Paragon of Destruction

Although Arran was unfamiliar with the region around Knight’s Watch, finding a sufficiently secluded spot was a simple matter. This close to the Desolation, the roads were few, and no more farms or villages dotted the landscape.

Instead, there was only a seemingly endless expanse of inhospitable land, with rocky hills and dense forests that had gone untouched by human feet for many years. Amid that barren wilderness, solitude was easily found.

Still, Arran did not linger near the city. He traveled for a full day and night, journeying far enough from Knight’s Watch that there was not even the slightest risk of encountering others.

He finally came to a halt at a small clearing amid a dense patch of forest that lay hidden between two large hills. As remote as it was unremarkable, it was the sort of place where he would be impossible to find for all but the most determined pursuer.

Nevertheless, he spent several hours scouting the area, making sure that there were neither Blightspawn nor Darians nearby.

But the only sign of life he found for several miles around were a pair of goats and several rabbits, and when he was finally satisfied that the area was truly empty, he returned to the clearing.

Then, as he sat down on the ground and leaned back against a tree, he cleared his mind and turned his thoughts to the task ahead.

He had learned Muna’s techniques only half a year earlier, but he had studied them ceaselessly, quickly taking the elementary techniques to their very limits. And after that, he had used both the Forms and his own insights to push well beyond those limits.

His brief exchange with Lady Merem, however, had shown him it wasn’t enough. Whatever he had achieved so far, his accomplishments still fell short of what he needed.

After all, his goal wasn’t just to survive in the Desolation. Rather, it was to win whatever rewards the Imperium had to offer, and to set him on the path to gaining the Darians’ most precious secrets.

And unlike the Darians themselves, Arran could not afford to spend decades slowly building the power and status required to do so. He needed to do in months what Darian Knights took years to accomplish — and without the guidance that they received.

Yet impossible though that task might seem, he had some hope that it could be achieved.

While Muna’s techniques were no longer useful, he had already spent thousands of hours studying the Forms. And although the Forms used magic rather than sword techniques, he still believed that both were based on the same principles.

More importantly, he’d grown increasingly certain that the Forms were far more advanced than Muna’s techniques. After all, while mastering the latter had only taken him months, years of study and practice had yet to bring him a solid understanding of the former.

In terms of difficulty, the two were utterly incomparable. And if that difficulty was a reflection of their potential, the power of the Forms would easily eclipse that of Muna’s techniques.

The challenge, then, was to make a breakthrough in his understanding of the Forms.

Of course, Arran had no illusions about fully mastering the Forms. That step was still beyond him. But if he could take his comprehension of the Forms beyond its earliest foundation, the benefits should be considerable.

Yet while Arran knew his goal, that made achieving it no less difficult.

He spent several days sitting in silence, endlessly poring over his memories in search of something — anything — that could help him understand the concept behind the Forms.

Not only did he contemplate the Forms themselves and Muna’s techniques, but he also once more consider the rudimentary Forms he’d learned from Anthea, his true insight into severing and binding, the things Kaleesh had taught him about his insight into speed, along with all the other ways in which he’d been exposed to various insights.

Along with that, he carefully recalled his various encounters with Knights, meticulously digging through his memories to see if there was anything that might help him better understand their techniques.

But despite his efforts, the answers he sought continued to elude him.

After a week of uninterrupted study, Arran finally stood up, sighing deeply as he stretched his weary body. As much as it pained him to admit it, his efforts had failed to bring even the slightest result.

Worse, he felt like the path to his goal had become murkier rather than clearer, as if he was lost in a foggy swamp, traveling along a road whose destination he was beginning to doubt.

He let out another gloomy sigh, then decided that it was time for a break. If nothing else, a few hours of rest and a good meal might help raise his spirits.

And in his current state of mind, trying to push onward would do little good.

An hour later, Arran’s mood was much improved. He was sitting at a campfire and eating a much-needed meal, the smell of freshly roasted goat meat in the air as he considered his situation.

Disappointing though his lack of results was, it wasn’t entirely unexpected. He’d struggled with the Forms for years, and although he still believed that he could make a breakthrough, he had to accept the possibility that he would fail.

So instead of worrying, he sat back and rested, idly wondering how Kaleesh’s efforts in recruiting an army were proceeding.

From what he knew of Kaleesh, he had no doubt that the captain would exceed his expectations. After all, as strong a fighter as Arran was, when it came to commanding troops, he could not even begin to compare to Kaleesh.

