Silver sat awkwardly in front of the three other demons.
"Ok, guys, can you stop staring like that at me? You're making me tense." Silver complained.
"How can we not stare at you? You were standing ominously outside the window like a creepy stalker." Emperion shouted.
"I want to know why you didn't knock or use the doorbell." Shadow stated. "Why are you here anyway?" Silver put his hands together, as if he was praying, and pointed them at the three.
"I wanted to talk about the entrance exam. You two have been relaxing for the past week and a half. If you keep going on like this, honestly, I don't think you'll make the cut." Silver explained.
"You think I'm not good enough?" Emperion hissed, drawing closer to Silver.
"We have time, Silver. I don't see a need to worry." Shadow countered, reaching over to pull Emperion back down in his seat.
"It's been a week and a half already and you haven't done any training!" he exclaimed.
"It's only been a week and a half. We still have, like, a month and a half left of our two months to spend training." Shadow assured. "Besides, I, at least, haven't been doing nothing for the past week and a half. I built a freakin' house! Does that count as nothing?" Silver didn't say anything.
"If it makes you feel better, I don't think Emperion will make it either." Jay admitted.
"Hey!"
"And what about Shadow? Do you think he'll make it past the entrance exam? You don't even know what the entrance exam is."
"Shadow can do anything if he sets his mind to it!" Jay exclaimed, confidently. Silver still looked uneasy.
"If you want, you can monitor our training. I'll make sure to start working on this one early tomorrow morning!" Shadow finally got Emperion seated again.
"Fine. But if I feel you're lacking anything, or doing something wrong, I'll step in and teach you guys properly." Silver agreed.
"Also, if you're planning on staying here for the night, you'll have to sleep on the couch." Shadow warned.
"No, I have my own place to stay. I'll come by to train you whenever I have free time, ok? You guys will train deep into the night!" he exclaimed. Shadow slammed the counter and stood up.
"Great! Shall we get started?" he invited.
"Wait, right now?" Emperion looked around, confused. "But it's already dark outside! And you said we would train tomorrow!"
"If you can stay up really late." Silver challenged.
"And what about me? What if I want to go to sleep?" Jay wondered.
"We'll just do some basic training. It shouldn't be too loud, as long as Emperion shuts up for once." Shadow assured. "Or I could take you back to your house."
"I'll just sleep downstairs. See you guys in the morning. I'm not making you pancakes while you guys are training." Jay decided, hopping off the stool.
"That's alright. Making pancakes can be part of our training." Shadow pushed his stool back under the counter.
"How?" Silver wondered, hopping off his stool too.
"Emperion doesn't know how to cook, so it's a good time to teach him how to cook, while in a magic-sealing room." Shadow explained.
"I can cook!" Emperion exclaimed.
"No you can't." Shadow stated bluntly, grabbing his shirt by the back of the collar and dragging him off the stool and up the stairs. Silver followed. Shadow tossed Emperion into the training room and turned the dial near the door up to one. Instantly, Emperion felt the pressure he had felt during his first time in the room, except it was much lighter.
"If you can't move in this kind of pressure, you're weaker than a demon with no wings." Shadow called as Silver stepped into the room. Emperion got up and turned towards Shadow and Silver with an angry face.
"Hey! You get in here too!" he yelled.
"I am, moron. I can't change the sealing level if I'm outside the room." Shadow yelled back, irritated.
"Why would you make it that way?" Silver questioned. His eyes were full of curiosity.
"It's so I can't torture traning buddies, like this one, by setting the level of pressure to a setting I can't handle. If I can handle it, he can handle it to some extent." Shadow explained.
"Torture?" Silver echoed, slightly concerned. Shadow didn't respond. He raised the dial up to level two. Emperion almost fell down but he hung on.
"How well can you move under this pressure?" Shadow asked Emperion. In response, Emperion started to make his way towards him. He took heavy steps but his pace wasn't half bad. Shadow raised the level to three, making Emperion stumble but he corrected himself, quickly, without falling. He continued to make his way towards Shadow. Shadow kept raising the pressure until it was at level five and Emperion seemed to be struggling to move. He was just a few steps away from Shadow.
"So this is about your limit to pressure?" Shadow observed.
"Stop treating me like a test subject. I'm not here for experimentation, I'm here for training." Emperion growled through gritted teeth.
"Exactly. Training under sealing pressure like this strengthens the flow of your magic. Just standing there is still making you stronger." Shadow explained. "Before, I told you that the more magic you have, the denser your magic streams are and the more resistant you are to the reverse flow. But it also depends on how strong your magic is. If your magic is weak then it can't do anything against the reverse flow. If you train your magic to resist the reverse flow, it will become stronger and more fluent when you are taken out of the pressure."
"Clever." Silver praised, a look of understanding crossing his face.
"That's why, doing simple tasks, like cooking, can help you train. And since you don't know how to cook, it's killing two birds with one stone."
"But I don't need to know how to cook! I can just buy fast food or leech off you guys." Emperion huffed.
"You can't leech off others forever, you know, and fast food is terrible for you." Shadow sighed.
"How are you doing, by the way." Silver asked, turning towards Shadow.
"Fine. Why?"
"The pressure isn't too much for you?" Silver had a worried look on his face.
"No. If I couldn't handle this much pressure, I wouldn't have turned it up this far. Besides, we're only at the fifth level. It's not that high." Shadow huffed, a little upset.
"This gravity is annoying!" Emperion whined, butting into the conversation.
"Try to shoot a bullseye with a basic fireball." Shadow instructed, creating a target with his magic. He turned around and pressed a button to the right of the dial and the wall closed up behind them, encasing them within the training space. The spot where the door had been was tiled black instead of white. He then held the target right in front of his chest.
