Chapter 826 Four Pillars: Stages of Azure Energy
Snap!
At the moment Sellifer said those words, she snapped her fingers, causing the darkness surrounding them to be replaced by light.
Not long after, this light was replaced by the familiar sight of the barren ground, prompting Valyr to look around him with a hint of confusion.
Seeing that the woman whose memory he'd just viewed was standing before him, the gears in his mind madly turned as he tried to wrap his head around the situation.
"When you said earlier that it was time for me to do the same thing, what did you mean by that?" asked the young man after a bit of silence.
In response, Sellifer scoffed. "What other interpretation would you get from those words?"
"Naturally, I'm going to teach you how to achieve Azure Energy as well."
"Eh?"
Hearing those words come out of her mouth, Valyr was left at a slight loss for words.
Recalling all of the experiences he had with inheritances in his past and current life, the young man was quite certain that inheriting something meant that he would be doing most of the heavy lifting.
Then, on the flip side, the inheritance would only give him a few things that would aid him along the way.
A good example of that would be the Arcane Shadow Serpent skills he had obtained from the Gates of Enlightenment and Awakening, showing him a glimpse into the path he could take with his subclass being a variant of the Shadow Serpentine Lancer.
However, the path itself still needed to be trekked by him, figuring out for himself how he would make use of both mana and Shadow Energy to push his subclass to the next tier.
In fact, that was the reason why he had chosen the Azure Serpent Staff in the Hall of Legends and Myths in the first place.
Then again, that did not mean that he was going to reject Sellifer's goodwill. After all, having someone well-versed in something that he would take a long time to grasp on his own would save him a lot of time.
If anything, he just didn't expect something like this to happen.
"To be honest, I thought I would only be given the memory and then figure everything else out for myself," said Valyr after taking a few deep breaths. "But then you appeared beside me all of a sudden." Scratching the back of his head for a bit, he then gave her a wry smile. "Let me just say that I thought the insights from you were all I'd get aside from the memory. A small bonus of some sort."
"Well, that would just be a massive waste of my appearance if all I did was just give you that, no?" Sellifer let out a faint sigh. "If that were the case, I wouldn't have needed to appear before you in the first place."
"In any case, I do have an idea of what's going on in your head right now, and trust me that this is the rare occasion that an inheritance would actually actively help out an inheritor in making sure a path was fully inherited."
"But then again, that's what makes the Triad Gates different, no?" said Sellifer with a faint chuckle soon after, to which Valyr could only smile in response.
After Sellifer told the young man that the inheritance process would only finish after he had achieved a basic level of success in creating Azure Energy, the woman looked at Valyr with the expression of a stern teacher.
"Alright, before we begin, how about you show me your mana and Shadow Energy first?"
Hearing those words from Sellifer, Valyr slightly nodded as he composed himself.
Then, extending both arms outward, the young man soon willed his mana to appear on his right hand.
Whoosh!
Conjuring a bluish flame made out of pure mana, Valyr then focused his attention towards his left hand, willing all of the Shadow Energy in his body to congregate there.
Swoosh!
Though the task put a bit of strain on his mind, he was still able to conjure a flame of pure Shadow Energy in the end, its size and intensity more or less the same as the flame of mana.
"Hmm…" As she watched Valyr conjure flames of both mana and Shadow Energy, Sellifer was inwardly surprised at how much energy the young man's body had put into each flame.
'His Shadow Energy is definitely at the stage of 1st Cleansing, while his mana is seemingly stuck in a stage between impure and pure,' thought the woman to herself as she assessed what she was about to work with.
'Noel has definitely taught him well in regards to purifying Shadow Energy. Then, I'd presume the reason why his mana is like that has something to do with either skills or hidden stats.'
'In any case, his energy output relative to his class rank is definitely one of the best I've seen among other humans,' said Sellifer inwardly. 'In fact, he kind of reminds me of…'
Briefly recalling her fateful meeting with the man that had allowed humanity to become one of the dominant races of Veldanyr, a faint shudder enveloped the woman's body as she let out a slight exhale.
'Then again, he is a Zeihardt.' As these words popped up in her mind, Sellifer faintly smiled.
