Ascension of the elder

Chapter 85: It's innocent

"Now are we all caught up?"

"Who are you talking to?" Miranda asked with curiosity covering her face.

"Don't worry about it just roll with it." Kyle responded with a gentle smile.

"Just let him do his things you know how he get's sometimes." Clara put her thoughts into the mix.

"Clara my dear you know that nothing you say will hurt me as I know you don't mean it."

Kyle teased Clara while he grinned at her with a twinkle in his eye. Clara and Miranda were lying on his bed while Kyle was sitting at a small desk he had placed in his room where he was writing in a journal he had begun to keep recently.

"Is it morning already *yawn*." From under the covers of the bead a head emerged which belonged to Elena.

"No Elena it's only 4 in the afternoon we still have a couple of hours until dinner."

"Oh okay I'll go back to sleep then." With that she disappeared beneath the covers again causing Kyle to raise an eyebrow while Clara and Miranda could only giggle to the side.

This had become a regular occurrence as the three girls could usually be found either training or with Kyle. When he was working at his little desk the girls usually lounged around on his bed. Although Clara and Miranda were in love with Kyle they hadn't progressed as Kyle still believed they were far too young (you perverts) and Elena was well a special case. She had absorbed the memories of her host and was incredibly attentive to her younger brother Chad but when it didn't involve him or training she gained an almost godly level of absent mindedness and would always move at her own pace. Kyle enjoyed her company as she brought such a degree of randomness to the house it always brightened his day.

Kyle had been reviewing his progress and that of his people. Kyle himself was now at the seventh level and would be able to breakthrough to the eighth level at anytime. The rest of the household were at a minimum of level 6 which allowed everyone to safely train in external, mage and sorcerer skills. Kyle had begun to train in these when he entered the third level but found that the drain on the main channel was greater than expected. So he limited the people below the fifth level to only use skills with a maximum of 2 sub-nodes.

This would limit the power of the skill but it would reduce the drain, considering nobody should be able to use anything but reinforcement until the fifth level anyway they would still have an advantage over their enemies.

Through experimentation and the use of the library within the mansion Kyle had made good progress in his study of skills. While the sub-nodes within the torso and limbs allowed for body strengthening and in combination allowed for things such as sword waves and power punches by sending mana in an altered form to impact their target, the nodes and sub-nodes located in the central region of the brain governed the use of mage spells.

Part of what he found was only the 8 sub-nodes from level 0 and the 8 from level 1 were what determined the nature of the spell while all the subsequent nodes were used in combination to create a more powerful version of the original 16 types. You could also activate several of the original 16 at the same time to create additional effects or link them to the ones in the torso and limbs to imbue them with elemental power.

Speaking of nodes and sub-nodes as Kyle broke through he found that the increase in them continued with its exponential growth in quantity at level 2 he unlocked a further 16 nodes and 128 sub-nodes and at level 3 it was 32 nodes and 256 sub-nodes. So at each new level after 1 it added the sum of the multiplied the sum of the previous nodes by 2 and the same happened with the length of the main channel hence why Kyle and everyone else had slowed down.

When Kyle was messing around with sorcerer abilities he was surprised that almost everyone had slightly different abilities while the mage abilities if trained could all reach the same or at least similar levels. For example among the abilities Kyle had gained were telekinesis and telepathy while when Miranda had reached the same level as Kyle was previously she instead awoke a limited form of foresight.

Kyle looked into this and found that even within similar abilities there were different limitations. After pondering on this for a while Kyle felt that the most likely reason was that the sections of people's brains that governed the mage abilities would be largely the same but the sorcerer abilities developed with influence from the environment and/or memories.

The final zone to look into was the area which dealt with senses and reflexes in the back of the brain. This area didn't have any active abilities like the rest but if mana was fed into it the brain sensed more and reacted faster. It was a weird feeling when your perception of time slowed to an almost complete stop and you could only move your body at a snail's pace by comparison.

It did however create some interesting spars as once the household had learned to use these abilities the guarding and counter attacks could last for literally hours. Due to his soul sight Kyle could learn and experiment with skills and use them instantly while the others would need time and direction as the couldn't see where they needed to send their mana and had to learn from trial and error with Kyle correcting them when needed.

Learning new skills was necessary and to master them would take time so after discussing it with Faye, Ash and One they had given their respective divisions a set curriculum to master before they could start training in other skills.

