CHAPTER 88

  THE TIMELESS STRIKES

  Zephyr babbled, sharing his relevant wisdom, which for Hans was still irrelevant. But despite his feelings, the lecture continued, and so did his bored mind. It wasn’t what he was excited about. Most of it focussed on textbook answers and coordinated attacks.

  Since graduation tests were usually conducted in student factions, Hans, having the trauma of leading gone wrong, didn’t want to be a part of one. “I need to free Zilong and others from the hidden village while simultaneously destroying a node. This is a soon-to-be messy task, and I’m definitely keeping it under my pants this time.”

  Life on Concordia went on as did his routine life, with a few more graduates visiting to guide their juniors.

  Despite hating every minute of it, he kept attending these sessions to increase his chances, even if it aided a slim one percent against the red demons; he wanted to have it.

  “I need to learn everything about these creatures. If Zilong failed to help me, there must be a way for me to use them to my advantage when I launch a war against the Council node.” He pondered deeply, making other misunderstandings that he was paying attention to the seniors’ talk for the first time.

  With those sessions came a multitude of spars where the seniors imitated red demons’ habits and tactics to make examinees familiar. This, Hans enjoyed. He was always the one to get his hands dirty first.

  Yet surprisingly, he got his rear handed to him several times. “Man, I can’t just go nuts on my seniors. When it’s not a matter of life and death, I’m practically useless.” He sighed, glancing at his lacking-raw-power seniors. Various of them had put him in his place by sheer techniques they had developed with the experience they carried. Camouflage, ambush, and dirty tactics he wasn’t used to felt bitter to him.

  “Can I go again?” He asked, standing once more after a young woman in her twenties slammed him to the ground with pure strength. Her auburn hair and muscular build easily misunderstood as dwarf, but she was human.

  Flexing her solid arm, she sent Hans flying when he was just asking. “You should trust nobody. The lesson is over.” She said and went on her way, leaving the juniors to clean up the inventory.

  The same drill continued, and the final-year candidates came to know the atrocities the red demon were doing. Breeding the denizens just to eat them like livestock sent shivers down their bones. “One of the main purposes of the graduation test was to rescue the ones they could while they couldn’t, put them out of their misery.” A new instructor, stout in frame and old in age, said.

  “The culling of red demons is needed every year to keep their population in check, and while every other node called it as Red-demon trials, Concordia used this as an opportunity to fine-tune their graduates.” Remarked the auburn lady who had slammed Hans continuously for three consecutive days.

  As little information kept piling up about red demons, Hans and his friends made progress. “Just when will they stop?” Delimira, frustrated, asked Rudolf, who was referring to a private spar between Hans and Chris.

  “Still at stalemate!” Rudolf pondered aloud. “No matter who loses, I’ll feel bad. But you sure, you are not competing?” He pointed at her.

  Delimira didn’t answer and just focussed on her two friends who were giving their best and had already left her behind. She had a lot of powers, but she was not a master in any like them.

  “Long transformation— not easy and hard to control with a lot of recoil. Krosh art is precise with high damage but is limited.” She struggled inside, her right palm checking her beating heart. “I’m still stuck in the third circle, having my feet in so many boats.”

  After a while, Rudolf stopped both of them. “One of you has unlimited aura, while the other has access to unlimited mana. This won’t go anywhere. From tomorrow on, Chris is forbidden to use the bloodline, and Hans, solar-or-whatever. Got that?”

  Both nodded and turned to Delimira, who swiftly was making her exit. “See ya, you two. I’m finally making the fourth circle tonight.” She dashed towards Sierra, who just came there to fetch her. The preparations were complete, and she didn’t like being left behind.

  With the sun still hanging high, Hans poured everything in his solar spell—Photonise, Sunfield-Sanctuary, BlastBullets, landmine, Paradise-Garden, Hyper-Regeneration, and when the sun shied to the horizon— SeedBullet, LongShot, SharpDeath, SilvaOrtus, and VoidZone. He left ManaStorm and SolarStorm for emergencies only and kept them at arm’s length to use.

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  “Now, I’m done with my mage duties. I should pick up the swords.” Picking himself up, he ran towards the transfer SpaceDoor. With a zapp, he whipped himself to AgriLands, the man-eating forest where he planned to meet his waiting ancestor.

  “Shall we start, foolish descendant?” Dietrich turned back, sensing approaching Hans. “Hmm… it looks like your aura is manifesting properly. I’d say you’d hit grade 10 very soon.”

  “I need proper skills to move further. Isn’t it?” Hans wanted to hear that this universal belief was wrong, but Dietrich’s words didn’t help.

  “Yes, you do. Aura skills are not just powerful moves; they define how your body releases aura. That helps increase the grade. You know this stuff, so why hope vainly, foolish descendant?” Dietrich said, shaking his head. He came close, looking straight into his eyes. “And since you’ve already chosen whom you’ll learn those from, I won’t interfere. If you can pull that off, I’d even be proud.”

  “You really know everything, don’t you?” Hans had no idea about the conversation between Vanir and Dietrich, and he didn’t care. To him, Dietrich was the elder of the family who was deeply interested in their family child, and Vanir, he was just Vanir, whom he could trust with anything. “I’m ready.” Hans took the agile sword stance, his bright white aura wrapping around his sword.

  Swoosh! — perfectly, imitating what Dietrich had shown him, he began to volley stabs right at Dietrich’s face.

  “Impressive indeed, foolish descendant.” Dietrich dodged by the hair’s breadth and drew a straight horizon with his sword. Skilfully, Hans ducked and with a swift motion leapt at Dietrich, his sword burning bright.

  “Bzzzt!” An attack from nowhere manifested ahead of his chest that threw him back. “What the?” He stared at Dietrich, who stood calm far ahead. It was clear Dietrich hadn’t moved a sword. An attack he didn’t sense or see had hit him close. He searched for a hidden enemy, but there was no one. “What happened?” Puzzled, he asked.

  “That was a timeless strike, my descendant. The final hurdle which you have to cross for becoming a true Inheritor.”

  “But, I don’t even sense you move—”

  “Because I didn’t.” Dietrich insisted. “At least not when it hit you.”

  “Then how?” Hans was confused; he wanted an answer, but Dietrich didn’t want to hand it over on a silver platter to him. “You need to work on it, descendant.” He urged, raising his sword.

  He began to actively corner Hans, and as he had taught him, using the agile sword step, Hans began to dance. Swiftly dodging one after the other, but then it began: sword strikes kept hitting where not even Dietrich’s sword was.

  “Ah, goddamn it.” His battle sense, which many had shown confidence in, failed to detect anything. If Dietrich had used a real sword instead of a blunt one, Hans would have been in several pieces by now.

  Frustrated, Hans stopped his agile sword-step and began to rack his brain. “Timeless strike— meaning some kind of time-related trickery.” He took many invisible strikes from left, right, and below and finally managed to block a downward slash.

  “I got it.” He smiled as if he had achieved something a lot bigger. “These strikes are the ones I dodged previously, isn't it?” He verified, and Dietrich, amused, confirmed. “It took you two hours to figure this out. It’s not bad compared to your father; he actually spent almost four to understand what’s happening. I guess Rudolf calling you a sword protégé is not just his parental affection speaking.”

  “But ancestor. How you did you do it?” Understanding what was happening and understanding how it was happening was a different thing. “I clearly dodged those strikes, but they resurfaced in the same location as I passed through.”

  Amused, Dietrich responded with a grin. “The trick is to leave your aura in a time gap with a delicate balance, and when an unfamiliar aura passes through, the balance breaks, making the hidden strike appear.”

  “I don’t want to sound stupid, but it went several feet above my head—”

  “Never expected you to understand it on the first try, descendant. That’s why I always add, “ foolish” before addressing you.”

  “Stop rubbing over my face. Just tell me how?” Hans insisted.

  “Fine! Fine!” Dietrich coughed a little and pointed, “Do you know how our bloodline works? Why your friend Chris can call upon an aura much higher than his grade?”

  “It just happens, doesn’t it? That’s bloodline power.” He had never bothered to understand how the Parvian bloodline worked; he just accepted it as it was. “Am I wrong?” He asked Dietrich, who was clearly giving a disappointing look.

  “It’s the heart,” Dietrich answered, poking his left chest. “The heart borrows aura from future possibilities. If your friend could never reach an aura of grade eighty. He could never amplify his aura through the bloodline beyond eighty in his grade sixties. You understand a little?”

  “So if he is not destined to be a warlock, then he could not increase his aura to that grade no matter how much his heart beats loudly, right?”

  “Yes,” Dietrich confirmed. “The original Parvian bloodline, such as mine, has both the power of borrowing aura from future possibilities as well as to dwell in the past. Hence come our ancestral memories and experiences.”

  “That still doesn’t explain how you made those invisible strikes, ancestor.”

  “In simple words, we use the thread of time to our bidding. That is our real power, foolish descendant. A thread of time to summon aura from the future or leave in the past.”