The Exalt [Cultivation Fantasy]

Deep in the Abyss Prison, the ragged breathing of a young man echoed across a small empty arena. The seats were worn and dirty, and there was no stage but a ground of sand. Oscar was on one knee and bleeding from his lips, and right across from him was the Warden, Draven Ciaran.

"What's wrong? You haven't landed a single hit on me." Draven tapped his foot and made a circle in the sand. "Your Prinstyct is still immature."

Oscar wiped the blood from his lips and stood up, cracking his neck with anger in his eyes. He assumed his stance, clenched his fists, and opened his astral third eye to focus on Draven. His foot kicked off in a ferocious dash.

'Left!' Oscar saw Draven's intent to move his right leg and moved to block, but the image suddenly switched to the right. Unable to react in time, Oscar's right side was crushed by Draven's hook. He splurted out more blood and fell to the floor, the sand sticking to his cheek.

"Master, how did you suddenly change the intent? I definitely saw you were going to move your right leg, but it changed to your left hook." Oscar sat on the sand and looked up at Draven with gleaming eyes.

Draven up down a mat and sat down to avoid sand. "Tell me. Have you witnessed a battle between two Exalts with Prinstyct?"

Oscar crossed his arms and thought, but only one battle came to mind. "I watched the battle between Gilbert and Leon."

"What did that battle boil down to?" Draven asked.

"They constantly used spells to try to disrupt the other's focus or move them into unfavorable situations. Another aspect was using overwhelming or fast spells that surpassed the Prinstyct's foresight." Oscar recalled Gilbert's thunderstrike that moved so fast even Leon could not dodge it properly despite seeing the Ein moving.

"Spells are a good way. The Prinstyct can only see the Ein moving but does not know the spell's scale, speed, or type. But what about between you and me? We're not using spells, so what is the issue here?"

This question was what Oscar wanted to ask, but Draven had turned it back on him.

Draven had purposely lowered his powers and allowed Oscar to view him in the Prinstyct, or else there would have been no point to this training.

Oscar remained silent but closed his eyes, recalling every part of the battle with Draven. There were some instances when he could block Draven's attack, but more often, he was the one on the back foot. The Prinstyct suddenly changes at the moment Oscar cannot do anything to stop the incoming attack.

"Are you out predicting me?" Oscar asked.

"Good answer. In a battle between Prinstycts, there are three main ways to win. First, break their concentration, and the enemy's Prinstyct can't maintain itself. Second, use spells and anima to overcome that foresight. Third, read deeper than your enemy so they can't react." Draven stood up and helped Oscar to his feet. "So long as I can read your intent better, I win."

Oscar nodded and took up a stance. "In the end, I just need to outdo you."

"That is the case." Draven lowered his hands, leaving himself completely open, but Oscar could never get a single blow in.

A fierce exchange of blows scattered the sand around them, but no matter how much was blown away, more sand was revealed below. Deeper, they fought into a pit of sand.

Oscar blocked one of Draven's punches and grabbed tightly to swing him around, but Draven followed along the swing and rammed his elbow down.

'I saw that!' Oscar let go right before the elbow could land and went for a straight kick upward. In this situation, Draven was in mid-air and should not be able to dodge this strike easily.

Draven twisted his body, changed the trajectory of his elbow, and slammed onto Oscar's leg. "Nice try, but it was useless."

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"Guh!" Oscar fell to the sand, clutching his leg in pain. Draven's elbow had not broken it, but it still hurt like hell and ached every moment.

"If we were to determine it in the number of steps, you are reading two steps ahead while I'm seeing four. Three hours are up; let's resume your fabricator training." Draven tugged Oscar up out of the pit of sand that quickly fell into itself.

…….

Once more, Oscar was pounding away at the azureiron ore to refine it and shape it into the thinnest plate possible. Sweat built under his helmet as the roaring furnace spewed more heat and smoke to make it feel suffocating. In his frustration, Oscar slammed fiercely.

The azureiron ore cracked, and sparks flew out and covered Oscar, who stumbled to the floor in surprise. Oscar patted down the flickering embers on his body and observed the azureiron, seeing it had split down in the middle into two pieces. This was the fifth one already.

