Chapter 237: Chapter Two Hundred Thirty Eight

"Ow!" I yelped as a rock smacked into the back of my skull. The stone  turned to powder on impact, having been thrown hard enough to break on  my higher ranked head. I reached up to grip my head with a hiss of pain,  spinning around to try to spot the person who threw it. Something I had  no luck doing while wearing this gods damned blindfold. I heard a  chuckle to one side and whirled to face that direction. "How is this a  useful training exercise?" I snarled at Abel, who was completely hidden  from my sight.

Abel's voice echoed around us. "I already  told you this. When you're working with a partner, you need to be able  to function as if you're two halves of a whole. It's not enough to just  cover their back. You need to abandon your own defense and dedicate  yourself solely to theirs. A proper partnership means you can unleash  your full attack power at all times with no thought to defending  yourself. Protecting your partner can be done offensively, but in order  for that to work, you need absolute trust."

I whirled  uselessly in circles, listening for the sound of stones flying. Not near  me, but off to the side where Callie stood. I couldn't resist pointing  out the obvious though. "Yes, but there has to be a better way to do  that than...THIS. This is ridiculous-" My eyes widened behind my mask as  I heard a sound, shooting out to attack the spot I heard the stone  split the air. My fist hit nothing and I heard Callie yelp in pain as  the sound of a rock being destroyed against a human skull rang dully in  the air.

I winced. "Sorry baby." I got a snarly of  annoyance in response, but Callie didn't speak. It was my turn now  anyway though, so it wasn't like it would matter. Still, I had to admit,  I HAD actually noticed that attack, if belatedly. I groaned. "Ok. I get  the basic idea, but can you explain the actual mechanics of this  bullshit again? Because if you can't make it make sense, I'm going to  assume you just like throwing rocks at us."

That got a  snicker from our teacher. "Fine. I'll explain it one more time. When  you're operating as part of a team, you are half of a whole.  Concentrating one protecting yourself and working with your partner are  TWO tasks. Separate tasks that detract from each other. However, when  you abandon self defense and dedicate yourself completely to  cooperation, you reach a level cohesion impossible when you're just two  independent entities supporting one another."

There was  another whoosh of air and a crack against my skull as I staggered under  another rock blow, yelping in pain. I wasn't allowed to block his  attacks on me. Only the ones aimed at Callie. I also wasn't allowed to  fucking SEE. Apparently the point of this was to hone our instinctual  response to danger aimed at the other to work indistinguishably from our  own survival instinct. By making it perfect reflex to defend the other  person, we would have deeper integration in combat.

Being  able to see the attacks coming would make this a conscious effort rather  than a reflexive action. So we both got to wear fucking blindfolds and  try to defend the other person in darkness based on intuition and the  brief instant of noise when the rock was launched. I sighed, devoting  myself to perceiving...everything. I really needed to get this down,  since we apparently wouldn't be allowed to stop until we managed it.

I  closed my eyes (not that it mattered with the blindfold, but it just  felt right) and focused on my senses. Hearing. Smell. Taste. Touch.  Literally anything that could function in a helpful way. I could have  used a skill obviously. Seek Hidden would be perfect here. But despite  my complaining I was mildly interested to see if this would work. I  already felt like I was seeing some results, and I didn't want to ruin  my possible gains by cheating. It would defeat the whole fucking purpose  of asking for their help if we just ignored them.

A sigh  of air split the space a few feet to my side, and I lashed out at the  spot as quickly as possible. At the last second though, I altered my  course, aiming instead right in front of where the thing had been when I  heard it. I didn't manage to  actually land the hit, but I DID manage  to slightly graze it. I heard a grunt from Callie, but it sounded  different. "Time out!" Mel called. "That was actually close to a proper  hit. Not exactly reflexive, you're thinking too much, but it's progress,  so you can have a break."

I took off my blindfold,  glancing over to see Callie brushing grey dust off her shoulder. The  slight graze had changed the trajectory slightly. That wasn't bad.  Still. I had to question the process. "Ok. Being able to properly  predict attacks is great and all, but I don't think this is having the  effect you think it is. I'm just learning to predict attacks, and there  are less stupid ways to do that."

Mel snickered at that.  "Do you think so? Quick question then. If you just heard the sound of  the air being disturbed and reacted, how did you know what direction it  was heading? You didn't just predict where it was going, you managed to  perfectly match that prediction to where your partner was standing so  you could properly react to it. You showed an innate grasp of exactly  where Nightstrike was positioned without needing to call out to her or  bother with verbal communication."

