Chapter 42

Lady Allyna, Shael, Naveena, and Rydel stood on the outskirts of the village. Every preparation was already made, and all the farewells were said.

It has been a month since the Ceremony of Ascendance. Thalia had come out of closed-door seclusion a week ago, her base attributes had received an important bonus making her power incomparable to before.

They hadn’t done anything other than passing a quiet and happy time with the family, as they knew that they wouldn’t be able to see each other for a couple of years.

Unsurprisingly, Edyrm had expressed his intentions to take one of the positions for the voyage to the Hiral Kingdom. It was his best bet to not be left behind, his schedule would be training like a madman for the next five years.

Thalia had also asked the Grand Elder to accompany them into the ship. The reasons were that she wanted to have more experience fighting as an Ascended, an opportunity that was difficult to achieve here. Also, she was worried about what might happen to Edyrm.

Rydel had expressed his intentions of going, and while they didn’t take his words for granted, they advised him to take his time with his cultivation. In the end, the cultivation journey was a marathon, not a sprint, there would always be opportunities for getting stronger on another date.

While he didn’t particularly agree with this statement, it was true that it wouldn’t be worth risking his life either. He had already experienced a minor setback because of his greed, he didn’t want to cripple his cultivation because of irresponsibility.

“How far away is Osserion?” Rydel asked.

“You’d need to travel for a couple of years if you go by foot. I wish you good luck.” Shael happily responded.

“How are we going to travel then?” Rydel rolled his eyes.

Nothing had happened at the party between them, they knew where to draw the line. However, they’d grown closer.

Lady Allyna didn’t bother with their bickering and took out a flying vessel from her spatial ring.

It was a boat with the necessary space for not being uncomfortable for the three of them. It wasn’t very big, but it had two cabins opposite each other along with a little space to walk around.

“We will be flying for the next three weeks. Meanwhile, I’ll be meditating, and don't form any ruckus.”

Without saying anything else, she just entered one of the cabins and closed it off. The three of them hurried to the boat before they were left on the ground.

A couple of minutes after they had entered, the boat floated above the highest crowns of the trees and speeded up the southeast.

“Does she intend for us to sleep together?” Rydel unsurely asked.

“Three weeks without sleeping is nothing if you have a little bit of willpower, you know.” Shael looked at him.

“Dream on.” Rydel snorted. “We’ll take turns. I have my own bed in my spatial ring, just keep yours and I’ll put mine in when I need to sleep in a week.”

“Are you going to mediate these three weeks too?”

“Now that you mention it, I’m a bit at a crossroads with my Dao. I’d be good to take my Daodrop to the peak, but one of my attributes would soar too much compared to the rest.”

Shael thought about the matter for a while.

“Have you thought about comprehending a related Daodrop?”

“I have, but it’s still the same problem. I don’t know if that attribute would be further boosted or not.” Rydel exasperatedly explained.

“From what I’ve seen, your Dao is related to the Moon.” Shael stated. “Have you thought about forming an opposite Daodrop? Like the Dao of the Sun?”

“Of course, it’s easier said than done though. I have tried meditating facing the Sun for years to no avail.”

“It’s no wonder that you haven’t taken any forward steps then. The disadvantage of being born in a race where what Dao would you perceive was taken for granted is that you lack creativity. It isn’t just your clan, it happens to the great majority of elves.” Shael explained.

“What do you suggest then?” Rydel asked with curiosity.

He didn’t mind receiving advice from other people when he needed help. What she said was also true, from the Daodrops of the Elphyra Clan, the great majority of them were related to the Dao of the Forest.

“I have a plan. Do you trust in me?” Shael had a dangerous glint in her eyes.

“How sure are you of this plan?” Rydel shivered a little, she was up to no good.

“Do you trust in me?” Shael insisted.

“Fuck, I don’t have anything to lose.” Rydel said with determination. “Yes, I trust in you.”

“You made the right choice.” Shael’s glint intensified for a moment, even Naveena shivered with that one.

***

“Explain to me again why I’m doing this.” Rydel lamented out loud.

He was tied to a post above an unlit stake.

“You need to understand how to be a sun. I’m transforming you into a real sun.” Shael carelessly said.

“I’m not particularly looking forward to being burned alive.”

“Don’t worry, it won’t hurt.” Shael formed a fire to burn the stake with a formation before he could say anything else.

“Now, you only need to meditate.” Shael smiled.

Rydel didn’t find her smiles so endearing anymore. Naveena had already entered the unoccupied cabin, she didn’t want to participate in anything related to what they were doing.

Meditating in this condition was extremely hard. The stake was starting to burn, the first embers of fire licked his legs.

