The Legend of Black Eyes 243 Progress

"Don't let him get bored," Cicero had warned me one evening. "No matter how cleverly you think you've hidden your secrets, he will find out if he has no use for you."

I already saw signs of boredom from Omega the following week. He stopped coming to my breathing exercises. He started being short with me when I reported my failure yet again. I was hanging by a thread, and I'd already started slipping.

On the second week of the third month, I sat alone in my room at night. My body ached and my bones screamed for rest. I refused to give them what they wanted though. If I couldn't solve Omega impossible task, I'd have all eternity to rest for.

"Omega doesn't just kill you," Cicero told me. "He'd obliterate your soul. It'd be like you had never existed."

I sat down cross legged and focused on the source of my energy, on that tiny grain near my navel. I could see how my energy flowed, what I didn't see however, was how it was converted. I had an incentive to push myself beyond my limits though. Omega was not a patient man despite his impossibly long life.

I was holding one of Omega's crystals on one hand, and diverted its energy toward my core. I watched it flow toward it. Then I saw it resist its invisible pull. A blast of energy shot outward from that tiny rice grain and swallowed the new energy whole. A tiny bubble formed in which both energies battled.

It would turn ashen gray at some intervals, the color of neutral energy, then it would change to golden, my energy. As soon as the neutral energy showed any sign of struggle, more energy would blast from my core and coat the bubble.

My head throbbed at that moment. I felt a drizzle of blood run down my nose and my ears, but I pushed on. If I could replicate this process outside, I might as well have a chance at overcoming my impossible task.

I saw the golden energy coat the ashen gray one. It swirled and swirled inside. Gray slowly turned to silver, then to gold. After a while, a perfectly golden bubble floated beside the grain. It immediately flowed back toward the core and disappeared into it, like a drop in the ocean.

I opened my eyes. My heart was racing against my chest, pounding noisily against my eardrums. My shirt was bloody, and I saw everything in double. I crawled toward the desk at the end of the room and pulled a bottle with a golden liquid in it. I drank my fill, and when I put the bottle back, my heartbeat had already slowed down and my bleeding stopped.

Omega sure had a lot of useful treasures...

I looked around the room until I spotted a heavy chest in which I kept my gear. I approached it and activated my third eye. On a side note, opening my third eye had become increasingly difficult after I lost the Fragment of time. I could only keep it open for ten seconds at a time.

Those ten seconds were enough for me to spot the chest's time energy. It was easy to spot for someone who's already seen it. The difficult part, however, was absorbing it. I honestly didn't know the gift and curse I was bestowed upon. Time energy was the strongest, and most unstable energy that existed.

Only a small amount of time energy is enough to decimate a city.

If only I'd known that back then...

The next part of my plan was very tricky. I wanted to convert a sliver of time energy into mine. The tricky part about it could be broken down into two. First: I wasn't absorbing neutral energy, which meant it would be more hostile toward me. Second, I couldn't absorb more than I could handle, meaning the time energy I absorbed had to be smaller than my entire core.

One misstep and I would implode...

I carefully extended my senses toward the chest and extracted a sliver of time energy from it, just enough to cause some tiny rust particles at the hinges. As soon as it braced my conduits, a fierce battle raged inside me.

I immediately felt the shock of foreign energy trying to resist my will. My heart began pounding, and the drizzle coming out my nose became a deluge. Being a mortal is a major inconvenience, I'm borrowing my master's words here. My body screamed to give up, but I've been through worse.

I pushed on and urged all my energy to move against the sliver of time I absorbed. My entire focus was on coating the time energy and beating it into submission. It took the better half of the night for me to succeed, but when I did, I felt a hundred times stronger. My core had become the size of a marble.

It was time to put my new powers to the test.

I extended my energy toward the box, moulded it into a flat, invisible surface, then inserted it beneath the heavy chest. I willed it to rise then, to my greatest surprise, the chest levitated above the ground. It felt as though I was holding a feather. I put the chest back on the ground then repeated the exercise.

I kept exercising until sunrise. Omega hadn't showed up for my breathing exercise, so I kept training. By noon, I'd managed to create an invisible box that could hold about twenty barrels in the air. Satisfied, I went down to the cellar where Cicero kept his stock. I found Omega there, sitting atop the barrels, a ceremonial knife on one hand, an apple on the other.

Today was the first time I saw Omega eat.

"I sincerely hope you have some progress to show, one-eye," he said in a grim tone.

I smiled. I approached the barrels on which he sat and willed my energy to form the invisible box. Omega observed me with a sly smirk. He kept peeling the apple as though he didn't see through me.

When I was done, the box had Omega in it. I wondered if he'd genuinely be surprised if I lifted him along with the other barrels.

"Still waiting," he impatiently said.

When I tried to lift them off, I felt a sudden shock scatter through my conduits. I fell to my knees, incapable of uttering a word. I fell, face first, on the cold stone floor. I heard Omega jump from the barrels then I saw his boots cover my entire field of vision.

"You've only learned to lift feathers, now you're trying to toss a titan?" he said. He had this disapproving tone in his voice. "Tsk! You've wasted the entire night and the better part of a morning just to show off? I'll see you tomorrow."

He strode off toward the door. I heard him slam it behind him, then I felt my cheekbones burn and my ears sizzle.

I should have known better...

Stupid, stupid Myles!

Chapter end

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