Chapter 107 - A Crippling Disability

"Yaawn~"

A well rested Ellis woke from her sleep stretching her back and arms as bones generated satisfying cracks, her squinted eyes took a few seconds to fully open and look at the surroundings

"Had enough sleep?"

YuJu asked to which she nodded gratefully, it could be seen that he was done with his work since he was merely patting Anput in his lap while the four armed Orelic stood still by the side

"Good, let's set out then"

Patting the blissful hound to get off his lap he quickly stood up and led the two back into the dragon which was already loaded with all the cages housing the remaining little beasts

"Aaron, blend into the wall and try not to let anyone spot you, it doesn't matter even if they wreck the place, you just need to stay hidden"

The big rock nodded its head in understanding before phasing into the nearby wall, it was a slow process but wouldn't take too much time

With everything settled and after making sure nothing was forgotten he booted up the golem and exited through the hole, taking to the sky with the destination being the prison tower, Hortus

While sitting inside silence took over the room for a few minutes, YuJu was making sure everything was working properly and the two by his side didn't want to distract him lest something goes wrong, it was only after finishing all the check-ups did he glance back at them, keeping the screen viewing outside within half his vision

"Ellis"

"Yes?"

"Remember those items you stalked up on back at the mall?"

The raven head cocked her head to the side trying to recall, combing through her memory as to what they did there until she chanced upon a rather peculiar order he gave

"You mean when you had me get some bras for training?"

She asked with a cautious tone, whatever he had in mind might not be so fun for her

"Yes, it's time to put them to use"

He nodded with a slight smirk

"What your training to learn is spatial awareness, though your high intelligence helps you manoeuvre at battle with ease there will come a time when enemies will use skills that disorient your senses, in order to guard against such cases you must develop a strong sense of spatial awareness"

"And the bras help to do so how?"

"By using them to learn equipping"

The term didn't ring a bell so she asked for further explanation

"Equipping is a slang word used to refer to the act of wearing clothes or armours instantly with the help of spatial storages, by developing this skill you would not only learn spatial awareness but gain a good technique that helps in battles and reacting to surprise attacks"

Only now did she understand what he wanted her to do

"So you want me to try and wear my bra without using my hands and only the spatial storage?"

"Precisely so"

"Then why couldn't I do that with normal clothes?"

That was a very important question to her

"Much easier to learn covering one section of the body than clothing multiple limbs"

A pretty simple answer, one that made sense too so she couldn't refute anymore

"...How do I do this training"

Her tone seemed sounded like someone who gave up hope

"You need to learn how to take things out of your spatial storage without touching it first, then you will have to have it wrap around you upon coming out, how you learn to do this is up to you"

'Hmm, that doesn't sound too hard or weird'

Turns out it wasn't as bad as she thought it would be so she tried that immediately

"...."

"...."

"...."

For minutes she stared at her chest in concentration, trying as hard as she could to call something from within, her eyes were so focused she didn't notice the worried looks Anput was giving her containing worry and some sort of pity for an unknown reason

"Haah...I can't seem to control it without touching"

With an annoyed breath she complained, he didn't help her however and only checked for progress from time to time

Since he wasn't going to lend a hand she decided to use a different approach to learn this skill

First she put her hand on the feather and rummaged through the space to take out a bandeau bra

'I'll try to store it without using my hands first, that should give me a clue on how to take it out the same way'

Laying on the ground she put the bra on top and tried to have it sucked into the feather and, just like before, all she achieved was looking weird by staring hard at the still bra for a few minutes

"Stop using your sight and start using your other senses, remember that its spatial awareness your developing"

Her master advised while maneuvering through the skies

'Oh, right, I'm using the wrong sense'

Once the eyes were closed her mind switched its focus onto feeling the thin fabric resting on her skin, especially through the area where the tattooed feather was, from there she could instantly feel energy leak out of the spatial feather and envelop the part touching it

"Huu"

The heightened state of mind suddenly crumbled, an annoyed breath escaping her lips trying to dispel thoughts of throwing up that appeared out of nowhere

"Nausea?"

"Yes Master"

"It's a sign of spatial perception incapacity, since your physical awareness is actually great then it should be an energy one, how much time did it take for you to feel nausea after spreading the energy?"

