Chapter 65
Chapter 65
Kyon put his hand on Juno’s soft cheek. She was still coming to her senses. Once, he naively thought he could seduce her, completely forgetting how the masters treated the slaves. Now she was his slave under the subjugating formation. The outcome is sometimes different than expected.
{Rich noble people can do anything they want, the world is their oyster. All roads are open for them: to the best schools, tournaments, competitions with good prizes, to the elite libraries, the battle halls where they can find techniques and superior grades of elements. Juno is an ideal means to achieve my goal. I will become a high-ranking Stone.}
His thoughts flashed in a split second. He had set his major goal, now all he needed was to divide it into segments.
Juno angrily pushed his hand away. «DON’T!» – She rose to her feet and said with hatred in her voice. – «Why don’t you just leave? You’ve taken all my money. It’s enough for several lifetimes! What else do you want from me?!»
Kyon remembered 10,000 spheres that he had taken from her and laughed. «Stupid girl! Do you want me to walk away? It would be a crime not to take advantage of your position for my personal gain. You are the missing patriarch’s daughter and granddaughter of the present one. Your possibilities in the family are really endless and, above all, you belong to me. Isn’t it wonderful?»
His words made Juno shudder – she belonged to him. The rotten, crazy slave with no past and no future thought of her as his toy. – {Dirty worm! Just wait, I will find a way to get you.} – Juno turned away with a wry smile. She didn’t see fit to give him an answer. He hadn’t dishonored her, and that’s what mattered most. There was a hope that everything would end soon and get back to normal. She would forget everything, plunge headlong into intensive training and clean her body and mind in the hot spring under the full moon.
«Tell me about the party that Yegorka mentioned once.» – Kyon suddenly interrupted Juno’s thoughts.
Juno had to tell him about the party.
Grandpa Bai was going to throw the best party in the world for his beloved granddaughter, where she was supposed to find her love. He had invited the younger generation and expected the wealthiest, most honorable and distinguished guests to arrive and show off in front of his precious girl, win her favor, get her to dance and…
Juno frowned and added against her will that her grandfather was greatly mistaken in the number and quality of the guests. After her father disappeared, the family began to lose their power, influence, and authority in the kingdom. The younger generation began to deteriorate. Everyone was worthless. Yegorka was the most promising among them, the elders’ favorite. The Stones were expected to get 5th to 10th place at the next family tournament, where strength equaled high rank, which meant they were going to lose the 1st rank to the Browns. Everyone was pretty sure of it. The reign of the Stones was verging to its close. To crown it all, certain rumors had been flying about Timothy. He appeared to have switched his interest from runaway Elsa to Juno.
All this had downgraded the importance of the party, but Bai was completely unaware of it or refused to face the harsh reality. Anyone who knew about the future event must have heard something along the lines: «Patriarch Bai wants his worthless granddaughter to marry someone of high status before his family has lost their title! Who will ever fall for this scheme? What a shame! It’s so embarrassing.» … «It’s pure madness! I don’t want problems with Timothy Brown. I have enough on my plate. No, I am not going to the party… “
Kyon could see that Juno was telling him the truth. He shouldn’t expect talented young people at the party, they wouldn’t descend to that level. Besides, many of them were afraid of Timothy Brown. However, the best young people from the Stone family were surely coming. They had no choice as the patriarch had ordered them to be there. XiaoBai, Juno’s elder brother, was coming too.
Kyon found out even more details: there were no good parties without battles. Usually, the winner would become the king/queen of the party and get a reward.
Juno did not have a clue what prize they would get this time. But there wasn’t such a thing as a tournament without a reward. Her grandfather must have prepared something valuable.
{I see… It’s a good chance to prove myself in front of the Stones. I don’t want to miss this opportunity. I must take advantage of it and enter the elite of the Stone family, but I have to get stronger in about two weeks…}
«Why are you so interested in what’s going on in my family?» – Juno interrupted Kyon’s thoughts.
He slowly turned his eyes to her, coming back to reality. «I want to get a higher position in your family.» – He answered indifferently.
Juno stared at him for a few seconds and burst out laughing, looking so cute with her little hand covering her mouth. «He wants to get a high position in my family! I mean, seriously?! No way! You are not strong enough to beat even me in the battle! Don’t be ridiculous! It’s easier to get to the moon!»
«And that’s coming from the girl who took so much effort to overpower me.» – Kyon reminded her spitefully.
Juno pursed her lips and turned away. «Anyway, I am talented, and I cultivate faster than you, lousy fraud… Sooner or later, I will be number one in my family. More than that, I will gain the power my sister has never dreamed of. And you will achieve nothing because you are just a slave…» – She saw Kyon’s expression change and added in fear – «I mean ex-slave…»
«You’re stupid, aren’t you? I connected with my spirit a month ago. Now I’m at the 4th stage of the base phase. And you think I don’t have talent?»
His words cast a shadow of a grin across Juno’s face. {A month ago? I don’t buy it! He’s a lying bastard!} – But she said nothing.
Her silence amused Kyon. He grinned and took another chance to belittle her:
«After your crushing defeat, I will make you pick up the tears of sorrow and grief and drink them up. And now you’re free to go. Get lost!» – He waved her off like an annoying fly.
