The Insane Regressor: Throne of Pride

Karius held out his fist a moment longer than necessary, his eyes fixed on Ravian’s fingers, where the gray aura had already vanished. He had felt something surrounding them when their fists collided, something that had kept his blow from driving the boy backward as it had throughout the past several hours, but it disappeared before he could examine it properly.

It had felt as though the force of his strike had been erased. Karius closed his fingers once, testing the sensation left in his palm. The impact itself had been real; he had heard it and felt Ravian’s knuckles against his. What troubled him was how abruptly the force pushing back against his fist had vanished. He could not tell whether the gray aura had absorbed it or merely disrupted it, and its disappearance gave him no chance to find out.

Ravian made no attempt to hide his smile. His forearm ached from the point of impact to his elbow, but he looked at it only once; he was far more interested in the sensation that lingered in his fist after the aura disappeared. The result had been neither powerful nor stable, but it had happened, and he knew he had just crossed a troublesome threshold.

“Do it again,” Karius said, finally lowering his hand.

Ravian flexed his fingers, raised his fist before his face, and repeated the movement he had made before the collision. He stepped forward slightly and tensed his shoulder to the degree he remembered, but no gray aura appeared. He tried again without changing his position, then a third time while directing his attention to the power inside his body. All he gained was a sharper pain in his forearm. He tried to remember what he had felt an instant before their fists met, but the memory would not turn into a movement he could repeat. Absolute Focus let him recall where his weight had rested and how he had raised his arm; it did not make the gray aura answer when he asked for it. Ravian had learned enough from that single success to know what he wanted, which made his inability to produce it again especially irritating.

His smile narrowed when he saw Karius put a hand over his mouth to hide a mocking grin.

“Don’t look at me like that. You saw it too.”

“That’s right,” Karius replied. “Which is why I asked you to do it again. But…”

Ravian lowered his hand without acknowledging his failure, though the fatigue in his arm made denial rather pointless. When he had blocked the punch, he had not been thinking about coating his fist or copying Karius’s white aura. He had seen a blow coming and chosen to meet it with his own; only then had his power responded. He almost understood it now, but he felt he needed either more practice or to complete the missing parts of his cultivation technique to save time.

Karius noticed Ravian rubbing his elbow, then looked at the dried blood on his lips and the stance that was no longer as steady as it had been hours earlier. He had no intention of testing how many times his disciple could get back up, and they had already gone well beyond the time he had allotted for this session.

“Enough. Repeating this until you ruin your arm won’t give you a second result.”

“Hmm.” Ravian hummed, though he did not appear to be listening.

“You need to rest for a while. Then you’ll come back so we can continue our conversation; we’re not finished yet,” Karius said.

Ravian stopped moving his fist, though he continued to regard it with irritation. Part of him wanted to ask for another punch. Having Karius in front of him made it easier to recover that sensation than trying to find it alone later, but his arm was no longer responding as quickly as it should. Another attempt now would be more about clinging to a small victory than learning from it.

Karius approached and took hold of his injured forearm, pressing two fingers against spots some distance apart. A sharp, unexpected pain shot through Ravian’s arm, but he did not pull away. Karius released him a moment later, some of the tension leaving his face. The examination also made Ravian aware of how much the rest of his body hurt. Every place Karius had struck during the afternoon seemed to announce itself now that they had stopped moving, and he knew that another hour of blows would leave him less able to study what had happened, not more. He disliked the conclusion, but it was difficult to argue with his own arm.

“Nothing’s broken. Good.”

Ravian gave him a flat look. Karius smiled briefly, then picked up the remains of Ravian’s broken wooden sword and his own intact one from where they had discarded them during the fist training, and set both at the edge of the grounds.

“What you did at the end should have been impossible, Ravian,” Karius said as he returned. “You used your aura before learning how to apply a meditation technique.”

He fell silent for a moment, studying his disciple with an odd expression.

“In fact, it couldn’t have happened unless you already possess a spiritual cultivation technique.”

Ravian’s expression did not change.

He certainly would not reveal the nature of his dual cultivation technique, not even to Karius. He could tell his master that he was capable of using both aura and magic, but he was nowhere near ready to reveal his method, especially when the System had said it belonged to the category of forbidden techniques. It was written in Prohibian, too. Revealing something like that in this world would be tantamount to suicide; once anyone else knew, the information could spread. He had given Karius a reason to suspect the existence of a technique simply by allowing him to examine his aura. That was already more than Ravian had intended to reveal when the training began. He could live with his master knowing he had a method; letting him inspect the book itself, its language, or the path it contained was another matter entirely. The white gleam had not returned to Karius’s eyes, but Ravian remembered it well enough to choose his words carefully.

Yet he could not hide that he was a dual spiritual cultivator forever. It was an unmatched advantage that could draw countless enemies, but it could also bring him powerful allies. Ravian did intend to reveal it—just not now. Perhaps after he officially reached the Eighth Rank.

His thoughts had occupied no more than two seconds when Karius called to him.

“Hey, Ravian. You need to understand that we can’t rush something like this.”

He paused to let the warning sink in.

“Did you learn some random, shoddy technique while you were in the capital?”

‘Close enough, yet nowhere near the truth,’ Ravian thought.

“No, Master. It wasn’t anything shoddy. In fact, I hadn’t learned any cultivation technique when it happened. When I first awakened, it was as though I had a moment of enlightenment, and in my excitement, I tried directing the burning energy inside me outward.” Ravian lowered his head toward the ground as he recounted it, as though telling a frightening story.

Then he abruptly looked up at Karius.

“And suddenly, Master, a little flame appeared above my finger.”

“…”

Karius stared at him for a long while.

“A moment of enlightenment? And a flame?” he repeated in utter disbelief.

“Exactly, Master. Enlightenment, then boom—a flame.” Ravian wore an expression of perfect seriousness, nodding again and again in confirmation.

“…”

Karius remained silent, though his face betrayed a great deal about what was going through his mind.

“You… used magic?” he asked.

Ravian frowned.

“Was that magic, Master?”

“If it happened as you described, that flame was undoubtedly an expression of fire magic produced by your element after you used mana to manifest it,” Karius said, frowning as he put a hand to his chin. “But you just used aura. No one can use magic and aura at the same time. That’s forbidden by the path of the soul.”

Ravian felt his heartbeat quicken at the word forbidden.

“W-what do you mean, Master? Would I be in danger if I can use aura and magic at the same time?” he asked with an innocent expression.

Karius studied his face, then grew stern.

“More danger than you can imagine.”

Ravian was on the verge of reconsidering several of his plans when Karius smiled and continued.

“That would be true if you didn’t have me beside you.”

“Huh?” Ravian did not understand.

Karius shook his head at his disciple’s bewilderment.

“Do you really think your master is that weak, boy?” He patted Ravian’s shoulder with enough force to make it seem as though he meant to cause internal bleeding. “No one can harm you as long as I’m by your side.”

“And I meant it when I said you would be in danger,” Karius went on. “For centuries, every race has tried to create a dual fighter like you.”

Ravian’s attention sharpened several times over as his master spoke about dual spiritual fighters. Until now, he had weighed the advantage against the enemies it might attract in general terms.

“But not one of them has ever succeeded.” Karius’s gaze wandered briefly in thought before returning to Ravian. “And you, my disciple, may be the first person capable of refining the soul in two forms at once: aura and magic.”

“Do you know what that means?” Karius asked.

Ravian shook his head.

Karius’s smile grew broader than Ravian had ever seen it.

“It means you have the direct, exclusive support of one of the Taboos.”