Lucian unwrapped the cloth from his son on the seat next to him, and the child's body shuddered at the sudden exposure.
He let his son move around on the seat, but the little guy didn't do anything except wiggle his toes and arms, and make strange noises with his lips, as if complaining that he was cold and wanted his blanket back.
Lucian started measuring him, and found that his son was now the length of a loaf of bread. He noted it in the diary:
Today marks two weeks and 4 days. Our son is now 40 cm long and weighs 1.9 kg. He is moving his lips and opening his eyes while I talk to him.
He also likes to wiggle his toes and fingers. He is still not very active when he is not in my arms. I think he might be a little shy. Maybe he is a little afraid of the world outside his blanket.
Lucian tried to draw his son on the page and ended up making him look like a loaf of bread with a head. He showed the drawing to his son, "Do you think your mother will like it?"
The baby responded with a sneeze, and the spit bubbled out of his mouth, his face scrunching up in disgust.
"Alright, I get it, not a masterpiece," Lucian wiped the spit off the baby's face, "Let's put you back in your cocoon," he wrapped the cloth around the baby.
The weather was getting warmer, but it was still cold at night.
Securing his son back on his chest, Lucian resumed his work, going through the research papers that had been submitted to him.
The East Sea was a place that most people avoided. No ships sailed near the area, and no fishermen dared to cast their nets in those waters.
The waves were calm, and the water was clear, but the East Sea was known for its deadly eastern inhabitants ─ Deep Zone Reavers.
Compared to regular pirates who operated in groups and robbed ships, Reavers were a class above them, operating as a full on nation, with their own language and culture.
Legends said the strongest Kingdom had been the East, before a great flood swallowed their land and destroyed their homes, only leaving behind the Lost East Walls.
While the North depended on the Earth's Core, and the South on the Sun, the East drew its strength from the Moon.
Easterners could dive and repel water, sense what others couldn't, and track their prey from great distances, no matter how well hidden.
The most powerful easterners were rumored to be able to protect a ship from a tidal wave with the gravitational force of the Moon.
'Gravitation force, huh?'
Lucian had never witnessed someone use a gravitation force of the Sun or the Earth's Core with his own eyes, not even the ruby knights during the ambush had used that kind of power. He only saw the aftermath left by the Duke.
Celine said that Emerald Knights had the necessary basics to do it, but only a few of them could, due to the complexity of the technique.
A knight would have to tap into the astral plane, move their projection outside their physical form, then use it to impose gravitational force on an external object.
Lucian wondered if it worked similarly to how he could seize control of a dead person's body. Was he using the astral plane to move to the other body and take control of it?
'Not quite,' Voice answered, 'You can't take control of anything. You can only move and shape your astral form.'
The binding between the southerners worked on the same principle.
Northerners couldn't transfer messages between each other, but they could transfer blessings without backlash through great distances.
Those were innate abilities that came naturally; anything beyond that was considered a skill and needed to be mastered.
The theory of great gravity was a shared concept among all kingdoms.
People from different nations could tap into their sources (Moon, Sun, Earth's core) to pull their astral projection outside their body and inflict damage on their opponents or protect their allies.
It required a deep connection to their source, which couldn't be felt or manipulated by their human senses. Lots of mediation and rest were involved, a very unfamiliar process to a man like Lucian.
'How can one get stronger through doing nothing but focusing on their breathing and clearing their mind of everything?' he wondered.
'An impossible feast for you,' Voice, who was a victim of Lucian's hyperactive mind, said.
'Why did you never tell me about this?' Lucian asked.
'You'll probably find excuses to slack off, thinking that you'll get stronger just by dozing off and doing absolutely nothing,' Voice replied, 'And then when you fail, you'll blame me.'
The disadvantage of not going to school and being homeschooled by a shady, half-mad, half-ghostly, self-proclaimed know-it-all, was that Lucian missed out on a lot of knowledge.
These advanced techniques of the knight were only taught at the Royal Academy.
Had anyone seen the huge library? It had books on any subject, from the study of the mind and its effects on the body, to the study of the body and its effects on the mind. Different paths to knighthood were also explored in detail.
Not all silver knights were the same; some could heal better, some could strengthen their bodies further, some could move faster, some were better at sensing their environment, and so on.
While the knights could choose their paths, Lucian was forced to adapt to the situations at hand. Like getting lost in the desert, pulling cards for long hours…
His mind slowly drifted to Celine, 'Can I send a blessing to her from here? Will she feel it?'
'Voice?' Lucian called out. Something told him that Voice was intentionally hiding this from him.
Wasting blessings on others would mean more resources to spend on tempering his own body. Less power for him.
But the cut she had on her stomach was deep…
'Dumb! DUMB!' Voice echoed in Lucian's mind, as he chided him for his foolishness.
Lucian never wasted his time on training his blessing for the above reason, so he had no hope of sending one to Celine.
There were so many paths, and so little time.
'Aaaaaaghhhhh,' Lucian wanted to tear apart the report, feeling the stress building up.
The power gap was so big that he could feel it in his bones whenever he thought about what he was against and what he needed to achieve.
'My feral army can't fight on sea yet,' Lucian groaned, 'Too many things. TOO MANY THINGS! If nobody stops the Easterners, they will take over all the sea routes! Ugh!'
╔═══ Author's note ════╗
I wonder if you can feel his frustration.😅
Of course, there are disadvantages to not going to school. I never said there weren't any, heh.
Btw, villainess reached 52nd place in power ranking, so thank you all who donated their powerstones!
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