Chapter 69: Gift

After the metal cooled down, Teo opened the mold up and saw that the metal had hardened exactly where the holes used to be.

Teo’s eyes sparkled as he took a file and filed the excess metal that protruded out. He was careful not to damage the stone itself as even though its melting point was very high, it was quite brittle and liable to chip and break into powder.

He switched from filing to polishing the surface of the stone. The more he polished the more beautiful it became. The black coating infused itself onto the surface of the stone creating a deep jet black color as several tiny metallic spots shone brilliantly like the stars in the night sky.

When Lia saw the stone completely polished, she gasped and marvelled at how beautiful it was.

As Teo scraped and filed the last piece of excess material he could find, Teo could feel the array within the stone activated.

‘This is a good sign!’ He happily rejoiced

By filling up the small hollow tunnels with metal within the stone, it reinforced the overall structure of the stone. Furthermore, its sturdiness was enhanced because the array that was inlaid was also reinforced the stone’s durability.

Teo grasped the stone into his hand and applied the greatest amount of force he could unto the stone. He nodded with a smile on his face as the stone clearly was not as fragile as before. He took the file that he used earlier and tried to whittle it down the stone into powder but found that he could no longer do so.

He then walked towards a hammer that was placed on a nearby anvil. After locking the stone in place, he lifted up the hammer and sent it slamming down towards the stone.

-BANG-

A loud intense sound briefly shocked Lia as she saw Teo hammering the stone one swing after another.

After seeing that there was no crack or dent onto the stone after taking so many hits, Teo became extremely happy. This meant that the array did not have any air bubbles and that its durability had dramatically increased!

As he held the stone up into his hand, he disabled his God’s eyes and found that he could not sense a thing. Even with his void and darkness senses almost mastered, he could not sense a single thing!

He quietly inserted some of his Qi into the stone and felt his consciousness sink into the stone into a separate space that he could control! The space could fill up two floors of a medium sized building!

‘SUCCESS!!’

He happily rejoiced inside but the sense of accomplishment grew too great and showed on his face!

As he could no longer control himself, he jumped and shouted “YES YES YES! I DID IT!”

Lia who was watching him felt amused. She thought that Teo was easily pleased with his nicely decorated piece of rock, but she did not know how valuable this simple looking rock was!

As his excitement mellowed out for a little bit, he grabbed Lia’s hand and said, “Let’s do this again next week!” Then, once again, jumped in joy.

As this was only the prototype, he needed to actually needed to drill a much smaller stone for her sister’s necklace but despite it being much smaller, Teo felt like he had practiced enough. He was confident that he could create the perfect necklace within two days. It was unfortunate that he had to wait until the next weekend to use the forge again, but he was not too worried.

-----

Only four months left until the end of the school year but during his spare time, Teo would sometimes be seen enjoying himself within the library.

With all his projects finished, his hardships within these past 8 months was not in vain. The gifts he planned to give Rowen was all completed. The pendant inlaid with the void array was simple yet elegant piece of work, it was like a dark pearl with hundreds of tiny sparkling metallic facets. Inside the pendant’s pocket of space was the protection ring that Teo created.

As for Lia’s equipment and the boots that he bought for everyone, they were already complete. He had placed a limiter array in each of them to limit the Qi intake to only class 4 fighters and below. Although the results from the grand auction before showed that an ordinary shoe could handle Qi up to class 5 fighters, he did not want to risk it breaking or attracting unwanted attention. With the shoe’s boost, their speed should be far greater than anyone of similar cultivation.

Teo had also inlaid some camouflage to surround the outside of the shoe. The camouflage were inscriptions that gathered wind elemental energy. Their designs were seemingly extremely complicated looking but actually only had a basic effect. This was because the energy flow from the array could disrupt the flow of any inscription that was laid too close to the array, making it impossible for him to lay any inscription beyond those of the simplest functions. It was simply used to fool people’s eyes, including the wearer’s.

Despite all his gifts being completed, Teo did not yet give them out to everyone because although the majority of foreign visitors who hunted for the mysterious eccentric had left the academy, there were still some that lingered around. He hid all these items within the initial prototype array that he created. Although the size was quite big for it to be a pendant, it could fit inside his pockets without problems.

For three months the remnants of these foreign visitors had investigated thoroughly but could not find a single clue. Many had guessed that perhaps this eccentric had already left the academy or another group had already kidnapped this person so many of them gave up.

‘I guess it’s this shelf today’, he thought to himself

Teo quickly pulled out blank book be bought from the southern district from his bag and copied the contents of a book and quickly returning it inside. Then he pulled out a similar looking book and copied the next book after it.

He repeated these actions discretely, making sure no one was watching. As he copied one book after another, he would store them inside his prototype array within the hidden compartment in his bag.

Teo would buy one or two blank books across many different shops, sometimes changing from one disguise to another. By spreading out these purchases across many shops, the merchants would not take notice of how many blank books Teo had bought. With his astronomic wealth, he would slowly copy each and every book as his personal collection!

‘I can’t wait till I can go up the second floor next year,’ he smiled

Teo spent his days going to classes, training, spending time with his family and friends and if he had extra time, he would be in the library copying every book he can. When he returned to his private cave, he would organize the books he had copy. Despite copying so much, he had yet to actually read any of them, but within his heart there was a fanatic desire to collect each and every book he could get his hands on.

These days were peaceful for Teo. He had soon forgotten about the incident with the headmaster as even Tordin who frequently stepped out of the academy was never attacked by the Rizon family. As for Rowen and the others, they never left the confines of the academy.

Since there were still foreign visitors around, Teo had thought that this prevented the headmaster from doing anything stupid. As for Zachery and his group, they would take until next year to fully recover.

