Chapitre 273: Chapter 273
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAH! I'LL KILL YOU!"
Igor lunged at Azazel, but the man dodged and ran away very quickly.
"What happened?!?!"
He questioned, but all he got was a ki blast narrowly missing his face
"Wait!!!"
Azazel retreated into the skies with Igor hot on his tail. Igor's angry outburst was far beyond his prediction.
"IT WAS A JOKE!"
"DIEEEE!"
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|DxD|
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Igor stared as Azazel retreated into the distance. Unknowingly, he had chased the man far into the wilderness. There were mountains draped with luscious greenery as far as the eye could see. In such a beautiful night, the moonlight illuminated the valleys.
The only reason Igor stopped was not because he wished to admire the sight, but because he felt the time had reached midnight. This further brought about a change in his time chamber artifact. After a long month, he could finally be able to enter it.
"Hmph. I'll let you go this time, Uncle Ay."
As much as he wanted to beat Azazel to death, every second and minute he delayed translated to days and months of missed training. He could conjure up methods of beating the Fallen once he returned. But for now, he had to depart.
"Hehe."
A flicker of unwillingness flashed in his eyes for a brief moment, but the white light gradually covering him erased it. Just like Azazel said, he was no longer getting stronger solely for himself, but for his family too. Only when he surpassed the likes of Shiva could he deign to relax.
[I'll see you all in three weeks.]
Vwong!
September 15th, 1999, Igor left the world just as Saturday made its appearance. Aurelia was left behind to protect everyone and that singular fact alone would serve to calm Igor's nerves. With his sister at the vanguard, even a Supreme Class would have trouble against her.
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|DxD|
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The same scent, the same sight, the same vastness---Igor could admit he missed the time chamber. He stood on the steps and gazed forward with a resolute gaze. The emptiness didn't fill him with dread, but with anticipation.
For a moment, Igor saw the four-year-old version of himself standing next to him. At the time, he'd already trained for thirty years and had just come back for his fortieth year.
The gaze in his eye back then still held fierce determination, yet the fatigue behind them could not be hidden. Now, he was ten, yet had lived far longer and experienced more than any human could ever hope to see.*
His eyes had lost their innocent lustre over the years, but that was the price to wield power. Fortunately, he had his family. His desire for power was kept afloat by his love for his family. With absolute power, no one would lay a finger on them. Just like Shiva, he would also become an existence everyone would respect and fear offending.
"Hey, Triny. You ready?"
{Yes!}
The little lass was also excited.
"Alright. Let's go! …read books."
His voice lowered as his excitement died. He tried, but he couldn't do it. He couldn't force himself to be happy about what he was about to do next.
{Are you giving up already~?}
"Tch! Who said I was giving up. It's just a couple of books on theory and stuff."
Igor crossed his arms and walked into the building. Unfortunately, he wouldn't be seeing any physical training for a few months because of a certain someone.
{Bleh! Stop complaining and go study, meanie!}
Igor ignored her. His steps were somewhat solemn as he made his way towards the library.
Dakaang~
He opened the door and as always, the small room was filled with books and scrolls of sorts neatly placed on shelves. He went to one of them and began browsing all the books on it. This particular shelf contained books on theory instead of techniques.
Igor rarely read books on theory and if he did, they were only on Ki and Spirit Ki. But today, he had to read up on chakra and most importantly, nature energy.
Because a certain old hag was useless…
{Hey!}
…she couldn't create nature energy on her own. Triny was a demon without a real body. Her true body's whereabouts were still unknown because once again, she's useless.
{Stop saying that! It's that stinky old man who hid it from me!}
Now, the only way for her to possibly manifest herself through him is if she could create her own nature energy. Not only would tmhis be a massive boon to his strength, but they'd no longer have to rely on existing nature energy.
Not only was Earth's nature energy too tainted, there wasn't enough for Triny to create a spiritual body and manifest herself without consequence. But if she could create her own nature energy and use him as a medium, then she'd no longer have to remain in his head all day.
Seriously, who would want to have an old hag in their head?
{Meanie! Meanie! Meanie! I'm not an old hag!}
"Yes, yes. And men can turn into women."
{You…hmph!}
He didn't pay much attention to her and continued roaming the shelf for that one specific book he knew he saw a couple of times. He rounded the shelf once more and finally found it.
"There it is."
Igor would never forget it. It was so thick it'd make the bible look like a little brother.
"Nature Energy Encompassed. Yep. It's this one."
He picked it up and walked over to the desk where Aurelia used to read.
*Thump!*
As expected of a historical book. Igor's excitement slowly faded once more after he placed it on the table.
Sigh…
This book was fairly large and just opening the first page aroused a sense of fatigue within him. The book was the size of his chest, yet the text was barely the width of a baby's finger.
"Let's get this over with."
His hair turned red as he entered his Demigod State. The transformation not only increased his strength, but his cognitive ability as well. As a state derived from the Kaioken, it produced a qualitive boost to nearly all his attributes.
That unfortunately included his emotions, but he'd take this as a chance to train himself to control them. But no matter what, he wanted to understand everything in this book and many more within a month or two.
