Chapter 130: The will (1)
Everything was black, his eyelids heavy until the snap of fingers reached him.
When his eyes opened, the wooden room resurfaced. The same as yesterday.
And once again, Sirius was not alone the ten others sighing at finding themselves in the same situation.
"Let’s resume."
Gramm’s voice made them all turn their heads. He stood before them, several neat stacks of papers arranged at his feet. He wasted no time and pointed at Fidri.
"What is resonance?"
Fidri looked surprised at first before improvising the answer they were all supposed to know.
"It’s the power one acquires after awakening."
As if unsatisfied, Gramm turned his attention to Iris. She thought for a moment before answering.
"It’s a weapon. A means to reach an objective."
"Elaborate."
"I have a dream to achieve. My resonance is the means by which I can realize it, like a vehicle you choose to get somewhere."
For the first time, Gramm showed a faint smile.
"What is the fuel of this vehicle?"
This time, he questioned Kritos. The latter answered without hesitation.
"Ether."
Satisfied, he looked at Sirius.
"And the engine?"
Sirius thought for a moment.
"The objective."
"Are you sure?" Gramm said before adding, "During your duel yesterday, what is the thing that allowed you to endure the destructuration you suffered?"
Without waiting for Sirius’s answer, he turned to Kritos.
"And you—what allowed you to move your scalpel without touching it?"
They both remained silent for a moment before answering at the same time.
"My will."
"Good."
Gramm let the word settle into the silence before continuing.
"Without will conscious or unconscious you cannot, under any circumstances, use your resonance. The objective is not the engine. It is the starting point. Will, on the other hand, is what makes the engine run."
He paused, then pointed at Iris.
"Can you see the amount of ether contained within my soul?"
Iris nodded.
"Good. Now look into your own soul and tell me if ether were water, how much do you possess?"
Iris slightly closed her eyes, her Soul’s Eyes activating silently.
"Enough to fill a pool. Not a very big one the kind you’d find in a garden."
"And the others?"
She let her gaze pass over each of them.
"Roughly the same for everyone."
Uncertainty began to spread through the group. Few understood where Gramm was going with this.
"When a human is not awakened, the amount of ether their soul contains is like that of a bathtub. They have it, but they cannot use it in any way."
He let the image settle before continuing.
"When they awaken, that amount jumps. The bathtub becomes a pool. That is the threshold of an initiate your current limit."
He stopped, then simply said:
"Now look at me."
Iris hesitated. She took a long breath, then fixed her gaze on Gramm.
Her Soul’s Eyes plunged into his soul deeper than ever before. She felt no resistance, as if Gramm had gently opened the door for her.
What followed lasted only a few seconds. But it was enough for her to start sweating, her eyes widening at what her vision revealed.
"A sea," she whispered.
Silence fell over the room like a weight.
"A sea?"
The shock was visible on each of them. Elizir was the first to voice it.
"What would that equal one billion times our capacity?"
Gramm continued his explanation as if their astonishment meant nothing to him.
"The amount of ether varies according to rank. An initiate has roughly a garden pool. An intermediate, an Olympic pool. A master, a lake. A transcendent, a river or a great river, depending on their level."
He let the hierarchy form in their minds before adding:
"This corresponds to the total capacity a soul can contain. But and this is where most are mistaken this capacity does not determine power."
The statement surprised the group. Gracia was the first to react.
"I don’t understand. If someone possesses a sea of ether and another only a river, isn’t the first necessarily more powerful?"
Gramm did not answer. He looked at Sirius, expecting him to respond in his place.
Sirius nodded slightly, understanding what was being asked of him.
He briefly recalled the mechanism of his attack—that << Ygros Slash >> which had allowed him to cut down even a Count before speaking.
"No. Suppose you have a sea, but you can only draw from it with a spoon each time you act."
He looked at them one by one.
"And suppose your opponent only has a river but draws from it with an industrial pump."
The silence that followed spoke volumes. Gramm concluded.
"What determines your real power in combat is not what your soul contains. It is what you can mobilize at any given moment. That flow that is what makes the difference between life and death."
"And it’s will that controls that flow?" Kritos asked.