Time slowly passed peacefully but no matter how slow it seemed, from a different perspective it was only a blink of an eye.

-----

A black haired old man finally stepped out of a sealed room and walked towards a small cottage as he grabbed an orange colored fruit with a mysterious glow from the nearby tree.

He took a bite out of the fruit and casually entered the cottage.

Sensing someone enter the cottage a middle aged man with crimson flowing hair quickly exitted his study and greeted the black haired old man with respect

“Elder brother you are finally out!”

“Ah Lark, I’m just checking up on things. I’ll be heading back soon”, the black haired old man said as the light from the outside shined on his face.

This old man is Teo’s master, Cien!

“I wonder what Elder Brother Cien did to make him lose a great amount of strength?”, Lark asked

“Oh it’s nothing, I just gave my candidate a very special gift!”

“A gift?”

“The God’s eye!”, Cien smiled then he continued “Let me see what he’s been up to lately”

Cien’s hands started to move and an array quickly formed in the air in front of him. This array formed into a large screen where images quickly flowed one by one showing a blur on the screen.

As he watched the quick moving images, he smiled but then frowned.

“This kid’s improvement is quite good, he managed to create an advance rank array all on his own. His creativity is also very good..”

His eyes was cheerful as he praised but then a hint of disappointment could also be seen.

“Except he is relying too much on my protection array, he won’t be able to grow like this,” Cien complained and continued, “Not only that, this empire is too peaceful for him!”

Lark looked at the images as well and saw a young boy with dark black hair. He looked ordinary but as Lark’s eyes flashed his pupils widen in surprise

“His potential is quite good but Elder brother, your array is too restricting”

“If he can’t handle this much, he’ll never be strong enough when we need him to be”

Then Cien’s hands moved and without Teo noticing, the array embedded on his chest slightly changed.

“There! This should make him less reliant”, Cien said as he headed back to the recuperating room.

-----

As time passed by within a blink of an eye, the school year was almost over.

By this time, all foreign powers had given up on their pursuit of the mysterious eccentric, or at least they no longer thought that this eccentric was still within the academy and thus moved on to other nearby towns and villages.

There was only a month left before the year ended and the eighth year seniors started to prepare themselves. They were set to depart within three weeks, a week before the school year would officially end. They took this time to form groups of 4 to 6 and prepare themselves for the trip.

Rowen’s group had a total of six people. Including Gina, Riss and Tordin, another person from the Martial faction, Alex, and one from a smaller faction, Gale.

The students were given freedom to form their own teams and although they were acquaintances, their focus was to have a well balanced team. Each individual had different set of skills. A team did not only need strength to survive, but they needed to be able to support each other’s weakness.

They were placing their lives in each other’s hands for two years, and despite being supervised by an elder, there was no guarantee that they would be safe. There has always been a very small percentage of students dying during these last two years, so they made sure to prepare themselves.

For their fighting strength, four from the Martial faction was enough. Despite Riss’ not showing her prowess in combat, she was capable of identifying materials as well as other miscellaneous information that could come in handy. She was basically the brains of the team, despite having such a personality.

Gale’s expertise were within treating injuries as well as knowledge in poisons and herbs. Gina was the cook of the team, although she could also hunt, she was more proficient at setting traps and alarms and other device.

As for Rowen, she was the one who gathered these people. Despite being annoyed with Tordin, she allowed the loner Tordin to join as well. His experience of the wildlands was very valuable to the team and he was just as good at hunting and tracking as Rowen, if not better.

Their last member Alex was the Martial faction’s strongest water elementalist. Aside from being able to conjure up water from the atmosphere, he had a tremendous amount of defensive capabilities.

As the day of departure grew near, Teo tried to spend as much time as he could with Rowen. Despite being busy preparing for the trip, she let Teo accompany her during the first two weeks.

After completing most of their preparation, Rowen decided to relax with Teo and the two siblings played chess against each other as they chatted.

A surge of loneliness erupted from his heart that he had been holding back for weeks as he remembered the day when Rowen left home to enroll to the academy.

“Teo, when are you planning on giving back my necklace?” Rowen asked

She could not leave before getting it back from Teo, because it was the only gift she had received from Teo.

“Sister, I will give it to you on the day of your departure,” he replied in a less energetic tone

“I wonder when we’ll meet again?” Teo asked

Tears started to swell from his eyes and he looked away as to hide it from Rowen, but she caught it right away. Teo’s his nose moisten as he breathed deeply.

Rowen stood up and walked besides Teo. She suddenly embraced him from the side as her eyes also became teary.

She softly whispered

“Once you graduate, I’ll be sure to visit on that day. Then we’ll return home spend some time with mom and dad, and maybe brother Aran”

Teo could not respond as he kept his eyes closed and his mouth barely holding back his loud cries. He just nodded fiercely and felt the warm embrace of his beloved sister.

There was not much time left and during this last week before her departure, they just relaxed and spent their time together. They ate together and played together. Riss, Gina, Windle and Lia also came and joined in. It was the happiest days of Teo’s life and he deeply engraved these days into his heart.

After a few days, Rowen was going to leave and he would not see her for a very long time. So he fully enjoyed the last few moments that he had with her.

[Edited by thisisnate, unsure if completed or not but it looks good to me]

[Author’s Note:

Arc 2 - Growth will end at Chapter 70

Moving my website to a different one, updated in “website” button at the bottom of this post. I will be updating the “daily notice” there to inform you if a chapter will be out or not.

‘Heaven revealing eyes’ will be renamed to ‘God’s eyes’

‘Red Guards’ will be renamed ‘Red Guardians’ or is ‘Crimson Guardians’ better?

‘Spirit Severing Stage’ will be renamed as ‘Mind Awakening Stage’]