Previously
I sat on the opposite end of the round table as she sat at the head end. She circled her finger in the air as two plates full of sweet pie gently fell before our hands. I investigated the food and with surprise, I had to admit that Ivanka had greatly improved her cooking skills.
Before, she only managed to burn or freeze something but now she was able to whip out something like a berry-crusted sweetpie. Sure, it looked rather crude and wasn't really glazed in anything other than a few sprinkles of white sugar.
But, looks could be deceiving. Perhaps she had advanced enough in her horrible cooking that she made it look good, like a mimic treasure chest before devouring those enchanted by it's appearance.
Or, maybe not.
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"Eat," Ivanka simply said. A pair of fork and knife appeared before us. She easily dived into her food for the afternoon while I was still wondering if I can trust something she cooked.
Picking up the knife, I sliced into the sweet pie and found it to be soft enough that my knife easily sliced into it as some form of gel-like fluid that smelled like strawberry flooded out. Huh. Maybe she actually was learning from my cooking lessons.
"Thank you for the meal," I offered a quick prayer before hesitantly letting the first bite enter my mouth. "It's actually. . .good?"
"You don't have to look so surprised," Ivanka said. "I am able to learn."
"Yeah, but the first thing you attempted to learn cooking from me, you managed to make a half-cold, half-hot bubbling monstrosity that you call a stew," I retorted with an amused smile. Oh, the good old days.
"Please refrain from teasing Glen," She said.
"Oh and you gave it a name," I said, shaking my head. She could be weirdly protective over her first achievements like that. 'Your first mistake is to be cherished', she says.
"So I see you've been having difficulty with the first stage," She decided to change the subject. Maybe I teased her a little too much.
I bit onto the sweet, delicious pie. "Yeah." Ivanka snapped her fingers and a glass of cold refreshment appeared. I gulped the pie down with the drink which sent a little shiver of pleasure down my spine. "The support mage keeps annoying me with her spells and curses. The two wobbling buffoons only got size for brains."
"You lack power," She said.
I grimaced. She didn't have to give me the cold truth like that. "Yeah."
"You try and make it up with your speed," She continued. "You asked me to help you develop your speed during our two weeks of training." More like two weeks of hell. "But you've met a bottleneck. Of course, you did."
She glanced at my emblem. "You were never meant to be a fighter after all. It's already an achievement that you managed to pass the tutorial and onto the first stage in under a month, no matter how physically trained."
"Yeah but-"
"You want more power," Ivanka scoffed. "Who doesn't want that? I've given you a path to walk onto, a forbidden one but it should be good enough so that even you should be able to reach the middle stages."
". . .And how long will it take me?"
"A year," Ivanka said without hesitation.
I shook my head. "I can't do it. A year's too long for me to stay here. Who knows what will happen outside in the year that I stay here. No, I'll spend the six months as fore-promised before the rift to the outside opens."
She sipped on her drink. ". . If you go out with vengeance on your mind as you are right now, you'll be swallowed and eaten alive. And, I'm not even talking about the Demon God."
"It's been nearly a month since I've been here and I've been stuck in the first stage for a week now," I sighed. "Imagine the hope I felt when I realized that, even I could become powerful when I passed the tutorial in under a day, only for that hope to vanish in the next."
"At this rate, even if I have to use-"
"No," Ivanka cut me off. She looked at me from the other end of the table but I could feel and see the fire in her silver eyes. "You must never use that ability unless absolutely needed."
There was another thing we found out about the divinity sleeping inside me, that anger and fury boiling inside me, when I was going through that hellish training under her tutelage. It was the fourth night of the first week, when I was resting under the stars, contemplating my existence and purpose in this world when I felt it. Anger beyond words suddenly plagued my mind as my body went through shock, eyes rolled to the back and breathing grew errant like a beast as anything near me started to turn into ash.
I didn't know why or how it occurred but fortunately for me, before the anger completely possessed me, Ivanka appeared and gave a swift chop to the back of my neck, sending me unconscious and the anger dissipating. The next morning I woke up with a sore body but not as sore when I was fully possessed by that anger.
Ivanka and I had dialogue during the morning and I found out the reason or condition for that anger/divinity to appear. It was so simple that I wanted to smack myself for not realizing earlier. Apparently, near the woods, right where I was sleeping under the stars, there was a pack of chromatic dragons, more specifically a living, pissed off looking, giant red dragon—a red dragon that was strong enough to start crystalizing it's divinity, had somehow wandered into the woods or Ivanka's pocket dimension.
Ivanka had sent it off, kicking it outside her pocket dimension or so was what she had told me when I'd woken up. Apparently, that red dragon had sensed me and was flying towards me to devour me as nourishment for the crystallization of it's divine core to ascend to become a god.
Basically, that anger would take over when I was facing an opponent of divine level that would and could kill me. I didn't tell Ivanka but I had a hypothesis that it was some form of self-defense the world had left me since I was a transmigrator, only this self-defense turned out to be a last-resort use since it greatly burned up my life energy.
If it hadn't been for the natural rejuvenation energy of the woods or my constitution as the Maiden that granted me an immense life-force, I would have already turned into a shriveled up corpse that time in the training grounds.
My hopes of spamming it as a cheat code to getting stronger fast quickly eroded when I realized that since it was active and woken up now, it greatly impeded me from summoning forth chakra or chi—the energy required to use martial arts.
For some reason, since chi was essentially life-force as well, my anger—I really needed a better name—mistook the chi as it's nourishment and kept on stealing it away from me, essentially leaving me with an empty cup.
Which was why, I was increasingly growing frustrated with myself after a week of being unable to learn martial arts.
"It's no wonder you're unable to progress past the first stage," Ivanka interjected. "I forbade you from using any weapons, trinkets or your emblem skills in the 10 stages. That removal of self-dependence and utility clinginess is what allows one to absorb something new, something foreign into your body, after all."
I kept my mouth shut, silently growing frustrated. I really didn't want to ask for her help regarding my situation since I wanted to do it myself.
Her eyes glowed, telling me that she might have caught onto me already.
"There's something you're not telling me," Ivanka said. She swirled her fingers as her finished plate and cup floated back home. She really needed to teach me how to do that.