*TAP*
Softly landing on the ground, Hai took a few brief instants to process the situation before starting to look around after being forcefully teleported to this dojo-like room.
"…" Silently scanning the room, he noticed that again, outside this space there was nothing there, only pitch-black darkness.
"Master…" Turning his gaze to the side, Hai saw Charlotte's blurry figure kneeling and lowering her forehead toward the ground.
"Please forg- ACHK!" Charlotte spoke in an apologetic tone but was swiftly silenced by a chop on her head.
"Master, why?" She asked while holding her head in pain.
"…" Blankly looking at Charlotte, Akame raised her hand threatening to give her another chop.
Charlotte wisely shut up and did nothing more.
*SIGH*
Sighing, Akame pursued her lips and gazed at her disciple before redirecting her gaze to Hai.
"Thanks for the help, Hai. I didn't think she would need to be confronted this directly to see this flaw of hers." She thanked him before turning her gaze back to Charlotte.
"Do you know what was the purpose of the training you two did just now?" She questioned while looking down at her disciple.
Charlotte looked up at her master and stayed silent.
She can more or less infer the purpose from the interaction between her master and Hai just now.
"M- UGH!"
"Answer me when I ask you a question, you stupid disciple." Akame commented while raising her fist off Charlotte's head.
She knows that her disciple has her reasons to be the way she is; to think as she thinks. But this is no excuse to keep in err like how Charlotte has been doing.
As much as she has her circumstances, Akame isn't training Charlotte to die to someone who has a broader mind than her.
If she did so, Akame would find a way to revive Charlotte just so she could beat her to death for her stupidity.
"…" Noticing how her master has been silent and only glaring at her, Charlotte unconsciously shuddered a bit.
Observing everything, Hai said nothing and only sat down on the ground while doing his own reflection.
'What did I learn?' He thought to himself but he wasn't sure if he could say he learned something aside from a bit more than space magic.
Although he now knows Charlotte's point of view and even discussed it a bit with her due to it, he didn't really get a sudden enlightenment that is going to change his worldview.
He knows that this small training session was meant to serve both him and Charlotte as a period to realize something.
He just doesn't know what exactly is it that he can infer from this training.
Hai is someone who although very confident and firm in his decisions, knows that he can be wrong, and hence is open to change for the better.
However, he still doesn't know what to "learn" from Charlotte's ideals which he doesn't agree with.
Silently musing over his thoughts, Hai closed his eyes while also waiting for Akame to finish lecturing Charlotte.
Looking at him from the corner of her eyes, Akame held in the urge to sigh.
She knows that comparison is poison. It can either strengthen someone when in small dosage, as it can kill another in great quantities or at the wrong moment.
However, she can't help but compare Charlotte with Hai and the other way around.
Charlotte is relatively naïve and has still some mercy in her, but she lacks the "maturity" and decisiveness Hai has.
On the other hand, Hai lacks "mercy" as a whole. He only moves when he has something to gain, so if he spares someone, for example, then it is only because there are benefits in it.
And although Akame agrees with this notion of his, she also knows that it is a must to still have some amount of mercy, because just moving when there are benefits can sometimes be the wrong move.
However, she knows that he will have some difficulty in this as he appears to be someone who has been toyed with and used. This kind of life is one of the hardest to allow someone to learn mercy, even if in small quantities.
'Little Hua is going to have trouble.' In the end, Akame just wryly smiled. She can't do much as she will focus mostly on training him in magical and physical aspects, nor is she close enough to try to help him in that.
She only cared enough as her disciple would also get to learn new things by interacting with him, so this is a win-win situation.
Although she also suspects that having a good relationship with him would prove to be better than she thought.
'I will see this in the future.' She shrugged it off and turn back to look at Charlotte.
"Until when are you going to keep quiet? If you found you did something wrong, make sure to correct it and not repeat the same mistake again." Akame added in a calm tone. She isn't particularly angry with Charlotte; she is just frustrated that it took this long and even external help for her to realize this glaring flaw of hers and don't ignore this.
"Yes, master…" Charlotte replied in a quieter voice. She knows that her master isn't angry but she is disappointed in herself for not being able to attend her master's expectations.
It wasn't particularly hard to do this.
But she "failed" in the end.
*CLAP*
Clapping once, Akame brought both Charlotte and Hai's attention to her.
"Alright, let's do self-reflection later. Hai, I said that I was going to train you, and I meant it." Akame spoke while doing some light stretching.
"Okay, you two, come at me. We will only stop when I say so." She stated while doing a 'come at me' gesture.
"…" Not saying anything, Hai just got into position.
Charlotte on the other hand vanished from where she was and attacked Akame immediately.
*BOOM*
With a small explosive force throwing winds in all directions, Hai watched as Charlotte hit the air near Akame but nothing else.
Her attack couldn't connect with Akame and she couldn't move forward. It seemed like she was stopped by something invisible.
Coating his eyes with mana, Hai noticed a single thin thread like the ones he observed in that maze made of mirrors.
However, this one he couldn't pry as his head felt like exploding every time he tried to look inside it.
'I will see this later.' He thought before materializing metal spears that were instantly fired at Akame.
