Chapter 66: Happy Hunting (I)
Ember blurred from one side of the archway to the other, his body hurtling forwards with explosive force. Splinters of stone and debris flew out from his steps. Unfortunately, the kinetic force still wasn't doing as much as he had hoped.
"I have told you before," Dawn said, sitting behind with a flask of warm beverage in her hand. She had been mostly idle since she began recovering. The most productive work she had done so far was carving a stone sitting by the wall. "You cannot learn it by forcing yourself. If you have the energy, you should practise the other spells I taught you."
Ember bolted to land beside her.
"Is it because I still haven't acquired the Mana Weaving skill?"
"It could be," she looked up, "or you may simply lack the attunement to conjure up enough kinetic force for an intermediate spell."
As much as her explanation sounded plausible, it depressed Ember as he thought about sitting down for a bit. Attunements, as they stood, didn't simply boost one's ability to shape an element limitlessly. It also had a significant impact on the amount of mana used and the time required to conjure up that specific element.
"I'm going to try a few more times," he said and dashed off once again. With the goalpost so close, Ember wasn't willing to give up so easily. He would require just one more spell. Even if Haste was an intermediate one starting at Tier 4, it shouldn't have been impossible for him to get it. After all, he had managed to push Kinetic Force to intermediate Tier 4 on his own merit.
The weave was not even that far off from Kinetic Push. The difficulty in Haste was that half of its mechanism needed to be woven internally in comparison to Kinetic Push or any of his other elementary spells. He had to weave his breaths of mana into thin strands inside his mana channels and then stitch them into a simpler form of kinetic spell, allowing his lower body—his legs, tissues, muscles, and even his cells—to build up kinetic force to release it all in an explosive burst of movement.
His pace would not be any slower than using his Blitz Steps, even in its unmastered state. And Ember could only imagine how much faster he would get if he managed to combine Blitz Steps with it.