'I could even become a teacher in a small sect specialized in medicine now.'
But this did not come without consequences. Now that his diagnostic skill was good enough, he was able to discover the price of changing his Fire technique to Light and Darkness.
In the process of changing his breathing technique, Tristan had permanently damaged his energy veins. He was only alive because the damage didn't occur near his core. According to his estimates, he might have compromised about 20% of his essence veins.
With his skill now evolved, he investigated the condition of his own body. He didn't think his skill was already better than all the healers his father had hired, but unlike them, he had all the time in the world to examine himself.
Seventeen days later, he finally found something, or rather, he thought he had. It was like a clue that kept disappearing, but the more he searched, the easier it became to find it again. Eventually, he managed to see what he was looking for.
It was extremely small and thin, probably less than 3 millimeters.
'Is this hair? Or maybe a thread?'
What Tristan noticed looked like small black hair, coiled around his energy veins near his core and blocking their growth. But to his surprise, there wasn't just one; there were several.
'I've finally discovered what happened to me!'
"I'm no expert in this, but I can safely say this doesn't look natural."
Suddenly, his lips curled into a smile, but his eyes were filled with sadness.
"Bastards!"
After a few more moments, he finally calmed his emotions.
"Well, now there's just one thing left."
'How the hell do I fix this?'
***
Still trapped in a filthy dungeon, Tristan pondered deeply about his current situation and how his problem could be resolved. Then he decided to use his Divine Fragment of Tales once again.
Now, as a spirit surrounded by an almost infinite number of golden pages, he spoke the following words:
"Black hairs blocking energy veins."
Once again, all the pages around his body moved, and this time a large number of them disappeared, leaving only a "small" amount remaining.
"As expected! This kind of thing shouldn't be common."
He reached out, grabbed one page after another, and began reading. Some of the pages contained only a few sentences. Compared to the stories of legendary heroes, this seemed to be something quite unknown.
The more he read, the heavier his heart became.
This time, he believed that his research had been successful; after all, this description was of a situation so specific and unusual. He compared several tales and concluded that most of them spoke of the same problem he was facing at the moment.
The problem was that he found no solution—quite the opposite. Most of the tales he read ended tragically.
|The Tragedy of Jiradh|
⟨...
On the third night after the solstice, the venerable second son of the Marquis of Jiradh fell ill, and the entire marquisate was in despair. His ability to cultivate had been taken from him, and his desperate parents summoned all the healers of the marquisate, and they came, one after the other, but no one could discover the cause of his affliction.
Even more desperate, the boy's parents spent the entire fortune of the marquisate to summon a Healing Master from the White Tower.
When the Healing Master arrived at the marquisate, his confidence was unshakable, and everyone noticed it. On the first day of his visit, he spoke in a casual tone as if it were nothing serious.
"I've discovered the cause," he said, and after a brief silence, he continued: "Something like black hairs is blocking his cultivation, but don't worry, Darkness can destroy anything." And so, with his unshakable confidence, the Healing Master began his treatment, and a few seconds later, the head of the marquis' son exploded.
…⟩
'The other tales I found didn't end much differently from this one. In summary, a talented healer would discover the cause and attempt to resolve it by destroying the threads, only for their patient to die.'
'I'm glad I decided to look at the tales. Truth be told, the first thing I thought I should do was learn to control Darkness and immediately destroy the hairs.'
But now he had many things to consider.
'I can't destroy the threads with the Darkness element. Could other elements work? Or can they not be destroyed at all? Or is it necessary to wait a certain amount of time before destroying each thread?'
"I wish I had the luck to find a viable solution in the tales, but the information in them is brief and not very detailed."
'Well, as long as I don't find a solution in the tales, I'll have to try through trial and error. I'll have to learn to control Darkness and maybe destroy just one thread to see what happens. I think it should be safe to destroy one 'hair'—it shouldn't release enough essence to kill me.'
Tristan's initial idea was that by destroying a "hair," the energy vein would increase in diameter. Since this would happen quickly, there would be a large flow of essence moving through only a few veins near the core, causing them to be destroyed and resulting in fatal damage.
Then time passed, and he worked on the principles of Darkness.
