"Well, Grand Elder, can you join me here?" I said with the smile still on my face.
'…what is with the weird looks they are giving me,' I thought.
"Haa," I sighed. "He can't be beside you, so he won't help you, whether intentionally or not. Besides, it's better to be under a shed than under that wicked sun," I said.
He came to my side and I made a small sand hump for him as well to sit on. He stared at it then the shed for a few seconds before sitting.
"With that out of the way, let's start."
**Boooooomm**
It was like the sky was falling, but that was them sensing only a tiny flicker. The presence hasn't even been truly released.
Everything has a presence, whether alive or not. The presence of non-living things is always transparent and formless like water. So are living beings, but only at the beginning as babies. As they grew, so did their presence. It took different shapes, thicknesses, purities, and other attributes determined by the owner entirely. The young man's presence was formless like water, but it retained the same awe-inspiring blue tones and thickness his energy had. It was like a borehole was just punctured, but instead of flowing forward, it flowed backward and upward.
It was truly awe-inspiring, just like before with his energy. It was like an ocean of blue magma threatening to swallow and dissolve anything it touched. As it flowed, different shapes were created and dissolved again and again. Imagination got the better of the assembly members, though. Each imagined a different type of beautiful yet monstrous blue creature slowly crawling out of his body, but there was one similarity with all their imaginations—its growing size.
Their heads continued to slowly raise with the presence. It didn't stop growing and expanding. It didn't reach them; it started from me and went backward, enveloping mile after mile in seconds. Though they were close to the edge of the continent, there were still a few miles until the empty dark space which was once filled with water. Reaching the edge of the land, the presence continued, pouring into the dark space and at the same time raising into the air. Then they couldn't lift their heads any further.
"Isn't this too much?" Grand Elder said, panicked. He was also mesmerized by the display, but he finally snapped out of it.
"I know it is. There is a reason it is flowing backward and not forward, enveloping and completely destroying them," I said. "This is the height of power they are to aim for, right? This height can save their world. If their will is crushed, so be it. But if this helps to increase their lust for power, they might just save this world for you. You would have helped enough."
'So he knows that as well,' the Grand Elder thought as he stared at me before looking back at the assembly. A small part of the presence split apart from its main body and then divided itself into five different proportions, coming down on them before they could even react. The test had commenced.
"What is this feeling?" Khan thought. The pressure exerted by the presence on him nearly brought him to his knees, but he wasn't the chief for no reason. He resisted with all his will and slowly stood up. Standing, he painfully turned his head to look at the others. The generals' knees were bulging, while Toko was almost touching the ground. Mul was only humping a bit, but before his eyes, Toko actually started to rise. His eyes couldn't believe it, and he lost his focus for a millisecond. But the presence didn't miss that chance. He was brought on all four limbs. The sound of something falling to the ground made the others look at him, and their shock at how the chief could be brought on all four limbs brought all of them to their limbs as well.
It was almost comical how they all kept trying to rise. It was like watching a group of people trying their hardest to get their last squat right. Even though they kept failing, each failure brought them a bit closer to getting back on their feet. As I and the Grand Elder watched we saw the first to fall be the first to rise.