“Yes, my lord,” the girl bowed.
Giving Dora a sad look, she followed her brother past the two golems and went to the dormitories of the inner circle disciples. Since their exam (which also felt like it had taken place in a previous life), neither Einen nor Hadjar had been assigned a room in the dormitories of the fully-fledged disciples.
And they couldn’t go back to the Forest of Knowledge, either. Moreover, out of the corner of his eye, Hadjar saw the silhouette of the warrior who served House Tarez. The one who had challenged them both to a duel just before their exam. However, unlike Tom, he hadn’t specified a date.
“By the Great Ancestor, Tom’s gone crazy. I understand that the death of a family member has affected them both, but that doesn’t mean that he has the right to act like a scoundrel!”
“The death of a family member?” Hadjar asked.
Dora realized that she’d said too much, so she stopped talking. With a sigh, she turned to Hadjar.
“Please forget I said anything. The affairs of the Predatory Blades clan are their own. I can’t discuss them.”
Hadjar nodded stiffly. Looking at Anise’s back as she departed, he made a hundred guesses about what had happened to them.
“Well, I’ve got a duel tomorrow.” Einen, despite having to fight a disciple of the inner circle, looked eerily calm. “Isn’t it funny, my friend? We were originally going to have you do this.”
“That’s right,” Hadjar said, smiling. “A battle between a fully-fledged disciple and an inner circle one will bring in less bets, though.”
“Profit is still profit, my barbarian friend.”
“Are you already aiming for victory, my bald friend?”
“Of course! We should come up with a plan. We’ll have to be cunning.”
“I’ve already forgotten the last time we had a fair fight.”
“The world of martial arts is ruthless, my barbarian friend.”
“And we’re even more ruthless, my bald friend.”
Dora watched the two leave. Sometimes, they really scared her with their madness. Or was it fearlessness? The kind that usually overcame any obstacles and troubles. Their confidence that they would win, that they would defeat anyone who got in their way, was both inspiring and... Well, quite honestly, frightening. By being amused at the prospect of great danger, the two commoners had managed to scare the elf Princess.
While ‘The Holy Sky’ School continued on as usual, somewhere in the distance, the drums of war began to beat quietly.
Chapter 513
There was no point in worrying about the fight with Tom Dinos. The friends had already developed a plan for situations like this one. They only had to make Einen the ‘golden goose’ (the person they would bet on) instead of Hadjar. Having done that, the two suddenly had some free time to spare.
“This is rather unexpected,” Hadjar drawled.
He was looking at his hands. Oddly enough, they now looked the same as when he had entered the library of Mage City: cracked skin, large calluses, covered in long and wide scars... His Technique for Strengthening the Body and dragon’s blood could no longer cope with Hadjar’s constant battles and training.
“My bald friend, you’re suspiciously calm.”
Einen shrugged. To others, it would’ve looked like a brief spasm.
“Don’t avoid the question.” Hadjar squinted. “Something happened to you back there, in the elves’ house.”
“See for yourself,” Einen said evasively.
Hadjar really could and had already seen it. One quick glance through the World River was enough for him to gauge the extent of the changes that his friend had undergone.
A month and a half ago, when he’d just joined ‘The Holy Sky’ School, Hadjar had been surprised by the structure of Tom and Anise’s energy bodies. Their energy channels were two or three times wider than what average Heaven Soldiers and Spirit Knights might’ve had. And the wider the channel, the higher its bandwidth. Even if a cultivator had an ocean of energy stored in their core, while they pumped it through a thin tube, they would be killed by someone who could empty their lake of energy with a huge bucket.
Hadjar had had to use several liters of Primordial Water, a very valuable resource, in order to expand his channels a little. However, Einen, after visiting Hera, now had channels as wide as the Dinos siblings’ own. Moreover, they now shone with crystalline purity. No pollution (which accompanied any cultivation) was interfering with the flow of his energy.
