FM Chapter 8

Remember this is an original novel written by Addis of ExR. This is not a translation.

Chapter Eight

Discomfort welled in Kai, thick and black as an oil spring. But in the back of his mind, he felt his soul stir as if it wanted to raise its hackles and hiss back at the man. He wouldn’t turn over on to his stomach and show his weaknesses, but, at the same time, he wondered what the man meant by his earlier words.

“What do you mean?” Kai asked the mysterious man.

The man’s jade green eyes flashed with a brilliant light before he stepped swiftly before Kai. A growl echoed through the forest and Kai finally remembered that he was still facing the Blue Frost Isthmus. The man reached down towards Kai’s hand that was still gathering a golden light and tapped down on the base of his wrist. Immediately all of the gold faded away as if it had never been there in the first place.

“Watch, this is how you control it.” The man’s languid voice called out to Kai before he turned towards the Dire Beast and raised a hand.

Kai watched as the air seemed to burst with color before a large ball of air swirled in the palm of tha man’s hand. The air turned into a small tornado until it increased in size and the winds howled with intensity. WIth just the single step, Kai realized that, instead of focussing on one point, the man was gathering in and spreading the Element all over his body before willing it to do as he bid.

This method made gathering the Element faster and also made the power stronger. It also did not threaten the life of the user by calling on their own life force as Kai had done. Elemental cores dispersed energy through the cultivator’s entire being and it was not just located in one central point. If the cultivator called every single pore to attract the energy, this would cause the body to glow and would also increase the rate in which Elements were drawn towards the cultivators.

The way Kai had been taught to control his Elements was the backwater way and would harm his cultivation more than influence it into a high releam. This was the reason why the man had stopped Kai from harming himself. He sensed potential in this young boy and did not want to see another end before they even began.

With a single flick of his wrist, the man sent the hurricane force towards the Blue Frost Isthmus. The wind howled as it crashed against the beast. It struggled valiantly, but, in the end, the beast fell, it’s blue scales cracking as they sprinkled everywhere like snow. The enemy dealt with, the man turned back towards the boy and saw him biting his lower lip with his eyebrows scrunched together. He was deep in thought and had gained enlightenment over the way to use Elementals.

Nodding solemnly, the man turned and began to dissect the corpse of the beast. An hour later, the man was sitting in front of a small fire, chewing on the cooked meat of the Blue Frost Isthmus. Faylor and Jaelen had regained consciousness and were chatting quietly with the man. Every so often, the two would glance over to where Kai still sat with a frown on his face as he murmured unceasingly.

The golden haired man learned that this young boy was named Kai and he was on his way to the Capital for the yearly aptitude test. The man knew, just from the burst of golden power, what Kai’s results would be. However, he did not mention this to anyone.

The golden haired man was named Cian and, as he took another bite of the Blue Frost Isthmus beast’s meat, he took another glance at the boy. Pretty didn’t begin to describe Kai, Cian thought from his spot at the camp. The girls who tittered and flirted with him when he was in town were pretty. Kai, on the other hand was energy itself, like a bright, white lily among scarlet roses. But roses had thorns, and even though this lily seemed not to be like the roses, his petals were dripping with an unidentified poison.

Late into the night, Kai finally opened his eyes. He had finally been able to comprehend exactly how to form the Elements around him. With this new method, he wouldn’t harm himself. Both Faylor and Jaelen were fast asleep as they were still healing from their wounds. The golden haired man had told the two that he would keep watch while they slept. Knowing that someone who had saved them wouldn’t try to kill them, they two had immediately dozed off.

Alone in front of the campfire, the lights flickered across the golden haired man’s face. The visual, of the embers slowly rising and cracking before they lit up that man’s face, was the first visual Kai had when he opened his eyes. It was a serene moment when their eyes met, like two storms slowly meeting.

Kai’s eyes were light to moons in the dark as they caught the man’s jade ones.

“May I ask your name?” Kai asked quietly. He didn’t know why the man had decided to save them, but he was thankful. Even if he didn’t remember who he was, he still remembered who Jaelen and Faylor were. These two men wanted what was best for him and he could see it in their every action.

The man just gave a peaceful smile before looking back into the flames as he responded, “My name is Cian.”

“Thank you for saving us,” Kai said before giving a slight bow.

