"You need to create the skill now. I mean, creating a skill is not that easy. It can't be done just like that!" she said.
"I have an idea." Eiran beamed. "I will flood my blood into my veins and harden them. This way, I get a boost in strength and durability."
He showed her in the book—It was one of the foundational techniques used by Enhancers.
He jumped down and concentrated. His veins bulged and a subtle hardening took place. She swiftly appeared beside him and poked his neck, and everything collapsed.
Her eyes were not impressed, and Eiran chimed in, "I can master it in no time. I'm a fast learner."
"Prince Eiran," she called calmly and seriously, which attracted his attention. "I'm impressed that you came up with that on a whim, but to tell you the truth, this fight is dangerous."
Eiran's excitement depleted. He was anxious, and the hardening he had just shown her was something he had been thinking about from the beginning, before she even came here
"I can help you with that. Luckily, I have a comprehensive Art regarding Body Enhancement. We can go through it slowly."
"Alright." Eiran's voice was low.
The Enhancement Category also had subcategories which included Constitution, Gearforce, Neuroflare, and Attunement.
Constitution was about enhancing the physique, Gearforce enhanced objects and tools, Neuroflare enhanced the brain's processing power, and Attunement enhanced other people's abilities, or the flow of other events or forces that didn't originate from the user.
Eiran's ability to gain hyper-intelligence was also accelerated by Neuroflare, and he understood that even though that wasn't the only aspect.
After explaining to her what he really wanted to achieve and knowing that Eiran touched both Neuroflare and Constitution, she inserted her hand into her long gown and brought out a folded leather.
The plates were moved away from the stone and she spread it the leather. "I would like to explain a little bit of what I can do," she said. This was to make him understand her worth and capability for future plans and reference.
It was very important for the Prince to know what his Chamberlain was capable of doing.
"I train in many disciplines. I won't say I master everything, but when it comes to coaching and training, I'm a jack of all trades. Though I have my own mastery in a specific field that requires life and death combat."
She then began to explain the spread leather. "I created this as a project when I dabbled in Constitution mastery. It's rudimentary but very effective. I call it Blood Steel!"
It was a complex sketch of human anatomy regarding blood vessel pathways as well as the heart and brain.
But it wasn't just the blood vessels—there were some aspects that Eiran couldn't grasp, and he asked, "What are these and these?"
"Good. Those are Talent Energy nodes." She said with a smile. She was ready to explain the whole sketch, but thankfully Eiran had seen the points of importance.
"Hardening your body with blood is not about the blood itself. That's damaging—except if you can regenerate your blood fast, it will be counterproductive. This Art pursues subtle interactions with your blood and Talent Energy in relation to the Enhancement Category, and it creates a standard Skill of hardening."
Eiran nodded with concentration. 'This is great. It's more efficient than what I envisioned. And there won't be pain.' His own idea would cause him mild pain and numbness of the body.
"I like it," he said.
"Good. But I must tell you, its strength is also its weakness. The hardening has no upper limits—as long as one has talent energy, it will rise up, unlike other more refined Arts that have caps. Those with caps has to master a limit for their body to adapt, then move ahead. But Blood Steel can be damaging if you go too far. To avoid that, you need to regulate it yourself."
"I still like it."
"I can make some adjustments quickly to suit—"
"Do you have one that can accelerate speed and perception?"
"Yes." She pulled out another leather and spread it. "It's not sharp continuous speed but short bursts of speed, though upon mastery you can link them up. Snapping Steel is more advanced than Blood Steel because I improved upon the other. However, the two can't be used at the same time when Blood Steel is forced into the body."
She brought out another leather. "This is for perception. Snapping Steel proved to be too much for me to keep my perception. This is for complementary—it allows my perception to speed up with the burst of my speed. Or if I link it with my intuition, once attacked at high speed, I can react in time."
"You are really amazing," Eiran said. One needed to have incredible knowledge about anatomy as well as Talent Energy behavior to come up with all these.
His knowledge of anatomy—his own or the people he came across—was instinctive and intuitive due to his control over blood, but he had zero knowledge about talent energy and wouldn't be able to come up with these easily.
"Explain to me in easy mode the talent energy effect on the skills!"
She took a deep breath and began to speak.
Immediately Eiran felt sleepy as most of it went over his head, only capturing what he might need.
An hour later, Eiran's head was about to explode. It turned out he hated listening to things he wasn't interested in, and her explanation mostly contained those.
He leaned back and lay down, eyes closed, relaxing his mind. Minutes later, he sat up, eyes still closed. He then began to recall everything she said, along with the sketches and his body's nature.
Hyper-intelligence took center stage, with incredible focus analyzing and grasping the very essence of each art in relation to himself.
Nyara Dume became silent. This feeling was the same he had given off when she first came in here and she slowed down her breathing to not interrupt him.
Unfortunately, she was calm but her blood was raging with emotions. The trial she had barely passed indicated the insane potential Prince Eiran possessed. But not only potential—also his Talent and his ability to command that talent.
From what she knew, few other chamberlains would have passed that trial. Even she had to literally accept death to be here.
Of course, she was shocked by his lack of knowledge, childish demeanor, and lack of fighting skills, but that didn't waver her respect for him. She knew he just needed time to be honed.
She silently sighed as she looked at her body. It was very thin, skinny even, as if she had gone days without food. She was weak too, couldn't even bring half of her former strength. But her imperfections had just been gone in mere moments.
How terrifying would his healing ability be to readjust her body's fundamental foundation without the crippling her future?
She had resigned herself to a broken body, a ruined future. Yet in minutes, without even knowing it, the prince had restored her.
Her lips curled up gently, tears welling up in her eyes as she felt her internal body. Everything was where it should have been. She recalled...
"You worry too much, my dear!" An aged woman barely walking with her cane had said. "Who knows? Maybe they dismissed you because someone better will come!"
That was her great-grandmother speaking to her when she was rejected once more from being a chamberlain.
"Done!" Eiran said as he opened his eyes. "I want to sleep, but I shouldn't." He complained.
Nyara had cleansed her face quickly to not show tears to him. "We still have about six hours. But you need to train with a weapon or something. I mean, I don't know—can you even win?"
"Of course. I hope so!"
Eiran jumped down, walked to the open space, and stretched his hands.
"Here goes my technique!" he said. Nothing happened, but Nyara reached him fast, hand around his face.
"Impressive. You even created stages!" She felt his internal changes. What he had just used was the first stage. It was invisible from the outside.
"This will be great for resisting internal force attacks!"
Eiran relaxed with a frown. "I can't speak when I use it."
"That is because you haven't mastered it. Talking is a distraction," she said, her face full of praise.
"But I can't use the next stage," Eiran complained.
"Don't worry about that. This one is more than enough. I'm glad you put limits at a time. Your tender body would be harmed without that... You are really a great genius. You did what took me time to do in just a moment." She couldn't help but praise.
"Maybe I should train more to grasp it!"
"No. We don't have time. Since you grasped this so fast, we should go on to the weapon stage. I can help see what weapon will best suit you!" She said. Her reasoning was he can train the weapon and the new technique.
"Alright." Eiran wasn't satisfied with the technique but dropped it since she was more experienced than him.
Nyara guided Eiran's palms to rest on her palms, then made him think of weapons his body would be best attuned with. Her body glowed beneath her attire and she pulled back.
A silhouette began to form between them.