To put it simply, thanks to these changes, Einen had reached a new level of power. It had nothing to do with how much energy he had in his core or in his level of Weapon Spirit mastery, but his energy body had changed drastically.
“I already saw it,” Hadjar said.
They were walking toward the Treasure Tower. As they passed the Hall of Fame, they noticed that it was quiet. Usually, there was a crowd of disciples near the building that issued tasks, but not today. Every cultivator could feel the approach of the wind of change and was therefore in a hurry to finish any urgent business they had and go train.
“Then why did you ask, my barbarian friend?”
Perhaps it wasn’t worth it to torture someone who didn’t want to talk about it, but Hadjar was worried that Einen’s troubled state of mind might affect the outcome of tomorrow’s duel. He didn’t care if Einen won or lost, but if the islander was at odds with his own heart and thoughts, he could lose more than just the duel and a bet. A person could recover from defeat, but not from death.
Einen, well aware of his friend’s thoughts, looked at Hadjar with gratitude. Passing disciples of the outer circle flinched when they saw his inhuman purple eyes. Waiting until they were alone, Einen spoke, his tone a little sad:
“We haven’t been children for a long time, my friend.”
“It’s a matter of relative age.” Hadjar looked up at the sky. Despite the heavy atmosphere in the city, the weather was lovely. He wanted to go smoke his tobacco somewhere on the hills, not fight for his right to wake up to a new dawn. “When I spoke to the King and his sister, they called me ‘boy’.”
Einen smiled. Hadjar didn’t know what his friend was getting at, but the subject seemed to worry the islander.
“I meant to say that I’ve never seen children fight in wars.” He looked around the School’s yard. A few disciples were wandering about, minding their own business; most of them were younger than twenty. “They’re all children. And the Empire, our homeland, will send them to their deaths if it has to.”
Hadjar could’ve argued the point. He considered the small, outlying Kingdom of Lidus to be his homeland, but Einen was right. Lidus was part of Darnassus, even though it had had little contact with its ‘ruler’ for many centuries, and had mostly just paid taxes.
“You won’t be fighting children, my friend.” He finally understood what was bothering the islander. “Cultivators who have lived for millennia don’t care about people like us, who haven’t even been alive for a century.”
Hadjar began to truly comprehend just how differently time flowed in Dahanatan compared to the outskirts. Of course, it moved at the same speed as it did anywhere else; the difference was in the way people perceived it.
In some villages of Lidus, a decade was considered a significant period, because a century was the maximum lifespan of a mortal. In cities and capitals, a century mattered a lot. Practitioners, even if they had a very long life comparatively, didn’t live longer than three to five centuries without special potions and resources. Here, in Dahanatan, five centuries was a somewhat noticeable unit of time. Anything less was treated like a month.
For the majority of the population, Tom Dinos, Hadjar Darkhan, and even that assassin Spirit Knight, who had lived for three centuries, were all the same age.
‘The Holy Sky’ School had declared the age of sixteen as the upper limit for new disciples because they saw it as recruiting ‘babies’ and teaching cultivators from birth.
After all, early ch
ildhood was the most productive stage of cultivation. So, if by the end of their first century, a cultivator didn’t reach the Spirit Knight level, they were unlikely to become a Lord. If by the end of their first millennium, they didn’t become a Lord, they would never be a Nameless. And so on.
Perhaps that was why Hadjar’s claim that he’d be able to accomplish something that took others centuries had elicited so much skepticism from the ancient beings. In their eyes, he was still just a baby. And they probably thought he was almost half the age he actually was.
“The Sea of Sand wasn’t as different from the Islands as it seemed at first glance.” Einen sighed and closed his eyes. “But, by the Great Turtle, once we came to Dahanatan, I felt like I was in another world.”
Hadjar knew exactly what his friend was talking about. To him, the contrast was even greater. After all, he’d originally come to Lidus from Earth. Most of what seemed normal to him now had felt like pure madness at first.
