Dyon chuckled, but obediently waited outside until Ri came out. Although he was a bit surprised that you could bathe in the lake of purity left by her mother, it wasn’t unbelievable. But, what Ri said about it afterwards caused him to ponder about her origins again.
“By the way, I made the mistake of not warning you about the cave yesterday, so I would be an idiot if I made the same mistake again. You can never swim or touch the actual lake, you’ll freeze into an icicle regardless of whether you’re pure or not.”
Dyon nodded. Keeping his inquiries to himself. 𝘪𝑎.𝒸𝘰
“So! Where to Madame?”
“As much as I’d like to take you to the formation guild or even the alchemy guilds now, it’ll probably be best if you register at the academy first. The new calendar year just started, so the period of acceptance is about to close. But, my father happens to be the school head, so even with a late application, you should be allowed to take the test. That reminds me, how old are you?”
“Uh, you said the new calendar year just started, so I should be 17 now.”
“Ah, so your soul only needs to have reached the Higher Foundation Stage and your innate soul has to have been at the Lower Foundation stage to be accepted. I’m pretty sure you meet those requirements considering your aurora, so we can just head there now.”
Dyon smiled, he was going to brag in his usual arrogant fashion, but he was trying to keep his flirtatiousness to a minimum. He was failing miserably, yes, but he was trying, nonetheless.
‘This essence blood nonsense is no joke… I’m going to either have to find an outlet, or find an essence powerful enough to counter the sage essence…’
While Dyon was thinking, Little Black had walked up and licked his palm, causing Dyon to reflexively stroke his head.
“What kind of beast is that? I’ve never seen one before… scales… fur… those white swirls on him are beautiful…”
Dyon scratched around the white scale on Little Black’s forehead, causing Little Black to growl in pleasure.
“I’m not sure either honestly, but he’s been my only companion for a while now,” Dyon said with a smile.
The one thing about Dyon was that while he had no qualms about putting himself in danger, he could never do the same for his friends. He could scream at the top of his lungs that he was the successor of the Celestial Deer Sect in the face of an enemy, but he’d never admit that Little Black might be a supreme level beast or beyond.
With Little Black’s appearance not matching up with that of any other beast, no one would make the connection anyway.
Ri didn’t find this to be odd as she strapped her thin sword to her back. Dyon tried to stop himself from watching her perfectly proportioned hips sway with her hair as he followed silently behind her.
Dyon had no idea why he was so infatuated with Ri’s appearance. Even Delia and Meiying hadn’t made him look at them this often. He could only assume it was the essence within him, so, he changed the subject to distract himself.
“Are you ever going to tell me how you manage to remain perfectly silent when you move like that?” Asked Dyon in curiosity as they made their way through the forest.
Ri smiled an adorable smile. “It’s not easy to learn even if I did tell you. My father specializes in illusory type techniques. In fact, he manifested his soul using a unique type technique. In the end, his soul manifested itself as mist. It allows him to understand people intimately and find the best way to manipulate their senses.”
Dyon had an astonished look on his face, ‘To understand people and then manipulate them? What an overpowered ability…’
But, Dyon pushed this to the back of his mind, he was even more interested in something else.
“How do you use illusion techniques to be soundless? And if this was your father’s ability, why do you have it?”
“Remember how I told you using a unique type technique means you have to forge your own path? Because my father’s soul manifestation was ranked so highly, and he was very intelligent with his cultivation, he took a seemingly straight forward ability and branched it into countless techniques. These techniques may be used best by my father, but it doesn’t mean others can’t use them as well.”
“I see… so forging your own path also means innovating your own technique… no wonder only geniuses do it by choice.”
“Right. Even when someone has no choice but to choose a unique type, usually they use stock techniques that could work with almost any soul manifestation of their type. Imagine one person manifests as a lion and another as a bear, they would both have access to strengthening generic abilities.”
“Interesting…” Dyon was trying to soak in everything Ri said.
“In terms of how the technique actually works, it sounds simple, but it’s hard to grasp. Illusions are all about slight of hand. Well, low level illusions anyway. My father is powerful enough to literally distort reality, but, I think that’s only possible if you have his manifestation type and become powerful enough.”
All of a sudden, Dyon’s ears twitched as Ri took a step.
“See? It’s not that I’m not making sounds. It’s that I’m not allowing those near to me to know I’m making a sound. There are frequencies of sounds that the human ear just can’t hear no matter how powerful you become. I’m distorting the sounds I’m making into a frequency that you can’t hear. The issue with this technique is that beast can hear me. But, without my father’s manifestation, this is the best we can do.”
Dyon began mumbling to himself, “so, illusions of the eyes are about seeing things that aren’t there, or not seeing things that are. Illusions using the ears are about not hearing things that are there.
“The way Ri’s father’s technique works is by playing with the frequency of the sounds… I could probably cheat and create an array that can do that, but a flash of gold would give me away even if I was silent…. Hmm.”
They continued to walk forward as Dyon thought.
𝘳𝑎.𝒸ℴ