(Darkness, the element of Darkness represents concealment and the end. It is the element of decay, death, and destruction. Darkness is the representation of disorder, something intrinsic to the existence of complex living beings in the universe. Darkness can mask reality, but only the void can truly erase the existence of something completely. It is necessary to control Darkness within oneself to truly understand how it interacts with the world.)
Soon, he managed to create a mantra for Darkness. Developing a breathing technique for this element was quicker now that he had more experience in the subject. The pillar he chose to cultivate this element was "Shadows."
After all, his current existence was no different from a mere shadow in a prison cell; his existence had been practically forgotten by others. During the last years of his life, he was merely a mediocre and insignificant being.
Being able to connect an aspect of his own life with the concealment principle of the Darkness element allowed his understanding and mastery to advance rapidly.
Now, at eleven years old, he decided it was time to try to develop a Darkness ability. Tristan picked up a stone in his hand and stared at it, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He imagined a black blade as thin as a sheet of paper. He imagined this blade cutting the stone, slicing it perfectly in half.
With the preparations made, he used the Darkness breathing technique he had developed, drew the essence of the power from his body, and guided it to the tip of his pinky finger. He opened his eyes and touched the stone with his finger. Suddenly, a small chip was removed. It didn't happen as he expected, but it was good enough.
'It worked! That's what matters.'
A voice spoke in his mind.
[You created an ability]
A wide smile appeared on Tristan's face.
'Magush'
Name: Tristan
Species: Human
Age: 11
Realm: Mortal
Core: Solid Red (Blocked)
Talents:
Abilities: [Tyrannical Eye] [Dark Blade]
Artifacts: [Fragment of the book The Tales of the Creation of the Heavens and Earth]
Ability Name: [Dark Blade]
Rank: 1
Element: Darkness
Damage Type: Physical and Magical
After that, he dedicated his time to refining his new ability. As time passed, he became able to destroy small stones, and currently, he could destroy stones about 5 centimeters in diameter. But what he focused on the most was his precision, as it was what he needed to destroy the threads.
He tried to create a blade the size of a small needle to try to destroy the threads that were coiled around his energy veins. A month later, his ability hadn't evolved, but he felt ready to try.
Tristan placed his Darkness essence at the tip of his finger and then slowly began to poke one of the 'hairs.' He wouldn't try to destroy it now to avoid repeating the mistake of the healers in the tales he had read. Instead, he was using his other ability, [Tyrannical Eye], to see how it reacted. At first, he didn't notice anything strange, but after a long time of paying attention, he noticed something.
It was as if all the threads were connected. When he poked one thread, some kind of vibration spread through the others.
His eyes widened.
'The other threads are tightening more around the energy veins!'
He understood the secret that caused the deaths of the people in the tales. By destroying a single thread, the other threads would react by tightening around the energy veins, causing the collapse of the core.
"This complicates things."
He began to think of some solutions to his problem.
'Maybe if all the threads were destroyed at the same time, it would be possible to get rid of them.'
'The problem is that this is practically impossible. Creating five Dark Blades is already too much for me, and I would need to create thousands to do it that way.'
He tried to think of a solution, but for several days, no good idea came to his mind. Until one day, he thought of something.
'I need to focus on each thread I want to destroy. It's not possible to destroy them all at once, but the Light element is focused on area effects. I could learn a 'healing' ability that doesn't permanently heal anything but maintains a certain effect for a time. Then I could destroy a thread and use a temporary 'healing' ability to hold it together. So that I can continue destroying the other threads, and when all of them are destroyed, I can deactivate the 'healing' ability.'
"A fake healing ability that would act more like a temporary band-aid shouldn't be too difficult to create."
He began to put his plan into action. He read more and more stories about healing and restoration, trying to transform the philosophy behind these subjects into something he could implement in practice.
Time passed, and Tristan became more anxious and excited as he progressed in his new task.
Suddenly, he heard footsteps in the corridor in front of his cell's metal door.
At first, he thought the guards were preparing to deliver that disgusting food again, but he quickly realized that the situation was different.
He didn't see the small food hatch opening but heard the sound of keys.
"What's going on?"
Tristan grew increasingly anxious and nervous. This was a completely different situation from what he was used to.
Who could say what would happen next?
Then, something he thought impossible happened: the thick metal door to his cell creaked open. Light cut through the darkness. After three years imprisoned in the dark, Tristan saw the light again.