421 The Path of the Knigh
Abel took out the book that Hoover wrote. It was meant to be a recollection of his journey towards becoming a knight’s head commander. Since only a handful could be the very best, he needed a lot of guidance was needed.
For a knight’s commander to become a head commander, there were a lot of obstacles that must be overcome. First up, Abel must learn to combine his combat qi with a specific type of energy. More specifically, by combining his physical attacks with a specific type of, say, an element, his regular attacks would be much stronger than before.
It’s much harder than it sounded, though. While the knights could learn such techniques from the scrolls they found, they never found out how to control their own mana to perform these moves.
Yes, a knight’s head commander had to learn to use his own mana. Throughout history, many knights have gone through some insane lengths to attempt this. One solution they found was that, with the help of wizards, they could attempt to drown themselves in areas that were highly-concentrated with mana.
It was a daredevil move, of course. It was the equivalent to exposing your entire body to poisonous gas. Many have died whilst trying to do this, but some did end up gaining the ability to control a very slight amount of mana.
Again, even those who survived had to bear the negative consequences for the rest of their lives. The loss of physicality was the easy part. Once the body was corroded with mana, the damage could end up being irreversible, detrimental, chronic, and potentially end up causing all sorts of other lifelong issues.
Once a knight’s commander had (miraculously) learned to control his mana, things would start to become easier. He would have to learn to combine his combat qi with his knight’s techniques. Some time was needed for this, obviously, but it really wasn’t a concern for the genius that was Abel.
After flicking through some of the pages, Abel realized that he was already a step ahead. He didn’t need to learn to control his mana all over again. Right now, his biggest problem was with combining his combat qi with his knight’s techniques.
The element he chose was the “power of dimension.” It was an overpowering element, needless to say. The problem was that he couldn’t activate it with his knight’s techniques. Also, since he could only unleash this power with a quick hit, he couldn’t really make a correct assessment of where he should be.
So, what was his “real” level? He was technically a knight’s commander, but he was so much stronger than just that. If he was against any other knight’s commanders, he could easily dominate them with his dark-golden combat qi threads. Even without his combat qi, he could take on most of them with his max level strength and agility points.
If he really wanted to know where his current level was at, he could try to take on a knight’s head commander. He had never done that before, actually. He didn’t even know much about the knight’s head commanders. There weren’t many of them on the Holy Continent. In fact, apart from the “charge” technique that Hoover wrote in his book (and it wasn’t even the complete version), there didn’t seem to be a lot of knowledge that had been passed down.
Abel was different. He was learning both from the Holy Continent and the dark world. He could be promoted to a knight’s head commander anytime, and it wasn’t like he had to sacrifice his health for it. It was a shame that there wasn’t a lot that Hoover could teach him.
So, he chose the power of dimension as his base element. While this choice made his training a lot more difficult for him, he didn’t regret it in the least. There wasn’t anyone that could guard against the power of the dimension. As seen in his fight with Cliff; as much as he had to prepare for his one-time-only attack, once he was all set, there was literally nothing that could stop him.
For the next few days, Abel went to the prison’s first floor during the day and went back to the Rogue’s Encampment for his meditation session during the night. After he was satisfied with the progress he was making. He went back to his room in Liante City.
He was back in his room. When he closed down the seclusion circle, he saw that Bartoli had prepared breakfast for him. It was a fairly simple meal. There was some white bread, honey, and a little bit of fruit.
Bartoli said in an apologetic tone, “Good morning, Master! ah…. I’m so sorry. This was all I could get with my magic gemstones. The better ingredients can only be bought with points…”
“No, no, it’s fine. This is great!” Abel smiled as he began to dig in, “Can you boil some water for me?”
“Yes, Master!”
Bartoli went out to get some water from the well. Once she did, she came back and placed a full bucket on the table. Then, with a wave of her wrist, a butterfly made of flame emerged from her hand. It flew around, rested on the bucket, and the water in the bucket immediately started boiling.
Abel enjoyed the show. It was something that he invented himself, but Bartoli did it much better than him. Unlike him, she could command a fire element without activating any spells. Not only did that require a lot more control, but the resulting flame was also very different.
“The water is ready, Master,” Bartoli said after she made the butterfly disappear.
Abel took out a crystal bottle from his portal bracelet. It contained the “super blue howling rabbit soup” that was used to flavor up his “ration potion.” It was a secret recipe of his. Even if he told the others how to cook it, they wouldn’t have the skills required to mimic what he did.
There’s a special name that he gave to his blue howling rabbit stock. “Rabbit essence.” After one drop of it was placed into the bucket of boiling water, a strong, pleasing smell quickly diffused throughout the room. It almost smelled like a whole roasted rabbit.
“Have some of this, Bartoli,” Abel said, then poured some soup into a wooden bow.
“Thank you, Master,” Bartoli thanked him. She didn’t have a lot of faith in her master’s unconventional cooking methods, but she sure liked what she was smelling.
After a gentle sip, her eyes started sparkling. She had eaten a blue howling rabbit before, and this solution, whatever it was, tasted almost exactly the same as that. In fact, unlike the time when she was actually eating the rabbit’s meat, there was something about this “soup” that she couldn’t help but keep drinking.
Yes, she felt like she was getting addicted. If Abel wasn’t so strong, mentality and spirituality, he would’ve warned Bartoli about it a lot earlier.
Bartoli pointed towards the crystal bottle that Abel was holding. She only had one drop of the liquid. It was one drop. There were so many more drops in the bottle her master had.
“Master, what….” Bartoli couldn’t help but smile from the extreme satisfaction she was feeling.
Abel replied with a smile, “Rabbit essence, Bartoli. It’s something I’ve made by extracting the richest parts of a blue howling rabbit.”
“Can you use it on other foods?” Bartoli asked.
“Yeah, sure. Try it on anything. I haven’t done a lot of experiments with it yet, but if you’re interested…”
Abel proceeded to hand the entire bottle to Bartoli. He didn’t mind giving it away to her. After all, it wasn’t even that hard to make. If he wanted to, he could make a tankful of it at any time.