The Insane Regressor: Throne of Pride

Karius had made it look easy, but there was nothing easy about it, especially for Ravian, who had yet to learn how to use aura. He could barely conjure Void flames through magic, let alone condense his aura outside his body as experienced Ninth-Rank Walkers could.

Now he stood before Karius with a scowl, glaring at the wooden sword in his hand. No matter how hard he stared or how much effort he put into it, nothing happened, which was only to be expected.

He needed either to learn the method through his cultivation technique or to have someone teach him how to apply the foundations he already possessed. In other words, he could sit down with the Void of Prohibition book and keep experimenting until he succeeded, or he could learn from someone with experience.

Neither approach would have been possible if Ravian had no cultivation technique at all. That was the foundation for everything else; once he had it, learning the rest was only a matter of time.

But because of his agreement with Lysandra, he had not had time to study.

Now he was facing the consequences, standing in front of his master and sweating from the effort of staring at a sword while the old man laughed at him. Still, nothing happened.

“Hahahaha!” Karius burst out laughing, clutching his stomach.

Ravian’s eyebrows twitched. The man was hundreds of years old, yet he sounded as though watching Ravian fail to copy him was the most entertaining thing he had seen in years.

What could Ravian do about it, though? Not everything could be taken by force. Sometimes, he simply had to study.

“Are you done laughing, old man? Are you going to teach me, or did you bring me here just to laugh at me?”

Karius took his time catching his breath. If anything, he seemed to draw out his laughter deliberately.

‘That damned old man really does have strange hobbies.’

At last, Karius looked at him again.

“Boy, you truly need to work on hiding your expressions. Anyone passing by could tell you were cursing me in your head just now.”

“And who said I couldn’t hide it?” Ravian replied.

Karius’s gaze turned serious, though a small smile appeared on his lips.

“Hoho. Little Ravian grew bolder while he was away, didn’t he?”

Ravian caught the mischief in his voice, but refused to give in so easily and said nothing.

Karius’s smile widened.

“Tsk, tsk. Ignoring me now? Should I take you on another flight to teach you how to fly, like I did before you ran away?”

Ravian’s pupils trembled at the memory.

“Ahem. I was only joking, old man. Why have you become so impatient while I was gone?” Ravian asked with a smile that held no happiness whatsoever.

“Raise your sword.”

Karius’s voice abruptly took on a sternness that made the command impossible to mistake for another joke. Then he vanished and appeared directly in front of Ravian.

‘Oh shit!’

Ravian hurriedly raised his wooden sword to block Karius’s, and the two blades met at an angle.

Bam!

A violent crack echoed through the training grounds as splinters flew through the air. When they settled, Ravian looked down at the sword in his hand—or rather, at what remained of it. The sound had come from his own wooden blade exploding on impact.

Across from him, Karius stood with his wooden sword perfectly straight and intact, without even a scratch on it. White aura continued to surround the wood.

Ravian exhaled sharply.

“That’s cheating, old man.”

“No, no.” Karius shook his head. “That’s a difference in strength and skill. Your first lesson is to call things what they are.”

The moment he finished speaking, Karius attacked again, moving so quickly that Ravian could barely follow him with his eyes. Ravian lifted the remains of his sword, trying to anticipate where the next strike would come from.

Bam!

A powerful blow struck his stomach before he could even see it coming.

Whoosh!

Ravian was flung backward like a kite whose string had been cut, then hit the ground with a muffled thud.

“Cough!”

He coughed up saliva and blood as he lay there struggling to catch his breath. When he finally raised his head, he looked toward the old man who appeared to be in his forties and had just struck him.

This time, aura surrounded Karius’s free fist, which was still held in the position it had taken when it connected with Ravian’s stomach.

“Get up, Ravian,” Karius said as he approached. “Before a fighter learns how to fight, he must learn how to take a hit, particularly from someone stronger than himself.”

Ravian did not complain. He got back to his feet despite the injury and wiped the blood from his lips, then adjusted his stance.

Karius had expected a grim or pained expression. Instead, Ravian greeted him with a broad smile.

‘He’s… smiling?’ Karius struggled to make sense of what he was seeing. ‘Shouldn’t he at least be giving me that cold look of his?’

He was judging Ravian by the boy he remembered: the one who had fallen to the floor, unable to move, after Karius punched him in his shabby home in the slums of the City of Light.

Karius did not know what Ravian had been through before reaching this training ground. Had he known, he would never have underestimated him here.

Ravian was no longer like an ordinary human. He had changed profoundly, both physically and mentally, and the disasters he had faced had strengthened his resolve. Most recently, he had stood alone against an entire orc camp… more than once.

