Chapter 369

Enough

Time passed--days and weeks melded into playful blurs, like a reel of a movie. The progress was never going to be made in a tiny passage of a month. It was impossible, after all, to reforge the kindling flame into a roaring blaze that quickly, no matter how one tried. It needed slow tempering--slow but steady.

And steady it was. The progress was there, Cain knew. But it was... normal. Nobody made jumps. Though some, naturally, progressed faster, it was still not ‘fast’, per se. Though neither Quinn nor the twins said anything, he could feel their disappointments slowly mount. It wasn’t strange, but they couldn’t understand. Cain knew that none of these people were transcendents--after all, in his past life, though Senna was beyond talented, she was not ‘out of this world’ so to say.

He was trying to make them transcend, cross that border between really strong and defiantly unmanageable. And that was no easy task, even for him. No, perhaps especially for him. Until this life and a myriad of lucky encounters, he himself was a tiny toad in a well. He had no means of ‘changing’ anything, not really. He could teach them all the tiny tricks of the trade when it came to dirty fighting, but that wouldn’t help them--not at what they were trying to achieve, anyway.

And though nothing was being said, they knew. Emma, effectively, stopped talking with him, as did Senna. Only Jamal ever came about for a drink or two, but even he hadn’t been around in a couple of weeks. They all became vehemently dogmatic in their pursuit... but it was yielding nothing.

Looking at their downtrodden backs, he couldn’t help but sigh. It’s been three months altogether, a very short time. He hadn’t really expected them to make any real strides, in fact. He had merely hoped that the first six months, in fact, would broaden their horizons slowly. But... they were hungry. Too hungry.

Since Lana came to visit them for the first time, both Emma and Senna had no choice but to join the two for the dinner. While the young was ecstatic to share her many stories, the other two remained quiet.

“Okay, seriously, what’s happening here?!” Lana, unable to quench her curiosity any longer, asked at the end of the dinner. “Did you and mom get divorced or something and you forgot to mention it?”

“Nah,” Cain replied with a faint chuckle. “The training ain’t goin’ as well as these two expected.”

“Oh? Must be hell if sis is being so weird about it,” Lana said. “How do you think I’d do, dad?”

“Godawful.”

“Hey!!”

“Do you even want to try?” he quizzed, laughing.

“No, but still,” she pouted briefly. “I won’t pretend I get it. No, I don’t get it. It’s dumb. Magic should be easing our lives, yet everyone here’s so sweaty about it, training day after day after day for months on end. It makes no sense! I never saw you train, dad. Maybe teach them?” though Lana’s words were spoken in innocence, Cain saw Emma’s and Senna’s shoulders droop an inch and a half as they lowered their heads further.

“You can’t teach badass, ‘m afraid, kiddo,” Cain chuckled, patting her head.

“Oh, please,” Lana rolled her eyes. “You’re as badass as that neighbor’s dog back home. Remember? What was even that thing? Like a crossbreed between a devilspawn and sewage? Anyway, he’d bark like a nightmare, but walk up to the thing, and it would curl and start shaking like a leaf in the wind.”

“Oh God, I remember that thing,” Cain cringed. “It had such an ugly bark. It used to wake you like in the middle of the night. I can still feel mom’s elbow in my ribs--’Cain, go fuckin’ snap that fuckin’ thing’s neck’. One of the few times I wasn’t a piece of shit,” he added. “I went to you, held you, and you stopped crying. I guess she got worried since I didn’t return, so, she got up from the bed, walked over, and just stared at us from the door like a creep.”

“Why do I feel like you reversed your roles in that story?” Lana asked, arching her brows.

“Hand on heart, finger in the bum, I speak the truth!” Cain exclaimed flamboyantly. “Anyway, hon, if these two are in the shitters, you can only imagine the rest. Mind cheerin’ ‘em up a bit?”

“... alright,” Lana stood up and kissed Cain before turning to leave. “Be nice, dad.” She added before leaving. Senna and Emma remained silent still, feeling the weight. Cain stayed silent too, waiting.

“In my previous life,” he broke the silence abruptly. “I was shit. Like, genuine shit. Not just personality-wise, but strength-wise, too. All I ever taught you were some basics that even children back then knew, and some few tricks of survival I’ve picked up over the years.”

“...”

“To be honest with you,” he added, taking a sip of the wine. “I don’t even get why you guys are so depressed. It’s like your pet turtle died or something.”

“It’s frustrating,” Emma said, sighing and looking up at him. “Of course you don’t get it. In your last life, you never had any aspiration to be the best. In this... you were never not the best. Of course you don’t get it, Cain.”

