Chapter 49: Surprise Surprise!

Rob had thought that his training would be the most simple task given. He thought this not only because he was already being instructed by Jade in the field of cooking, but also had never truly been challenged in the kitchen.

What Rob was unaware of, was that he wasn’t going to be taught how to cook, but instead, he would be taught the art of potion craft.

“So you want me to synthesize a potion that is difficult to make in large batches, in large batches?” Jade simply nodded at Rob and he remained confused through the entirety of his alchemy lesson with Jade. Though it was his first lesson, he felt like he’d been set up for failure. Jade didn’t help his fight against that sensation, with continual shrugs or vague answers in response to his questions.

Until, Rob asked, “Wouldn’t it be better to learn to create this potion as it should be made first, to gain an appropriate understanding of how it works?”

Jade shook her head before she stated simply, “I would agree if you could state a single moment where a single potion would be useful, compared to having a few or more.”

Rob opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. The more he thought about what most potions did, and their relative situational uses, the more he agreed with what he was being required to do. This made the task far more digestible for Rob and things began to flow better for the young man moving forward.

A potion of water breathing had a duration, and Rob wasn’t known for being extremely cognizant of himself and his surroundings at all times like his peers.

“Why drown when I could just take another sip or potion completely,” mumbled Rob to himself. His practice was surprisingly fruitful. His first batch was burned in the final process, but his second was useful product.

Jade wouldn’t allow him to digest the product and told him to begin again, and they continued like this over and over. With each completion, came an additional singular comment from Jade.

Rob was interested in each change made to the process with each completion, and asked many questions to understand the why of the changes, more than simply memorizing the steps taken.

His decision to truly learn was rewarded by Jade tenfold. She hadn’t originally planned to spend as much time with Rob, but when she saw his talent, she stayed nearby. Even as she worked with Rob though, she used an ability to check on the well-being of Troy and the rest of her son’s friends. She skimmed through the small group, but paused when she fell on Troy and Khalif.

“Don’t go in there, it’s obviously a—“ Jade stopped talking to herself and set down the knife she used while she showed Rob how to dissect a certain plant used in the underwater breathing potions. She rolled her eyes before she leaned both hands on the counter top and sighed heavily. The scoff and laugh that followed made Rob worry as Jade looked at him.

“I’ll be back,” said Jade in the same moment she summoned a portal behind herself and pushed herself into it. Rob then found himself caught in a fit of laughter, and returned to his own practice.

…

Troy truly enjoyed the trident she’d found. She spun the light infused weapon around herself, with grace, but she knew that her actions were unrefined in the area of skill. She used it as she would have used any other spear, glaive, or even large axe at some points, but knew she missed fundamentals that she believed only tutelage could provide.

Though she believed what she did, she still practiced. Underwater, for days.

She and Khalif were the first ones to be able to move, and thought that they should scout out the underwater city before they brought their entire group into the interior. They felt they made their way quickly from point to point underwater, until their first encounter with the life of the city.

“How in the sparks are we going to be able to stop one of these things, let alone a group!” Troy tried to focus on combat, but Khalif’s words unsettled slightly. They truly were in a dire struggle against a single opponent, and both feared that more enemies could join the fight at any time.

“We gotta be better than this,” yelled Troy. She felt herself grow angry in a way she’d never felt before. This wasn’t what she envisioned for herself at all in that situation. It had only been the start of their journey, but she still held higher expectations for herself and the others in the training exercise.

The heat and light within Troy blossomed to a new degree. The energy able to shine more brilliantly from her pores, even though they were deep underwater and surrounded by light already.

This was what Jade wanted to have Troy experience. Although the environment was rich with natural light, the water's characteristics suppressed its intensity.

Unlike the Dump at night Troy’s body wasn’t being drowned in various light mana from seemingly every direction. This caused her normally satiated body to become starved in situations where there wasn’t an abundance of light for her core to feed on.

Her current location came with both an exceptional amount of light, and caused her body to feel starved due to the water. This caused Troy’s mana to fill in a way it never had before.

Is this what Arson feels like?

Thoughts of Arson pushed Troy harder as she knew he was being tested in ways that none of them could imagine. Jade’s comments made Troy wonder if Arson should have been gone as long as he had been already, but instead of losing her current momentum, she focused on the enemies before her.

“Move, you idiots!” Troy looked back at Khalif who pushed one of his trainees out of the way of a giant seahorse’s dive. Just as Khalif seemed to be crushed, he vanished, and appeared behind the creature.

“Don’t just stand there, fight back!” Khalif yelled at the trainees that had frozen momentarily when they’d thought he’d be crushed. Instead he held on to a knife buried deep into the seahorse’s tail. Troy giggled to herself while Khalif climbed the back of the creature, and still managed to give orders.

“Let’s go people or we’ll be left behind,” roared Khalif, in the same moment he managed to kick off a nearby wall and slam the beast he fought into the ground. It was an easy feat for Khalif now that they had fought for days underwater. Troy thought her rise had been alarming, but Khalif’s changes made Troy wonder…

Troy herself fought in the middle of a large pack of Naga. The fish-women were fearsome fighters that left Troy with bruises with the use of their dual wielding mace arts.