“When in someone else’s temple, you can’t pray like you normally do.” Hadjar recalled an old saying. “We’re now in the heart of the Empire, my bald friend. It’s time we got used to it.”
Einen sighed again, then gave a sharp nod and waved his hand. Such outward displays of emotion were extremely rare for him.
“You’re right, my barbarian friend. It’s time to stop looking at the other disciples as children. They’re cultivators, same as us. Some are even stronger than us.”
“That’s right.”
Their spirits lifted, they finally approached the Treasure Tower. The old golem was once again sweeping the yard, cleaning the already perfectly clean surface of the stone platform with his broom, a tool more frightening than any Imperial level artifact.
“I’ve been waiting for you, young disciples.” The golem’s eyes were alive and full of energy. It was kind of scary. “Come in.”
Chapter 514
The last time they’d gone into the Treasure Tower was only a month and a half ago, but it felt more like a year and a half had gone by since then. It became clear where most of the disciples who normally spent their time at the Hall of Fame had gone: all of them, sensing the approach of war, had rushed to the Tower in search of Techniques and knowledge.
Even with thousands of people walking around the building (which, like Master Bilom’s shop, was much larger on the inside than it looked from the outside), the shelves were still filled to the brim with scrolls, manuscripts, clay tablets, knotted rope lettering, embroidered tapestries, and various paintings. Beneath domes made from glass or various metals were all sorts of artifacts.
The first floor, which, at the moment, had almost several thousand ordinary disciples exploring it, could boast an abundance of knowledge. Unfortunately, it wasn’t much use to the two friends. The Techniques and artifacts stored here were no higher than the Spirit level, which was far too weak. However, many disciples from the farthest corners of the Empire were glad to have access to even that much.
“We’d like to visit the second floor,” Hadjar said to the Gatekeeper.
The golem nodded. “Of course.”
The Gatekeeper of the Library went about unnoticed by the disciples milling around. They treated him like a piece of furniture.
Every time they wanted to buy something, whether it was a copy of a Technique or an artifact, they just took it. If their token held the required number of Glory points, they were deducted. If not, the disciple would feel the full effects of the ancient protection spell. The disciples who focused on strengthening their body sometimes did what they called ‘free training’: coming in and trying to take something they didn’t have enough money for, just to see if they could withstand the pain.
“Follow me,” still holding his broom, the Gatekeeper led them toward the spiral staircase in the center of the hall.
It was wide enough to let four people move around freely. The fully-fledged and inner circle disciples who were walking along it sometimes greeted the Gatekeeper with a respectful nod. For the most part, the golem was ignored.
“The second floor,” he informed them as they passed through an open hatch in the floor.
While passing through it, Hadjar felt a light wave of energy touch his body. When it came across his gold token, it subsided, leaving behind a slightly itchy sensation in the back of his head.
The second floor of the Library, apart from the fact that there were significantly fewer people here, looked the same as the first: rows upon rows of racks and shelves crammed full of various Techniques and artifacts.
Out of curiosity, Hadjar went over to the nearest shelf and looked at a scroll.
“‘Flower of Abundance’ Technique. Dagger. Internal energy. Spirit Level. Volume One. 8,000 Glory points,” Hadjar read aloud.
“Spirit level again?” Einen asked, surprised.
“It says that this is the first volume,” Hadjar put the scroll back.
Einen pulled out a rather heavy manuscript from a pile of books.
“‘Golden Body’ Technique. Strengthens the body. Spirit Level. Volume One. 11,250 Glory points.”
Hadjar frowned. He refused to believe that all the Library of ‘The Holy Sky’ School (which was larger than the Library of Mage City had been) had at its disposal were tons of useless junk — Spirit level Techniques.
“Something’s not right here, my bald friend.”
