Chapter 344: An Incomplete Compliment Is Supposed To Do What? Make Me Grateful?

For a moment, even after hearing what Kassie had said loud and clear, I was still confused.

’Ride the gravity?’

’Yes. In simpler terms, it is possible for you to... with the right footwork, movement patterns and balance distribution, ride anything. A horse, the wind, gravity, force and even momentum.’

Her voice disappeared for a second. Then it came back.

’I’ll be taking this moment to teach you how to do that.’

My eyes lit up.

’We’re resuming our intimate teacher-student relationship...’

’Intimate?’ Kassie’s voice dripped with so much venom it sent chills down my spine. Not almost. Actually did.

I chuckled, then remembered Gilbert’s whale was still plunging towards the ground. Kassie’s voice returned at that moment.

’You have, to an extent, mastered the act of using essence around your body. Now it’s time to connect what you have learnt of sensory essence and movement essence in order to use them to your own advantage. And to do that...’

’I must right my body according to sound. Well, not just sound, everything I sense...?’

I had replied in my head because the moment she mentioned connecting sensory essence and movement essence, something just clicked. I wasn’t even sure if I was right, and Kassie’s silence was making it worse.

A moment or two passed and she was still silent.

Just as I decided to call upon her, her voice came out:

’Next time... let me do the talking. But not quite, you aren’t entirely wrong either. If you want to ride something, unless you are more powerful than that thing, you cannot right your body or anything about it according to it. You will be swallowed... what you do is ride against it.’

As she spoke, I was trying to process what she was saying while holding on tight to the seat’s handle.

’But isn’t that contradictory? You need to be significantly powerful to go against something, especially if that something is force, or momentum, or gravity.’

’You’re not looking to tame, you’re looking to take advantage of. It’s the same mechanics of using someone’s power against them.’

I paused... well, mentally, and thought about it.

’Ah, I think I understand.’

Redirection. You couldn’t redirect an attack unless you were strong enough to withstand its force, or unless you knew it was coming. That was the thing. Foresight and anticipation gave you something raw power didn’t: the chance to turn force back on itself before it could swallow you whole.

Like calculating that a straight jab was coming for me. Because I was confident in the prediction, I slammed my palm against the fist the moment it arrived, and the jolt of force traveled right back into his wrist.

That was what Kassie meant. Or what I believed she meant. Either way, I could only decode her information to the level I was informed myself.

Over the past few months, I’d been paying closer attention to Kassie’s lessons than I probably let on. Even our combat sessions, though I may have seemed otherwise. I wasn’t a fool. I recognized the importance.

Kassie might have looked like she had no repertoire of supernatural abilities to turn to like Maggie, but in all honesty, she’d had far more to teach me. Maggie had never even thought to help me with such things, and even if she did, I didn’t think she could out-teach Kassie. The woman simply knew too much, and it was little wonder she could fight so well.

What Kassie said, I applied. The aircraft took its nosedive and neared the surface of the sea. Instead of simply flying and letting myself flow with the wind, I wrapped spirit essence around my body and inverted it.

The inverted essence made my body heavier. It was wrong to move like this, and this sort of thwarting was only possible because I was already riding a torrent of momentum. I twisted my body in the air, latched my feet onto the roof, and sent the inverted essence downwards before returning the flow to normal.

My essence re-registered what I was standing on as the ground. In that moment, I felt stabilized, like I was standing on solid earth.

Still a bit shaky, though. A moment later, I figured that was just my mind. I’d inverted gravity and momentum, tricked them both, but I hadn’t been able to trick my own head yet.

’Well, I’m going to have to trust myself.’

Slowly, I released my grip on the chair handle. Despite the violent momentum, I managed to steady myself and crouched down against the roof like my feet were glued to it.

Nisha and Tristan, who were close by, stared in shock.

"Since when are you able to defy gravity?" Nisha uttered.

I grinned.

"I can do many things. I’m just not one to show."

At the same time, the ship dove into the water and burrowed deep. My hold almost fell apart, but I caught myself and stayed.

A moment afterwards, I heard Kassie’s voice.

’Now this is better. I did not have to repeat myself. Good.’

For a moment, it didn’t quite register as a compliment... then it began to. I tilted my head, a bit confused.

’Hmm... there’s something incomplete about it.’

Gilbert’s airship turned submarine and continued to dive deeper into the sea. We passed groups of unfishly looking fish, passed a giant eel clasping its mouth on a sharklike aquatic creature with swimming legs.

There was a tentacled thing that looked like a Kraken, but none of these creatures noticed or bothered us.

We passed through the dark depths silently and broke into another layer. Here, crystalline light poured through from almost everywhere.

It was like someone had fused a magical but very different sun into the body of the water. The water itself was the source of the light. It wasn’t emitting anything in the obvious sense of the word, yet it was so bright that it didn’t need to. The water simply was light, if I could borrow such a concept.

And the Depth of the Sea... the Waterlands, was a very beautiful place.