Leaving the inn, Raze had decided to exit the city. He wanted an area to practice where others wouldn’t see him, nor could they get hurt by what he would do. He didn’t want the same thing that had occurred last time.
Walking through the city, the Demonic faction was an interesting place. There were fights that were breaking out on the street, and some would just watch. There would always be someone of a high level nearby that would interfere, stopping it before it got too serious.
For a Demonic Faction, there seemed to be quite a lot of people who were just. On the outside, it perhaps looked like a less connected community compared to the town from the Dark Faction he was in.
But on closer inspection, it looked as if everyone in the Demonic faction was more closely connected.
“I wonder though, there has to be a reason why Alter had trouble infiltrating this place. Is it because of the clans around here?”
While focused on the people, Raze had walked right past a bulletin board. It had several wanted posters nailed to it, as well as many requests for strong warriors to help out here and there.
On one poster though, it was looking for a particular person. [Looking for information on the Dark Magus]
After exiting out of the gates, he looked around the area, and decided to climb up high.
It felt like he was ascending a hill, but there was hardly any greenery around and instead just a pile of rocks. As he looked around though, he had entered a type of grove of the hill, and now he was in a wide empty land, that was covered from all sides and the eyes of others.
Stretching his hand out, the first book appeared in his hand. “What was this called, the ten descending steps, right?”
Raze flicked through the book, and started to break down each of the movements. For the first step, there was a lot of explanation.
“So it seems like the right amount of Qi needs to be placed in each step, and the reason why all of the movements are difficult is that each of the steps requires an exact amount of Qi to be used. One has to remember the movements, and then focus on the right amount of Qi that is placed in each of them. The flowing of the descending steps, and the right amount of Qi worked like a jigsaw, allowing them to combine together making the next step stronger than the last.”
“Right!” Raze said, pushing the book away and propping it up against a rock. He had it open on the illustration of the first step. “This doesn’t seem so hard.”
Focusing, Raze got in a fighting stance, and copied the illustration in the book, he lifted up his right foot and stomped down on the ground. This was the first step of the ten, and required the most amount of Qi.
The Qi needed to be focused, from the dantian, and flow through the body and expand out right as the foot hit the ground. Bashing it against the floor as follows, Qi bursted out the sides, and a foot imprint was left on the ground.
When he moved his foot, he could see the imprint clearly there. “I guess, was that it… did I do it?”
Raze could see nothing wrong with what he had done, so he had to have completed the right step, right? But was it meant to be so easy?
Using his wind magic, Raze flicked to the next page. The second step was a flick with the back foot to dash forward. Dame had explained that each step could be used individually or together or combined with other skills. This time though, where the Qi needed to be gathered and in which part of the body were different, but the instructions were clear in the book and Raze followed along.
“And a flick of the back foot!” Raze shouted, his toes pushed against the ground and he was chucked around five meters forward in the air. Immediately he could see how effective this would be. This move covered a lot more distance than the two-step shift did, but it had an issue that one could only move directly forward.
‘Wait, did I just do the second step again? Didn’t Dame say this was hard? He said it was really hard, right? I must have done something wrong, but everything felt right.’
Just to make sure, Raze did the step again, he powered with his Qi and flicked the back of his foot, and he dashed over doing the second descending step, covering the same distance back.
According to the book, a failure would result in one tripping over oneself, due to the uneven Qi distribution in one’s body. When achieving the movement and the right amount of Qi, the movement should be what Raze had produced.
‘I guess I did manage to do it then,’ Raze said, scratching his head.
After going through the first movement a few times, and then the second movement, all doubt in his mind that he had been doing the moves wrong was erased because they were working as the book had described.
The first move was used to reinforce one’s stance, and if an enemy was unprepared, the blast of Qi outward could unbalance the opponent. While they were unbalanced, that’s when the second move was to come in.
‘Maybe this is where the hard part comes in,’ Raze thought. ‘Combining the moves together. The Qi from each move needs to flow, so the Qi that was moved into one foot needs to flow back into the dantian, and then out the foot again, and I have to use the right amount as I have been doing.’
Raze had intense focus, and he took a deep breath out. He then slammed his foot on the ground perfectly, the foot imprint was left as Qi blasted out. Then moving it in his body, he flicked his back leg, and he could feel it, the power from the first movement was being added to the second. As he flicked his back foot, almost twice the amount of power was used in the move, sending him across even faster.
Standing there for a moment, Raze felt a satisfying feeling coming all over his body. As everything was connected, there was a tingling sensation. He knew he had gotten it right.
“I did it, I combined the two movements. At this rate, I might be able to learn all ten of the descending steps, and learn to combine them all. But if it’s this easy, is it really such an impressive skill? Dame said he could only do 6 of the steps… Did I get scammed?” 𝑂𝒱𝓵xt.𝑐𝒐𝗆
Raze hadn’t been scammed at all. Dame was truthful when talking about the Ten Descending Steps. What Raze didn’t know was that his years of experience in finally controlling magic, to do such enchantments, to do various spells, and a combination of spells, was also able to be transferred into controlling Qi.
Qi and Mana shared many similarities, in some ways a Deity Ranked Pagna warrior’s control over Qi was just as fine as a 9-star mage. Because of this, what would take others many years to learn, Raze was learning in a matter of hours.