Abel stepped into view,  tossing a rock up and down casually. "She's right. You might not think  you're learning anything, but your baseline awareness of each other IS  improving. It's just a slow and irritating process to go through. Trust  me. We did this training too. It's never fun." He paused, catching the  rock. "Well, that's not true. It's fun actually DOING it to someone. But  experiencing the training is never fun."

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"I get it." I  said with annoyance. "I just wish I felt like we were managing this  effectively instead of stumbling through it. Can we take a minute  though? I need some time to kind of mentally reset." Abel looked dubious  for a second, but finally nodded, and I exhaled with relief. There was  such a thing as too much training. Sometimes your brain needed to shift  back to a receptive state before you could learn more.

Producing  a small case from his coat, he gestured us over to the edge of the ring  to sit down. We were in the Pavilion, using some sort of training setup  that he'd had on hand, bracelets that partially suppressed Perception,  and probably did other things I didn't notice.

When we all  sat down he opened the case and started pulling out what looked a bit  like energy bars, passing one to each of us. I took mine, sniffed it  experimentally, then took a bit. I was pleasantly surprised by the taste  of strawberries and cream, and chewed happily. Eventually though, I  swallowed and turned to Abel with a question. "Can I ask you something?  It might be a little abrupt, maybe even personal depending how you look  at it?"

He just shrugged, seemingly uncaring, and I paused  to figure out how to frame my next words. "How do you do it?" I asked.  "How do you kill people so casually? We killed a bunch of people in the  sige, I killed them. I know it was necessary, that they would have  killed or hurt us, but it still makes me sick just thinking about it.  How do you learn to ignore the part of you that recoils at that?"

Rather  than be offended, Abel just made a noise of understanding and interest,  like I'd asked something very interesting. "I suppose to answer that I  would need to really know when it happened. My case was a bit different  though. Cicero and I lost our parents young, and I think that triggered  our abilities sooner than was normal. We were still children when our  powers came to the forefront. We ended up down here, where Alden took us  in, and we were raised for this kind of life from a very young age."

He  looked at Mel wistfully. "Mel was already here when we arrived. She  awakened even earlier than we did. I never asked why. Didn't seem right.  I suppose none of us ever had the resistance to ending others that  normal people develop and Ascendants unlearn. For other Ascendants, I  suppose part of it is recursion. Cultivation is brutal, we all know it  deep down, we all know that there are only so many stories to tell, and  that for ours to continue others must end, even if we fight it."

"But."  He said. "If you're asking how to turn that off, how to stop caring  when you take a life...don't. It's inconvenient, and messy, but caring  like that makes you better. It's a little bit of humanity that other  Ascendants mostly don't have. Touchstones like that are, somewhat  counterintuitively good for holding off other forms of recursion as you  grow. If nurtured properly, you can use that as a foundation to build  the person you are in such a way that you'll come out stronger for it."  He sighed. "I'm explaining this badly, but it isn't something you can  understand without a decade or two of recursion behind you. Just trust  me. Don't stop caring. Not until you have to."

It was  strange talking to someone at the same rank as me that was already so  much further into their life as an Ascendant. Even stranger because he  felt so much further along the process of becoming a legend than I was.  We had the same Impact, but it felt like he'd left behind so much more  of his humanity. Was it the time? Was I somehow avoiding recursion by  sprinting through the ranks? But then again had I really? I'd changed so  much since becoming an Ascendant.

Maybe it was the fact  that I was a superhero. Abel wasn't exactly a villain, the WCP didn't  really delineate that kind of thing, but he wasn't considered a hero  even back in the day. Abel was closer to a pure cultivator than a heroic  cultivator. Hell, I didn't even know if he used the job system. That  wasn't the kind of thing you asked someone who was already going out of  their way to help you. The subject of recursion never failed to unsettle  me when it came up.

I just sighed. This shit was  complicated. I finished my power bar and popped to my feet, putting the  wrapper in my pocket. "Alright. I think that's enough philosophy. I  believe you two still have rocks to throw at our heads. I'd like to get  this training out of the way so we can move on. You said this is a  necessary first step right?" I was now mostly convinced it wasn't just  an excuse to beat on us, but I couldn't help but ask one more time. My  questions couldn't possibly be more annoying than the training itself,  so I hardly had a reason to feel bad.

Abel stood up,  stretching casually despite having been doing nothing but throwing rocks  at us for like two hours. "Once your awareness of each other has  reached an instinctive level we can begin combat training. I'm not going  to start teaching you when you'll just develop bad habits you'll need  to unlearn. This is the first step, we need to get it right so the  following ones will be built on a stable foundation." He tossed a rock  up and caught it, giving me a vicious grin. "Now, blindfolds back on. We  have work to do." Joy. My head was aching already.

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