In the biggest, coldest, and darkest room of the manor, Arlo sat opposite Damien.
The side of the room where he was sitting was lit up in a dim and faint yellowish light. His face was slightly illuminated. The rest of his figure was shadowed.
The side of the room where Damien was sitting was void of light. It was completely dark, like an abyssal chasm or a black hole. He was hiding in the protective embrace of darkness; the veil of the night coated him entirely. Forget about his face; it was hard to even discern his figure.
“I know why you are here. Grandfather told me that you want me to train and take Roy to that place.”
Damien met eyes with him, speaking to him like he was speaking to a friend.
He wasn’t being rude to Arlo, his father. It’s just that that’s how they usually interacted. Arlo raised him in this way. From the beginning, he had treated him like a friend rather than his son and asked him to do the same. That’s why they are the most unique pair of father and son in the empire. And maybe that’s why Damien grew up to become such a valiant and fearsome existence. He wasn’t withheld by his father and was given all the support he needed from the day he was born.
“Yes, yes, I do,” Arlo said to him eagerly.
“What if I refuse to teach that technique to him?” Damien tested him.
“He is a pure-blooded Baldwin. It’s his right to learn the legacy technique of the celestials.” Arlo smiled at him mysteriously.
If Roy had seen him at this moment, he would realize that he was going to experience hellish pain similar, if not much worse, to the first time he got ravaged by black lightning.
“Have you told him about the hell he would be going through when I pass it down to him?” Damien questioned as he gripped the cold arm of the chair tight, and his hawk-like gaze landed on Arlo.
A thoughtful look appeared on his face as he said, “No, and I do not intend to. For people who are willing to put up a struggle until their last breath, entering that hell without a plan is better than entering it with a plan. It’s best to throw him in our ancestral trial ground without explaining what he would be facing. When he finds himself in a sticky situation, he will do his best to remain afloat and stay alive. And isn’t not giving up the very answer to scoring full marks in it?”
“Do you believe he can do it?” Damien’s voice came out of the darkness. Only his glittering golden eyes could be seen.
“Have you forgotten who your father is? I don’t make any useless moves. I wouldn’t have brought him here if I wasn’t confident about him overcoming it.”
“What makes you so confident in him? Don’t tell me it’s a gut feeling.” Damien’s face crumbled when he recalled that this man would follow his instinct 50% of the time like a beast.
“Of course, that’s not the case.” Arlo revealed to him, “He mastered basic level swordsmanship in a day. He improved with each swing of the sword. And before I knew it, he had reached the same level of swordsmanship as a trainee who had trained for 16 years. He was at the basic level of swordsmanship a month ago, and now he is at the intermediate level, able to combine techniques and abilities with his sword skills. And when I taught him the limiter breaker, he was clearly not resistant to lightning, but he became immune to it overnight and then went on to remove his second limiter. I have a suspicion that he had removed his third one too.”
Damien lifted his chin off his hand, startled by what he heard, and sat upright on his throne.
“That’s quite good considering his age.” He praised Roy before rubbing his temples, seemingly lost in deep thoughts. “He has a special physique that allows him to adapt to different environments, learn skills at a faster rate, and become resistant to the seven elements when they start ravaging him. It’s quite similar to the physique depicted in the stone of lost history. If he is really as special as you said, he would be able to survive the mist in that place and become a dragon disciple.” Damien assessed Roy.
It wasn’t just him but also Arlo who believed that he possessed a special body.
Arlo eyed him. “So?”
“Tell him to wait for me in the garden after the sun sets and night arrives.”
Damien agreed to train Roy, so Arlo’s lips stretched into a smile.
He stood up and left the room without telling his son that he had told his embarrassing past to his youngest cousin so that Roy could use it to blackmail Damien into teaching that to him.
Arlo asked Sandra where he could find Roy. After getting an answer from her, he marched into the room where he was supposed to be staying. It was locked, but he opened the bolts and locks using his aura and entered it without bothering to knock before finding Roy and breaking the goods news to him.
Roy thanked heaven that Delilah had escaped his lustful clutches, or else this man would have caught him nailing her like a berserker red-handed.
He didn’t mind being seen naked, but the thought of someone seeing her naked was enough to boil his blood and strip him of rationality.
‘Unlike what I expected, I don’t have a lot of time on my hand. Only two hours are left until the eventful meeting with Damien. How should I spend them?’
Roy’s eyes lit up.
‘I should strengthen myself and then meditate to clear my mind of all distracting thoughts.’
Roy had to admit that her breasts were the softest thing he had held.
He kicked the thought of embracing her out of his mind and opened his subspace, pulling out a heart-shaped bottle.
『You have taken out the elixir of Ascension from your subspace.』
It was an item that Arlo had brought him back in the auction.
『You have drank the elixir of ascension 』
『Would you like to increase the size of your inner world or your magic sea?』
He had been saving it because he couldn’t decide whether he should use it to increase the size of his magic sea or inner world.
“Inner world.”
But now, he had made up his mind to increase the size of his inner world using it. His magic sea was already ridiculously big.
『Ding! Congratulation. The size of your inner world has increased by a thousand units.』
『You can now store a maximum of 11000 units of aura in your inner world.』
He waved his hand, and a blue panel opened up in front of him. He withdrew a book out of it. It appeared in his hand. It looked like he had pulled it out of thin air.
『Ding! Would you like to learn Ninam’s first song? It will cost you 100000 thousand EXP.』
He got it from playing with fate, reducing the chance of the teleporter being born to 0%, and eradicating the Emperor’s assassination plot
“Yes…” Roy said.
Immediately a mournful roar echoed throughout the manor as Roy felt a pain that was a hundred times worse than giving birth to a 10-month-old baby. It lasted only a moment. After that, he no longer felt assaulted by pain. But his back was drenched in sweat, and his eyes were blurry.
『-100000 units of EXP』
『Ding! Congratulations. You have learned the first Shard of Ninam’s First Song: A Deceitful Heaven』