As Kyle was reminiscing about all the progress they had made in the last few years his father suddenly burst through the door and slammed it shut behind him while having eyes like those of a hunted animal. Kyle seeing his father like this thought that the enemy had finally begun to move again so he stood and took up his sword before his father's next words floored him.

"Kyle you have to defend me, your mother's master has returned." After saying this he did a truly impressive hero dive and hid under the bed. Literally he ran jumped slid on the floor until he was hidden under the old hardwood bed with the duvet hanging over the sides effectively hiding him from view.

Clara and Miranda who saw this began giggling again as they now saw Landon as their father to be and had grown close to both of Kyle's parents.

"Whosat." Suddenly a little head popped up again with blurry eyes and a confused look.

"Don't worry about it Elena it was just a big rat."

With that statement a thump was heard which sounded suspiciously like a head slamming into the underside of the bead followed by something mumbled which sounded something like 'betrayal'. Elena just gave a humph before disappearing again and now Clara and Miranda were holding each other trying not to laugh while they were red faced with tears in their eyes.

They had taken Elena as their own sister once she had regained control of her emotions and they went everywhere together. They thought that her strange antics were due to the time she spent in a coma and had no idea that within the body of this little girl was a being capable of killing all the gods in this universe.

Kyle looked out of the window and thought of his mother's master, he first met her about 2 and a half years ago after she was finally able to leave the capital. The emperor and his ministers tried everything they could to keep her from leaving but as she wanted to leave they only succeeded in delaying her.

When she arrived Kyle didn't go to greet her as he was working on a new array for the guild. This was a multi glyph array which would be placed within the guild hall as a defensive measure. After Kyle had gotten to know Draken the guild master a little better he found the dour man was actually a very attentive and caring man who spent whatever free time he had helping the newer members. So after Kyle had given him the nickname of "Eeyore" he had told him about the multi glyph arrays and also how his mother was training. Rather than share all this with the main guild he instead chose to keep this within the city and use it to strengthen the array masters present.

He didn't spread the multi glyph array concept as this was Kyle's discovery but the training method was mad freely available to those with residence in the city and a certain standing within the guild. Once the members learned Kyle was the source of this new training he gained a high status amongst them and even the oldest members would bow to him as he walked through.

Apparently his mothers master was angry when Kyle didn't come to greet her and rather than incur her wrath Landon instead led her to where Kyle was working. Landon felt that if his son could take the brunt of her anger it was better to sacrifice him than receive it himself.

When she saw Kyle she was at first ready to break into a tirade of abuse (which she is well known for, even the emperor fears her abuse). Before she could begin however she saw Kyle was creating a multi glyph array then was superimposing another over the top and then another before projecting them into a strange housing of some kind of stone mounted on a metal structure.

How could this kid know array projection and what were those arrays and how could he merge them like that? All of this was going through her head so she approached Kyle while Landon stepped back to be out of the firing line. Kyle looked up and saw this unknown woman approaching but he wasn't concerned as he could see his father hiding away in a corner.

"Good afternoon ma'am can I help you."

The woman paused her steps and looked at Kyle closely. She could see Kyle had trained physically but he wasn't large like the guards and he was definitely not bad looking. What arrested her attention however was the will and intelligence she saw burning in his eyes.

"Good afternoon I'm Susan, could you tell me what you were doing."

Looking over Susan's shoulder at his father Kyle received a nod so he decided to explain.

"Well Susan I'm creating a shielding tool for the array guild. The city is becoming dangerous and I don't want to leave them undefended just in case."

"But what were those array's you placed?"

"Ohh those are multi glyph arrays. By inputting a special command ring I can use multiple core glyphs within a single array without them conflicting."

"Well what about..."

With this several hours of questions and answers ensued after which Susan and Kyle were no longer strangers and were instead fast friends. At some point Maria had arrived and saw a broken Landon sitting facing the corner while her master and her son were happily chatting about various subjects.

Susan wasn't just an array master and clairvoyant, it would be better to say she was a scholar with a wide range of interests and she was also a genius. Kyle really enjoyed talking with her and she felt the same as she finally found someone who could keep up with and even surpass her thoughts.

Returning to the present Kyle could only shake his head at his father's antics before his door was opened with force.

"Damn boy you started early."