Troy’s skin grew more durable for as long as her speed was insufficient to dodge the majority of attacks that came her way, but over the last few days she was struck successfully less and less.

She healed fast, and grew used to the movements of the creatures. With the exception being the Naga males. The lithe fish-men used swords and knives to fight, and due to a difference in the makeup of their fins, could move far faster than their female counterparts.

Although the men were hard to catch, once Troy did, she noticed a single attack would often be enough to defeat one, but the females seemed to be far more dense.

Her trident swept back and forward,. Many were knocked back, but Troy realized after a few more attacks, that she’d been successfully surrounded.

She cursed to herself, and realized that Khalif’s warning to his trainees had been for more than just the fresh talents at his rear.

“Come on then, give me what you got!” Troy spun, and a new dance of light began. She hadn’t used her hard light clones, nor infused herself with mana since they’d been able to move properly, but knew the moment called for more than simple combat maneuvers.

…

Jade watched from a distance. She’d honestly thought Troy would have faltered with how reckless the girl was being, but smiled when Troy began to truly drink in the light around herself.

“That’s better…” Jade had been nervous, until Troy’s hard-light clones burst into action around the girl. With every thrust of her weapon, six clones either, blocked, parried or attacked. When she moved, so did they, not mimicking her as she once primarily had them committed to, but instead each took separate actions.

Because the clones were often destroyed by their movement, or the power of their own attacks; from a distance Troy seemed consumed by a growing army of light guardians.

Some of the clones she made with each strike weren’t destroyed, and instead stood frozen in the stance of their last actions. She used this to obstruct the vision of those around her, as well as create more opportunities to attack. Without realizing it, she’d begun to spring terror within the Nagas, as anywhere they looked, either Troy or her clones were there, stabbing, slicing, and rending foes apart.

Yet even as Troy began to feel as if she was unstoppable, she felt her weapon bounce off the great hammer of the foe in front of her. It was then that Troy truly took in her newest enemy and felt forced to take a step backward.

The naga in front of her was a slender female with a powerful build, reinforced by a presence that carried a physical weight.

Many of Troy’s clones disappeared under the new pressure brought on by the new foe, as the remainder were slowed from speeds fast enough to break the sound barrier, to a slow motion crawl.

The new naga moved as fast as her slender physiqued male counterparts, yet hit far harder than any of her wider bodied peers.

Troy struggled to keep up with the creatures movements while it spun in a tornado of maces and aggression, and knew she was only able to, due to none of the other naga attacking during this assault.

“Son of a sparking wildfire,” cursed Troy. She was continually attempting to either block or evade the attacks entirely. The pressure of the blows had begun to crack the trident she used, so even blocking soon wouldn’t be an option.

Troy was sure even her light refined bones would shatter when struck by one of the maces. She hadn’t refined her muscles, nor her skin, and even if she had, she was unsure it would change a thing.

Her hard light clones were connected to her current or last action, as she had only managed to delay the projections slightly thus far when she used them. Forced on the Back-foot since the beginning of the fight left Troy with little to no openings to attack, which made her most viable tactic in any normal fight a non-option. She grew more and more frustrated with each swing from the naga that made her feel the threat of death in her heart. Her vision grew temporarily blurry, and in that moment, Troy paused.

The naga dove toward her, arms wide, both maces cocked back in a threat to serve Troy a mental clap to end her days within the realms.

A new pressure entered the area. Light distorted around all gathered there. The energy visibly sucked into Troy’s body in an instant.

From a distance, an entire section of the city went dark, before a vortex of mana restored light to the area. During that brief instance, the entire fight before Troy and the naga had changed.

Troy, had doubled her speed, and begun an offensive of her own. Still unable to overwhelm the naga, Troy mixed in the use of her hard-light clones, and smiled as one of the projections landed her first hit within their entire duel.

“This ends here!” Troy pushed every ounce of the new energy thrust into her body and became a blur of light underneath the ocean's surface.

Troy danced around her foe like a ballerina. Slice after slice made on the naga’s body until a small haze of blue blood could be seen around its body.

Troy took this as a good sign and pushed her body to its absolute limit. The creature was able to block many of her blows, but seemed to slow down under her onslaught of stabs and swings.

Finally, Troy saw an opening she felt would allow for her to end the fight completely. With a large influx of light mana pressed into the trident in the moment of her last thrust, Troy’s weapon exploded into a pipe bomb of weapon shards.

The shrapnel remains of the weapon did nothing to the naga before her, and her own mana was left to disperse into the ocean depths without a catalyst to direct the energy’s intent. Light flowed into the water around the two, and Troy sighed, as she wondered if Arson would forgive her for dying there.

“Move!” Troy heard the words from behind her. She couldn’t tell if it was Khalif or someone else. From somewhere else. Yet even though she tried and another new energy begun to fill her body, she still could not move.

