Chapitre 12: Mastery

'Here comes the hard part.'

His spears extricated themselves from her body, spraying a shower of blood. With a mad roar, she clenched her teeth and summoned flames to coat her hand.

She brought her hand to her wounds and, instead of burning herself, began to heal.

'Ah…I see.'

Beyond simply creating aether marks, cultivation at each stage required one to take a multitude of steps, each leading to the acquisition of strange esoteric abilities.

One such abilities was the use of spells and affinities through aether, exactly what the woman had just done.

Because she had an affinity for fire via her inner aether, she manifested it, and through this manifested fire, she cast a healing spell that cost her absolutely nothing in terms of aether or stamina.

This demonstrated how terrifying the simple use of one's affinity, aether, and spells could be.

Unfortunately, though he knew how to do all that perfectly, Amon couldn't. Why? Because he hadn't sensed and mastered his inner aether yet, something he could only do after forming his first aether mark.

Currently, he could only use atmospheric aether to levitate things and empower himself and at most, he could try to disrupt casted spells using aether interference.

He was quite helpless, but his skill made up for any weakness he might have.

Only a few seconds had passed, and yet the woman had almost perfectly healed, though her face seemed quite pale and her aether thinner.

'Good.'

Of course, Amon had let her heal on purpose. His blades were infused with a type of poison that only activated upon contact and infusion of aether.

It was the only thing he'd ever asked of the Third Prince.

PAH!

The woman fell to a knee, frowning as she felt her body grow cold. Suddenly, she spat out a mouthful of boiling blood that left the ground sizzling, nearly melting the marble.

Seeing this, Amon whistled in awe. The fact that her blood had become so toxic meant she naturally had a high amount of aether concentrated within her blood, indicating her terrifying vitality and bodily stats.

WHOOSH!

Her hollow eye sockets suddenly shone with an intense light as golden flames filled them, and her body began to morph, becoming half fire and half flesh.

The poison within her blood instantly burned, and her blades returned to her hands, elongating to accommodate even longer blades of fire.

They burned with an auspicious light with a lustre worthy of a world first spark of fire—pure, unbridled and destructive.

As if that wasn't enough, the number of aether marks on her body increased, reaching nightmarish levels. As that happened, the heat of her flames intensified.

From simple orange flames, they soon turned into deadly white flames.

Seeing this, Amon wasn't impressed; in fact, he smiled.

He spun his spear and lowered his stance, his gaze calm as he waited for her to engage.

Seeing this, she roared out and shot at him, flames imploding at her feet to hasten her speed.

In a moment, she was upon him, her blades of fire already coming down to burn and tear apart Amon's flesh. To her dismay, her blades rebounded off his body, as if unable to affect it. In the next moment, a blade dug into her chest, immediately extricating itself to pierce her again.

In a second, Amon had riddled her with holes, but this time, he didn't give her any time to rest.

His grip on his pole tightened and his muscles contracted. From the soles of his feet to the top of his head, all his energy gathered and streamed into his hands while he performed a clean yet vicious horizontal cleave that left the air whistling.

WHOOSH!

His blade passed through her body like butter, separating her in two parts. Before she could react, he moved again, roaring as he then vertically cleaved down, then moved to diagonally cleave upwards.

"Ah!"

In a final effort, with a mighty step forward, he thrust his spear and pulverized the dissected portion of her chest that held her heart.

PAH!

Just as it exploded, his other spears moved to eradicate all her other body pieces, leaving a sea of blood and flesh as the only testament to the woman's existence.

Amon exhaled a breath as he put his spears away and stretched his neck.

'Pretty weak.'

[Father, it seems this is an effect of the chains. Beyond massively slowing your progress, it also stopped you from using most of your power. This woman had stats ranging in the thousands, meaning she was around the middle grades of the Initiate tier.]

Hearing this, Amon wasn't very surprised, merely nodding in understanding.

'This explains why her flames didn't even pierce me. I only expected it not to hurt.'

The reason Amon had smiled when she'd assumed her form of fire was because, after years of torture, thanks to his growth gift, he'd gained minor immunity to almost all poisons and elements.

Even though it didn't look like it, his skin had become rather thick and tough, gaining the ability to stop most blades without him having to do much apart from existing.

Now that his chains were gone or, rather, had fused back into him and given him back his true power, all his abilities seemed heightened.

'I suppose our previous estimate of fifteen walls was wrong. How many more walls do you reckon there are now? And how many of those have I shattered?'

[I don't know, but if I were to guess…it'd be either thirty-three or three thousand eight hundred. And in terms of walls, from your stat potency, I think we're around the twenty-fifth wall, meaning you've broken past nearly ten walls in nothing but a day.]

[The chains probably also restricted the effects of your gifts, father.]

Hearing this, Amon could only laugh. This Third Prince truly was vicious, but there was nothing he could do about it, and getting mad would only cloud his mind.

The past was the past

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