Chapter 192
Chapter 192
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 192
Chapter Title: Prodigy?
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Midterm evaluations had come and gone, and quite some time had already passed.
Before they knew it, summer was right around the corner.
The World Tree, which had been scattering pink petals for a while, now shimmered with vibrant green leaves.
Raheln Academy stood beneath that grand World Tree.
"Aaaagh!"
"Gaaah!"
"Quit whining and get up."
Sounds of training echoed relentlessly from the Martial Arts Department, as always.
Krash was sitting cross-legged in an absurd place, eyes quietly closed.
He was perched on a branch of the World Tree itself.
A height dizzyingly far from the ground.
Over the past few weeks, Krash had climbed this tree relentlessly, as if his life depended on it.
The reason? None other than Durandal.
"Your training starts at the top of the sacred tree. Come up, and we'll begin."
The moment Durandal finished speaking, he scaled the World Tree effortlessly.
With hands clasped behind his back, striding up as if it were a stroll—it looked deceptively easy at a glance.
But when Krash tried it himself, he quickly realized just how ridiculous it was.
The World Tree was far taller than it appeared to the naked eye.
It started with a gentle slope along the roots, but from the midpoint, it was practically vertical.
Even using aura to cling to the trunk and climb straight up had its limits.
So Krash drove Thunderclap into the World Tree from midway up, then used Accel to leap higher.
He repeated the process: stab the sword in, leap again.
'Damn it, never thought I'd burn through Accel's first charge like this.'
Grinding his teeth in frustration and cursing under his breath, Krash pressed on.
Any ordinary person would have given up and stormed off in a huff long ago, but Krash wasn't ordinary.
When his stamina hit its limit midway, he wedged the greatsword he'd grabbed after a fall into the sacred tree, sat on it, and dozed to recover.
Then he climbed again, repeating until he finally reached a branch.
"You've made it."
Durandal greeted the exhausted Krash with casual nonchalance.
And without pause, he added,
"Sit cross-legged."
No time for rest—Krash trudged over and assumed the position anyway.
Drenched in sweat, face a mess, but the fierce glint in his eyes burned undimmed.
Durandal approached from behind and slapped a slip of paper onto Krash's back.
"This talisman suppresses aura. It's infused with that power."
Sure enough, the aura inside Krash's body ground to a halt.
He belatedly sensed an intangible energy rising from the paper.
It was unmistakably the energy of Durandal's secret art, Dragon Lock.
'I thought it only suppressed World Erosion.'
Apparently, it could restrain aura too, if willed.
As Krash reeled in surprise, Durandal continued.
"From now on, you'll master the foundational power of Dragon Lock."
"The foundational power?"
"Exactly. Master it, and that talisman on your back will fall off naturally."
That was the talisman's purpose.
"A test, then."
"Precisely. Fail this, and you'll never learn Dragon Lock."
Durandal left those words hanging, walked around front, and plopped down cross-legged himself.
He sat there silently, staring at Krash.
Meeting that gaze, Krash fidgeted awkwardly in position.
He'd expected some guidance or hint.
But Durandal just watched, saying nothing.
And Krash caught on to what that meant.
'Figure it out myself, huh.'
Slap a Dragon Lock talisman on me out of nowhere and expect me to puzzle it out solo.
Infuriating, but if this was the training method, he had no complaints.
Krash closed his eyes and probed his own senses.
As Durandal intended, the aura within him refused to budge.
The sensation was profoundly strange.
As if a massive weight were crushing his aura flat.
The World Erosion's power had quieted too.
Just like his aura, it lay suppressed.
Perhaps because of that.
Krash felt an uncanny stillness within himself.
His inner world had always buzzed daily with aura and World Erosion clashing.
Today, with both dormant, only silence remained.
A hollowed-out emptiness in his body.
Yet oddly, it didn't feel foreign to Krash.
'This... I know it.'
From a curse he'd endured before.
One eerily similar to Dragon Lock.
It devoured a person's aura.
Harmless to average folk.
But devastating to elites like the Generation of the Sky.
No one, no matter how skilled, could fight barehanded without aura.
So Krash had absorbed that curse afflicting one of their number, per his role.
Any delay, and they'd have lost all their aura, left empty shells.
The curse devoured Krash's aura in an instant.
But his innate aura had been mediocre anyway.
He'd long abandoned cultivating it.
