Among the requested materials there were two wooden boxes containing an elental spark each. One had to be passed to Daniel – he was the one who had to forge the weapon that was going to take Duvant’s life.
Daniel didn’t understand why Lee was rushing him to finish the weapon – he had negotiated a full three months to work on it. But Lee kept pushing, insisting it had to be done imdiately. So in just four days Daniel created sothing incredibly wasteful, but beautiful.
The weapon resembled an oversized needle more than a sword. It was two feet long, round and thin, designed to allow a perfect flow of the wind elental energy from the spark sealed within its short handle. It was simple, but heavy, and if it worked as Lee intended – incredibly deadly.
Daniel passed it through their communication hole in the wall, and after storing the weapon in his glove, Lee sat in the middle of the room, with the box containing the remaining wind spark in front of him.
He deeply hated himself for what he was about to do next, but at the sa ti didn’t see another alternative.
Yes, technically he could die, but he never knew how many deaths he still had left, if any at all. And he knew where the overlord was, and knew how to get to her. After hearing her laughter, Lee was certain she was a nice lady and wouldn’t mind helping a young lad like him – for an omnipotent overlord his problem probably was just a joke.
Lee imdiately scratched the idea to attempt to kill Duvant as he was. His current speed was way too slow to ambush an elental lord, even if the lord stood right next to him. If he possessed the wind elent, though, the odds would dramatically shift in his favor.
The weapon he ca up with and Daniel created in a record ti, would allow to transfer huge amounts of wind energy through the tip – right into the Duvant’s body. Lee intended to use the technique hunters employed when hunting high level beasts, like Arax against the quakeback behemot. Of course, the devil aged decades because of the loss of the elental energy, but he was just an elental warrior.
The principle was simple – one had to use a concentrated stream of specific elental energy to counter the target’s affinity. In Arax’s case – he used one of his two sparks, the wind spark, and transferred large amounts of wind energy into the quakeback behemot’s body, killing the humongous beast with the earth affinity.
This hunting thod wasn’t anything new in worlds with more advanced cultivation – only the clueless elental warriors of Ashland had to reinvent the wheel. From what Lee guessed, it happened when the devil brothers lost their four hundred compatriots killing the scorchadon behemot – the beast whose description resembled a dragon, and whose spark was now in Lee’s possession.
Lee intended to use the sa principle when killing an earth affinity elental lord who was loaded with countless defensive artifacts. The weapon Daniel created was basically a one-ti-use cannon, specifically designed for this purpose.
What Lee inwardly struggled with was his lack of speed to connect the weapon with the elental lord. It was clear he could overco the deficiency by acquiring a high quality wind spark, and he even had it right in front of him. What he didn’t want was the experience he had to go through before the spark settled down in his Dantian.
’Fuck it!’ Lee cursed.
At this point thinking was a waste of ti. He knew what had to be done and was procrastinating, intuitively postponing the inevitable.
He opened the wooden box and took the green-colored spark in his hand. It was round and slightly flat, and for the first ti Lee had the strange feeling of being capable of sensing the enormous amounts of energy locked within the plum-sized item.
’Please let pass out in an instant!’ He prayed.
The mory of what had felt like an eternal agony after swallowing the fire spark was still fresh, and, if he was honest with himself, Lee couldn’t believe he was about to go through it again, voluntarily. In case he didn’t, though, the risk his situation becoming worse was too high.
He exhaled like an alcoholic before taking a shot, and swallowed the spark. Then he resolutely bit on a piece of wood, preparing for the inevitable pain.
Strangely enough, it didn’t hurt. It was almost like he had swallowed an oversized mint candy – it brought a strange cooling, even refreshing sensation. The bitter taste of the piece of wood between his teeth spoiled it, but it was pleasant nevertheless.
Only now Lee realized how agitated he was in anticipation of pain, and he allowed himself to enjoy the unexpected mont of stillness and calm. The stress subsided as the spark slowly moved though his body, like a stone sinking in a lake.
But then it hit the bottom, and Lee gasped for air. It was as if millions of tiny needles struck him at the sa ti, piecing the center of every cell. This wasn’t the torturous feeling of getting burned alive. It was the sensation of getting physically torn apart from the inside.
’I wonder, does a person feel like this when they are blown up? No, wait, I did blow up myself once ...’
Being capable of having an actual thought was what shocked Lee more than the pain, but the next mont he passed out.
***
Lee felt like a beaver. Or rather, like a beaver who hated the taste of wood.
His mouth was packed with bitter wood shreds, stuck to his tongue, while splinters jamd between his teeth, stabbing his gums like thorns. His lips felt thick and tongue numb. And when Lee reached clear all of that out, his fingers picked at pieces of wood soaked with blood, dark and partially dried.
"Whath thha fhakh?" Lee blurted, sitting up, but the pieced of wood between his fingers was the least of his worries.
He was sitting in a large puddle of dried blood, and, in fact, his whole body was bloodied all over. It hurt and itched at the sa ti, but it wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle.
What shocked him were hundreds of tiny cuts across his body, apparently the source of the blood. Each of them was scabbed, but his sudden movent tore the most open and fresh blood began to seep out again.
"Dhanhiel! Dhanhiel!" Lee shouted, "Whow longh whas I outh?"
"What?" A mont later Daniel responded, "I don’t understand you!"
"Whow mhany dhays?" Lee did his best to speak properly, but his mouth and tongue didn’t listen.
"You an how many days you were performing the weird ritual?" Daniel asked, "Five."
’What?’ Lee froze, ’I was out for only five days?’
But then again, his body was still a ss and likely it will take him several more days to recover. Still, it didn’t take the usual two months for him to regain consciousness.
’Wait!’ Lee slightly panicked, and focused on his Dantian, but imdiately cald down.
Now there were four bright lights, peacefully sitting across each other, their respective elental particles revolving around them.
’Could it be ...’
Lee had never controlled the process of the sparks settling down in his Dantian, but from what it seed, the water and fire sparks were now positioned across each other, and so where the earth and wind. The conflicting elents were separated and apparently that allowed him to recover much quicker than usual.
’This was unexpected!’ Lee thought with a smile, and ignoring the condition of his body, sat in a comfortable ditative position.
He observed the sparks for a mont, and then attempted to guide the newly acquired wind particles through his body.
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