"Hey, that's just mean!" Silver interrupted. "Anyone can hit a bullseye from that far away!"
"When are you going to stop insulting me and treat me like your equal?" Emperion demanded, slowly raising his hands to prepare a fireball.
"When you can fight me as an equal." Shadow stared down at the fireball that was forming in his magic circle. It was pitifully small. Emperion ignored the irritating size and fired it anyway. It swiveled up and down on its path and popped an inch away from the target. Emperion and Silver stared in disbelief.
"See? When you're at your pressure limit, magic becomes as hard as if you were just learning it. Your pressure limit is when you are in a magic-sealing room you can barely move in. The reason this limits your magic so dramatically is because the reverse flow the magic-sealing stone creates prevents the magic from your magic streams to flow into your center. Your center is the place where you build up the magic to create and use spells. With the reverse flow slowing your magic flow, it takes more energy to build up the magic in your center, which puts strain on the center. If you waited a few more minutes, you probably would've been able to hit the target. But the amount of energy it would've taken you to build up that much magic under sealing pressure would've caused you to become exhausted or pass out when you fired the spell." Shadow elaborated. "When your magic becomes stronger against reverse flow, it'll be easier to use magic and move under this much pressure. That's why doing simple tasks under this pressure gets your magic system to strengthen and helps you grow your magic." Emperion stared blankly at him again. Silver was nodding understanding.
"To put it in a way idiots can understand, doing simple tasks that require small amounts of magic under sealing pressure increases your fluency in magic and therefore, when you are released from this pressure, your magic becomes stronger and easier to use." Shadow explained again, irritated. Emperion brightened up for a second before getting upset.
"Hey, I'm not an idiot!" he barked. Shadow just sighed. He cast a levitation spell on the target, and let it float a yard away from himself. He then raised an arm to prepare a fireball.
"Your target was about a foot away from you." A black magic circle appeared in front of his hand and a similarly colored fireball ignited inside of it. He fired the fireball and shot the target straight in the center not a second later, knocking the target out of the air. Silver and Emperion were dumbfounded. He picked up the target and made it levitate again. Shadow shook his hand from the heat and walked back to the wall where the door was.
"When you can do that with a basic fireball, we'll spar without the sealing pressure and see how far you've gotten." Shadow instructed. "And, last question before you start practicing, do you know how to use Enhancement techniques?" Emperion looked blankly back at Shadow and slowly shook his head.
"I'll teach them to you some other day, then." Shadow stretched and sat down. "I suggest trying to make a decent sized basic fire before you try making a decent sized basic fireball." he called. Emperion just ignored him and continued to try to shoot down the floating target. Silver sat down next to Shadow.
"Try not to exhaust yourself to death!" Silver called.
"Why would I do that?" Emperion huffed.
"You're the stubborn type." Silver smirked. He then turned towards Shadow. "Are you not going to practice too?"
"I guess I could use a sparring partner. Are you good in close combat?" Shadow looked back at Silver.
"I'm decent, according to Scaldris. Are you sure you don't want to practice your magic?"
"It would be pointless. If I wanted to effectively train my magic streams, I'd have to increase the sealing pressure in this room, and I don't know how much Emperion can handle. If I increase it too much, it could kill him."
"It could WHAT?" Emperion burst, alarmed.
"Well I don't know what the reverse flow could do to a person if they're magic flow is reversed to the point of flowing backwards so I'm going to assume worst case scenario." Shadow explained.
"I know what happens. Happened to code Aros. He was a reckless idiot. He wanted to know what would happen if your flow of magic was reversed. So he went and did it to himself. He's still alive, thankfully, but the magic got reversed into his wings and overloaded them. His wings were unable to hold all his magic and eventually burst, leaking his magic everywhere. He was able to keep his life because I managed to get there in time and turn off the sealing stone before he drained his magic but he lost a wing and went down a few ranks. Now he's stuck doing Scout missions because his rank is too low." Silver explained. Emperion was staring at him with a horrified expression but Shadow kept his indifferent look.
"So I could potentially kill Emperion if I raised the sealing pressure too high?" Shadow asked with an interested tone.
"Yes." Silver confirmed.
"I think I'll stick to regular sparring when we all practice together." Shadow smiled and chuckled, trying to hide his nervousness. "I wouldn't want to accidentally kill someone or cripple them."
"Yes, please don't accidentally kill me." Emperion exclaimed, turning around to continue his practice. An edgy silence followed Silver's story.
"So anyway, I've been wondering. You avoided the question earlier but, why were you creepily standing in the window instead of ringing the doorbell or knocking?" Shadow turned back towards Silver.
"Uh... well..." he began. He blushed from embarrassment before he even said anything. "You guys were talking a lot so I thought you wouldn't hear if I knocked and most new houses lack doorbells. I was so used to not seeing a doorbell I didn't think to check." he admitted. Shadow burst out laughing, unable to contain himself. Emperion, for once, did a better job of hiding his amusement, but couldn't help but let a little laugh slip past him.
"I can see what you mean. Most people don't get to build their dream house out of nowhere and just buy an already built house so it makes sense they would forget to add a doorbell." Shadow laughed. Silver just shrunk into his shoulders with embarrassment. Suddenly, Emperion stopped firing at the target.
"I just realized..." he started trembling. "I also forgot to add a doorbell." This time, it was Silver's turn to laugh.
"H-Hey! We demons have all had tough lives! It makes sense to forget a doorbell or two." His voice slowly lowered as he spoke.
"That's enough idle chit-chat." Shadow stood up. He then reached out a hand to Silver. "Would you like to spar with me?" he offered. Silver clasped his hand.
"Sure, I could use the practice." he smiled.