At a certain point, he had to put a lot of power into shaping the azureiron further, but the power was too great and broke the ore. Oscar lifted the pieces of the azureiron with a large shovel and put them into a large crucible to be melted down.

"Master," Oscar asked as he saw the azureiron melting.

"What is it?" Draven was in the room, watching Oscar fail every time.

"If the azureiron can be melted like this, can't we put it into a mold to be a thin plate? Why do I have to pound it down myself?" Oscar held the hammer. Although it was only two days, the tip was already worn down. He had also been hot-swapping hammers when they got to this useless state.

"In the end, you need to hammer down on it to make it stronger. There is the saying, 'Iron gets stronger the more it is struck on'." Draven tossed a new hammer to Oscar.

Oscar caught it and stared at it intently.

"For fabricators, the hammer is key. With the hammer, you pound away the impurities and meld everything together strongly. Not some weak bond made by melting it all in a crucible, but true binding through the Ein you scatter all over." Draven took the large crucible with large tongs and poured its contents into a mold. "Understand? Everything is homogenous in this boiling crucible, and we cannot discern the good from the bad."

Oscar nodded and placed a new azureiron into the furnace. Once it was at the appropriate temperature, Oscar continued his hammering; each strike was slow and deliberate as his frustration was gone.

Draven tilted his head and smiled under his helmet, seeing Oscar's determination and fast understanding. It was a shame that his disciple wasn't a higher grade.

'But maybe he wouldn't be this way if he did have a higher grade.'

Meanwhile, Oscar stopped and lowered his hammer. The azureiron was around three-fourths of its original height. It was at this part that he always failed and cracked the ore.

'What is my hammer lacking? With Reis and Ein, there is enough power to lower it to this point, but now that same power becomes the crutch that prevents me from finishing.' Oscar stared at his hammer and fiddled around with it.

Suddenly, his hammer was taken from him. Oscar turned to find Draven tossing around his hammer. "Master?"

"Watch closely."

Oscar nodded and backed away. His eyes locked on the hammer in Draven's hand.

Draven came to the anvil, and instead of swinging the hammer, he tapped it around the surface of the hot azureiron. After several taps, Draven paused and swung the hammer down on it with a terrifying force.

Oscar thought that the azureiron would be broken, but his eyes widened as the sparks settled. Draven's hammer had formed a dent in the azureiron, which was not cracked.

"What did you see?" Draven tossed the hammer back to Oscar.

Oscar tensed up, recalling his master's tendency to behave murderously with this question. He racked his brain for an answer, thinking about Draven's previous motions.

Why did he tap the azureiron multiple times?

Draven stepped forward slowly, frightening Oscar, who fidgeted around and squeezed his head with his hands to urge his brain.

As Draven's steps grew closer, Oscar was still thinking.

What was so special about the taps?

Oscar remembered that his master stopped after tapping but struck the last place he had tapped.

"You struck the last place you tapped." Oscar declared.

Draven stopped for a moment but posed another question. "Why did I do that?"

'Are you kidding me?!' Oscar looked down but could hear Draven's steps resuming.

"Ein?" Oscar realized and blurted out the first thing on his mind. "You were using Ein!"

Indeed, he had seen Draven's hammer have a tiny hint of Ein in each tap.

"Correct. azureiron is not just metal. It's more akin to a living thing in how it reacts to the Ein." Draven tapped the hammer again. "I send my Ein inside with each tap to induce a reaction and see the configuration. At this stage, the azureiron requires a more delicate touch."

"Configuration?"

"It's more accurate to say it's a formation. Give it a try. Pour your Ein in."

Oscar nodded and focused a tiny hint of Ein, tapping away at the surface of the azureiron. To his surprise, there was feedback that came back like a response from the azureiron. He could visualize a network of nodes and lines that connected them.

"You see it, right? The point is to find the weakest spot to undo the current complication. Which one seems the most likely?"

"Here it is!" Oscar slammed his hammer, full of Reis and Ein. The azureiron did not break as his hammer sunk a part of it in.

"Every material has that fine point where it is safe to hit. It was fine at its original state, but it gets more important as you continue to mold it."

Oscar didn't hear Draven's words but tapped and pounded on the azureiron.

Draven shook his head and sat down. "This deaf disciple."

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