A body riddled with curses was better off wielding them than fumbling aura too late in the game.
That's when he'd felt this before.
All aura vanished, only curses filling him.
The curses chattered noisily everywhere, but his emptied aura core stayed serene.
So maybe that's why.
This sensation felt familiar, not off-putting.
Where others might panic, Krash calmly surveyed his inner depths.
With his core hushed, external sounds sharpened.
High in the sky, fierce winds rustled the World Tree's leaves every which way.
But those weren't mere tree sounds.
Sky, earth, sea—all pulsed with their own sounds and forces.
His quieted core let nature's power etch vividly into him.
And as Krash sensed those powers, they sensed him.
Curious, perhaps, they edged toward his voided core.
As if tempted to settle in that strangely empty space.
Slowly, leisurely, they seeped inside.
Krash knew this feeling well.
It was exactly like absorbing World Erosion power.
'Different power, same handling.'
Once he grasped it, Krash absorbed the force rapidly.
Soon, his core brimmed with the unknown energy.
Distinct from aura or World Erosion.
The instant it filled him, Krash felt an intangible energy overlay his body.
And as his eyes slowly opened.
The view differed from before.
Absorbing World Erosion amid erosion had yielded vast power.
Absorbing the world's power amid the world brought vastness anew.
"Ha."
A sigh escaped Krash's lips.
Snap—
The talisman on his back peeled free and fluttered away.
Right before him.
Durandal stared wide-eyed.
Shock plain in his gaze.
Naturally so.
Durandal had taught Krash no method, just sat him atop the World Tree.
This power could only be grasped firsthand.
Aura was a living being's innate force.
Honed by talent and toil, a privilege of life.
World Erosion was alien force from other realms.
Violent, brutal in reshaping worlds.
Erosion Beings hadn't known it originally.
But crossing into other worlds revealed it.
Realizing their home's force clashed with the invaded world's.
Thus, they wielded World Erosion freely.
Turning species was like inducting them into their world.
There, Durandal realized something.
If World Erosion existed.
Didn't our world have its own power?
That epiphany led him to purge his life-force aura.
Exhausting it daily till collapse, emptying fully.
Only then did he feel the world's power.
The innate force of the world itself, unnoticed by all dwelling in it.
Durandal named it the world's aura.
Through it, he forged the secret art Dragon Lock, ascending to the pinnacle of the Heavenly Demon.
*Wait, pinnacle of what? Contextually, top martial artist.*
He'd made Krash climb for easy access to this aura.
The World Tree teemed with it more than anywhere.
Especially while exhausting aura en route.
He'd anticipated results, but...
'Didn't expect it to work this well.'
Durandal gaped in astonishment.
'Is this talent?'
The man who'd reached the pinnacle through genius stared at Krash in disbelief.
Krash, who'd succeeded on raw experience sans any prodigy spark.
"This is it?"
Already, Krash wielded the world's aura freely.
Handling it effortlessly, thanks to World Erosion practice.
'Not for nothing Sephira's prophecy named him the star.'
Durandal saw a once-in-a-generation prodigy; Krash remained oblivious.
"Yes, that's the world's aura. Our world's innate power, distinct from personal aura. And that curse power you're using."
Maybe from mixing curses lately.
Durandal's eyes saw Krash's World Erosion as curse too.
Not wrong, so Krash nodded.
"Now, using that world's aura as foundation, you'll learn Dragon Lock."
"Got it."
Krash eyed the aura coiling in his hand.
Undeniably unlike World Erosion.
One eroded to conquer; this guarded.
Curious, Krash tested clashing them lightly.
Crackle!
Black and white sparks erupted in his core; his body locked rigid.
A split-second sense of his body cleaving in two.
Almost screamed right in front of Durandal.
'No simultaneous use yet, huh.'
But he'd foreseen this.
A world's native power surprised, but he'd planned ahead.
Even if it shredded his body, Krash would master Dragon Lock.
'Use everything usable.'
His creed from start to finish.
"Rest today. You suffered climbing up."
Durandal turned leisurely away.
"I'll fetch food below."
Krash had slaved weeks to ascend; Durandal descended casually.
Watching, Krash slumped down.
His gaze pierced clouds far below to Raheln Academy glittering.
Krash had one wish.
While he was up here, please—no incidents down there.
He knew full well how futile that hope.