Chapter 56: Training With Eldrion
Derrick just nodded, after all he had seen and heard about Eldrion, he was far from shocked that he knew he carried the dragon spirit.
"First things first, how much do you know about Varyn?" Eldrion asked.
"Not much. I just know what the energy is, and how to move it around," Derrick replied honestly.
Sir Thompson had done some teaching, but it wasn’t extensive.
"I see, then how does your Varyn slip into your attacks?" Eldrion asked.
His words caught Derrick by surprise. He never really paid attention to how that worked, he just assumed it was nature.
"Um..." Derrick was at a loss for words, he didn’t have an answer to give Eldrion.
"I see, you’re doing it subconsciously," Eldrion said with a smile on his face.
"You’re quite the talented lad," Eldrion had to admit.
"I’m going to teach you how to refine it, how to use Varyn strikes properly."
"That’ll be our first order of business." Eldrion sat on the floor, his legs crossed, and Derrick followed suit.
"Pull the Varyn from your core to your arms," Eldrion spoke, his voice authoritative but respectful.
Derrick did as told, in a few seconds, Varyn condensed within his hands.
Eldrion placed his hands on Derrick’s, and as soon as they made contact, a spark traveled from Derrick’s hand to his.
"You have cursed Varyn!" Eldrion exclaimed, backing away from Derrick.
"What’s that supposed to mean?" Derrick asked, panicked.
He already had his Dragonic transformation to worry about. Adding cursed Varyn to it was not something he wanted.
"Your Varyn, it’s unnatural," Eldrion said, slight traces of fear hung in his words.
"Maybe it’s because of the dragon spirit?" Derrick said, trying to claw back any sense of understanding.
"No, this isn’t from the dragon spirit, or your grandmaster talent, this is from you!" Eldrion’s voice was shaky.
"Is having cursed Varyn a bad thing?" Derrick asked, wondering if he could attain even the slightest thread of normalcy.
"Not really, in some ways, it can be helpful, but in most it’s just a bad omen," Eldrion said cautiously.
"Helpful how?" Derrick asked. He wanted to focus on the good and not the bad.
"With constant training, we should figure that out," Eldrion explained.
"Now that I have tested your Varyn, I should be able to teach you a few new tricks," Eldrion said, his composure restored.
"Have you ever tried firing out your Varyn like a beam?" Eldrion asked.
The question reminded Derrick of his first day of Varyn training with Royal Knight, where he witnessed Royal Knight obliterate a doll using nothing but Varyn.
"I can’t pull my Varyn out of my body, except when I fight," Derrick said honestly.
"Hmm, I think I can work with that." Eldrion smirked, an idea flashed in his head.
He stood to his feet and so did Derrick. In the blink of an eye, he had created distance between them.
"Try to hit me, without moving from that spot," Eldrion ordered.
Derrick stared at Eldrion, confused. Even if he coated his fist in Varyn, what exactly did Eldrion expect him to do with it from this distance?
"You need to throw your Varyn out of your body," Eldrion stated, confirming Derrick’s suspicion.
Derrick looked at his hands, then back at Eldrion who stood nearly fifty feet away.
He pulled his Varyn to his fist and tried to push it forward with everything he had.
Nothing happened.
"Again," Eldrion commanded, his arms folded.
Derrick tried harder, channeling more energy, gritting his teeth, pushing until his arm shook.
The energy snapped back into his arm the moment it reached his skin, like it had no interest in going anywhere.
"I can’t," Derrick said, his brow drenched in sweat. "It won’t leave my body. The moment it reaches my skin it just snaps back."
"I know," Eldrion said calmly. "Keep trying."
Derrick threw his fist forward again. And again. And again.
Ten attempts. Twenty. His shoulder was burning and his knuckles were beginning to crack from the sheer repetition, but Eldrion hadn’t moved or said a single word, he just stood there watching.
"There’s something blocking it," Derrick said finally, shaking out his arm.
"Yes," Eldrion nodded. "And that block is you."
Derrick looked at him.
"You spent so long having nothing, that now you have power, your body doesn’t want to let it go," Eldrion said plainly. "It doesn’t trust itself to release it."
Derrick opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again.
He knew Eldrion wasn’t wrong. Every time the Varyn reached the edge of his skin, something in him pulled it back. He couldn’t explain it, but it was there.
"Stop trying to force it out," Eldrion continued. "Think of the air in front of you as part of your own body. Don’t throw the Varyn at me. Stretch yourself to where I’m standing."