Einen didn’t manage to answer before the Gatekeeper approached one of the shelves. Leaning his broom against the wall, he ran his hands over the spines of the books. As if responding to the golem’s touch, they shook off the dust and acquired the luster of newly written tomes.
“There are only standard Techniques on the first floor of the Tower,” he said quietly, as if afraid of being overheard. “They have no continuation and are very superficial, with a shallow understanding of the world’s mysteries.”
Hadjar understood what the golem was saying. For example, the ‘Light Breeze’ Technique had been described in one volume and had no internal cultivation.
Another example was the ‘Scorched Falcon’ Technique. Although it had only one stance, it was described throughout eleven volumes. According to the legends, the one who mastered the eleventh volume would be able to conjure a true fire falcon with a wave of their sword. The bird would be so powerful that it could destroy a Lord at the middle stage.
“The second floor has Spirit level Techniques that contain up to five volumes.” The old man picked up the same manuscript that Einen had recently held in his hands. “The ‘Golden Body’ Technique. First Volume. The second and third volumes are on the third floor. Both are still at the Spirit level. The fourth and fifth volumes are on the fourth floor. The fifth is at the Earth level. Those who master this Technique fully will have a body comparable in strength to an Earth level artifact by the end of it.”
Hadjar and Einen stayed silent. What did ‘a body comparable in strength to an Earth level artifact’ mean? It meant that no mortal weapon could injure that person. Even if they got shot by a cannon at pointblank range, the projectile would simply bounce off their body.
Moreover, even a practitioner at the New Soul stage of the Transformation level wouldn’t be able to inflict so much as a single cut on such a body.
“Venerable Gatekeeper,” Hadjar bowed. “Are you saying that all the Techniques on the second floor are incomplete without us acquiring all the volumes?”
The golem nodded and put the manuscript back on its shelf.
“How much does the fifth volume of the ‘Golden Body’ Technique cost?” Einen asked.
“49,000 Glory points,” the old man replied immediately. “For inner circle disciples, 41,000. For core disciples, 35,000.”
These kinds of discounts seemed a little more honest than those displayed on the price tags of the first floor. Apparently, they stored such useless trash there that the School didn’t care if all the students learned it. Except for the outer circle disciples, of course, since they were used like cheap labor.
His ‘Path through the Clouds’ Meditation Technique was at the Heaven level, which meant he had no reason to practice Techniques that were weaker than that.
That was why Hadjar had abandoned the ‘Seven Ravens’ Technique — his transition to the Heaven Soldier level had rendered that Technique useless. As for the ‘Light Breeze’ Technique, Hadjar simply had no other options. The Technique created by Traves was very weak, being only a Spirit level one. However, it had great flexibility and was ideal for Hadjar’s fighting style. Finding something similar would be very difficult.
“Ones that have several volumes,” Einen specified.
The golem thought about it for a moment. He looked like he was examining the contents of the library’s floor.
“The Heaven level multivolume Techniques are on the fifth floor and are available only to the inner circle disciples,” he finally said.
“Damn it!” Hadjar cursed.
Einen, after mentioning the Great Turtle, started walking toward the exit. They knew that they had to pass a certain test to get to the third and fourth floors. However, to get to the fifth floor, they needed an emerald token.
“So, all the volumes on the fourth floor are limited to the Earth level?” Hadjar asked, just to clarify.
The golem turned to him. Hadjar could’ve sworn he saw regret in his eyes.
“Yes.” He nodded. “The knowledge at the Heaven level and above is extraordinarily deep and broad. Learning any of it independently is almost impossible, which is why they’re stored on the fifth floor. Only disciples of the inner circle can count on the help of Masters and Mentors.”
In other words, the School didn’t care about the ordinary disciples. They treated the fully-fledged ones with condescending disdain. If the disciples succeeded, they’d be able to participate in a mutually beneficial exchange, and if not… Well, such was fate. The most useful lectures and training advertised in the Hall of Fame always required an emerald token.
Land of Magic Page 42
