As Arran opened his eyes, his awareness of his body returned in an instant, and the feeling was anything but pleasant.
He launched into a coughing fit, his throat dry like the sands of a desert. At once, he produced a bottle of water from his void ring and thirstily guzzled it down. That was nowhere near enough to sate his thirst, and a second bottle followed quickly.
When the second bottle was empty the parched feeling slowly abated, and with his mind no longer overwhelmed by thirst, he took some moments to gather his wits.
He quickly realized that more time had passed than he expected. The lower half of his face was covered in a thick and itchy beard, and his body felt frighteningly weak — the result of not eating for weeks or even months, he suspected.
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While he wondered just how long he had been senseless, he decided there would be time to worry about that later. Right now, his body was desperate for nourishment, and he would have to see to that first.
He produced a small meal of dried fruits and dragon meat from his void ring, then hurriedly ate it all, washing it down with yet another bottle of water.
The Dragon's Ruin wasted no time in absorbing the Natural Essence within the food, and some moments later the feeling of weakness began to subside. Although he was still nowhere near his full strength, at least he no longer felt as if he was on the verge of collapse.
Thirst and hunger addressed — at least for the moment — Arran got to his feet, groaning as he forced his stiff body into action.
A quick look around the room showed no signs of change, except for a large piece of paper that had been nailed to the door. On the paper, there was a message, scribbled in messy, angular characters.
STAY NEAR THE MANSION UNTIL I RETURN
A message from Brightblade, he knew. Both the shoddy handwriting and the frustrating lack of detail were things he recognized instantly.
That she had already finished Snowcloud's Tempering did not come as a surprise — his itchy beard made it clear that he had spent no small amount of time comprehending the insights Master Zhao's had left him.
And from the look of it, they had returned to the House of Swords without him.
Yet these were matters of later concern. Without delay, Arran hurried out of the mansion and stripped off his filthy robe, then stepped into the stream that ran through the small valley.
The water was icy, but Arran was glad to wash the filth of his skin. After some minutes, he felt like a new man. The robe, he burned — it was beyond salvaging.
He took a mirror from his void ring, and as he gazed into it, the sight of his reflection caused him some shock. His eyes were sunken and his cheeks hollow, with his face resembling that of someone on the brink of starvation.
He had planned to shave his beard, but instead, he merely cut it short. If it wasn't exactly fashionable, at least it would conceal his emaciated state.
All of this took him half an hour, and by the end of it, he decided it was time for another meal.
This time, he ate a large slab of dragon meat, roasted in Fire Essence. The Dragon's Ruin made quick work of it, and when he finished eating, the weakness that still lingered within his body had subsided further.
Fully recovering would take longer, but trying to rush it would do him little good.
And more importantly, now that he was fed and bathed, he was eager to finally examine his Destruction Realm. It had been sealed off years earlier, when he had little understanding of magic.
But now, with everything he had learned since then, he hoped he could finally figure out how to use it. And if there was any justice in the world, the Realm's power would match the amount of trouble it had caused him.
He sat down on the grass next to the stream, a trace of excitement in his eyes as he prepared to study the long-sealed Realm. Then, he closed his eyes and began to examine it.
The Realm itself was exactly as he remembered it — a narrow connection to some unknown reservoir, producing a constant trickle of violent Essence.
Both his Sense and his command of Essence had increased tremendously since the Destruction Realm was sealed, but he found the Destruction Essence was still as difficult to control as it had been before he knew what it was.
Just moving it within his body was difficult, and gathering enough of it for a spell or attack seemed downright impossible.
The result was disappointing but not unexpected. Undeterred, he spent nearly an hour poking and prodding the Destruction Essence, trying to figure out to what extent he could make it submit to his will.
In the end, he found that he could just barely circulate the Destruction Essence through his body — and that was enough to cause him more than a little excitement.
If Elder Naran was correct, circulating the Destruction Essence through his body would strengthen his resistance to magic. And from what Arran guessed, it would do so more efficiently than the Essence in Uvar or the Patriarch's amulet.
Yet that wasn't what caused his excitement. Useful though resistance to magic was, the Patriarch's amulet already gave him a way to train it, and a more effective method would hardly make a big difference.