Derrick took a breath and tried again. He pulled his Varyn and instead of pushing it forward, he tried to extend his sense of reach, like his arm was longer than it was.
A faint ripple distorted the air directly in front of his fist, traveled one inch, and flickered out.
It wasn’t much. But it was something.
"Progress," Eldrion said immediately. "Do it again."
Derrick didn’t wait. He kept going, not pausing between attempts, each punch pushing the ripple slightly further than the last.
Two inches. Five. Eight.
His knuckles were raw and sweat dripped steadily from his chin, but he kept his mind locked on the target.
The cursed nature of his Varyn was making it harder than it needed to be. It was heavy and resistant, clinging stubbornly to his bones like it had no desire to travel beyond his skin.
"Your cursed Varyn is fighting you," Eldrion muttered, walking a slow circle around Derrick, studying the ripples as they grew. "It’s heavy. It doesn’t want to leave you."
"Then why are you making me do this?" Derrick asked between attempts.
"Because when it finally does leave, it’ll hit harder than anything you’ve thrown before," Eldrion said simply.
He said it with a certainty that wasn’t just theory.
Eldrion’s mind drifted back, just for a moment.
He had been twenty-two when his own teacher put him through this same exercise. Back then, everything else had come easily to him. Swordsmanship, enchantments, physical conditioning, he had blazed through all of it faster than anyone his teacher had ever seen.
But Varyn projection had stopped him cold.
Three days he stood in that same clearing, throwing punch after punch, getting nothing but a sore arm and a bruised ego in return. His teacher had said nothing, just watched, the same way Eldrion was watching Derrick now.
On the fourth day, something in him finally let go. He still remembered the feeling, like a dam breaking inside his chest, the energy rushing out of him all at once.
The blast had knocked his teacher clean off his feet.
Eldrion blinked, pulling himself back to the present. He looked at Derrick, who was still grinding through attempt after attempt without complaint, his jaw set, his eyes focused.
’Stubborn.’ Eldrion thought. ’Good.’
Derrick said nothing. He just kept punching.
Fifteen feet. Twenty.
The ripples were beginning to look like something real now, dark and distorted, carrying that same strange aura that had alarmed Royal Knight when he first examined Derrick months ago.
Thirty feet. Eldrion was still ten feet out of reach, arms folded, expression flat.
Derrick’s core was burning. His arm felt like it was about to give out entirely, but he refused to stop.
’He thinks I can’t reach him.’ The thought landed in Derrick’s mind like a spark. ’He still thinks I’m that scrawny kid with nothing.’
He didn’t pull the Varyn this time. He summoned it. Every last drop from his core, dragged up from the deepest part of him.
He felt the dragonic transformation begin to stir at the edges of his mind and shoved it back down hard, forcing everything, every ounce of energy he had left, into one single strike.
He stepped forward, his foot cracking the stone beneath him, and drove his fist forward with a shout that echoed across the clearing.
A dark pillar of energy tore through the air and slammed directly into Eldrion’s barrier.
The impact was deafening. Derrick’s arm gave out completely, dropping to his side like dead weight. His knees hit the ground and he stayed there, head low, ears ringing, lungs burning. He couldn’t even tell if the strike had landed properly. The dust was too thick, the silence too sudden.
He looked up slowly, squinting through the settling cloud.
Then he saw it.
A hairline crack running straight through the center of Eldrion’s golden shield.
Eldrion lowered his hand slowly. He stared at the crack for a long moment, then looked at Derrick, who was still on his knees, his arm trembling at his side, barely managing to stay upright.
The silence stretched between them.
"Well," Eldrion said, a genuine smile breaking across his face for the first time since they had met. "I wasn’t expecting that."
Derrick didn’t respond. He was too exhausted to form words.
"You aren’t just a fountain," Eldrion said quietly, still staring at the crack in his barrier. "You’re a damn volcano."
Derrick managed a weak thumbs-up before the system flooded his vision.
[New Skill Unlocked: Varyn Fist.]
[Info: Allows the user to project a concentrated blast of Varyn energy from the hands or feet.]
[Dragon Fist has leveled up.]
[Healing and regeneration has been activated.]
Derrick stared down at his right arm, or at least where it used to be.
[AN: I’m sorry for this Chapter being so long, I was experimenting with the Webnovel pricing system to build an algorithm that would help me determine the price of Chapters. I understand that it may dullen the Chapter or the moment, but it had to be done.
I’ll try my best to restrict my Chapters to about 1,000 words.]
