Chapter 90: Arcane Projection
The simple complete circle, the one Moon was familiar with and even imagined himself a few times blasting Uon’s eyes with, was now being displayed.
Moon instinctively covered his eyes and kept them shut, not going to fall for it twice.
Uon raised an eyebrow. "What are you doing?"
Moon opened a small gap in his fingers. "Protecting my eyes, obviously," he stated logically.
Uon squinted. "Who said he could damage your eyes through the screen?"
Moon listened, not in the slightest convinced.
He felt like the yellow giant was trying to bait him for another round of unsettled grudges.
"And who said you wouldn’t attack my eyes to demonstrate?" Moon retorted, still refusing to uncover his eyes.
Uon’s face fell; he looked rather tired.
"First, you urged me to show what Flowing Light looked like; second, I covered my eyes before I demonstrated it," he tried to explain slowly to the distrustful Moon.
Moon thought for a moment; even Fate Alert didn’t react... which meant it wasn’t a real attack.
He gave Uon a sidelong look, but he had something else to say. "Why didn’t it blast yet?" Moon asked.
"I paused the video."
"Paused?"
Moon wasn’t familiar with the word, so he took an ultra-quick look at the screen. It wasn’t moving.
"Oh, you can freeze the guy inside that thing?" Moon exclaimed, raising his eyebrows.
"It was recorded a long time ago," Uon tried to explain.
Moon didn’t know what recorded meant; it was different from what he remembered on the first floor.
Though he decided he wouldn’t ask anyway for now. ’I’ll figure it out somehow later,’ he assured himself.
Then, before he knew it.
BANG~
Uon resumed the video again, and the flowing light exploded.
"Oh!" Moon squinted his eyes at the bright light. "It isn’t as bad as expected."
"That’s what I’m saying; the brightness level can’t be higher than the screen brightness," Uon elaborated.
Moon scratched his head. ’This, I’ll also find out.’ He noted the cryptic speech to be investigated in the future.
The old man resumed his speech, demanding Moon’s attention instantly.
{As you have seen, the regular Flowing Light is one you’re all familiar with and some can easily perform.}
He paused before the orb started emitting light. It was the same light, yet it felt like the entire mass was working differently.
{Instead of activating the art independently, letting Echo scatter in the process, how about having your Echo be a mass, a unit, and projecting it at one of its corners?}
BANG~
A similar explosion of light came to be. Moon wasn’t just trying to focus; he was completely lost in the sight.
His mind, which usually found it challenging to focus and drifted meaninglessly, was now like a marching train, unstoppably focused on that one thing before his eyes.
"Did you see it?" Uon asked.
No answer came. He took a glance at Moon, only to find his eyes fixed wide open on the screen.
’So you do know how to focus sometimes,’ he thought to himself, feeling rather liberated.
Thus, Moon kept watching every detail of the lecture that went on for another hour. Once it was done,
"Ah, I’m tired," he exclaimed as he leaned back into his seat.
For some reason, he did look exhausted. "What just happened to me?" he asked Uon, who retracted his arm at last after a very long hour.
Moon blinked a few times. He looked at Uon, who looked like he was just fine. "Why am I tired?"
"Your attention span is disgustingly nonexistent!" Uon spoke words Moon again didn’t understand.
He added right away, "Anyway, can you actually get or try doing what Grandmaster Zen did?"
Moon rubbed his chin. "I understand what he did, but I’m not sure if I can do the same."
"Well, to summarize, Arcane Projection requires a special state of Echo. It doesn’t consume much Echo in the process of projection, and it requires the circles to be drawn or imprinted somehow on the mass of Echo," Uon gave Moon a quick recap.
Moon nodded; it was about as much as he understood.
He, by default, had one of the requirements.
Uon stood. "Now the rest is for you to figure out; I don’t have this state of Echo anyway." He turned around, leaving Hall 1. On his way, he paused for a moment.
"Teacher Samuel will be waiting for you in the arena after dinner; he has a special lesson for you."
With that, Uon opened the door and left, leaving Moon behind in deep thought.
Before long, he also stood and headed to his room.
He sat on his bed, closed his eyes, and tried to play the scene in his mind.
’I’ve been trying since last night to find a way to soften and shape Echo... It failed every once in a while, and it failed every single time in reality.’
He was thinking of Hypothetical Prospective, his Ascension gift that had done no harm nor good up until this moment.
Maybe it let him realize how bad his injuries were, but other than that... it didn’t do anything.
The state of his Echo wasn’t something that could be resolved anytime soon from what he saw. Also, considering the fact that Samuel recommended Arcane Projection instead of trying for long was another indicator.
He, for a fact, had his Echo disabled for a long while. Disabled compared to normal people, at least.
Moon himself was pretty happy with it for some reason.
That lump felt fun, and he also had some ideas he wanted to try in combat soon.
But for now, he needed to see if this new method of utilizing arcane arts would work.
So, he extended his hand, letting the lump pop out.
’A perfect circle,’ he thought while running his finger over the lump of Echo, trying to draw the circle crudely.
His attempts, in and out of his sampling space, all resulted in what was known in the description as a null result.
None of his attempts reflected on the world, and his attempts in the world never matched those in the sampling space.
Only that one occasional forced failure that didn’t follow the rules of imagination made the two worlds connect.
He didn’t hold back; whatever came to his mind, he tried without hesitation.
The old man in the video could just look at the Echo and the circle came to exist. He tried that at first, but it didn’t feel much different from his first attempt... back when he couldn’t even release his Echo.
So he needed to find a way.
A method to imprint the circle on the Echo.
He tried to make a circle with his fingers, with a knife, with Liquid Mountain.
He even lifted the bed and tried to use the leg as something to draw with.
He then tried to make a circle with his thumb and index fingers. The tips touched, and he placed his Echo on it.
"Would this work?" he asked, a question he obviously knew the answer to.
It didn’t.
Time ran, sprinted... The bright sky was now darker than black.
He didn’t know what day it was or what happened outside.
He didn’t bother himself with anything, but this was getting out of hand.
In his frustration, Moon had one last thought for the day.
One more attempt that he didn’t know if it would work or not.
But it was the last thing he could do.
He brought the Echo close to his mouth for a bite.