Dean needed to stop reading for a while because Hector went out of his tent to look after them and see if they were doing a good job or trying to run away.
He didn't need to concern too much with Paul, since the latter never tried to run away in all the time he became a slave. However, Dean was an issue. Even though Rick's "Emperor's touch" brainwashed Dean and added several restrictions, the boy was always playing with his limits and trying to find openings in his orders.
Once Hector saw that everything was ok, he just went to the bathroom, which actually was everywhere he preferred, and returned to sleep. His face showed the hassle that it was to wake up just to look at slaves who were chained to tamed horses especially obedient with their owners, so they wouldn't run away even if Dean and Paul spanked them or tried to ride.
After that guy returned to sleep, Dean took his book again and began to read from the point that he stopped before.
"To Nourish your "Willpower" it's important to know a basic thing about the relation between the two different mystic energies of this world. Ironically, even though they are opposite forces, "Willpower" and "Chaos" can help to nourish each other. That's why Dreads like to eat humans, although they can nourish themselves just with the "Chaos" present in the air.
"However, the Dreads have an advantage that humans don't have. It is the fact that "Chaos" is everywhere, so the more they live, the stronger they get because they can absorb it from the environment. Humans don't have "Willpower" present in the air, just within themselves. So, in order to get stronger and Nourish your power, you will need to use the only energy available: "Chaos", or else you will never achieve this goal."
Dean got flabbergasted once he read that. It was something surely ironic and unexpected. He was curious to know what kind of technique he would need to use to make it happen.
"Well, you will need to make your heart learn how to absorb "Chaos", firstly. Then, it needs to learn how to convert it into "Willpower", and finally hold this newly gained energy for some minutes before expelling it again.
"Your heart won't just add energy nonstop, after all. You will need to gather more energy than it can take in order to enlarge it bit by bit until it can have a bigger reserve. The process of conversion will also help in the recharge of "Willpower" in your heart. It's an essential technique for these reasons.
"It's a disadvantage in comparison to Dreads because of the stage of conversion and expel. They don't need to do it at all, and that's why they grow stronger quickly.
"To make this exercise of nourishment, it is important for you to know how to control your "Willpower" well. That's why more than one month of training is necessary. When someone is trying to do this stage, they need to have a grasp of how they can control a type of energy. Then, instead of doing it from the inside out, you will do it from the outside in. It seems basic and easy, but you will see that controlling things that aren't part of your body and making them enter inside it forcefully isn't as easy as it seems."
The boy closed the book, satisfied with what he could read. Dean could get a good grasp of what Will wanted to teach in the Nourishment pillar.
Now that he got to read the second pillar, he knew that his training would be just as he thought before. Each pillar would need the previous one to work well. If you didn't have a certain time of practice and knowledge about the previous stage, then you wouldn't be able to advance.
'It's a delicate process. It's very similar to the way they taught me in my apprenticeship as a blacksmith. I don't care about it, though. This long and harsh process just makes me more sure that I will get stronger if I focus. What bothers me is the time, though.'
Dean wanted to get out of that slave routine once and for all, and as fast as he could. He still had in mind that his family and friends were far away from him and he needed to find them, he needed to know if Refuge Sarah could pull through.
Nonetheless, he knew that Rick's group had the four pillars. He never saw them training once, but if they had spells then they must have had completed at least the first level of each pillar. It was enough to make them several times stronger than him.
'Don't worry about it. Just focus and you will pull through. The path is harsh, but the reward will surely be amazing!' He tried to think positively and focus on the long run. If he attached himself too much in the present, he would get dejected.
Dean sat on the ground cross-legged.
That exercise needed more concentration than motion, so he didn't need to make the forms while training it. That alone was enough to make him happy because now it would be easier to hide from those bastards.
Dean utilized the same basis that he learned on the first pillar, Control, in that exercise. However, he changed his intentions, focusing his mind on the environment and paying attention to the lines of "Chaos" waving around. There wasn't too much, but it seemed enough for now.
For several hours, the boy tried to learn how to control that energy. It was really difficult. He felt like trying to hold air. Since it wasn't something material, but an energy that you felt with your mind and instincts, it was five times as hard to interact with it.
While he trained, Paul glanced at him. The boy always did it from time to time. Not that he was interested in what Dean was doing. After all, he wasn't an Ascendant. However, he was trying to figure out how someone who became a slave could struggle so much.