Rather, he was excited because he knew this was exactly what he needed. By circulating the Essence, he could further increase his control of it. It would be a slow process, but it was a path ahead.
And best of all, it wouldn't require his full attention — he could train it even while doing other things.
Still, he spent half an hour practicing the circulation technique with Destruction Essence, just to make sure he had it well in hand.
When he was satisfied that he could maintain it without effort, he decided it was time to focus his attention on other things.
He started off by eating yet another meal — the third in as many hours. The previous two had done him some good, but he was already feeling famished once more.
At a guess, he thought he would be hungry for a long time to come.
After he finished the meal, he began to test his magic. He suspected that he could imbue it with his newfound insight, and he was eager to find out whether his suspicion was right. If it was, it would definitely strengthen his magic considerably.
He tried his spells and techniques one by one, attempting to somehow imbue each of them with the insight he had gained while unsealing his Destruction Realm.
Yet hard though he tried, all his attempts ended in failure.
It wasn't that he was trying to do something impossible. At least, he didn't think so. Rather, his skill in magic simply wasn't sufficient. While he could use the spells he knew, he lacked the knowledge to alter them in any meaningful way.
With a sigh, he gave up.
There was no way to succeed with his current level of skill, and practice by himself was unlikely to remedy that any time soon. What he needed were teachers, and for that, he would have to rely on Brightblade.
He had another quick meal while sitting in the grass next to the stream, and when he finished, he switched his attention to sword practice.
Master Zhao's techniques, stripped of other influences, provided him with a new foundation — one far more robust than the previous one. And now, he began to build on that foundation.
He did not hurry or force himself. Instead, he merely executed the simple techniques Master Zhao had taught him slowly and carefully, repeating them until they felt as familiar as the imperfect versions he had previously used.
The work was as pleasant as it was easy.
The spark of insight seemed to guide his movements, and his progress came almost without effort. But even so, he took care not to over-exert himself — his body had yet to recover, after all.
He ate when he was hungry and napped when he was tired, enjoying the feeling of the sun on his skin and the grass under his feet as he practiced. And while he trained, he constantly circulated Destruction Essence through his body.
As his familiarity with the purified techniques grew, he gradually began to improve upon them, drawing upon his experience to adapt them to his needs.
This, too, proved easy.
Whenever he introduced an influence that conflicted with the bright spark of insight within his mind, the discrepancy was immediately clear, and he wasted no time in discarding it.
Still, he found that many of his experiences helped him improve the techniques. His sparring matches against Darkfire, the battle against the Body Refiners, the battles he had fought against novices — they all helped him refine the basic techniques into ones that matched both his mind and his body.
When evening fell he was still far from done, but he ceased his labor and retired to the mansion, randomly picking a room to sleep in.
He continued his practice in the morning, and throughout the day that followed, he made steady progress. More and more, the techniques were beginning to resemble something that could be considered an incipient style — one of Arran's own making.
While it was built on the same insight as the calm and controlled style Master Zhao had taught him, his own version was a very different one.
It possessed an aura of savagery that the original lacked, along with a hint of ruthlessness. It was a style meant to brutalize enemies, tear their defenses asunder and strike them down without mercy.
Arran felt some wonder when he saw this, somehow still surprised at the violence that lurked within him. He had known it was there, of course, but seeing it condensed in a sword style still made him frown in puzzlement.
Yet there was no point in denying it — the sword style was a product of his mind, and its ferocity reflected an aspect of his personality.
By the third day, the style had grown into something he knew would be effective in battle, and more so than any of the styles and techniques he had learned previously. Even though it was still far from finished, it was already clear that it had the potential to become staggeringly powerful.
Pleased with his progress, Arran set to work again, eager to further refine the style.
But before his second meal of the day, his Shadowsight picked up two approaching figures, both of which he recognized instantly.
He turned around at once, and was greeted with the sight of Snowcloud and Brightblade. The former stared at him in joyous shock, while a satisfied grin appeared on the face of the latter.
"Didn't I tell you he was close to awakening?" Brightblade spoke the words in a confident tone, but Arran could not help but notice the trace of relief in her voice.