That smile still lighting his face, Cian just nodded, letting the warmth and light of the fire be the only thing within the dark night.

Understanding that the man didn’t want to talk any longer, Kai sighed in his heart before going over to where Jaelen and Faylor were sleeping. He unrolled is own sleeping bag before crawling into it. Even as he fell asleep, he could feel those green eyes watching him from the other side of the fire.

Kai dreamed of beasts and knights and battling through the plains of a world unknown. At the lead of thousands of men was a lithe man with hair the color of sunlight. He was wearing stark white clothing and had a black sword in his hands, light glinted off of it causing it to flicker like the stars. He yelled something and all the men around him screamed back a reply before charging forward madly. He closed his eyes, breathed in once, and looked into the direction Kai was watching from.

Eyes like the green abyss of a forest met his.

Then he woke up.

The next morning, as twilight began to fade, the three from Vahna said their farewells to the golden haired man. Cian shared some of the meat with the three before putting the rest of what he had gathered into his dimensional ring.

Dimensional rings were small pockets of another dimension that had been sealed within a ring using arrays. These rings were usually only items that the extremely wealthy had, they could cost anywhere from a few thousand gold coins to the millions depending on the size of the dimension. Although these rings seemed like they would be something easily stolen, they had a safeguard within their unique arrays that bound them to a certain person. While that person was alive, no one else in the world could see what was in their dimension.

Seeing that black ring glinting from the morning sun, Kai suddenly frowned. Remembering the dream from the night before, Kai looked at Cian and whispered, “Who exactly are you?”

A lazy smile covered the older man’s face, “You will find out when we meet again in the future.”

A confused look spread across the younger man’s face, “The future?”

A chuckle escaped the golden haired man’s lips and then Cian disappeared from the camp like a wisp of smoke as if he had never been there in the first place.

Kai stared at the spot where Cian once was before looking over at the two standing behind him. “Did he tell either of you who he was?”

“No, all we know is his name.” Faylor replied for the both of him, shaking his head.

Jaelen sighed, “Enough about him, we need to leave. It will take us another half month before we can exit this forest.” And with that, the three of them set off once again, their feet silent on the forest floor.

Thinking of the test to come, Kai asked, “How much longer until the Capital.”

Faylor answered with a grumble, “Approximately, two months.”

“So we’ve still a long way to go,” Kai began to grumble just like Faylor. Jaelen looked at the two and smiled. He was just now beginning to see Kai’s true personality. Maybe it had been the long amount of time he had been asleep, or even the loss of his memories, but for the longest time, it seemed as if Kai was just an empty shell going along with the routine of life.

It made Jaelen extremely happy to see the boy begin to sprout like grass after a long drought.

Sixteen days later, the three finally exited Sareen forest. Five days after that, they finally reached the first village since they left Vahna.

Kai was ecstatic to finally sleep in a real bed. While he loved the stars and the feeling of nature, it could not beat the feeling of not having rocks stab into your side as you slept.

For the next month and a half, the three went from village to village on their way to the capital. While the first village they stopped at was cheap and had only a few inns, as they got closer to the Capital, each village become more prosperous.

Villages didn’t surround the Capital, instead, there were four cities backed by the most prestigious families beneath the King. Nythlm, Earthborne, Silum and Wusteria were the names of the four major cities. Every single one of these families had a Body Essence realm as their Family Head. One could not even compare these cities to the main villages in the area.

At long last, the three reached the capital with two weeks to spare before the testing was scheduled. Being one of the biggest cities, the Capital of Ludum was the largest city that Kai had ever been too since he woke up. With no memories, the size of this large city with its prosperity was unimaginable. It was a good thing that there were a lot of entrances by the gate or else the three would have had to take an entire day to get through the cities security.

With two weeks left to go before the aptitude test, Jaelen, Faylor and Kai began to look around the Capital of Ludum for a place to stay. After searching through the many shops, they finally found a cheaper place to stay which was called the Boar’s Head Inn.

The Inn’s first floor was dedicated to a restaurant while the upscale hotels usually brought the food to the room for the customers. There were more luxury hotels closer to the center of the city, but those were so expensive it hurt Kai’s eyes to even look at them. As it was almost noon by the time they found the Inn, they decided to venture around the Capital to see what the large city had to offer.