Alacryan Arthur

Chapter 28

 Caera Denoir POV

It was quite weird, seeing Arthur talking to the air, but since I had also felt the weird way mana had behaved and his reaction to the intent of whoever he was talking to, I believed him. After he had activated his will again, the entity seemed to have calmed down, as Arthur didn't fall to the floor again.

Of course I had questions, and not only a few.

What was that thing that even Scythe Cadells intent couldn't compare to, and how strong was Arthur, if he had no problems with his intent? I only felt about a third of Seris intent, and that hadn't even been directed specifically toward me.

While Seris was the second strongest Scythe, from what I had heard Scythe Cadell was quite a bit stronger, albeit just in raw power output. If Arthur, someone younger than me could withstand his concentrated intent, what did that say about Arthur?

Also did I hear him right? A dragon gifted him his will? Does that mean, he had Vritra blood and a Dragon will, additionally to his weird magic, I had already witnessed and a mental maturity I hadn't expected from someone younger than me. I had to mature so fast because of the standards of the Denoirs, but he was even younger than me.

He also mentioned the massacre of the ancient mages, but the cruelty of the dragons didn't surprise me.

But the thing that interested me the most was a word only mentioned on the side.

Aether.

I remembered how Sevren told me stories of this mysterious force and all the things we did together. He finally ventured through the relictobs in search for the lost magic of the ancient mages, but never returned.

If I could learn about this magic, my brothers and my dream would come true.

While I wanted to ask Arthur everything about Aether he knew, right now he was sitting on the earth in a meditative pose, like he was absorbing mana.

He told me beforehand that he would train with the voice, who had introduced itself as Erith, and that this would happen in some kind of mental realm. Since this seemed to be our only way out I just accepted and promised to watch over him for the duration of his mental absence.

And that was what I did. After an hour or so I was getting bored, and so I decided to train a bit on my own.

And so I withdrew the sword from the dimensionring and practiced the blocking and attacking basics. Someone once told me "Don't fear a man who knows 1000 techniques. But fear the man that has practiced one technique 1000 times."

That quote stuck to me, and so I continued to practice the few different techniques the runes offered me, as well as my sword arts.

The barrier around our portal seemed to be the perfect target, as nothing I did damaged it even remotely.

I still had to get the hang of how one could use the decay mana art, how to fuse it with fire to create the legendary soulfire, a fire that burns everything.

I let out a frustrated roar.

"Still no luck with decay?" I heard Arthur's voice from behind me.

"No, not really. Already finished with training?"

"No, but there is a pretty huge time dilation in there, so it's been a few days for me and I couldn't sunstain my will any longer, so I am locked out for a bit."

I nodded. He had told me that he needed his will for the training, so it made sense that he had to take breaks.

"How about I show you the basics?" he asked, while lifting his arm to let the soulfire he already conjured jump from it toward a building nearby, engulfing it in the black flames. These onyx flames licked on the cold stone, and with each millisecond it burned a bit of the stone, but the stone didn't turn black or even white, no, it simply disappeared. After a few seconds the building had simply disappeared and Arthur canceled the spell.