Bab 24: Chapter 23: Gearing up
"You lost, hahaha, you lost in a battle of control against Noah"
A drunk Ryan could be seen causing a ruckus at a tavern in town.
"Of course, I lost, have you even seen a domain master pull that sort of stunt as a mid level practitioner, so shut the fuck up"
Noah just watched his two teachers bicker amongst themselves. They were in town to celebrate Noah's graduation from Karl's training program.
It had taken almost 3 years, during which he had endured the teaching and love from the brutal dwarf
Although they had turned his celebration into their own little drinking game, well it wasn't all bad, if only Valdor was here to celebrate this moment with him.
But Valdor had left the village 2 years ago.
Karl had reached the limits of what he could teach him another craft of creation and smithing. He wasn't a soul art practitioner (also called weapon masters) and didn't know the particular style for them, so he got in contact with his homeland and called in a favour from his old teacher.
Knowing his rebellious but favourite student needed his help, not to mention if Valdor had even just half of his fathers talents in the crafts, Kalder quickly accepted to take the boy into his fold and put him through the ropes. But that's a story for another day.
Noah pulled himself out of his thoughts to see Karl staring at him while supporting the now unconscious Ryan.
"Come on lad, let's go, this one over here is completely wasted."
He stood up from his seat, joining Karl is supporting Ryan knocked out body.
"Wonder what the lad is worrying about this time to let himself
get knocked out by such cheap stuff" Karl muttered to himself.
Noah had him but decided to keep mute. He understood what Karl meant though.
For practitioners of his level, it wasn't easy for him to get intoxicated by mortal wine. He'd have to completely lower all his defenses and lower his metabolism to allow himself get drunk, yet Ryan was in this state.
And Ryan was way stronger than him, he wasn't sure how strong but Noah knew he was at the very least an ascendant. Going by Karl's words, Ryan was worried about something, seems like it wasn't the first time this happened.
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Noah was back in his room after helping lay Ryan in his. It was time he reviewed all he had learnt.
It was his usual habit to make a review of himself and what he had gone through over years, perhaps to ensure his memory was till fine.
He didn't know the cause of his amnesia,but he definitely didn't want to start losing his memories again without him being conscious of it.
So far, he had learnt about how practitioners or awakened use their powers and the requirements for growth.
When a person awakens, energy channels present in his body, start to open and become functional.
While all beings possess the source in them and energy channels, only those who were awakened were aware of them and able to use them.
Noah was already an exception to this rule as he could tap into his source and use from it to a minor extent before he awakened.
Now that he taught about it, doing what he did during the battle with the fire wolves was very dangerous and the slightest mistake could have taken his life as his source would have been completely depleted exhausting his life.
Well not that it mattered anyways as he would have died to the wolves if he didn't take the risk.
Back to the point, all people had their source and 107 dormant energy channels in them at the point of birth.
During the process of growth and development, 10 of the dormant channels might become partly accessible to them, which explained why some mortals could do feats like create a small ball of light or conjure a bucket of water.
For people like this, using they used their source to fuel these actions and doing so left them weakened and with side effects afterwards unless their energy channels had developed to become stronger even if they hadn't awakened.
Upon awakening though, conscious control of these 10 channels become available to the practitioner, and that was how they became able to control the elements.
This wasn't enough for them to become all powerful superhumans capable of wonderful acts though as each practitioner has to nourish and strengthen each individual channel to a state of maturity before opening a new one.
There was a checkpoint which indicated a new state of power when passed.
Early level practitioners had 20 matured energy channels.
Mid level practitioners had 40 matured energy channels
High level practitioner 60 matured energy channels
But peak practitioners was where the difference started to occur.
A peak practitioner must have 70 matured energy channels before his eligible for ascension after enlightenment and baptism. That was least possible.
However a peak practitioner could also keep opening and raising all energy channels until he hit the 107 limit however this would make his ascension and baptism that much harder.
But all actions had rewards, as an ascendant, his power would be above other in his level depending on how many energy channels he had opened at the time of his ascension and the amount of channels opened proved how far one could progress on the path of ascension to Godhood.
If some ascendant missed this chance, he would need a god level treasure from a ruin to give him another chance to open his channels and increase his prospect.
The stage of ascension however was to enlarge and condense his source to take in more aether from the world.
At this point, the practitioner doesn't just use the aether from the world to perform his arts like the awakened, but uses his source to perform his arts, increasing his lethality and power.
The aether from his source has his imprint and has undergone rounds of condensing and transformation allowing to be of a higher quality as that found and used by normal awakeners.
An ascendant need to have undergone 107 rounds of enlargement and condensation, turning the source to a solid form capable of sustaining itself without input from the world to even have a chance of approaching Godhood, a state of independence and freedom from the world.
Apart from this, an ascendant depending on his route gains a significant boost in his power.
In Noah's case, his sensory abilities and control of his ice element would increase significantly, and when in battle a certain radius around him would become his absolute domain of control.
He would need to be facing an ascendant of equal strength or greater to be able to take him down when his domain had been established.
A scholar once theorised that if an embodiment ascendant reached godhood, he would create a mini-world of his own where he had absolute control, but no one had had ever become one.
The closest to becoming a god, upon reaching the heights of ascendancy said it was not his time yet and vanished of the face of the world, his whereabouts not known even now.
Others have tried, but they had all failed in the world tribulation.
It was a blasphemy to the world to try to break away from its control and become a god. They had to prove they were worthy enough and bear whatever it threw at them, but so far none had successfully done it.
Well ascendancy was still a long journey away from Noah, and now he just had to keep increasing the amounts of energy channels he could use until he was eligible for enlightenment.
The battle art he received from the temple had great synergism with his embryonic route art. When used together, the lines between the path and route art became blurred and functioned together as one big art, as if both were a piece of a whole.
His route art was called the ice world, and the path art was called rulers path.
Both used together gave him absolute control over the ice as long as it was within his radius of control, as long as there was no one strong enough to destroy his authority over the ice.
But as powerful of an art as it was, it also had a restriction, whenever he tried to learn other paths arts related to ice, while he knew them, he couldn't perform them, as if the art not allowing him to.
Till today, Noah hadn't learnt a single magic spell, neither could he use the runes like Karl did.
On the bright side, he didn't need his hands to perform his art, so he kept training in the warrior path with Ryan.
Now he was ready to travel the world and see just what it had in store for him
Hadiah
-- Hadiah diterima Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone