Chapter 137: Another Crisis
Five days had passed since their return, and Silas couldn’t find a clue about how to solve his problem.
That wasn’t all.
During the past days, a new problem surfaced, one that he had never experienced before.
"I can’t keep on like that."
Sitting in his dorm, in his study room, Silas squeezed his head, with a real serious look on his face.
He spent the past days doing the same, training in the morning with his team, and doing his research afterwards. He first headed to the library, surveyed lots of books speaking about Mana and even complicated theory books.
He looked for teachers and asked them about Mana. He asked about the dragons, asked about curses, even asked if there were any diseases associated with Enhancers.
Yet he found no clue whatsoever.
"They are all dead ends."
He laid his head over the desk, closing his eyes, and recalling the torture he had to go through every night.
He never stopped getting into his Time Mind World; he never stopped trying to meditate and find a clue about what happened to him.
And he ended with the same pain and torture every single time.
He slowly raised his head and looked at the blank paper in front of him.
"Going into my special world didn’t help."
"Asking teachers gave me no direction."
"And I learnt nothing from reading lots of books."
He kept drawing circles on the paper, while his thoughts were racing against his rage and urgency.
"And now..."
"I have to deal with this growing new crisis..."
Saying these words made his hand holding the pen tremble, letting the pen fall over the ground. He leaned and grabbed it, while recalling what happened during the past few days.
He thought going with his friends and training with them would be his only source of relief and distraction. He sought peace there, but he ended up having more trouble.
His Raven Ability... Something had happened to it.
It all started two days ago. When he was normally throwing his daggers around, shocking Terio every single time he did so, he suddenly had a terrible feeling. Then his daggers faltered midair, before half fell to the ground.
He was controlling six daggers now. And three fell without warning, for the first time ever.
Silas thought it was a fluke. Yet since then, the same thing repeated.
Every single time he sent daggers, half fell midway. Then today something worse happened; he couldn’t recall his daggers like before.
It was quite a shocking deterioration, on a pace that even scared him.
"Is it because I kept meditating and pushing against that blackness in my Mana Heart?"
Silas was very troubled; his Raven Ability was now off book. And he knew without trying that his Dreastare Ability wouldn’t work as well.
One ability was broken, and another wasn’t an option. Silas found himself in a very tight spot that he never saw coming.
There were lots of stakes here. First, the days were approaching the moment he couldn’t use the dragon blood. According to Cher, Terio, and Darius, the dragon blood would take one week to show the full effects.
With one week almost over, he had only one week before departing for the new mission.
"I can’t step a foot outside the academy in this sorrow state."
This was what deeply troubled Silas. He knew the next mission would be dangerous. It wasn’t just Cher’s father whom he should watch out towards, but also Rachel’s clan as well.
Yesterday, Cher revealed a piece of news she heard through her connections. He knew about what happened to Rachel, and how her clan lost a lot in the past mission.
Everything looked fine until Cher revealed two important pieces of news, or better, warnings.
The first was that Rachel saw in Cher a way to get back at what her father did. And the second was rumours of a high bounty paid to get rid of Silas’ entire team.
Cher’s supporter told her that Rachel considered Silas as her biggest obstacle, the main cause of bringing such big loss over her and her entire clan. And she wanted revenge.
"I bet a weak D-grade monster can easily kill me now."
The situation was very difficult, and what scared Silas the most was the possibility this wasn’t the end of it.
His state was deteriorating at a fast rate, and he couldn’t even tell what would be affected next.
"Will I be bedridden?"
"Will I be crippled?"
The more he thought about it, the more urge he felt to find a solution fast. Yet to do that, he first needed to find a clue, or a hint at a direction he could walk through.
"Even speaking with the Shadowheart was pointless..."
Returning to the same point he started from, Silas recalled how he tried last night to speak with that entity, asking it for directions or clues.
All he got was more rage, making him feel disappointed.
Finding no use in thinking, he left his desk room and headed towards the bath. Yet midway through, he stumbled across a couch, almost falling over his face.
"Ouch!"
His leg hurt, and he had to blame only himself for being distracted like this.
Yet when he leant to find what he stumbled upon, he was surprised to see a meditation soft mattress folded under the couch.
"It’s the one I got from the training room."
He recalled it; it was the mattress he used to meditate upon from time to time, before he stopped doing this and started meditating inside the Time Mind World.
Ever since then, he never meditated on this mattress again, ending up folding and hiding it under the couch.
Holding it in his hands, he decided to unfold and give it a try.
"At least it won’t hurt like hell."
He reasoned to himself, while taking the posture of the first meditating session.
Then something strange appeared.
Usually when he meditated outside his special world, nothing much happened. He would feel tranquillity and peace, but nothing else.
Yet this time, tranquillity and peace came like torrents, washing away lots of weight that burdened him, and never saw them before.
When he started meditating, he felt like dropping into a refreshing ocean filled with a gentle breeze. With every wind passing, more weight got removed, and the burden lessened.
He slowly opened his eyes to find himself sitting in the middle of a vast dark place, one that looked astonishingly similar to his Time Mind World.
Yet this place didn’t give him the same feeling as being in that special world of his. The darkness that was surrounding him felt more like a land than an ocean.
And he was sitting just in the centre of it.
’This place...’
Silas was confused, yet he didn’t bother to think too much about it. The tranquillity and peace filling him right now filled him with great clarity, one he lacked and missed greatly since coming back from the mission.
Being in this state made his thoughts run faster, and he instantly came up with what he should do.
’I’ll treat it as a simplified version of my Time Mind World.’
He decided.
’If so...’
’Then I can meditate in here, right?’
Thinking back to the pain and torture he had ever felt during his last meditation sessions, Silas was a bit hesitant. He wasn’t afraid of the pain; he was worried about losing such tranquillity and peace.
So he decided to try the first meditation session. It was the simplest and the one he was more adapted to. Yet unluckily, nothing happened when he tried.
’Is it because I’m already using it to get access here?’
Silas couldn’t tell. Yet he didn’t waste a single moment questioning this. he knew his time at meditation lessened greatly, and his presence here was limited by how long he could maintain his meditation.
So he started doing the second meditation. And there it worked.
Torrents of chaotic memories appeared and overwhelmed him. Whenever that happened before, he would be very alarmed and disturbed. But now, he felt more at ease, even more relieved.
After all, he missed those chaotic moments and memories the most.
It meant his meditation was going smoothly, like how it used to.
That drove more courage into him to try and check his body. He saw the barren lands stretching over the horizon, he saw the darkened sphere of light, the well, the triplet petals, and the darkness sailing through his Mana.
Seeing all this made him realise the situation didn’t change because he managed to push away worry and pain, replace them with peace and tranquility. Yet as he was armed with the latter two, his mind was quite sharp, and he finally had an idea.
’I created those petals by trying to push the Mana water out from the well into the canals I dug...’
His idea came when he spotted the triplet petals he created himself. He recalled how he did them, and decided to give it a try.
Yet instead of just digging more canals, he thought of something else.
’If I can direct and control the Mana in the well to some extent...’
’Then why shouldn’t I try to let it run faster? Move in spiral form?’
He didn’t know from where this idea came to him. But something urged him to try. And then he recalled how he created the triplet petals, felt the Mana water, and tried to push them to move into spiral direction.
At first nothing happened.
Then little amount of Mana in the well started to move.
Then a small swirl appeared.
Then a little of the darkness vanished.