"Let's begin now that I picked everyone that couldn't know where we would be," Triam said after he put Carmen, that was kissing the ground in happiness, and Roland down in the crowd of new disciples at the Society's entrance.
This time people paid attention to Roland, he was able to almost defeat Oliver, the new star of the Society, and survived the ultimate Spell of a Magus Rank 1. They also know now that he was one of the ten Princes and the Follower of the notorious Queen, Elizabeth, that defeated the heirs of the Dynasty in Real Existence and was able to escape from their fury without affecting the Society.
And they also paid some attention to the crazy and coward girl that was kissing the ground.
"The difference from a day to another is disturbing. Do these people only care about the reputation and the results?" Roland thought as he observed his surroundings.
He saw the red gates with smelting furnaces but the environment beyond it was completely different from where he was.
Roland could see Lakepoint outside but inside of the Society the environment was dry and hot, with mountains at distance and trees too tall to be inside of the Society without no one of Lakepoint perceiving.
There was some kind of illusion in play or they were being show the landscape after the hidden teleportation portal on the red gates.
"I will begin by explaining the main rules and your castes' benefit," Triam said. "Killing your fellow comrades is prohibited, you must always wear the robes you received if you aren't at least a Prince or Princess, you can't bring people from outside of the Society to here if they aren't slaves, and you must complete a mission in a place I will show you in three months, this is necessary to the Society's survival and to expand our influence."
Triam proceeded to do a lengthy explanation about castes but they could be resumed like this.
At the lowest lived the Peasants, they had to live in joint rooms and had access to the most basic techniques of manipulating fire to combat and Equipment Formation.
In the middle lived the Viscounts and Earls, they had similar rights of having small houses and could access high-level resources and techniques, and from these two castes that the caste Follower was created.
At the highest lived the Princes, Princess and the only Queen, they had access to everything if they were deemed worthy and were normally chosen to ambassador missions or friendly tournament with other cities and Societies. They were also the only ones that had a chance in every ten years to be recruited by a Sect of the middle stratum, Existence.
And if they wanted they could ignore events like this, just like Oliver did with the excuse of 'focusing on his training'.
"The first place we will visit is the place you can go to learn with any teacher and receive answers to the common questions about the Great Arts or the training." Triam led the way after finishing the explanation.
Roland and Carmen for at least eight hours with pauses to eat were introduced to the whole Society. They now where they can't go and also the most important places.
Like for example, the place where the founder's coffin was and where the high elders lived.
As the crowd dispersed and Triam went to his house, Roland and Carmen stayed still.
Roland sweating, said. "Junior, do you remember the way to home? Flying was too quick to me remember the way from here." He cursed in his mind the bad luck he has of always getting lost.
Carmen fidgeted without knowing what to say, she was too worried about her own life and vomiting to remember the way.
Lucy that was tired, sighed with a frown. "What would you guys do without me? For now, just go to the left and I will guide you two children to home."
***
At Roland's room, there was a bucket of water he picked from the kitchen and a bucket full of blood that he asked Carmen to buy using her powers in exchange of always letting her see his training.
"What are you planning to do with these?" Carmen asked while she tried to use Spiritual Energy from her technique to make a small gust of air and failing.
"Experimenting, Lucy's technique has many things beyond my common sense and it is interrupting my progress on the technique. She could say to me the answer but decided against it, only telling me I was in the correct path." Roland answered with the Soul Spirit in hands.
"Should I say something to receive his favor? Considering the technology level here and that he trains with water, his questions can be easily answered by me." Carmen thought. "But if I say now maybe he won't be that thankful, to ascertain my position in his heart I need to wait until he fails sometimes to make him like me…
"But why am I trying to make him like me? What's wrong with me? My mission is to only I feign to fall in love in him, not the other way around." Carmen struggled with her own heart and unknown feelings inside of her. "I can't be that easy, right?
"Just because he saved me I shouldn't be like all those girls that suffer from 'suspension bridge effect', or that he seems nice and honest about my appearance that… I should stop thinking, everything I think just ends up as positive points to him and negative points of me."
Roland didn't know of Carmen's unfortunate circumstances and continued to experiment without perceiving her plight.
"First, let's test those 'vibrations variations'." Roland put his hand on the bucket of water and began to play with it, causing many waves within it in certain patterns easily perceptible if someone pays attention to them. He analyzed them and come to a conclusion.
"When putting more strength the waves even bounce on the bucket, but they only move in 'accord' to the initial strength I used to make them and move quickly without getting out of the pattern. This gave me an idea, what would happen I make waves beyond the limit?"
Roland took out Vital Energy from the Soul Spirit and spread it through the bucket of water.
He put strength on the Vital Energy he is controlling and began to shake it together with the water with only the power of his thoughts.
"Oh, I see now. That's what the technique was talking about 'vibration variations.'" The bucket shook, even more, the water constantly bouncing until Roland gave a shout and suddenly used more Vital Energy and strength.
The water vibrated so much that the bucket exploded and his hand got a slight cut on it by how strongly and 'sharply' the water was bouncing. "Interesting." Roland ignored the blood on his hand that wasn't still cured of Oliver's attack and Carmen's squeak at having the room wet by water and the explosion sound.
Roland this time touched his Soul Spirit and mimicked what he did with the bucket of water. "Will it also exploded or will bear the vibrations?"
The Soul Spirit vibrated so much that a slight noise of air being cutting was possible to be heard, but it didn't explode or the vibrations were strong enough to cut Roland's hands like the water on the bucket did. "What am I missing?"