Watching Valyr maintain the flames of mana and Shadow Energy on both hands for a bit more, Sellifer eventually told the young man that she had seen all she needed to see, prompting the former to dispel both flames with a relieved sigh.
After that, the young man looked at her with slight expectation, understanding that Sellifer asked him to show both energies so they knew how far away he was from achieving Azure Energy.
And surprisingly, Sellifer did not beat around the bush.
"I've got to say… as a Zeihardt, I wasn't expecting your mana and Shadow Energy to be that bad," said the woman from the start, making Valyr feel as if he was stabbed in the chest.
"I could excuse your Shadow Energy not being up to par with what you've told me earlier, but doesn't the Zeihardt clan have a lot of manuals that teach you how to improve your mana's quality?"
"They do?" asked Valyr in response, his eyes widening in surprise.
Hearing those words, Sellifer stopped what she was about to say, instead looking at the young man with a hint of confusion.
Becoming silent for a bit, she then began to rummage through her thoughts, only for Valyr to give her the information she wanted to know.
"You've gotten to this point without the help of the Zeihardt clan?" asked Sellifer, though she was the one surprised this time. "No, wait. You've left the Zeihardt clan when you were young?"
"Yes and yes." Valyr nodded. "To answer your first question in more detail, I started off my journey in a village before eventually getting to this point."
"As for your second question, that would have something to do with the Heralds."
"The Heralds…" Hearing that term, Sellifer more or less knew what was going on.
"If that's the case, then it's wild to imagine that you've gotten this far without any actual backing."
Saying those words, she soon let out a sigh, her expression at that moment showing sympathy to the young man.
Though, it did not take long for that expression to disappear, returning to what it was before.
"Moving on from that, I'll assume that your control over mana and Shadow Energy is above average," said Sellifer as she changed their current topic.
"With your subclass having something to do with both Shadow Energy and mana, I'll also assume that you have a few skills there that would allow you to make use of both energies at the same time."
At those words, Valyr nodded.
Nodding back in response, Sellifer continued. "I'll be asking you to show me some of the skills later on. But for now, let's go through the five stages of Azure Energy in greater detail."
Fwoosh!
Extending her palm outward, Sellifer conjured yet another wisp of deep azure energy, prompting Valyr to put all of his focus on it.
Though, just as he was starting to appreciate the energy's properties, the energy grew weaker before him in the blink of an eye.
Stopping at a state where it was similar to the energy the Sellifer from back then had discovered through sheer luck, Sellifer began to talk.
"We've already seen this stage in the memory. The first stage of Azure Energy, the Azure Trace."
"In this stage, we've fused Shadow Energy and mana into a homogenous form, but there's still a lot left to be desired from it."
After saying those words, she then focused her attention on the azure wisp, causing it color to be a slightly darker azure.
At the same time, the wisp gained more heft to it, emulating a bit more of the force that the original wisp of Azure Energy had earlier.
"This is the second stage. The Azure Wisp," said Sellifer. "If the previous stage only had traces of the true Azure Energy's properties coursing through it, then this stage now had wisps of the true Azure Energy's properties coursing through it, hence its name."
Not long after, she imposed her will on the wisp of azure energy once more, now causing it to look more like a flame than a wisp.
"The third stage, the Azure Flame."
"The reason why it looks like this is because this stage is considered an intermediary stage between going from having traces of true Azure Energy in the fusion to actually forming the actual Azure Energy itself."
"After that would be the fourth stage, Azure Essence."
Saying those words, the azure flame returned into a wisp, only this time, it now began to resemble the azure wisp she had conjured earlier.
"In this stage, you could say that you've successfully made true Azure Energy," said Sellifer with a faint shrug. "However, there are still a lot of impurities that cause some of its efficacy to disappear."
"And that's where the fifth and final stage comes in."
Fwoosh!
Without warning, Sellifer pushed a great amount of energy into the azure wisp, causing it to turn into a ball of fiery deep azure energy.
"Azure Quintessence. The pinnacle form of Azure Energy itself."
"From the aura it's already giving out, I'm sure I don't need to explain anything else about it, no?"
Admiring the ball of Azure Energy for a bit more, she then threw the ball into the air as it exploded into a myriad number of azure strands.
"Now then…"
"How about you show me those skills you got from your subclass?"
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