Chapter 520: A Bit Of Training

My birthday came and went.

A few more days passed.

It was currently the twelfth day of the voyage. According to our navigators, we still have three more days of travel ahead of us.

The meetings had grown less frequent as we neared our destination.

That gave me more time to practice using my Spiritual Pressure.

...What? Why are you surprised? Did you think I only slacked off whenever I had free time?

Wow.

I’m offended.

...Okay, maybe I had planned to slack off at first.

But Vereshia caught me one day and decided to take it upon herself to train me.

For the past, I don’t know, a week? She had been torturing me.

And no, I didn’t misspeak. Torturing, not training.

She claimed she was training me, but there was a certain point after which being forced to catch throwing knives without your hands every day after breakfast started feeling like torture.

The first few days were mostly about control. She gave me many good tips. I appreciated them.

But what I didn’t appreciate was her throwing swords and daggers at me while forcing me to catch them all with nothing but my Spiritual Pressure.

Then she’d throw them at me from different directions.

Then she’d throw them while I was blindfolded.

Then she’d throw them while I was blindfolded, spinning around on one leg, and trying to recite the names of all the officers in my army.

That last one was just cruel. She knew how bad my memory and attention span were, yet she still forced me anyway!

I still couldn’t remember Captain Osgood’s name.

That was unacceptable for her. "He’s been serving your family for twenty-three years."

"I have been serving my family for significantly less," I complained.

"You’re his lord!" she shouted. "And now you’re the heir! Act like an heir!"

"I didn’t ask to be put into this position."

"...That’s not the good defense you think it is, boy."

"Okay, then he should strive to be more memorable." I shrugged. "It’s not my fault most people are so plain they don’t even register to me."

She threw a knife at my forehead.

I caught it. The air around my body distorted, and an invisible pressure reached out to stop the knife inches away from my face, keeping it afloat there.

"...Good," she acknowledged begrudgingly.

I smiled, plucking the knife out of the air and throwing it aside. It clattered onto a pile of a dozen other blades like itself.

This was another thing I’d learned about Vereshia. She didn’t praise often.

Which meant whenever she did, I enjoyed it.

B-But not because I liked validation!

Pftt.

I was simply a man of refined tastes who appreciated quality compliments.

Anyway, the point is that she helped me a lot in mastering my Spiritual Pressure.

And even though her methods were crazy and needlessly grueling, thanks to them, I think I had successfully grasped the basics of telekinesis in less than a week.

I couldn’t fly at supersonic speeds like Aarav and her just yet, but I could lift things off, push and pull people, and do a variety of other cool stuff.

Once I got the hang of tapping into that supernatural sense I did when I was falling to my death, everything else was rather easy.

But I was still impatient.

"When do you think I can open Portals?" I asked one evening.

We were on the deck of the flagship.

Out here in the open, the salty ocean wind howled past us as cresting waves slapped against the iron hull.

The sun was setting, painting the horizon in a myriad shades of orange and red, while the sea sprayed cold mist over the railing every now and again.

Vereshia, who was leaning against that railing with her arms crossed, was constantly getting her hair blown around by the wind.

She pushed a silver strand away from her eyes and gave me a funny look. "What makes you think you can even do it? You know only less than half of total A-rankers ever hone their skills to the point of tearing open the fabric of space, right? And even then, it’s usually those with some kind of time- or space-related innate abilities. The rest just have to wait until they transcend to S-rank."

I was swinging my sword, practicing wrapping my Spiritual Pressure around its blade, when her words made me frown. "I think I read that statistic somewhere. I couldn’t understand why, though. Don’t you just need to punch a hole through space?"

Vereshia huffed. "And what happened when Aarav told you to push against gravity?"

...Ahh.

"I see," I mumbled.

The problem was not being able to comprehend space.

Just like gravity, space wasn’t anything tangible. It just existed. It was just there.

In the case of gravity, at least you could feel it.

But space, on the other hand, was like a canvas inside which everything existed. How were you supposed to push that canvas when you were inside it?

"Besides," Vereshia continued, "only Monarchs and Dukes can open Portals anywhere at will. Mundane people like us have to probe around the fabric of space, feel where it’s at its thinnest, and then punch through that weak spot to create a hole. It’s a very tiring process that takes a lot of time and practice. Most just use pre-existing Gates. Unless, of course, they’re a once-in-a-generation prodigy with a ridiculously dense Spiritual Pressure or a terrifying level of comprehension... or both."

Ugh. Boring.

I sighed and went back to practicing my swings.

I swung the sword down, and a translucent force rippled in the air, riding the edge of the golden blade of my Divine Sword.

The distortion immediately faded away. The translucent ripple traveled a few inches before dissolving into nothingness.

A weak breeze. That was all my sword swing produced.

"What are you doing?" Vereshia asked, leaning forward a little, curious.

What was I doing, indeed?

I was trying to mimic a move I had seen Vaeghar use against us.

When we were fighting him, the Moon Eater used his claws to sweep through the air, sending out crescent-shaped slashes made of pure Spirit Force.

Those slashes were powerful enough to shear through anything in their path.

I had seen some higher-ranked Awakened pull off a similar move. But instead of unleashing their Spiritual Pressure, they used Essence.

Starting at A-rank, you could project Essence out of your body to deliver long-range slashes or shoot an energy beam.

I, however, wasn’t trying to project Essence.

I was trying to project Spiritual Pressure.

The difference between the two was massive.

Essence was raw energy. It enhanced your weapons, strengthened your body, and allowed you to perform a variety of superhuman tasks. And if you unleashed it in its purest form, it would be like giving the force of an explosion a direction.

But Spiritual Pressure was different. It was literally the weight of your soul pressing down on reality. Trying to use it as a projectile was like trying to scoop up a handful of gravity and throw it at someone’s face.

If you want a simpler analogy, just imagine Essence as water and Spiritual Pressure as rock.

Dropping a ball of water on someone’s head wouldn’t do as much damage as dropping a fist-sized rock.

I had never seen or heard a human detach their Spiritual Pressure, though. Except Monarchs, of course.

Monarchs could leave behind their Spiritual Pressure as a giant bubble whenever they needed to move out of their Safe-Zone.

Doing that drastically decreased their combat prowess and stripped them of the omniscience they enjoyed inside their domain, but it kept their Safe-Zones safe and running.

I wondered how Vaeghar had managed it.

He was sealed and weakened, yet he was still wielding his Spirit Force so masterfully. So I didn’t think it had anything to do with ranks.

If there was a trick to it, I wanted to figure it out.