Echoes of the Abyssal Blade: Path to Free Will-Chapter 89: Spear Affinity

The days spent with Kedes were brutal, and completely exhausting, filled with sweat, bruises, and an endless ringing of metal grinding against wood.

In the mornings, the air felt thick with mist rising from Dragon Tooth’s colony’s wild undergrowth, the smell of wet earth and overripe fruit hanging in the air.

All of that was happening, and Jonan found himself standing in the arena, spear in hand, with Kedes staring at him.

"Grip it tighter," Kedes barked, his voice coarse like gravel. "The spear isn’t some stick you wave at your enemy. It’s a limb, treat it like one, lose it, and you lose your life."

Jonan obeyed with a nod, and he started adjusting his stance, and he started feeling the rough wood press against his palm.

Kedes demonstrated again. His feet were planted on the ground, his spear was held not too high nor too low, and then he gave a thrust like a viper’s strike.

The natives of Dragon Tooth fought differently than the warriors Jonan had trained with in Starfall.

Here, spears weren’t used for ornamental formations or defensive lines, they were tools of a brutal and efficient hunt.

The tribesmen fought beasts with them, struck down their rivals, and used them to deliver death before an enemy could draw a breath.

Kedes circled him like a predator, correcting every misstep. "Your weight’s too far forward. You’ll eat a counter. See this?" He kicked Jonan’s leg, sending him stumbling. "Fix it."

And Jonan did. He learned the lunges, the turning sweeps, how to plant the butt of the spear and pivot to unleash a brutal upward thrust.

Here, combat wasn’t about elegance, it was about who would strike first. The strikes were designed to cripple limbs, gut throats, and pierce hearts in one motion, and the most important of all, their attacks were carried with the sole intention to kill, with no mercy shown to their enemies.

As each day passed by, Jonan could feel his movements turn smooth; what had started as clumsy imitations became instinct. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

His hands were blistered and callused, his arms ached so fiercely at night that sleep came only in fits. Yet, beneath it all, a strange thing began to stir.

It was during one such morning, while Kedes demonstrated a feint-turn-thrust sequence, that Jonan felt it. A flicker. Not from his heart, where his aura usually gathered and moved with the secret technique, but elsewhere. Subtle, faint as a dying ember in the wind.

He froze, not enough for Kedes to notice, but deep inside him, his senses had sharpened now. When he moved the spear again, he felt it—a thin, almost imperceptible thread of presence, something familiar and intimately tied to the weapon in his grip.

No, not the weapon, nor was it any technique; he could feel it, it was an aura.

Jonan concentrated, his mind narrowing. The world dulled around him, and he probed that thread. It wasn’t the oppressive, heavy aura of his heart, the aura born of the secret technique, that carried the ’Belief’ of ’Hatred’ with it. This was another type; it was attributeless, and it was inside his own weapon affinity, the spear affinity.

He was stupefied and dumbfounded by this revelation, he had a weapon affinity now.

His chest tightened. The thing that had plagued him since his earliest days, the absence of weapon affinity, now he got it in him in the unlikeliest of places.

Jonan now felt that maybe the natives of this land were not born with a weapon affinity, instead, they were bestowed the weapon affinities on them by their gods. He has never heard of such an occurrence in Dreavows.

He thrust the spear again, and this time, the thread thickened. It was still weak, like a spider’s silk in a storm, but it was real. The aura didn’t come from his heart. It gathered at a point below his chest and palm, mingling with the weapon.

For the first time, Jonan understood what it meant by having a Weapon affinity.

This term had always been an abstract thing for him. The difference between prodigies and the rest. Those with affinities could channel aura through their weapons with ease, perform battle arts as naturally as breathing. Those without struggled for years with nothing to show.

No wonder the weapon-type battle arts he’d tried before had never resonated with him. Without affinity, the path had been half-closed. But now—

He exhaled. He could feel the spear affinity mark beginning to form, a vague, shifting presence beneath his skin. It wasn’t just a place to store aura; it made the practice of spear arts smoother, the control of aura more efficient, and the comprehension of techniques sharper.

"How is it you’ve gone still all of a sudden?" Kedes growled, closing the distance.

Jonan’s eyes gleamed. He thrust the spear forward, and though it wasn’t perfect, the movement carried a thread of that newfound aura; by mistake, he let the aura seep out.

Kedes’ brow arched, and he thought. "Hmm, what is this? he is able to block me easily, but I could see that his muscles are not that powerful enough to counter my attacks yet."

Keeping his doubts to himself, Kedes kept pushing Jonan back.

Jonan said nothing, but inside, his heart pounded, "What a mistake." He now kept the aura hidden, he was too excited for a moment.

From that moment, training changed. His strikes felt truer. Where before each technique had been a struggle against unseen resistance, now his body moved with a strange ease. Not flawless, not yet, but the spear no longer felt like a stranger in his grasp.

After the day’s practice, Kedes smeared a pungent oil across Jonan’s skin, thick and golden, drawn from the glands of the beasts. The sensation was instantaneous pain, and it was searing. Jonan gritted his teeth as fire danced beneath his flesh.

"You want strength? This is the only way to move forward," Kedes muttered. "Let the pain carve your weakness away."

It wasn’t aura training. No glowing runes, no secret techiques. This was flesh and blood forging.

The natives relied on their bodies as much as their willpower. And as the days rolled into weeks, Jonan’s muscles toughened, his bones thickened, and his skin became harder than tanned leather.

Jonan also followed Kedes in his hunting expeditions, in the dense forests where mist curled like serpents between the trees, and the cries of beasts echoed through the dark.

Jonan fought alongside Kedes, hurling spears into charging lizards, driving the haft into the throat of a six-legged cat-thing, cleaving through the skull of a gnarled, boar-faced horror.

Each hunt game gave him valuable experience, and also led him to understand his physical strength better, in situations where he cannot use his aura, his body and flesh will cover for him.

But where the other natives hit a ceiling, limited by their flesh, Jonan’s path was unbounded.

Because of the secret technique, because of the aura of ’Hatred’ burned into his heart, marking him a spirit forger, and now, with a spear affinity igniting within him, his path diverged from them.

The natives of the colony also noticed that Jonan’s physical strength had reached the fourth grade, just below the elders.

In the quiet hours of night, Jonan experimented alone. He sat cross-legged, a spear across his lap, and called forth the aura in his heart—the thick, oppressive ’Belief’ of ’Hatred.’ It came to him easily now, coiling in his veins, thickening his muscles.

Then he reached for the other one. The thin thread of affinity at his chest. It was attributeless by default, but when Jonan willed it, it took on his crystal attribute, hardening his flesh and bone, giving him a defensive force, but it was not good for attacks.

And when he willed it to change again, he felt yet another slumbering spark. It was of Fire, not from the secret technique, but from within himself. It crackled like a hibernating ember, it was a destructive power in nature, and it was good for attacks.

And he also tried reining it in, he did not want anyone to notice his aura-related abilities here in these lands.

By the close of the second month, Jonan realized something more.

The weapon affinity he received wasn’t just a boon. It was a sign that maybe this was the greatest opportunity in this ’Abyssal Ruins’.

In this land, affinities weren’t given at birth, they were bestowed by the will of the gods on to their subjects. Which meant Jonan’s blessing wasn’t a coincidence, this blessing he received might be the greatest opportunity of this ruins.

He was wondering if, now that he had gotten the greatest opportunity, he should get back to Dreavows, but from what he had heard, that the exit to the ’Abyssal Ruins’ are always present in the middle of the land.

He had to now ask the chief about the middle of this land, where it is, or if he has even been there.