Akame on the other hand just glanced at the spears and they stopped before hitting her.
*CRACK*
*SHATTER*
With the spears shattering, she looked at him and again did a "come at me" gesture.
"…" Silently raising an eyebrow, Hai vanished from where he was.
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Meanwhile, as Hai was training with Akame and Charlotte, the girls were also immersed in their own training.
After receiving a few explanations from Akame, they were sent to plain rooms where they would have about 12 hours to train and show visible progress by revising what Akame taught them.
While Elena and Kryn were doing fine on their own, the same couldn't be said for Hong Li-Wei.
As she had already entered and successfully progressed in the Core Compression rank, she was just a step away from ascending to the Fountain rank.
However, she found a problem when she tried to breakthrough.
She didn't know what to do.
It is like she knows the theory but doesn't have any idea about how to apply it in reality.
Sitting on a simple bed amidst an empty room, Hong Li-Wei crossed her legs and closed her eyes.
She doesn't know if this position helps in anything but as she has seen Hai do this sometimes, she thought it could help her even if a bit.
With her eyes closed, Hong Li-Wei once again tried to feel the mana in the surroundings and it didn't even take a few seconds for her to be able to feel a strange yet familiar energy around her.
Concentrating on feeling mana, Hong Li-Wei then started to think about what she needed to do.
To raise her rank, that is, to get stronger, she needed to somehow add a "fountain" to her core.
This much is easier enough to understand to her.
Now, the problem comes in the form that she doesn't know how is she supposed to add a "fountain" to her core or even where this would go, as her core is something that even Hai had never seen.
When a person forms a core, this core acts as a "pocket world", a small desert world where mana stays.
When someone reaches the Fountain rank, this is when they create a fountain, a source inside this "pocket world". This source is a species of container made for mana. The mana is absorbed by the mage and ends up in this fountain.
After absorbing enough and having the mana be denser enough, the fountain will eventually give birth to a nascent, which will then start to form a river.
This whole process is made so a mana user's capacity to hold mana grows by a huge margin at each rank.
And this is Hong Li-Wei's current problem.
As she visualized her core as a chip, the inside of it is a bunch of mana particles behaving like codes.
They are everywhere, have no purpose, and don't follow her commands aside from when she tries to use magic.
Although she knows some forms of dealing with codes as she is an experienced diver, she has no idea of how to deal with those "magical codes" as they seem different from the ones she knows.
'What the hell am I supposed to do?' She questioned herself while scratching her head.
She already knew that she had no talent for magic as she has seen Kryn showing her what is talent, however, she also believes that there are ways to walk without talent.
She just doesn't know such a way right now.
'What if I tried to make it like Nexus Net?' When this thought crossed her head, she immediately shook her head.
In the Nexus Net, as a diver, she has to be constantly finding ways around the rules that govern that place.
And this is why she doesn't want to face her core as if diving into the Nexus Net.
There, she has to find ways to circumvent the rules. If she were to do this with her core, something that is hers and hers alone, what would she do by not even being able to "control" her core to the point she needs some "shortcuts" to use magic?
While not hellbent on being the best or an amazing mage, Hong Li-Wei wants to be able to properly use magic, at the very least.
What she didn't know however, is that having to use those "shortcuts" is something normal and that every mage faces and does.
Mana is something that even modern technology and studies can explain.
It is like a universal law, it simply exists there and no one can disagree with it, even if they can't explain it.
And as a mysterious thing, mana sometimes behaves differently even under equal situations.
When a mage tries to use mana, they first need to take in mana from the surroundings, purify it inside them, and then, they will have a "control", the mana they use to influence the outside and thus, cause external phenomena.
Being a mana user in general is hard. Being a mage is even more as one would have to pave their own way and always pay attention to their mana reserves because mages can't generate mana on their own. Hence, the higher the rank, the bigger the mana reserves and the less the mage has to worry about running out of it.
And this is where things get complicated. The mana core although created by the mage, doesn't follow every order from them and doesn't behave in a comprehensive way.
It sometimes might act strangely, like how it is a "mess" right now to Hong Li-Wei.
What Hong Li-Wei is trying to do without knowing, is to change one of the "rules" made by mana, that is that one needs to learn how to use those "shortcuts" to be able to use magic.
This is something that not every mage can do, and the few that can, like Hai, are stronger than normal and sometimes, stronger than they should.
She is unconsciously taking her first steps in creating her own rules to govern her core.
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A/N: Hello there, I hope you are having a wonderful day!
I would like to apologize for not posting the bonus chapter I said I was going to post yesterday. I ended up not having an idea of how to write this chapter and postponed it to today, so, sorry for this inconvenience.
I should post the bonus one later today, so stay tuned.
So, what do you guys think about this chapter?
Comment what you thought about this chapter. If you liked it or not, I want to read your opinions and interact more with you guys.
Another thing: Please give your feedbacks. I want to know what you guys think, if there are things that could be better or if I could have done something in a simpler manner. If you could also leave a review, that would help me to understand what you think about the novel in general, so it would be really helpful.
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That is all for today, thank you all for reading! 🍷😎