PATH OF THE STAR HUNTER

In an undulating and changing way, Desmond captured his will in the water trying to represent the image on which he was concentrating, according to Sasha’s advice, Desmond was trying to represent something significant for him that in his mind is related to concepts attributable to the Water.

It wasn’t really a surprise that the image in Desmond’s mind was a woman and it was even less of a surprise that the woman in question was Claire. Following the image in Desmond’s mind, the water began to mold under the constant pressure of his will gradually taking on a human form, but as soon as Desmond tried to imprint Claire’s finer details the water figure collapsed due to Desmond’s lack of control.

This was the fourth time it had happened today but Desmond wasn’t daunted, he could feel it, although it didn’t seem very significant at first, with each exercise his control over the water became finer and more subtle if only by a tiny amount.

In a way, this tiny but steady progress was something that Desmond enjoyed, especially when it came to training in water mana which gave Desmond a calmer and more relaxed state of mind compared to other elements.

In addition to Desmond gaining an understanding of certain properties of water when he consumed the , his progress in controlling the element of water had been much smoother.

Which was reflected in Desmond’s mastered abilities of said element, the strength of his alone had increased by leaps and bounds and he was at a point where Desmond felt that he would soon gain a new understanding of this ability further unlocking its combat potential.

Somehow some understanding of the concept of softness even made its way to painting some nuances of it on Desmond’s ability which Desmond didn’t expect.

Desmond stopped his training in the water element at the third-hour mark and moved on to the next phase of his routine. Compared to water and metal which had more solid and defined natures, it was the ever-changing wind and ever-unpredictable fire that were giving Desmond the most trouble.

.....

Originally the wind was one of Desmond’s strongest elements and even his best attacks involve this element but he had found a bottleneck in increasing his control over this element mainly due to two factors.

The first was that Desmond did not have an understanding or a concept that he could associate with the wind that would help his mind and will to control this element, normally Desmond would simply resort to compressing the wind until it reached the point where it became destructive but there was no a mental image or intention that Desmond would have understood about it.

Desmond’s second problem was his mental state, the wind was free, capricious, carefree and always changing, a mentality that was only sometimes present in Desmond who had a strict upbringing since he was a child only to have adolescence and adulthood full of responsibilities and although Desmond’s personality seemed to have an innate affinity with the wind; his life up until now made him lean more towards the metallic element.

In that sense, even Desmond’s current lifestyle was full of responsibilities, discipline, and decisions that required firmness, causing Desmond’s mental state to default to something incompatible with the wind element.

Which led to Desmond’s training being designed to increase his control and to seek out that affinity for the wind that should be innate to Desmond.

Sasha again showed her skills as an instructor and showed how well she knew Desmond, as Desmond’s training was closely related to a hobby that Desmond greatly enjoyed.

Hanging from the edge of the fourth-sided roof, eight beautifully crafted wind chimes swayed gently to the whims of the wind bringing with it a beautiful natural melody as ripples of mana emerged from the aquatic magical minerals these bells were made of.

The wind chimes were a small project that Desmond worked on in the past with some materials he found in the necromancer’s cave on the world of Erack after getting an idea about it while buying some wind chimes during his first official date with Claire.

Every time the wind stirred the bells, these resounded not only with a beautiful melody but also resounded with waves of mana that had a calming effect on anyone who heard them.

It was precisely the existence of these campaigns that inspired Sasha to design Desmond’s training. Desmond’s job was to control the wind surrounding the entire training area and use it to create a melody with the wind chimes.

This might seem simple but it wasn’t at all, as Desmond had to constantly generate independent wind currents that only stimulated one set of bells at a time while he tried to coordinate all the bells to form a melody.

As if the chaotic nature in which wind chimes behave wasn’t enough, Estela would always stay close by to cause disturbances in the surrounding mana field so that Desmond would have to change the mana intensity at certain times and areas.

The amount of effort, concentration, and stress of this exercise was not something that could be neglected since it required extremely precise control over small amounts of mana independently, so the calming effect of the music of the bells was of great help for Desmond since without this it would be practically impossible for him to enter a suitable mental state to train the wind element.

As with the water bending exercise, Desmond spent three hours training the wind element before moving on to the last phase of his control training, this time moving on to his least favorite element; the fire.

This was by far the exercise that Desmond found the most challenging, and not without reason. As a master of the fire element, Sasha understood better than anyone how difficult it was to control it and also knew of Desmond’s apprehensions about this element, so she designed a training not only focused on training control but also to teach Desmond to better understand the properties of fire than he could accept.

The exercise was very simple, Desmond only had to hold an object for three hours, nothing more... of course, the trick was that Desmond had to hold the object using nothing but fire mana.

Not only was fire one of the elements with less corporeal presence, which made the exercise difficult in that regard, but fire also carried with it a destructive tendency that was impossible to ignore, so the challenge was to make the fire dense enough to sustain the object but not powerful enough to destroy the object.

To Desmond’s further distress, the objects Sasha made him hold were purposely all of different weights and shapes, not to mention that they had different degrees of fire resistance.

Desmond almost gave up hope when Sasha told him that his training would only be complete when he was able to hold every flower in this garden without burning it.

Weight and shape aside, Desmond couldn’t even hold small pieces of metal without turning these red hot from the heat; that’s why Desmond didn’t think he could hold flowers.

Yet Sasha was completely ruthless in refusing to change the ultimate goal of his training, no matter how much Desmond protested.

However, Sasha, being the kind and caring soul that she is, still went to the trouble of explaining to Desmond why the training in this element was so strict even though Desmond hardly ever used it.

“It is precise because you don’t use it, we elementalism use the mana that exists within us to gather the mana in the atmosphere and with this wield the power of the elements, the more mana of a type there is in the atmosphere the more power we can deploy using less of our mana reserves. There will always be times when certain types of mana are more abundant in certain areas or when mana of certain types is taken from you by someone who has a higher mana mastery or who made a move earlier than you. So giving up an element of mana you have an affinity with is giving up a weapon in your arsenal and making yourself more vulnerable against your enemies.”

Given Sasha’s detailed explanation, there was nothing for a pragmatist like Desmond to comment on, although deep down he still felt reluctant to use the fire mana that seemed so troublesome and uncontrollable.

“I know what you’re thinking, but just because you use fire mana doesn’t mean you have to stick to the way most use it, and I certainly don’t expect you to use it the way I use it. My power is something that comes to me innately and it is not easy to replicate. And for you, who have affinities in other elements it would be a waste of time to obsess over the most difficult way to use an element. That’s why I need you to understand fire more deeply so that you understand what aspects of fire best suit your standards and your style of combat. You have to understand one thing Desmond, all the elements regardless of their nature or the way you see them; all of them can be used to destroy or to protect something... fire is no exception.”

Following Sasha’s explanation, Desmond found himself motivated by trying to find aspects of the fire that fit his standards. Since Sasha could even use fire to heal someone’s wounds, Desmond firmly believed that he could find an aspect of fire that suited him better.

It was a source of immense irony that Desmond didn’t find this aspect of fire during his training but instead, he ended up finding it during an activity that was completely unrelated to training but that would be a topic for the future.