The Beginning After The End novel Chapter 39

"Whew." Wiping the sweat off my body with a towel I then hung nearby, I put my robe back on. I stood on the backyard patio with only the full moon illuminating the area. Sylvie was curled up beside me, her now white fur heaving up and down, matching the pace of her breathing.

With everyone else asleep, I had the peace of training to my heart’s content. These past few weeks, I’d been doing little outside of training myself as well as helping the growth of Elijah and my father, with a few pointers for my baby sister as well.

Ellie hasn’t been training much but her progress was still pretty decent. I predicted that she’d awaken around eleven if she kept at her pace, maybe even ten if she actually started trying more. I found it oddly satisfying when I watched my sister play with the friends she had made at the School for Ladies, a small class of noble young girls gathered together to be taught etiquette and basic household skills. Early on, I learned that this general population believed that "proper" and "refined" ladies should have both the manners and grace of a queen, while still being able to cook and sew for her husband.

In the world I lived before, women worked just as much as men, and the whole "women should stay at home" saying became taboo, often incurring the wrath of many females and other males alike if said aloud.

However, the things Ellie learned in school seemed to only be reserved for the public, because though Ellie was asleep now, she’d made a fuss beforehand, saying she wouldn’t go to bed if I didn’t stay with her until she fell asleep.

I couldn’t help but chuckle when I compared that spoiled behavior to the refined, graceful façade she’d put on in front of her friends, acting all lady-like and whatnot. I’d almost burst out laughing when she addressed me as "dear honorable brother" in front of the couple of girls her age at her tea party.

My sister’s birthday was coming up soon and I could tell she was eagerly wondering what present I would give her. Knowing her, she would probably love whatever I gave her as long as I gave it some thought, but with my personality, I wanted to give her something functional as well. The problem was, I was out of money. This blasted dimension ring costed me all the gold I earned as an adventurer.

I thought a little bit about what I could do to earn money when something came to mind. One obvious advantage I had was the fact that my mind contained ideas and inventions that hadn’t been developed in this world yet.

With a satisfied grin on my face, I turned back to training. There were two things I was focusing on outside of developing my mana core, which I estimated would reach dark yellow stage by the time school started in autumn. One was training heavily on my lightning and ice attribute skills, which were by far my strongest assets.

I decided I’d keep my fire, water, lightning and ice skills a secret during my stay at Xyrus Academy. Being an adept dual-elemental augmenter was the most attention I would want during my years there, and since Lucas had only seen me use fire elemental skills during the dungeon excursion and at the testing grounds, it’d be even harder for him to fit the pieces together if I only used earth and wind magic. If I purposely didn’t train my earth and wind magic at all until I entered the academy, it’d be more than enough to pass off myself as a mere ’talented genius’ that wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows.

I opened one of the books I brought with me from the library. I managed to find some of the limited books on deviation skills, containing a few segments on lightning and ice. It seemed that, for lightning, there were two main methods that augmenters opted to. One was internal, and the other was external. Because of the unique properties of lightning compared to other elements and their deviants, there were some individuals who focused on using internal lightning skills, which was stated as much more difficult.

Thunderclap Impulse was one of the internal lightning techniques that I had developed, which could be seen as the stepping stone into much more powerful skills. The book only went on to say that, for internal lightning users, most reached a ceiling quite early on before ultimately switching to external techniques. This meant that internal lightning skills hadn’t been developed enough for people to actually find advantages in it.

This was also the route that I chose to go. While I would have some external lightning skills under my belt, I knew from experience just how much more powerful internal skills were compared to the external counterparts. Of course, it may not be as flashy but what I wanted wasn’t a dazzling light show—I wanted absolute power. It’d take time and patience to develop but I already knew the rewards would be tremendous as I imagined the levels above just using a small current of lightning to quicken my reaction.

As for my ice elemental skills, I wanted to focus on a wide range skills to fight against multiple opponents. The combination skill of White Fire and Absolute Zero was my strongest skill, which I could only use under the massive power-up I got from the second phase of my Dragon’s Will, Integrate. I imagined that, for now, even if I had the technique and theory down for either lightning or ice, I’d need to be in the Integrate phase if I wanted to use the more powerful skills.