He’d spent months studying the man’s manuscripts on strategy, but that was only barely enough to scratch the surface of the knowledge they contained. And contrary to his original expectations, his experience in battle had been only marginally useful in helping him understand tactics and strategy.

Individual combat relied mostly on strength, skill, and speed. As long as one had enough of an advantage in any of these things, victory would be all but certain.

Yet mass combat was wholly different. More than anything, it needed coordination — to forge an army of individual soldiers into a seamless whole, with each part strengthening the others. With that, a competent commander could amplify his soldiers’ strength many times over.

After all, with a line of spearmen defending a group of archers, their combined strength would be far greater than the individual strengths of both groups added together. And the greater the army, the more such opportunities would arise.

As Arran pondered this, a frown suddenly flashed across his brow. It remained there for only a moment, after which his eyes went wide with surprise — surprise, and excitement.

He cast his food aside, then immediately stood up and drew his sword, fearful that waiting even the slightest moment might cause the nascent idea in his mind to dissipate.

As he wielded his sword in his right hand, he drew a large amount of Shadow Essence into his left, thoughts racing in his head as he readied himself to test whether his intuition was right. Then, he began to move.

At first, his movements were clumsy and slow, like those of a child holding a blade for the first time. And although an observer would not see it, the same was true for the way he controlled the Shadow Essence in his hand.

Yet there was a broad smile on Arran’s face, and as he continued to move, that smile gradually turned into an uncontrollable grin.

He kept at it for several hours, and although his movements improved only marginally, the grin on his face slowly grew even wider than before.

Then, finally, he sheathed his sword and sat down to resume his meal. After all, with the training ahead, he would need his strength.

The breakthrough he wished for had finally arrived. After years of studying the Forms, he had finally found the missing piece. And now that he knew what it was, he couldn’t help but wonder how something so obvious had eluded him for so long.

The secret behind both the Forms and the Darians’ techniques was as simple as it was powerful.

So far, he’d treated the Forms like ingredients in a well-stocked kitchen, using only those he believed were needed for attacks and spells while ignoring the others. That was how Anthea had said the techniques in her rudimentary version of the Forms were meant to be used, and it was how he had used his own true insights into binding and severing even before that.

But now, he finally recognized the truth.

The power of the Forms wasn’t that they allowed one to learn and use separate insights, but that all those different insights could be combined. Like soldiers in an army, each strengthened the others, and to ignore any of them was to forgo a source of strength.

How this was possible, Arran did not yet understand. As far as he could tell, it made no sense that insights into severing and speed could strengthen a block, or that his insight into binding could lend power to a thrust. But sense or not, it appeared to be true all the same.

Stranger still, however, were the effects on his magic.

In the buried city near Amydon, Arran had witnessed Karanos use Shadow Essence to create physical attacks. This was a feat he had tried to replicate on many occasions, but each of his attempts had failed miserably. Even imbuing Shadow spells with his insight into severing had achieved nothing whatsoever.

Yet now, when he merged all his insights into his spells, they had a sense of physicality that had been absent before. It was only barely noticeable, but he could tell that some of the Shadow spells were already on the verge of becoming tangible.

And that was after only a few hours of practice, with Arran still struggling to merge his insights into his spells.

Doing so was no simple matter. The Forms and Muna’s techniques had provided him with hundreds of lesser insights, and to use each of them in his spells and attacks was like juggling a thousand eggs all at once.

Just becoming proficient at something so complex would be an arduous task, and mastering it was something that seemed borderline impossible.

But even so, if even these early attempts of his already had such effects, then he could scarcely begin to imagine what proper training would accomplish.

That thought was enough to leave Arran eager to start his training, but after a thought, he decided to sleep first. He’d already gone a week without so much as a moment’s rest, and the task before him would require every scrap of effort that he could muster.

Still, he could not resist giving his newly gained ability a final try.

A look of concentration appeared on his face as he gathered Shadow Essence and formed a spell — a Flamestrike, but using Shadow Essence rather than Fire Essence. Then, an instant later, a dense streak of Shadow burst from his hand, surging toward a nearby tree.

The effect was small enough that a casual observer would not notice it — no more than a brief rustling of leaves, as if a brief gust of wind had brushed by the tree.

To Arran, the sight was more beautiful than even the most dazzling sunset. He had finally achieved the breakthrough he sought.

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