“Oh, no, I know perfectly well what it’s like not being the best,” he said. “What I don’t get is... how the two strongest people became shells within, what, few months?”

“We just realized the gap is all,” Senna elaborated. “Even if we always knew we were comparatively weak, it’s different now that we’ve seen it. It’s like we were kids in some sheltered village in the middle of nowhere; while we probably know we aren’t the cleverest in the world, being the cleverest in the village must account for something, right? Shit it does. It accounts for nothing. We’re learning that just now.”

“Not just that,” Emma said. “What’s more hateful is... I don’t see a way to catch up, C’.”

“... of course you don’t,” Cain shrugged. “There ain’t one.”

“...”

“Even if you were a thousand times more talented,” he added. “Those three are literally hundreds of years old. Do you think you can simply close the gap like that by just mindless training? While it’s true that they have you beat on the basis of, well, everything, it’s only natural. They can spew their sophistry all they want, and they can sing about the talents... it’s hollow. I am far stronger than them, aren’t I? So, listen to me instead. You lack nothing.”

“... yes, listen to you,” both chuckled and rolled their eyes.

“I don’t mean this as neither a father nor a husband,” he added, his tone turning stern. “But as a rando facing two of the three most beautiful women ever in the existence of everything.”

“Ugh...”

“That tangent aside,” he chuckled yet again. “It’s true. You are enough. Both of you. You don’t need wings, you don’t need fire, you don’t need some reconstruction of your talent. Talent is nothing. Look at me. I ain’t got talent. You saw my stats, when it all started. They don’t get it. Most those who had the smooth sailing toward the top don’t. They think that the moment you hit the wall, it means that you will reach your plateau sooner rather than later. But we all get bricked, here and there. If we just quit while ahead... well.”

“You’re sweet,” Emma said, smiling faintly. “But this won’t be... ‘fixed’ with words.”

“Well, if words fixed things, there’d never have been any wars,” Cain said, finishing off the drink and standing up. “Follow me.”

Uncertain, Emma and Senna both stood up and followed him out of the building. Suddenly, they found themselves incapable of controlling their bodies as the external Mana took over them, shuttering them into the sky. Though they panicked for a moment, they didn’t have time to process it as they landed just as quickly, near an unfamiliar, starlit lake. Cain stood by their side, extending his right arm and shooting a tiny mote of light, made up entirely of pure Mana, above the lake. The little thing flickered and floated, though seemed self-contained.

“How strong do you think that tiny mote is?” he asked.

“Since you asked, it’s probably a nuke,” Senna scoffed.

“Nah, it’s exactly what it looks like. Couldn’t kill a fly,” he chuckled. “So, how do you turn an innocent bundle of Mana into a weapon?” he turned toward the two of them, the lake a glowing backdrop. “The key to knowing how to fight, beyond the minutia of moment-to-moment instincts that you will simply develop given enough time, is to be void of all the fancy... while tossing out the most blinding attacks imaginable. No matter how massive of a rock I throw at an ordinary person, they will die by only one of its segments. Overkill with the style, perfect the amount within.

“That bundle of Mana, if precise enough, can pierce someone’s heart. Or their lungs. Not enough to kill them--but enough to alarm their bodies. And that alarm will overpower their will, and their instincts will kick in. A person instinct is always to self-preserve--they’ll go on a defensive. And you get the momentum.

“You will never best Quinn or the twins in an honorable duel,” he added. “But no fight ever fought but the one for the spectacle of it is truly honorable. You will see even experienced fights occasionally commit to insanely wide swings and you will ask yourself: why is he exposing himself so much? There’s a reason. At every higher level, no opening will ever be given unless you beat it out of them. And even then, you have to be wary of traps.

“They broke you by using the bloodhounds in their souls to make you believe you are somehow lesser. But all those bloodhounds are just bundles of raw emotion that has piled on for hundreds of years. Guilt, anger, fear, love, hate... we all have them. We just have a lot more of it than you. If you connect those bundles with the invisible motes of Mana in the external focus of nature, you create an atmosphere--atmosphere dominated by those emotions. And suddenly, those within it... they fell that same fear you felt. The same anger. And their bodies shudder and quiver, incapable of quelling the sudden change. Ultimately, there is nothing magical about being strong... because everyone who struggles is strong. To some, it’s merely just getting out of the bed in the morning. We find it as natural as breathing, but some find it as difficult as summiting a mountain. Whatever our hurdle is, is what gives us that push. Keep steady and keep strong. The moment your spirit dies, so does your fire. And the moment the fire dies... we becomes shells, lifeless husks simply existing, and not living.

“You don’t need any cosmic and existential magic to ‘fix’ you,” he walked up to the two of them and petted them gently. “You are enough.”