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|DxD|
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Time Chamber: Three Months Later
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Igor holed himself up in the library and read everything with great fervor. There was no need to take notes. His elevated thinking not only allowed him to commit everything to memory, but his Demigod State allowed him to understand everything.
The only cost to this was his sky-high irritability. His transformation was one born from the desire to fight and kill. Sitting for a few hours without smashing everything to pieces was already Igor's limit. Any longer and he might be consumed by the desire to fight and destroy.
So whenever his bubbling anger reached the boiling point, he'd decisively cancel his transformation and meditate. If the situation permitted it, he'd use the suppressed state of his transformation. Compared to the full transformation, the fifty-times multiplier was easier to handle.
He considered it a sort of training and over the weeks, results were shown. Unfortunately, his constant usage of his transformation for studying slowed down his progress of reading.
Still, he did his best not to waste time. The increased comprehension was indeed a great benefit and during his times of meditation, he used the time to think of ways to create nature energy.
From the get-go, he knew it would be a great gamble and the knowledge increased with each book he read. But after three months of reading, Igor now had a solid grasp on what he could do. It would be dangerous, far more dangerous than anything he'd ever tried, but the end results would be worth it
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|DxD|
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Time Chamber: Seven Months Later (Ten months after entry)
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Everything on paper was easy. But in practice, the difficulty skyrocketed to unimaginable heights. Seven months. Igor has been trying and failing for the past seven months to create nature energy.
Nature energy was a very finicky form of power to capture. It's illusiveness had Igor and Triny wondering if they were treading on the right path.
From one of Nakamura's books, nature energy is described as a neutral energy that ki and chakra branch from. If ki and chakra combine, the two energies will form chi, but what if a change in the merger resulted in nature energy once more?
It was a conjecture the duo came to after three months of intensive reading. Gambling on such dangerous ideas was far too daring, but the possibilities made it worth trying. So for the past few months, Igor coordinated with Triny to create nature energy.
The process was not easy and required different levels of experimentation. The two of them were operating on limited information. The books they read did not contain knowledge of how nature energy came to be---only that ki and chakra were sourced from nature energy.
So it was reasonable that combining ki and chakra would lead to forming nature energy once more, but the result of that would be chi, not the former. Worse still, information on chi was also scarce.
The number of chi-users was so rare there were no documented processes. Creation of chi either happened naturally over time, or spontaneously like a hurricane. So Igor and Triny were scrapped for information, but that didn't mean they gave up.
For months, Igor tried merging his ki with Triny's chakra. They tried merging it internally and externally, yet all methods ended in failure. It was only fortunate the different energies silently cancelled each other out.
For days in succession, Igor wondered if the issue was due to his lacking control over his ki or Triny's over her chakra. The pain of having chakra forced through him was nearing his limits at the time, especially after continuously doing this for weeks on end.
Because he was Triny's host, the only way the lass could interact with the world was through him or rather, his body. It was why more often than not, Triny had to channel excessive amounts of chakra through him if they wanted to try merging the two energies externally. But as the saying says, fortune favours the bold.
In the sixth month, Igor instinctively used his demi-ki one morning when the pain in his left arm got too much. The chakra she channeled through his arm was immediately expelled, but the sudden expulsion created a very, very, very faint trace of an energy they knew all too well---nature energy.
As Triny's host, Igor was able to clearly sense that tiny presence of nature energy. This little smidgen of nature energy was so minute even a blade of grass had more. But this little smidgen presented hope, hope that their experiments finally had a direction.
Regretfully, Igor and Triny couldn't begin testing themselves once more. The damage to Igor's left arm was far too significant to ignore. His healing abilities were indeed fast, but besides how the damage was extremely far-reaching, the lack of nature energy slowed down his healing rate.
It was fortunate the time chamber still produced the healing herbs kept in his bedroom. Soaking his arm in water laced with them allowed his skin to gradually change from scorched-red back to normal.
Still, it took three weeks for Igor to heal from this incident. But when his arm healed, he was ready to try again. The benefits of producing nature energy certainly wouldn't be small. The after-effects were still unknown, but he would gamble on this.
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AN
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The gaze in his eye back then still held fierce determination, yet the fatigue behind them could not be hidden. Now, he was ten, yet had lived far longer and experienced more than any human could ever hope to see.*
Explanation: This is a bit confusing because I just did the math. Igor entered the time chamber in 1991 when he was still four. He stopped entering the time chamber in 1996 and went to train with Sun Wukong for the next three years.
Prior to that, Igor was still four in 1996. If we account for the number of months he spent waiting for the time chamber to reset, then we can give him a freebie and say he's five.
Counting from 1996 to 1999, his bone age should be eight-years-old, not ten. So where did the extra two years come from? My only guess could be when he first activated the Demigod State. In his state of grief at Shuri's death, he tapped into a power his body was not prepared to handle.
If we recall, Shiva said Igor lost twenty years of lifespan in total just by maintaining the transformation. My guess is that somehow some way, his body was forcibly aged up by two years because of that.
I still don't understand how twenty years translated to two years of forced-ageing, but that's really the only explanation I can dig up for how he's now ten. Either that or Igor is intentionally ageing himself up in his thoughts because he's desperate for those double digits.
With that said, thanks for reading my work. I'm thankful for the comments I get from all of you.
Until the next chapter.
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone