Chapter 71: Chapter 67 Drawbacks
After their little experiment, Lucas was amazed by the power shown, just letting the energy take a different path a bunch of times could lead to such a powerful change?
'No, that couldn't be correct, this must be a one-time thing. There's no way every mage can just upgrade their power like that!'
'The book stated that you needed to absorb elemental energy or practice the meridians for a long time. I believe it must be a one-time thing. The energy is probably collected and placed into the core, awaiting its release.'
The strange look on Lucas' face let the princess know what he was thinking about, she had also read the explanation, so she realized the source of his amazement. "If you're wondering why it was so powerful, it's because you let the energy take that route way too many times, letting the magicules adapt and change to become stronger and stronger. If you circulate those pathways enough times your regular fire will always be so chaotically powerful. The downside is that it requires more energy and it has a nasty side effect."
Lucas looked up at her, wondering what she was talking about, he didn't feel anything strange.
"I know, I know, it should happen riiiiiight now!", Lucas waited with bated breath, hoping the downside wouldn't be that bad. Seemingly out of nowhere, the meridians he had touched with his energy started to experience a tremendous amount of pain. After all the energy flowing through them was chaotic, causing pain would only be natural. His shoulder and upper right arm felt stuck, as if frozen in ice, any movement felt horrible.
Lucas held stead vast, not letting the pain show on his face,
'It could've been a lot worse, although I do wonder how many people would do this if it hurts this bad?'
'If it is temporary power, this has to be a last resort of some sort. Or perhaps a single use of the meridians would still upgrade the power and not have such drastic drawbacks.'
"It hurts, doesn't it? Maybe we should rest a bit longer, so you can recover....starting with your hand."
Lucas looked at his hand and saw what was left of it, it was burnt so much that he barely felt anything since the nerves were simply vaporized. The pain from the meridians was something new, like a muscle he had never used in his life. Yet he stood up and started his physical training.
"What are you doing!? You should be resting now, whenever mages use such a brutal spell, they need to rest at least for a few hours!", she was genuinely concerned for the boy, but he didn't care in the slightest.
"The muscles I'm training now don't affect my meridians, so they can rest."
"That's not how it works!", but Lucas had already blocked her out of his mind, he was using his willpower again to sense his surroundings. His continuous training might be seen as over the top, but he made sure to always let certain parts of his body rest. Stamina proved to be no problem as he was used to going beyond his limit, whenever he got tired he used magic to refill his stamina pool.
His mind sphere never changed during the training, but he did get better at sensing the surroundings, he couldn't form object or colors, but he did feel if there was something there. In most cases that would be a useless skill, but now that he was accompanying someone who is being chased, it only made sense to scan the environment every now and then. He could only sense about a mile away from him, which wouldn't give him that much time to prepare, but it was better than getting ambushed.
The princess tried to make Lucas stop, but nothing got through to him, he was stuck in his desire for training. She sat down and looked at him, normally she would sleep but now she wanted to observe him. The training contained a lot of different exercises, to make sure every muscle is being used properly, making his body quite chiseled at a pretty young age. When he was done, he was drenched in his own sweat. While panting he made his bed, which was a backpack and the cold hard dirt floor of nature.
Before he could lay down, the princess approached him with a towel in her hands, "You seem exhausted, but you should clean yourself before going to sleep."
It was a strange gesture to Lucas, but he went along with her. Taking the soft towel he dried his body up in a quick fashion. He planned to sleep since it had been a while since he visited dreamland, but the princess started to talk again. She would talk about meaningless things in Lucas' eyes until they touched on the topic of her situation at home.
"You see I have a beautiful sister and a handsome brother, yet they don't feel like family. They don't even feel like friends, it's more like we're…competitors. Like we're fighting for something I don't know about.", she was slowly starting to lose her happy facade again, going back to, as Lucas thinks, her real feelings.
"The throne?", Lucas asked with a bit of certainty in the back of his mind.
"I don't know, it could be, but father isn't sick or old yet, so there wouldn't be a reason to already fight for a living man's property....WAIT how did you know I was a princess?!", the shock on her face was indescribable, did he read her mind?
"Because you said it not too long ago, remember?"
"Eh? Ah.... oops, well never mind that, you probably already knew anyway."
'She's the most gullible person I've ever seen, what a strange girl. Also, that's not how politics work!'
Lucas wasn't the absolute best when it came to politics, but he had seen the dark side of humanity and the books in the library had a lot of information about the political world. She was more aware of the current circumstances, but he was better at interpreting them.
"I guess you aren't the most competitive?", she showed a sad smile before answering. "No, not really, I just wanted to enjoy my life with my family, but it feels like I already lost them. Every time I talked to them, they would seem aggressive or want something from me…like they wanted to hurt me."
Lucas stayed quiet during these sorts of moments, she was opening her heart to him. So there was no need to hurt her now, or she wouldn't ever dare to open it again. He might be cruel, he had even killed someone, but he still had memories of being a young happy-go-lucky child. He knew what it meant to lose someone or to suffer, but he didn't let that hinder him, it became his motivation to keep moving forward. Although a part of Lucas wanted to hurt her really bad to see what would happen.
"So my supporters had me placed inside my room to keep me safe, to protect me."
'That sounds like captivity, almost slavery, she couldn't do what she wanted, had to follow orders and couldn't move freely. That's slavery.'
"Then why did you leave the castle?", the sun had already set, and the night sky started to show itself. The stars gave off their tiny white lights, lighting up the surroundings. Lucas was wondering why she was even let out of her room if her family hated her. 'Could it be an assassination attempt?'
'You don't need to attempt an assassination, you could easily poison her with some food and a few false promises, easily I tell you!'
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