Ethan was shocked. If mere basics can be this strong, what about the dragon expert tutorial? The fact that this skill is exclusive to the emperor made it harder for him to believe.
"I am amazing, right?" Rowena said proudly. "If I had made this skill public for everyone, then it would have been chaotic, so I decided to make it exclusively for the emperor, who is also my direct descendent."
"OK, enough chatting, let's get to work," Rowena said. "First of all, try channelling your inner flame to your hands, and also, you can move your inner flame to any part of your body; furthermore, it can also be used as a shield to minimize damage, but I won't talk about that for now," He paused for everything to sink, before he said, "You can start!"
Ethan tried focusing on his inner flames; then, he tried moving the flame towards his hands, and his hands caught on fire.
"You are doing it wrong. As I said before, reduce the intensity of the flame before moving it around. Now go again," Rowena said sternly.
For the past 30 minutes, Ethan had been making the same mistake over and over again.
Rowena was now getting impatient, so he asked, "What does your inner flame look like?"
"It's a mixture of blue and red, and it looks unstable," Ethan replied.
"blue and red. You are one lucky man. To even possess the eternal flame, I knew you were meant for greatness," Rowena said.
Ethan raised a brow after hearing Rowena, "What do you mean by an eternal flame?"
"I will tell you after our training session. Now try moving the blue flame instead of the red, since it is smaller, it should be easy to control," Rowena instructed.
Ethan took a deep breath and focused all his attention on the blue flame; then, he moved the flame slowly towards his hands. Although the blue flame was not as intense as the red, its intensity needed to be reduced, which Ethan was currently doing.
After a while, small blue sparks started whirling around his hand, producing small sparks. The blue sparks danced around his hands like lightning.
"Woah! That's amazing," Rowena gasped.
The blue sparks were simply beautiful; one might even mistake them for lightning.
"Rowena, is this OK?" Ethan asked.
Hearing Ethan's voice, Rowena snapped out his thoughts, "Yes, it is OK, at least for now, but you still need to practice and become more creative with it."
Soon, Ethan saw a system message.
[A new skill has been recorded]. [Dragon spark: 20% mastery]
"Wait—what does this mean?" Ethan asked after seeing the message.
Rowena, in his holographic form, answered, "As I told you before, the system helps you to make use of your skills easily, and this is one such instance, so next time, if you want to make use of any skill, you just need to give a command." Rowena explained in a tone that, clearly, shows he was tired of explaining the same thing over and over again.
The system just kept amazing Ethan each day. He was kind of feeling glad that his, not so good, brothers threw him off that cliff.
He knew Rowena and his friends worked hard to make this system, and the fact that it was in the form of contact lenses, only added to his admiration.
He soon snapped out of his thoughts and asked, "How can I increase my mastery?"
"Oh, about that, just keep on using the skill continually, and it will increase," Rowena said.
"Now, why don't we have a little spar?" Rowena suggested.
After hearing him, Ethan frowned, and asked, "Isn't this just a holographic form? I mean, how am I going to make an impact on you if I can't even touch you? "
" I already have plans for that," Rowena said and gestured for him to attack," now show me what you got."
Ethan charged at Rowena, who was in his holographic form.
Although he doubts if he will be able to make an impact; however, when he sent out a punch, hoping it would pass through the holographic display; instead, his fist made contact with a hard surface.
"What! How? " Ethan was visibly confused, but soon, Rowena sent out a double palm, sending him crashing to the wall, which was probably one of the strongest metals.
"What just happened?" Ethan asked, as he slowly dragged himself up.
"Hahaha, you underestimated my capabilities," Rowena said, as he slowly approached Ethan, who was now on his feet.
"How did you?"
"It's simple. I just made your brain cells think I was real," Rowena said.
"Alright, that explains it." Ethan groaned. The palm strike from earlier made his rib cage crumble. He willed the system to send a healing pill to his mouth; then, his ribs healed quickly.
When he started feeling OK again, he said, " Rowena, you are 1000+ years old, right?"
"Yeah, why do you ask?" Rowena raised an eyebrow.
"Because I would appreciate it if you go a little easier on me."
Rowena looked at him for a second and said, "The attack just now, I held back 90 percent of my strength, so I don't know what you are fussing about."
Ethan was speechless. What about his full power if only 10% of his strength caused this kind of damage? If Rowena had used his full power, he was sure he would have been history by now.
After a while, Ethan smiled shamelessly and said, "Can you please use 5 percent, because I would like to walk out of here in one piece."
"No, 10 percent is the least I can go and anything below that will not be accepted; besides, this is for your good. If you want to get stronger, this is the best way to stop whining and get your ass over here, "Rowena twisted his holographic neck. Ethan was about to ask him why he was doing that. After all, it's not his real body, but he stopped when he heard what Rowena said next. "It has been long since I kicked some ass," Rowena smirked.
"What! Isn't this supposed to be training?" Ethan was speechless.
" Yeah, it is part of training."
Over the next few hours, Ethan suffered the same fate. His bones were broken, he was knocked out, and he crashed to the wall multiple times and suffered severe injuries, but, thankfully, there were healing pills, so he survived; in spite of all this, he never landed one hit on Rowena.
"Nice job, kid. You managed to survive. For a moment there, I thought you were going to die," Rowena chuckled.
Ethan lay flat on his back with visible sweat all over his body.
After some time, he cleaned himself up and stood up.
"Hey, are you not forgetting something?" Ethan asked after he got up.
"What?" Rowena asked, confused.
"The eternal flame you talked about," Ethan reminded him.
Rowena nodded in realization, and he said, "The eternal flame is also known as the godly flame."
****