Roland tested various ideas, he made it absorb Essence to increase the size of it, he increased and lessened the amount of Vital Energy in certain patterns, however, nothing worked until he began to accidentally rotate it because of how he was searching for good points on the Soul Spirit to experiment next.
He grinned as blood appeared on his hand when the accident occurred. "That's it! Its power must increase in similar to how an arrow has its power increased after spinning in the air."
Roland happy his experiment worked and that he progressed on his technique since the next parts will be easier to understand now that he completely knows his common sense is wrong, decided to test the power of the Soul Spirit when using vibrations.
"First, a ball of water."
Roland separated a small ball of water from the Soul Spirit, vibrated and spun it at the maximum he could before releasing it on a wall.
The result was beyond Roland's expectations, the ball of water flew in a speed unbelievable and penetrated the wall with such force that even a big hole was made and several walls beyond that were penetrated, also accidentally making a hole to the wall of his bathroom.
This was a power completely different from when he started using the Soul Spirit when he couldn't even penetrate the fur of beasts.
"If I use something bigger like a water spear and-"
"Roland, there's no need to you test that. I assure you that you are right and the power of such spear will be even bigger, but if you do that in your house, it will do too much damage to it. Do you want to destroy the house you just got?" Lucy chided Roland and also pointed to the wide-eyed weak Carmen that could get hurt in his tests despite her being a layer above him in Essence Reformation.
"Sorry." Roland said crestfallen and slowly went to the bucket of blood to make another 'non-dangerous' experimentation.
"No, it can't be. He won't do everything right without my help, right?" Carmen thought, letting off training to pay attention to Roland.
"'Blood is just water in another form', why do the technique say this so confidently? It must be right if looking at my previous success but I must understand the reason." Roland touched the blood with Vital Energy and tried to analyze their interactions.
The Vital Energy felt… as if in home when put in the blood, it was as if blood was the origin of the Vital Energy.
Roland tried to control the blood with the Vital Energy like when he did with the bucket of water but nothing happened.
Not feeling disheartened, he tried again and again, putting more and more Vital Energy on the thick red blood until he was able to make a small drop of blood float before it immediately dropping down to the bucket. "Did it really work or did I used so much Vital Energy that I covered the blood and floated it together with the Vital Energy? It's something wrong with this kind of manipulation, if blood was really just water in another form it shouldn't be that hard considering what kind of my technique mine is. What am I thinking wrong?"
Roland pondered looking to the blood, like water it was a liquid but being a liquid was enough to be considered 'water'? "Blood exist in our body and makes it work, if it was only water then normal water could substitute blood but our body was created with blood nonetheless. It must have a reason for this."
Carmen debated within herself if now should be the time to tell him the truth with how quick he is absorbing and creating knowledge not pertaining to this age since Roland shouldn't be that smart but before she could, Roland had an inspiration coming from the time he was in the trial of fire after tasting some of the blood that got in his hands after using Vital Energy. "Blood has a metallic taste so this means some metal is indeed on the blood, so when I tried to float the blood I was also trying to float the metal inside of the blood making it not work.
"What can I control is only water, after all. In some way unknown to me, water must exist in the blood alongside the metal, so instead of trying to control all blood, I must only control the water within the blood and the rest will follow because they probably can't exist outside of the blood."
With new determination, he did the exact same thing he did earlier with a bunch of Vital Energy but this time he focused on the water in the blood, he ignored the red color, stench, and density of the blood.
Soon the rewards to his efforts appeared and he was able to for ten seconds float all the blood in the bucket with the same amount of Vital Energy he used earlier to only levitate a drop of blood for a second.
"It's still hard and I miss sometimes, accidentally using Vital Energy in what's not water within the blood but this proves that blood is another form of water like the technique said. I feel like I'm already more than halfway done with it after these simple experiments." Roland smiled, feeling good about himself and his progress.
Lucy and August were also happy for him to find the answers without their help.
Meanwhile Carmen was in a pit of despair, she wasn't even in the mood to correct his misunderstandings about the plasma that is only about fifty percent of the blood and all the others things in the blood that couldn't be resumed in 'it's another form of water with some metal in it' and how ridicule is to him control blood like it is water or how his explanation made any sense.
At this rate, Roland will do everything without her and in his heart, she will only be a junior that is weird and weak.
"Now the conden-"
Roland was interrupted by Carmen that quickly got close to him and said. "Roland, I'm from another world, maybe what is outside of your common sense is normal to me and I can help you understand your technique."
Roland took a step back, surprised by her eagerness. "Could she be wanting to repay me for saving her? It must the only reason to her look so desperate." He thought and said. "True, your knowledge can help me. I'll ask you some questions and I want to try to explain to me how people of your world think, okay?"
"Ask whatever you want, the technology of my world was really advanced in comparison to here. I'm a well of knowledge." She puffed her almost non-existent chest.
Roland asked about water condensation and solidification points, ice and the one that most baffled him, 'water particles can be made from the air you breath using Vital Energy'.
To his surprise and delight, Carmen was capable of answer everything and helped him in various experiments to confirm her answer.
Roland now held respect for the other world's knowledge and for Carmen that was able to understand so complicated subjects when she was only a child considering by what she said that she came to this world before becoming a teenager.
Carmen's plan partially worked but she ended up angering another being she didn't want to mess with.
The fox murderously looking at her for stealing her disciple's spotlight and own conclusions about her own technique, made Carmen cold sweat and yet feel defiant against the fox.
"Who cares if you are his master? I need to survive here. Let's see if you dare to kill me after I place myself so deep in Roland's heart that he won't be capable of living without me… why the hell am I still doing this the other way around? It is to me fall in love with him not him with me!"