Juno was steaming with outrage, but she swallowed the insult and hurried out. She couldn’t stand to be around this madman as if he was a rotting corpse. She had to figure out how to escape.
«It’s not the appropriate way to say goodbye to your master!» – Kyon said coldly.
Juno could feel goosebumps rise on her skin. She turned around, frowned.
The silence seemed to last forever.
Kyon stretched his hand graciously:
«Well, I’ll gladly teach you if you want to practice with me… It’s no trouble at all. I know lots of positions.»
Juno jumped out of her skin. The angry expression on her face turned into utter despair as she was trying to come up with an answer. His order was as degrading as stabbing herself with a knife, but… She had no choice. Her lips quivered and half-opened. She smiled insincerely and answered in a sweet, trembling voice:
«Goodbye, dear master… Have a good time…»
Kyon broke into a tender, approving smile and let her go with a satisfied nod. {Right… I will rehabilitate you.}
He knew that he would never forget the time he was starving or how she had ordered him to knock out his teeth, the fact that he had no shelter for the night and her many attempts to kill him. Juno’s suffering was not coming to an end any time soon.
Outside the gate, Juno blushed like a ripe red apple. All she wanted was to scream from humiliation and hatred. { I swear to heaven that only one of us will remain in this world! May goddess Danna be the witness of my oath!}
Left alone, Kyon sighed and looked into the cloudy sky. A little more than two weeks were left before the party. He needed to improve the quality of his energy and master the basic grade of all the elements, choose a unique body, invent the ideal movement technique, and learn a couple of combat techniques. Kyon knew he had a lot to study yet. He still knew too little about the world around him.
Above all, he had to be careful with the maids. Since he had already taken over Juno, everything should work like a charm. However, he’d better not cause suspicion and keep playing the role of a servant when someone saw him around the “lady.”
Kyon went to the center of the arena. He was considering which element to master next when he remembered Juno’s powerful lightning. He had almost lost to her because of it. He had made his choice – his second element would be ether.
Jean once gave him the basic grade of each element. He swallowed the cloudy stones, and the information formed in his mind in the form of neural connections that he was hoping to acquire with the help of Synergy.
Kyon couldn’t care less about any restrictions on the number of elements for the local practitioners. Four elements were for a genius. Only a heavenly genius could master five. Kyon was going to bend them all, with no exception. They could call him a god after that.
When Synergy analyzed neural connections, it excluded accidents or coincidences. It wasn’t about enlightenment.
It took Kyon a week to acquire the basic grade of the simplest element, the pure energy (aka inner energy). He thought it would take him longer to master ether, but it didn’t… He already had the guideline, all he had to do was to apply it to the ether element.
After two hours of vain attempts, Kyon frowned. The element didn’t respond. It was complicated and unpredictable, its neural connections were incomprehensible. The energy was erratic, which complicated the analysis. He couldn’t find a single lead to the neural connections.
The time was passing by. It was getting dark. Kyon took short breaks to grab a bite, answer the call of nature, and take a nap.
Suddenly, his eyes lit up with a spark of awareness. He had found the first lead! It was all downhill from here. He had to put the whole thing together, and he would have the basic grade of the ether.
The sky was overcast with dark gray clouds. Here and there was a clap of thunder, a bolt of lightning. A strong hurricane wind rose. Tinyl but fast raindrops crashed against his face, the wind tousled his hair. He was one step away from acquiring the element.
*pop*
He comprehended the essence of the element when he mastered all the information he had. It reached his soul and became one with it. Kyon could hear an unusual, funny sound that meant he had acquired the basic grade of the ether once and for all as if he had known it from his birth.
*BOOM*
The menacing bright lightning broke at the barrier and disappeared without a trace.
Kyon stretched out his arms like Moses and laughed. {Even heaven supports me! There’s a blessing! Ha-ha-ha!}
It was his second step on the path of becoming a powerful practitioner. He had mastered the basic grade of his second element. It was intoxicating to realize that bending the ether came so naturally and quickly to him.
Usually, it took the most avid adepts from six months to ten years to master the ether. Thanks to her talent, Juno had learned it in a month. If someone found out that it took Kyon only eight hours, they would seethe with envy.
The weather calmed down after the thunderclouds swept away. The drizzle and wind disappeared. The clouds were melting in the twilight.
Kyon wiped the sweat from his forehead and sat on the bench. He stretched out his hand with his fingers in a circle as if he was holding a sphere. Dangerous bright purple lightning fired from his fingers. It was focused in the center, making loud and cracking sounds.
{My guess was correct. The ether creates and controls charged particles!}
Kyon began to test the new element at once. He noticed that his ether attacks were more powerful than Juno’s. Not much, though, by about one stage.
He found out that his pure keys made him five stages stronger in the previous battles, but it didn’t add up now. If Juno were five stages stronger than him (at the 9th stage), she would have topped him in power. He wondered why.
He found the answer pretty soon. Juno had the advanced ether (2), and he had the basic grade (1). The power of their ether defied the rule of five stages. The difference in the three stages would make them equal in power.
{So, the difference between the basic grade and the advanced grade is two stages.} He came up with a curious idea. If Kyon had an advanced (2) grade of ether while his opponent had the basic grade, the difference in their power would be seven stages even if their cultivation were the same! An enormous advantage, indeed.