The naga raised both maces, arms once again spread wide to end Troy in a single smash; Troy forced to watch as both weapons came at her seemingly slowed by the perception of her final moment alive.

Both maces came together and rang like a bell even at the bottom of the see. Troy was sent hurdling through the water end over end, and it wasn’t until she smashed into the wall behind herself that she realized she hadn’t been struck by the weapons. Her back bounced off the wall, but she was still able to remain upright, even after being sent adrift at high speeds.

When Troy looked around, all the naga were dead, with the exception of the one she’d just fought. It, was being held by Jade, who dangled the naga by the neck and let it thrash in her grip uselessly. A portal beheaded the naga and Jade took in Troy with a smile, and nodded once in her direction.

“That’s enough for now, it’s time to return home.”

A round of celebration could be heard behind Jade and Troy was glad to see Khalif and the others were safe and sound. She’d lost track of them during her push into the city, but they’d barely made it down a single street and had fought hundreds of naga due to Jade’s initial kicking of the underwater hornets nest.

She’d wanted to perform the job that Jade informed them she’d let go without attention for a long period as a way to help and show appreciation for the woman. Only to have to be saved by Jade in the end without barely having had completed the task.

Troy sighed and nodded back at Jade. Grateful that she’d increased her abilities somehow, and was excited to see what her notifications held.

A portal was opened and she and the others stepped through. Troy had to force herself not to look back at the headless naga she’d fought, as she knew, if they returned there would be more of the same.

There is no space in my heart for new fears, thought Troy to herself.

…

“Why should I have to explain anything to anyone after what I’ve been through?” PRO stood in front of Arson and felt her smile turn into a frown at the young man’s question.

“In fact after how you tricked me into that place, stole season cycles of my life, and still now require more of me, I’m beginning to believe that I should end my journey within Endless immediately, and with permanence,” said Arson. He knew this would effect PRO as he’d long suspected that PRO needed him to be doing these trials for some reason. In fact he believed that PRO actually needed more than just him, maybe as many individuals as a realm could hold, or more.

Arson learned much about the realms during his trials. The biggest detail being that travel between realms was both seen as impossible, and beyond illegal.

Every realm he traveled to had laws against realm jumping, due to the rise of the sky kingdom, otherwise known as the CityNation of CloudLake. Arson’s mother’s birthplace.

Regardless of the laws set in place by every realm he visited, or the beliefs of those he talked to while there, nothing changed the fact that he himself traveled between many realms, and knew he wasn’t the only one who did so.

A man named Carter did so. His mother and father did so. He suspected the order that Dare wanted to be a part of did so, along many others.

The look in PRO’s eyes told Arson more than even the silence that dragged on between them. Being in the familiar place without the threat of death made Arson want to rush toward the nearest portal and hope it led home. If only he could be so lucky.

His fate in his mind had been shaded towards the belief he would live with the weight of an eternal struggle, and only he could bare the pressure that came with it.

“If you leave, you know that you forfeit the knowledge you are owed by completing the first floor child, not many gain even this honor, your mother included,” said PRO as her frown once more shifted. PRO had seen Arson’s actions, and knew like his parents that the temptation of knowledge was something hard for the Omni to pass on, ever. They were built for Endless, and though outcasted before they could return Endless to its former glory, one of their kin was supposed to return the cursed family's home, and bring about a new era of magical discovery and wonder.

Or, as the Omen believe, their cousins the Omni, would end all things. Only the presence of Omen, could save existence as the realms knew it, thus they pledged to purge all of their distant family members from the lands of cultivation and Uni-Vare.

“What knowledge do you truly believe is more valuable than being returned to my family and friends to me after what I’ve just experienced, you would have to be promising immortality for me to even blink at the thought of staying here a moment longer,” said Arson. He started to look around at his surroundings, with the honest intent of finding a way home. He no longer cared what PRO and Endless could offer, he just wanted to help his mother make her home beautiful, and trash a problem of the past.

He shook his head at the momentary thought, that maybe he was meant to make trash non-existent throughout all realms…?

“It's far better than immortality, boy. Think bigger. We are in a place linked to the keys of reality,” said PRO with bridled excitement in her voice. Arson didn’t know what his accomplishment meant to PRO. She’d been overseer of Endless for eons. She lived in the city of Origin since being appointed, and had felt alone ever since.

And now for the first time since she’d managed the knowledge available to life in the Uni-Vare, she had not one, but two potential candidates for her replacement. She wouldn’t let either opportunity pass without trying everything within her capabilities to make them both push to the end and both become worthy of the position b being offered.

Even if neither of you know what you are truly signing up for…

Arson sighed and closed his eyes. He knew that the potential of something like this occurring was high even before he returned, and with as many questions as the trials left him with, hated himself for the magnitude of his own curiosities.

“So…”

“Yes,” asked PRO with a raised brow. Arson opened his eyes in that moment, and looked PRO in the eyes before he responded.

“What was your original question?”