Chapter 1677: Fruits of Comprehension (1)
"...Only a couple of days remain before they have to leave the ocean, yet they haven’t even moved anywhere near where the second test is."
Letting out a faint sigh, the Director continued to watch Valyr and Ataraxia through the screen in front of her.
Thrumming her fingers in both disappointment and impatience, she faintly recalled the words she said to herself almost three months ago.
"Back when I sent you a message about their arrival, you told me that they were the fated inheritors of his legacy," the Director murmured, her gaze briefly shifting towards the ceiling.
"Yet, even though so much time has passed since their passing of the first test, the farthest they’ve gone is the middle layers of the True Depths."
"Are you expecting them to have a change of heart and head to the layers of the True Abyss in these next couple of days, Progenitor?" she asked, a hint of doubt creeping into her tone.
"...Would they even be able to do so?"
"After all, even I, a peak Rank 7 Myth, face a bit of difficulty when arriving at the layers of the True Abyss." As these words left the Director’s mouth, a bit of fear appeared on her face, her mind briefly recalling the memories she made at the time.
In response to the doubts and questions that were lingering in her mind, the atmosphere surrounding her remained silent, making it seem as if she was just rambling and ranting about her ideals and expectations of the two to herself.
Though, just as she thought that her worries would be left unnoticed, a calm yet amused voice soon echoed within her mind, assuaging some of the concerns she had regarding the current situation.
"Although your performance as the Seventh Guardian has satisfied me throughout these past few millenniums, you should really learn to trust in the newer generation a bit more," the voice said, letting out a slight chuckle.
"Of course, being a part of the Zeihardt Clan yourself, I’m not surprised that you have a negative view of the current generation, especially when it comes to its Heralds."
"However, believe me when I say that these two will inherit his legacy no matter what," the voice continued.
"...If anything, they’re the only ones in the clan worthy enough to inherit it."
"..." Remaining silent after the voice was done talking, the gears in the Director’s mind began to turn as she shifted her attention back to the screen in front of her.
Not knowing what gave the voice great confidence to state such claims, the woman’s questions were soon answered the moment she noticed the duo do something she’d been waiting them to do for almost three months.
Of course, that was to dive deeper into the Ocean of Crystallized Truths.
"...It seems... I should place my faith into the Progenitor more," murmured the Director to herself as she watched Valyr and Ataraxia dive deeper with a slightly wry smile.
"I’ve definitely gotten rusty."
...
’...I know I agreed to it the last time we talked about it, but... are you sure you wanna do this?’
Diving deeper into the Ocean of Crystallized Truths, a look of unease appeared on Ataraxia’s face as he asked Valyr a question.
’Are you seriously chickening out after getting this far?’ replied the latter through their connection, looking at his other self with a hint of amusement. ’Plus, didn’t you say you’d tell me ’I told you so’ if we didn’t gain anything from going through the second test?’
’That... was from a person that didn’t know better,’ said Ataraxia in response, a hint of red suffusing his cheeks. ’But seriously though. After pushing our concepts to this level... are you seriously gonna risk it for something that could possibly kill us?’
Though two more months within the Ocean of Crystallized Truths might not seem like a lot of time for the two to push their concepts any further, with their first month already yielding a ton of improvements, it went without saying that the same thing happened during the next couple of months.
Considering that the initial goal they gave themselves was to push all of their Intents to 5th Grade, the duo did just that, with Valyr spending a bit over three weeks to achieve such a feat.
On the other hand, Ataraxia had already accomplished said goal before the first month had even passed. After all, his other self had spent the majority of the first month forming a new Intent from scratch.
Nevertheless, with the grades of all their Intents more or less equalized, the two briefly took the time to assess whether upgrading their concepts to higher grades was a good idea.
However, after recalling that it took Ataraxia almost an entire year to create a 1st Grade Intent from scratch, the two decided not to go ahead with the idea for the meantime.
Instead, thinking back to the additional concepts Valyr had infused into the [Intent Seed of the Accurate Shot] to transform it into the [Intent of the Silver Death], the two decided to work on their Intents by increasing the quality of the concepts themselves.
With the remaining time they had to stay in the ocean, both Valyr and Ataraxia looked at the list of concepts they comprehended and checked if any of them could be combined to form a more powerful Intent.
For Ataraxia, who had only comprehended a total of five Intents thus far, the only combination he found that would work well was [Intent of True Mana] and [Intent of Spell Control].
Considering his position as an Emissary of the Arcane, the young man decided to go for it, framing the fusion from the perspective of his understanding of mana, as well as the specialty of his class.
With that, he was able to combine the two Intents into one, surprisingly turning it into the 4th Grade [Intent of the Great Arcanist].
On the other hand, with how many Intents he had under his belt, the number of combinations Valyr could make were far greater than the ones his other self had available.
Of course, among the possible combinations he had in mind, there was one the young man prioritized which he felt was a no-brainer to combine from the very start.
Naturally, that was the [Intent of Forging] and the [Intent of the Forger’s Flames].