"In part."
Gramm took a few slow steps in front of them.
"Will controls the flow, yes. But it is not limited to that. To think that will is nothing more than a tap you open more or less is like thinking a scalpel is only meant to cut."
He stopped and observed them for a moment, as if carefully choosing his words.
"What are you doing right now to remain seated without falling?"
Silence.
It was Ana who answered.
"My body maintains dozens of muscular tensions simultaneously. That’s what allows me to stay seated."
"Is that done consciously or unconsciously?"
"My body does it without me thinking about it."
Gramm nodded, as if the answer confirmed exactly what he intended to demonstrate.
"That is exactly your relationship with will right now. You use it every time you activate your resonance, every time you strike, every time you survive something that should kill you. But you don’t see it. You don’t know what you’re doing."
Iris spoke, her voice calm but cautious.
"And seeing one’s own will is that the difference between an initiate and an intermediate?"
He answered with another question.
"What concretely distinguishes an intermediate from an initiate, in your opinion?"
Sirius opened his mouth.
"The coating."
"Exactly."
Gramm turned back to the group.
"Those who use coating are intermediates at minimum. You all know that. But what you don’t know is what coating truly is."
He stopped in front of them.
"You’ve been told that coating is wrapping your body or a weapon in ether to strengthen it. That is true. But it is incomplete."
"Then what is it, really?" Fidri asked.
"Iris."
She straightened up.
"During your duel yesterday, you reinforced your violin. How did you do it?"
"I wanted... no, I believed it was an unbreakable shield."
"And your bow?"
"I wanted it to be sharper."
Gramm repeated her words slowly, as if engraving them into the air.
"You wanted it to be sharper."
He let the silence do its work, then continued.
"You all use your resonance the same way your will starts the engine, ether fuels the vehicle, your power manifests. That is the normal pattern."
He paused.
"Coating reverses that flow."
No one spoke.
"Instead of directing your will toward your resonance so it produces an effect, you turn your will back onto itself. You stop fueling the vehicle you fuel the engine directly. And when the engine receives ether directly..."
He paused, searching their eyes one by one.
"...your will becomes physically real."
Elizir frowned.
"Physically real what does that actually mean?"
Gramm did not answer immediately. Instead, he bent down and picked up one of the scattered sheets of paper at his feet. He held it between two fingers, facing them, and slowly rotated it.
"What is this?"
"Paper," Elizir said.
"Can you cut something with it?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Because it’s paper. It’s soft, it’s thin its nature doesn’t allow it."
Gramm nodded.
"Its nature doesn’t allow it."
He repeated the words while looking at the sheet. Then something changed.
A thin, transparent light covered the sheet barely perceptible, like a breath frozen within matter.
Gramm threw it against the wooden wall.
The sound was sharp, brief, violent.
A sound that should never have come from a sheet of paper.
The solid wooden wall split in two, a clean, straight cut running through it from end to end, as if something infinitely sharp had cleaved it effortlessly. The sheet itself fell to the ground in two perfectly separated pieces.
Gramm snapped his fingers. The wall returned to its original state, as if nothing had happened.
The silence that fell over the room was different from before. It was no longer confusion. It was something else—something between shock and an instinctive fear of what should not exist.
Elizir was the first to speak, his voice slightly less steady than usual.
"That was... paper."
"It was paper," Gramm confirmed, impassive. "Its nature did not change. What changed is that my will to make it sharp was real enough for the ether to take hold of it not to fuel my resonance, but to make that will concrete."
He looked at them.
"Coating is not ether around your body. It is your will made possible by ether. A coated fist does not strike harder because there is ether on it it strikes harder because your will to destroy what stands before you has become as real as your bones."
He let a long silence settle before concluding.
"The first step to becoming an intermediate is to learn how to manipulate your will."
His gaze swept across the eleven.
"Some of you, during your duel yesterday, managed even if only for a fraction of a second to manipulate your will unconsciously."
Silence settled in. Each of them recalled the scenes from the previous day, searching their own memories for that fleeting moment Gramm had mentioned.
His voice pulled them out of their thoughts.
"The next step, then, is to manipulate it but this time, consciously."