In the end, he had come out alive. He had died in earlier attempts, but to him, those deaths had been a way to gather information before carrying out a plan that would let him survive with as few actual losses as possible.

Compared with everything he had endured, this brutal training was another way to grow stronger. Ravian was certain Karius was doing it for a reason, one that would benefit him, and so he intended to withstand it to the end.

“What’s wrong?” Ravian asked, his smile still in place. “Why did you stop, old man?”

“What?” Karius could hardly believe what he was hearing.

Did that lunatic actually want to take more blows like the last one?

“Don’t tell me you’re getting tired already,” Ravian continued. “We’ve only just begun.”

Karius’s surprise lasted only a moment. He lowered his fist, watched Ravian settle back into position, and stepped toward him again. The next strike came from the side, catching Ravian’s raised forearm and sending a jolt through it that made his fingers open. Before he could recover, Karius’s other hand struck his shoulder and forced him to turn; Ravian kept his feet under him, but only just.

Karius was controlling every blow. Had he used his full strength, there would have been no lesson after the first hit, and Ravian knew it. That knowledge did nothing to make the punches pleasant. Sometimes he saw Karius’s fist and moved in time, only for the aura around it to brush his guard and leave his arm numb; at other times he read the change in his master’s stance too late and took the impact against his ribs or stomach. He could endure each blow, yet enduring one gave him no way to stop the next.

He kept Absolute Focus on the instant before contact, trying to identify what happened when Karius struck. He remembered what it had felt like when the orc commander’s weapon reached him and compared it with the pressure running through his arms now. Karius’s aura did not appear from nowhere at the moment of impact; he carried it into the blow, guiding it with the movement of his body.

Ravian tried to summon his own power while raising his guard. Nothing came. He could make Void flames with magic, but he had never practiced drawing his aura outside his body, and staring at the energy around Karius’s fist was no more useful than staring at the sword had been.

After another exchange, Karius stepped away. Ravian was still upright, though he had blood on his lip again and one arm had begun to shake whenever he lifted it.

“That’s enough for today,” Karius said. “You can’t defend yourself against aura by looking at it. Without a cultivation technique, using your own aura would be impossible, and even with one, you still need to learn how to apply it. Keeping this up won’t teach you what you haven’t studied.”

“I have a technique,” Ravian replied.

Karius glanced at him. “Then go and study it.”

“I am studying.”

“Getting punched is not the same as studying.”

“I couldn’t make my aura appear on that sword. When you strike me, I can feel what yours does.” Ravian raised his trembling arm, looked at it, then met Karius’s eyes again. “Give me a little longer.”

Karius’s expression hardened. Ravian expected another lecture about knowing when to stop, but the older man studied the arm he was holding up, then the steadiness of his stance.

“I won’t keep hitting you until you fall unconscious.”

“Then I’ll make sure I don’t.”

“You’d better.”

Karius resumed at a slower pace, leaving Ravian time to raise his guard before each blow, though not enough to avoid them. That, Ravian discovered, was somehow more frustrating. He could watch the white aura approach, brace for it, and still feel his defense give way. Several times he tried to push his own power outward as their arms met, but it remained within him while Karius’s aura struck.

The minutes stretched into hours. Ravian learned to recognize the shift of Karius’s shoulder before a straight punch, and he no longer turned his head away when a blow approached his face. His forearms grew sore and his breathing rough, but the unfamiliar sensation at each impact grew clearer. Karius was not adding aura to a punch that was already underway. The power around his fist moved with it, answering the same intent.

Ravian had been trying to make his aura appear first, as though he needed a shield waiting around his hand. He adjusted his stance, felt the cultivation technique he possessed offer his power a route to follow, and fixed his attention on the next movement he intended to make. He would raise his fist to meet Karius’s, and his aura had to move with it.

Karius noticed the change in his eyes and threw another punch. It was still measured, but strong enough that Ravian would feel it if he failed. This time, Ravian stepped in instead of retreating. His fist rose to meet his master’s, and for an instant, a thin, dark gray aura drew tight around his knuckles.

Bam!

The two fists collided, but Ravian did not go flying. Pain ran up his arm, and the dark aura vanished almost as soon as it had appeared, yet he held his ground. Karius’s white aura remained around his fist as he slowly lowered it, staring at Ravian’s hand.

Ravian opened and closed his fingers. He could still feel where the power had answered him, though he was not certain he could call it back on his next attempt. That uncertainty failed to suppress the smile spreading across his face.

For the first time, he had stopped one of Karius’s punches with his own Void aura.