Chapter 271 (1/2)
Frowning, Azriel considered the man in front of her. “Liam. Don’t you know not to disturb someone during their training?”
Liam’s smile was very tired. The man had acted as an intermediary between Azriel and Drak for several years now, and never failed to smile, although it seemed that something had shaken the edges of his confidence. “Now, now, I’ve given you up to the limit; the dinner is in 20 minutes. It’s time-”
“I’m very fast, perhaps you’ve seen?” Azriel interrupted. “I could make it to his temporary residence in a handful of minutes.”
“Perhaps, Miss, but I think Drak had something different than spear-user casual dress code when he sent the invite,” Liam said, eyeing her training equipment skeptically.
“Did he? If only the previous invite had mentioned it, I would have changed.” Azriel said.
“I’m mentioning it, right now.”
“And you are pulling me out the door in your insistence I arrive early. There simply isn’t time,” Azriel said, walking past Liam. The man could only sigh and follow behind her.
*****
Randidly’s body was trembling. His control of mana and Aether were both frayed, although they were starting to recover. That flood of emotions into his body… He could only sit and feel them, allowing them to sink into himself. The furious angers, and the vicious cold fears, the love, the wide acceptance, the regret…
Deep, endless seas of regret flowed through him, filled with grasping hands and discouraging whispers, pressing, pushing, pulling, attempting to wear away at the will. But also from the emotions was the determination and focus, slowly seeping into Randidly’s soul. It was… a strange experience. And one that Randidly wished to have avoided.
But Randidly had already gained several levels in Battle Intent, and there was so much more fragments of emotions scattered through him.
Still, the strange trembling made things very difficult. He couldn’t train, and he didn’t really want to walk out like this, in case that there were people who would just see a member of the top 4 trembling, falling over his own feet. So Randidly decided to remain here and ride out the emotions as best he could. In the meantime…
Randidly positioned the ivory spear on the table, in a well lit area. Then he began to study the complicated engraving on the spear, a flowing thing that spanned almost the entirety of the shaft, curving around and twisting together in strange ways.
If what Randidly understood about the spear was correct, it was an unbelievable piece of artisanry. It could be fed Aether to absorb meaning from the world, or it could absorb thoughts and emotions to produce dirty Aether. And it seemed that these processes didn’t actually consume what was given, but stored the fuel inside the spear itself. These emotions flooding Randidly, keeping his only movements to trembling, felt just as real as his own emotions, although he knew they weren’t. How was this possible…?
Over the next 8 hours, Randidly brought out more and more of the Engraving encyclopedias, checking and rechecking. His training with Azriel was temporarily on hold, as he continued to tremble, although now it was more intermittent than persistent. Still, wild waves of emotions crashed against him, and he just gritted his teeth and focused on his research.
The main accomplishment of this time was to divide the Engraving upon the spear into 4 parts. At the center was what Randidly could only guess was the place that the consumed substances were stored. It was the most intricate piece, the most mystifying, filled with strange eddies of energy and weird twists and turns.
Surrounding this central storage region was the second most complicated work, that seemed to act as the portion that allowed this process to be reversed. It almost must somehow be the production portion of the spear, but again, Randidly was completely out of his depth. Shadow IV as a rune continued to cause him to struggle, and this was much, much more refined than that, filled with Engraving techniques that Randidly didn’t recognize from any of the volumes.
The final two portions were positioned on the outside of the intricate engraving, and were what Randidly believed to be the absorption portions. They were similar, but slightly different. Still, after his run-ins with the Creature and its strange constructs, Randidly had some familiarity with how to shape Aether, and could identify with a strong degree of certainty which side did what.
Both were dense, but they were not complicated, which was somewhat mystifying to Randidly. Based on what he could guess, this is the type of equipment that would legitimately make someone a Heretic. Yet it was rather… unimpressive.
‘Well,’ Randidly supposed, ‘Not everything about the system is perfect, I guess…’
With a much lowered frequency of tremors in his body, Randidly went up to the roof and once more called down the Weeping Cloud, and began to Engrave. It seemed that the rain drops also did a lot to expedite and smooth the process of absorption too, which was a big help, but still, it wasn’t enough to prevent Randidly from ruining a dozen spears, trying to Engrave.