Chapter 159: Nostradamus Project (2)
After Kara left, the training room returned to silence. As if nothing had happened. Kaiser remained motionless for a long mont on the ring, eyes fixed on the floor, arms relaxed along his body.
’Should I have said sothing?’ he wondered, thinking back to Kara’s shifting expression. He knew, or rather had sensed, the jealousy in her gaze; he didn’t dwell on it. Anyway, she was the one shouting everywhere that she had no head for things like love. ’... The day soone manages to unlock the secrets of these creatures, I’m sure even God will open the gates of paradise for him.’
He took a deep breath. That wasn’t all, but he also had his own things to deal with, knowing full well he hadn’t done anything wrong. ’Let’s put that aside for now, I’ve got more serious stuff to handle...’ he told himself while thinking about his two swords.
For so ti now, he had the feeling he had hit a plateau that was holding him back until this mont. ’Why can’t I break through to the third movent?’
’Am I not training enough?’
Despite this difficulty, strangely enough it didn’t feel like an insurmountable wall at all, but rather like a slope that simply refused to incline any further. He felt he was only missing one tiny thing.
"Why not try? Who knows what might happen..." After scanning the room and seeing no one around, he decided to do a little training on his own as well.
His fingers closed around the familiar grips, which responded to the pressure of his palm with their vibrating chains. He lifted them, spun them lightly, feeling their weight.
Just from that, many mories ca flooding back, especially those of the old man and his advice about love. Without realizing it, a small smile appeared at the corner of his lips before vanishing.
"I hope you really felt it, that love you kept talking about..." he murmured to himself. "... Even if I doubt it..." he added, his eyes slowly sliding over the two blades.
"I’m getting more and more sentintal, I wonder if that’s a good thing..."
After this sentintal mont, Kaiser climbed back onto the ring. His goal now was to manage to reproduce the third movent of his art: the new moon.
Concretely, it wasn’t really a movent in itself, but rather a state in which Kaiser could fuse with his swords, essentially becoming the sword himself.
That would open far wider possibilities: summoning them whenever he wanted, no longer needing to rely on a storage ring like he had been doing until now, those were just so of the many advantages he could gain.
But until now, no matter how he tried, no matter the thods or how he attempted to feel every micro-sensation of his blades, nothing ever ca of it.
At the center of the ring, feet firmly planted, body relaxed. He closed his eyes for a mont and began visualizing an opponent to make the exercise a bit more concrete. An enemy capable of pushing him to his absolute limits. Soone who would leave him no margin for error, where the only way to win would be for his swords to beco Kaiser and Kaiser to beco his swords.
A heavy silence suddenly settled over the room, the air thickening with pressure and not just a little. Many students would have been shocked to see Kaiser release such an aura.
Then suddenly he moved: a horizontal slash perford in a few tenths of a millisecond, slicing the air. Then a second, then a tenth. In just a few seconds he began producing more and more attacks, but it was never enough.
’Faster...!’ he shouted in his head, accelerating the rhythm, feeling his blades cut through the air at insane speed.
Then suddenly he stopped dead after several minutes. "Shit... shit, shit!" he cursed, irritated. Once again he had failed. Another goddamn failure.
Panting, he paused for a mont, trying every possible way to find a solution. He was strong, at least to so people but it was certain that his current level was far from sufficient for what awaited him.
He had tried ditation, brutal training, but nothing had worked so far.
"Let’s start again," he said, frowning.
He took his stance again, took a deep breath, and this ti unleashed far more attacks in a very short ti but reality caught up with him. Another failure.
"Fuck!" He clicked his tongue.
A third attempt followed. Then a fourth. Always the sa flaw. Always that invisible, insidious blockage.
He felt like a cultivator who had reached a bottleneck with no way to achieve enlightennt.
Finally, Kaiser stopped completely. He stood motionless, swords hanging along his arms. He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly.
"Tch..."
Just as he was about to start again, distant voices began to echo at the entrance of the room. Several footsteps, undoubtedly other students arriving.
’I’ll have to leave,’ he thought. He imdiately stored his swords. He had no desire to expose himself needlessly, much less train under curious stares. He stepped down from the ring without a word and left the room at a calm pace, passing a small group that gave him looks as he went by.
Outside, the sun was already setting. The sky was taking on orange hues, and a light breeze caressed his face. Kaiser took a deep breath of the fresh air.
’Well... I didn’t succeed, but it’s just a matter of ti...’ he thought as he walked toward the usual little locomotive. "And what if we went to write those damn prophecies."
He took a seat inside the vehicle, leaned back as the machine gently started moving. The scenery passed slowly before his eyes, but his mind was already elsewhere.
When he arrived at his manor, he didn’t waste ti. A quick bath, just enough to relax his body and clear his mind then a proper dinner, and afterward he headed to his study.
The room was lit by warm light. On the large worktable already lay the materials he had prepared. Among them were special papers for the notebook as well as a quill he had actually had great difficulty obtaining on the black market.
He had to be extrely ticulous this ti. There was no room for the slightest mistake, because it could prove fatal to the entire project.
Taking his seat at the desk, Kaiser picked up his quill, dipped it in the ink, and slowly began his work, carefully choosing which words he would use.
After all, he planned to proceed in exactly the sa way the Nostradamus of his world had done: using ambiguous verses and poems that could be interpreted in many different ways. On top of that, he would weave in the true history of the Thousand Years’ War.
Kaiser wasn’t particularly gifted with letters, but he was good enough with his law studies to write convincing bullshit and had enough culture to mix it all with dramatic stories that were completely unheard of in this world but extrely popular in his own.
So as he wrote a reworked version of Sleeping Beauty in his own style:
With the fresh blood of an adult ice Wyvern,
he continued:
[The young lion will overco the first.
In a warlike field by the last,
The scourge will fall upon the world itself; even the light of Siel will not illuminate the shadow of the midnight fla.]
For anyone who knew the past of the Thousand Years’ War, the young lion could only an the imperial Dantalion family with its winged lion crest, and the first was undoubtedly the first warrior, none other than Sulyvhan, who had been betrayed.
For others, it only pointed to the first prince Julius, who possessed more talent than the first emperor. And the second line could only refer to the arrival of the demons.
But for the Holiness of the Holy Cathedral whose true na was Siel and whom no one else knew, it ant sothing else entirely. And even for the Spectrum who would summon the Archdemon of Midnight, it carried multiple profound interpretations.
Even though he had written a lot of nonsense, just one single line referring to a secret no one knew was enough to make all 33 pages credible.
Kaiser gave a faint smile after contemplating his work for a long ti. Needless to say, he was proud of it.
It was already very late at night when he finally finished. That wasn’t really a problem; tomorrow was Sunday anyway. Which ant no classes.
Most students would go to mass at the Holy Cathedral, as they did every week. But Kaiser had absolutely no motivation or desire to go flatter the ego of that damn Holiness.
With a click he turned off the light, preparing to get a good night’s rest.
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