Rising god-Chapter 110: Flow and Progress

Baines maintained his composure, acting as if the voice calling "Sir Jin" wasn’t meant for him. He glanced at the speaker. From her voice and her attire, she screamed her identity as a member of the Orion Assembly. She was the woman Baines met in his room, leaving her question hanging.

He then turned back to the sparring arena, uninterested. Unlike their previous encounter, this time she didn’t conceal her face, and her presence confirmed his suspicion:

’So they knew I didn’t die.’ Honestly, it didn’t seem like a big deal to find out. Anyone with half a brain would know. He could’ve hired another guard to complete the ten; however, he didn’t for no other reason than he did try.

The woman, expecting a reaction, waited through twenty minutes of silence. Undeterred, she pressed on. "Sir Jin, we come with a better deal."

Baines remained silent, his eyes fixed on the match below.

"We want a separate relationship with you," she continued, undaunted. "We’ll provide any information you need."

"Who killed me?" Baines asked abruptly, his tone flat.

"We believe it was the Red Sun," she replied confidently.

Baines studied her for a moment, then asked, "What do you want?"

She exhaled, relieved. ’Nice.’ "We’d like to invite you among our executives."

’Should I just chain her?’ He didn’t want any random person just nosing into his business, at the same time, he didn’t care for all this. He was already busy at the moment.

Before he could respond, a voice interrupted. "Sir," a man bowed, flanked by two disguised figures. It was Mark, his chained servant, with two of the surviving guards.

"You survived?" Baines asked, mildly surprised.

"Thankfully, we weren’t present during the incident," Mark said calmly. He and four guards had escaped the attack on ’Jin,’ but only two accompanied him now.

’Hm...’ Baines assessed the situation. The Orion Assembly’s information could be useful, and Mark, already bound by his soul chains, could be a reliable intermediary.

"Alright, Mark will handle it. Send what you want, and I’ll tell you what I need," he said, refocusing on the spar. Mark nodded, moving to negotiate with the woman, who silently thanked him with her gaze. Without his arrival, she knew Baines would’ve dismissed her outright.

Baines observed a match pitting a greatsword user against a rapier wielder.

The greatsword user was large, making his movements slow; however, he wielded devastating power, where one hit could end the fight. The rapier user, on the other hand, was agile and precise, struck rapidly from multiple angles, and evaded the heavy blows.

The match alone highlighted why underground fighters fell to trained warriors: raw strength just couldn’t match refined technique.

Baines’s purpose here was to discern their sword flows. For the large boy, was he using heavy sword flow or destructive sword flow, and for the smaller boy, was it quick sword flow or light sword flow? That was what he came to discern.

Eventually, the larger boy won. Unable to understand a thing, he stayed for the next match.

The next match featured a girl with a whip against a boy with dual daggers.

The whip cracked, striking from unpredictable angles and deflecting from various sides. ’She’s using a changing sword style,’ Baines was amused. After all, changing sword style was what he had chosen to adopt. Changing movements mid-swings, moving from unpredictable directions, combined with his sword resonance, he could easily change techniques mid-swing.

The boy’s sword kept showing illusions, confusing her about where the daggers were going. ’He’s using illusion style.’ If the illusion wasn’t showing, one would think it was changing style.

He watched two other matches before returning to the tower. When he got back to his room, he used Eye to replay the matches, focusing especially on the one using the great sword. After all, he needed it to continue his progress on Absolute cut and destruction. freēnovelkiss.com

Without being able to find anything, he read the book on flow all over and went back the next day.

This time, the same greatsword user faced a longsword wielder.

When they collided, the one with the long sword didn’t seem to be pushed back at all. Instead, the one with the great sword seemed to be pushed back.

The fight continued with Baines wondering why the boy wasn’t pushed back one bit.

’Then one of them must be using a heavy sword while the other is using a destructive sword.’ He mused. From what he could see, the heavy sword was just like that, heavy, while the destructive sword’s effect was on impact, ’Is that the difference?’ He couldn’t help but think there was more to it.

However, before he went further, he asked, ’Eye, according to the information you have absorbed, where were these sword styles created from?’

[ALL SWORDS LEAD TO ONE—VARIABLE SWORD]

’The sword that carries everything with it?’ He had seen the variable sword on the first page of the book on flow, but he didn’t think it was all that special. Well, unless one was chasing the pinnacle of the sword.

After musing over a bit, he couldn’t help but think, ’Then what was his second sword resonance for?’ The only effect of it was being able to freely change techniques from any direction. But that even felt like the effect of the first resonance. So, it couldn’t be all right?

’Perhaps there is something I haven’t done?’ This wasn’t the first time he was thinking it. ’Well, the book said to focus on the flow.’ That was how he threw away any useless thoughts and focused on the flow of their weapons.

Even when the match changed and different sword styles clashed, he focused on the flow

As he was dazed, a thread suddenly flashed before him.

His attention was gripped by that thread. ’What was that?’ He looked with his heightened sense. His heart raced. ’Did I just lose it?’ He couldn’t find it again.