He deployed his divine senses and concentrated them on the fire and his body to see any change in real-time. After closing his eyes, his entire spirituality was focused on inspecting his surroundings.

Shael wasn’t happy with the current scenario, and to Rydel’s despair, she decided to make the stake bigger so that he’d become a living torch. Thankfully, the boat was made with resistant materials and they wouldn’t be catching on fire anytime soon. At least not because of some normal flames.

Rydel gritted his teeth as the fire kept covering him. He thought back to when the Serpent transformed the whole sky into a sea of golden flames, how they scorched an entire beach and turned it into glass.

He pondered what would have happened if this fire didn’t lose its fuel, if it had continued unimpeded to the forest. Would have eventually burned the entire forest, or something would have stopped it?

To be everlasting, to have an infinite amount of energy.

Rydel awoke from his trance when the last sparks of fire were extinguished. His whole body ached, this type of normal fire wasn’t enough to overcome his endurance, so he didn’t receive any serious burn. However, his skin was red and tender, like he had just returned from a sunbath without any sunscreen.

“You were on the border of gaining an insight.” Shael stated.

“Yes. However, something was lacking.” Rydel pondered. “I think that if I continued with that type of training I’d just get a Dao related to fire. It was very effective though.”

“That isn’t bad. Maybe you can form a complex Dao by fusing the Dao of the Fire and the Dao of the Moon. There should be a lot of options, like the Dao of the Flaming Moon, or the Dao of the Moonfire.”

Rydel pondered about that. The Dao was immeasurable, the possibilities of combining Daos were only limited by the imagination. However, that didn’t mean that you could be careless and just fuse everything, as you’ll get weird combinations.

The Dao of the Moonlight was a subsidiary of a greater concept, the Dao of the Moon. If he were to assimilate the Dao of the Moonfire, his strength wouldn’t increase.

Both Moonlight and Moonfire were minor concepts of the Moon. Besides, he didn’t know how restrictive Moonfire would be nor what it could be used for. It’d be taking a risk without any gain.

“I don’t know if it’s a good idea.” Rydel said.

“You had wings, right? I need to bring out the heavy artillery…” Shael mumbled.

Before Rydel could protest he was shooed to another place in the boat as Shael was preparing for the second test. He could only sigh and accept what was about to happen. At least Shael knew what she was doing.

***

The next method consisted in constructing a burning kite to which he would be tied, while he was floating next to the boat. The main issue here was that the boat was flying at speeds that he couldn’t hope to maintain.

That’s why he’d be tied by another rope on his waist too and he’d be flung at the back. Rydel liked his possibilities with this method even less, Naveena had even started to look at him with pity, sometimes shaking her head. He even saw her sneakily making a prayer for him.

“This time you’ll feel like a true Sun, burning in the sky.” Shael said with bright eyes.

“Do you secretly like to see me suffering?”

“Of course not, silly! I just like to explore the infinite possibilities of the Dao. It’s fascinating how everyone reaches a completely different conclusion even when put in the same situation.” Shael said.

“Huh, I didn’t expect that response.”

“Why? Did you think that I was shallow or something?” Shael’s smile didn’t reach her eyes.

“Not at all! It’s just that you were, well, flirty, the first time that we met.”

“Oh, that? I just wanted to test if you were of the lecherous type, I have enough with those back home. Congratulations, you passed the minimum courtesy test, more or less.” Shael responded.

“Does that mean that I’m free of becoming an elf kite?” Rydel said hopefully. It was nice to further his comprehension of the Dao, but he wasn’t a masochist.

“Nope.”

***

Shael didn’t leave him any moment of respite for the next week. The experiment with the kite didn’t go very well, as he was repeatedly being banged into the boat due to the speed. It was impossible to enter a state of meditation in that way.

Even then, he was thankful to Shael. With every experiment that he tried, he became increasingly close to his objective of gaining another Daodrop. Hopefully, it’d be one related to the Sun or one close enough that he could change to it, they had done their best to approach the Dao of the Sun.

Alas, like Icarus was forced to acknowledge, the easiest way to become closer to the Sun was to get his body burned.

“We are close to our first stop.” Shael said.

“Aren’t we just going to Osserion?” Rydel was confused.

“Yes, but I asked Lady Allyna to have a stop first. You owe me one for this.” Shael said.

Rydel wasn’t able to question her further when the landscape changed under them. They had left the forest halfway through the week, and they had traversed through both plains and rocky mountains.

The sight was completely different right now. Black clouds covered the entire sky, not permitting light to pass through, huge boulders the size of small mountains permeated the land until the eye couldn’t see.

“Welcome to the Cemetery of Meteors.”