Teran arrived to pick up the siblings as usual and after exchanging some greetings with Sia, he carried them away.
While they drilled through the ground, the siblings used the astral view and saw massive amounts of brown earth astral particles everywhere with a large amount of them surrounding Teran.
They continued to read the flow of energy before they realized that they had arrived at the canyon.
"Okay so since we're teaching you guys techniques, I'll get straight to it." Teran started as he was covered in an earth barrier.
"Both of you, hit this barrier as hard as you can." Teran instructed, much to the confusion of the siblings as they noticed that the strength of the barrier was around mid gold rank. But they decided not to question it and did as they were told.
Victoria summoned both of her gauntlets and used part of her purple empress mode on both of her fists while Gideon brought out his daggers and did something similar, but with his poison avatar.
The two of them then used layering up to four layers and attacked the barrier with all the strength they could muster.
But the moment their attacks landed on the barrier, something odd happened. There was no explosion or massive shockwave, instead,the duo felt as if they had punched into soft cotton. And then the barrier rippled strangely before.
*BOOM*
Both of them were blown away by a massive amount of force and crashed into one of the cliff faces.
'What the hell?' Gideon thought with bewilderment while ignoring the stinging pain in his arms along with Victoria.
'The amount of force that was released, was pretty close to, if not the same as what we released. Wait.' Victoria's eyes widened as she came to a shocking conclusion.
"Our attacks got reflected." Gideon said with a solemn voice, his thought process the same as his sister.
"Bingo, the barrier took in all the force you two sent and transmitted it back." Teran's voice sounded as the barrier was taken away.
"I call it the reflect barrier. The name is pretty simple, but it does just that. Anyway the barrier is great for defense and has great resistance to piercing and drill like attacks." Teran started it's benefits and the siblings nodded.
"As for the theory behind it, well, it's actually a but complicated. Basically, when the barrier receives any form of force, the astral energy that makes it up ripples in a unique pattern and the force rides the ripples like waves, the ripples then carry the force back to where it was transmitted initially and send it back. All of this happening near instantly." Teran finished his explanation and was met with eyes that hardly understood.
"Wait, how do you- What?" Gideon was properly perplexed.
The theory behind the layering technique was fairly complicated but one could understand it after some thought, the same thing with the phantom strike, and Sia's anti-magic domain was broken up into pieces.
But when the siblings tried to visualize what Teran meant, they were left confused by the concept.
"You should have learnt how to use the astral view now, use it to see what I mean." Teran was patient with them as he instructed.
The duo complied and once again entered the colorful world. But they noticed that there was an abundance of earth energy particles in contrast to the other elements that seemed to be lacking.
They soon turn their attention to the barrier and immediately saw something. When they looked closely, they saw that the surface of the barrier was not actually smooth and was actually made of of very small wave like patterns that stretched across its body.
"Now watch closely." As he said that, Teran created an earth bullet and fired it at the barrier with a large amount of force.
The instant the bullet hit the barrier, the impacted area began to ripple, and the ripples went on before covering the whole barrier. The ripples then seemed to pass through each other before suddenly converging back into where the bullet hit. All of this happening near instantly.
*BANG*
The force was returned into the bullet then exploded into fine dust.
After the demonstration, the siblings understood. The force taken rode the ripples quite literally like waves, and the ripples didn't stop moving but went around the barrier before the ripples along with the force that rode them were returned to the point of impact.
Sadly, the changes happened to fast and so the siblings couldn't properly see how it happened. But Teran was already satisfied that they finally understood the theory behind it.
"It's good that you guys get it now. Anyway, pay close attention to the ripples and try to understand how they work before trying to make the barrier yourself." Teran advised and the siblings nodded before paying close attention.
Teran then proceed to launch different types of attacks at the barrier which did what it did before. But the siblings using the astral view payed close attention to how the ripples moved.
In addition to that, they also noticed that the barrier had a texture similar to rubber, as the point of impact seemed to stretch inwards slightly as it took the hit before sending it back out.
It was only after the 20th time that they were able to get a rough idea of how the ripples worked.
"Give a try then." Hearing that they had gotten it, Teran encouraged them to try.
Gideon and Victoria sat down cross legged and began trying to create a barrier that was similar to Teran.
But it was actually quite difficult because they had to concentrate on making every individual ripple. And mind you, each ripple was five times smaller than a millimeter, and there were thousands.
Fortunately, their concentration had increased due to Sia's training and so they were making progress, albeit slowly.
Sweat covered their heads as they made sure that each ripple was the right size without being to big or small. At the same time, they gave the barrier a similar texture to very durable rubber, just like Teran. After all, the ripples wouldn't be able to move if they had the glass like texture of conventional barriers