He looked around, and the sky was already dark, even the students sparring had returned. With a sigh, he retired back to the tower’s accommodations.

But he was back the next day.

Different sword style users came today; however, he didn’t mind. He wasn’t here just to find out about the heavy and destructive again, he was here for that thread.

And he focused once more. The thread showed up twice that day.

Finally, by the third day, he caught on to the thread and was able to follow it.

’Yes,’ He didn’t know how, but he caught on to it. ’Do I pull it?’ After a moment of thought not to lose it, he pulled it.

Shaaaa...

A revelation washed over him as his sight changed, as if a blindfold had fallen away.

His perception, now razor-sharp, well, only limited to weapons, swords specifically. ’Is this the flow?’ He now saw their paths: Destructive, Heavy, Light, Fast, Quick, Illusion, it all lay bare.

Though mastering these styles required practice, their essence was now accessible, and it would be easier. With this, he had fully tapped into the second stage of sword resonance.The moment Baines grasped the Flow of swords, his drive to continue his new techniques surged. Originally, he had planned to use a day, but it took four days, costing him time.

As darkness cloaked Soctis Academy, he headed back to the Sun Tower, only to be halted by a female servant. Wordlessly, she gestured toward a figure a few paces away.

Pale skin, swirling gold eyes, and her forehead marked by the same sun emblem as the imperial successors.

"Let’s meet again," the woman said softly.

’So it was the princess,’ Baines mused.

"The princess wishes to speak with you," the servant said, her tone flat.

...

With little choice, Baines followed them to a pavilion separate from the dormitories, and its garden was a tranquil enclave of calm and peaceful plants. He recognized even plants that could trap a weak-minded minded in a dream state.

The princess dismissed the servant, and they sat alone under the starlit sky. "I’ve heard much about you," she began. "You rarely speak, as if you don’t like it. You must’ve been in a lonely place for so long, probably for the same reason I said earlier."

’She’s not trying to recruit me?’ Baines noted, unlike Kael’s probing, Seraphina’s demands, or Veyron’s camaraderie. Her approach was introspective, almost empathetic. "What do you want?" he asked bluntly.

"Want?" she echoed, as if the notion was absurd, like ’What could she possibly want?’ "No, I sensed my opposite in you, and I was curious, what happened to you?"

Baines remained silent.

"If you won’t share, that’s fine too," she said. "But at least answer this: what keeps you going?"

’Keeps me going?’ The question caught him off guard, but he answered, "Progress."

"Progress?" she murmured, her eyes distant. As someone sharing a mirrored yet opposite pain, she understood.

The feeling that anything he did was towards achieving his goal, and the fact that there were results to show for it, was the result Baines meant.

Training in the ruins, gathering achievements in the last front and Darkan, those he killed, those he saved unilaterally, the pains he felt, those treasures he got, and the reward for doing all these was his brother’s return.

That was progress, and he would keep doing it until he found them all.

Curious, he turned the question back, "What keeps you going?"

She paused, startled, then said, "Who said I keep going?"

Baines understood instantly.

She wasn’t living, she was waiting. Suicide would disgrace her family and their god, so she was waiting, waiting for the schemes of one of her siblings to take her life.

Basically, the princess was fed up with life.

When Baines arrived here, he saw no guards, felt no assassins hiding around in the corner. Meaning if he even killed her and her servant, no one would know, and maybe the worst part was, she was wishing for that to happen.

He, burning to reunite with his family and erase his enemies’ legacy, sat opposite a princess weary of existence, yearning for oblivion.

Neither tried to sway the other nor convince them otherwise; their exchange laid bare their extremes. No more words were needed. Baines rose and left.

...

Back at the Sun Tower, the registrar greeted him.

"Kirk Barn, you’ve come." She handed him a letter. "There’s a joint operation for students from the first to fifth floors to investigate the phenomenon in Pollum Village."

Pollum Village, it was the village near the ashenfall ruins where Baines had emerged post-training.

He nodded, taking the letter, his mind aligning with the registrar’s unspoken doubts. ’First-floor students on missions?’

Typically, only fifth-floor students undertook regular assignments, and a phenomenon of such scale needed 7th floor mages in the least.

It was so obvious. ’They’re probing for my whereabouts,’ he thought, nearly sneering.

They wanted him to join the exploration and join, while they sent people to closely watch out for anything he did. A month ago, he’d actually complied either way, however with the third treasure, everything changed.

Entering his room, his senses flared. The space wasn’t his room anymore, he had entered another person’s space, likely their domain.

Mist swirled around twin mountains, it was oddly similar to the old man’s dark world.

Clang!

He drew his sword, blocking an incoming strike, the force pushing him back and making him grunt in pain. A figure materialized, wreathed in dark grey energy.

"Yes, it is you," the figure said. "I’d have been disappointed if the one I killed with one strike was you."

’Ashenfall,’ Baines muttered recognizing the space, the realization clicking. The assassin who killed him wasn’t from the Black Sun, it was the Ashen family.

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