"A few seconds"

YuJu gave a surprised glance at the ever talented woman

"A few seconds? You might have been mistaken, try again"

Ellis nodded, somewhat worried, then tried using energy from the spatial storage to envelop the bra again

Thoughts of vomiting came about almost instantly which she tried hard to dispel, this only made them quickly escalate causing her to almost lurch forward to gag

Seeing this YuJu's brows furrowed and he faced the screen once more, one could easily tell something was wrong with the now anxious swordswoman

"Master?"

"...."

His silence didn't bode well with her causing more unease in her heart, still she remained quiet after that awaiting his inevitable bad news

Seconds seemed like minutes before turning into actual minutes that felt like hours and only when an actual hour had passed did he finally speak once more, by that time Ellis had calmed herself somewhat and was ready for whatever he had to say

"You have a somewhat rare energy controlling disorder, your spatial perception has nothing to do with it"

He let the words sink in and continued before she thought too much into it

"So far you have been making up for the use of energy by replacing it with your aura, even when controlling your weapon you've always made use of it to guide the energy, I'd thought your dependence on it came to because of how easy it was, I believe now it is because you had no other way but to use it instead"

Indeed it was bad news, so bad Ellis's throat became parched out of nervousness

Though his back was facing her YuJu could clearly feel dejection through their bond causing a sigh to escape his lips

"Don't give up so soon, it's not the end of the line for you"

"Can you fix it Master"

She asked with hope, after all what had he not succeeded in doing so far? Even with all the misshapes happening all over the place he always seemed to come out on top, hell he even brought her back from half death before, a simple disorder wouldn't stand in his way, right?

"Such a disorder is something I've never really had to deal with before so fixing it is out of the question, furthermore to research a method for that can only be a gradual process, a process that you cannot wait through with the plans I have in mind"

"Then…"

"Then you stop thinking about energy all together"

"? Didn't you say-" "That you needed to use your energy to accomplish spatial awareness? Yes, but you could control that energy with your aura, isnt this what you've been doing all along"

Tilting slightly gave her view of that confident smirk, as dark as his outlook always has been she couldn't help but feel as if light suddenly shone from him casting away the shadows that started to loom over her mind, whatever dejection and slight despair that came was already floating away

'That's right, my aura is what got me through all the disasters, ot and Master's help, I never depended on energy nor do I need to, at most it will be a supplement'

With renewed determination she closed her eyes once more as energy started to leak out of her body while she tried to cover it with aura just like she did with the weapons, it was barely doable when she wielded the two swords so a lot more practice was need promoting her to lose herself in training

With how focused the ever hard worker was she missed YuJu's own tired breath

'Just use your aura, what nonsense'

The inspiring words he'd said weren't something he actually had faith in, instead he merely spoke like that to keep her from losing herself in a helpless loop where she constantly blamed her talent and stopped moving forward, the reality of the situation however was indeed very heavy

'She must have focused purely on controlling energy within her body in the past, fully neglecting the use of energy attacks and the likes of it'

The Ellis before he went back through time was indeed an all out physical fighter, her excellent points were swordplay and strength, a path he didnt want the current Ellis to follow

'Her talent clearly lies in aura, strength could be gained through blood purification while swordplay is something she can learn on her own without the help if the system, until she picks up a better fighting style'

Everything up to here was all good and dandy, the addition of this sudden disability though was devastating

'If she can't control energy then it would greatly limit the amount of things she could accomplish, after all one couldn't get far with merely costing energy with aura, at some point she will need to control the energy itself and when it comes to that she will start lagging behind'

His forehead creased into a frown, so many major problems came about with this trip, they didn't have an army of dragons nor that sword and now Ellis had a disabling issue, what a mess, it made him feel like he could have achieved so much more if he'd made a trip somewhere else, and on that note, taken another slave instead of her

When he turned back to look at the hard-working raven head however his features relaxed, whatever regret he had fading away

'I forcibly dragged her onto this path and I will take full responsibility for doing so, whatever problem may occur I'll make sure to deal with it, keeping her path to the top viable'

With a renewed determination of his own he tore through the sky somewhat boldly as if to announce his belief in the promises of power given to those who followed him