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There was never a time Barrett realized more strongly that he had become a master than when the other sense of the word came into play. Sure, he could fight people… but when being asked to teach, he realized how far he had come.
Piera was one of his students, and she had come to him for help. “… now that finger won’t heal. There is medicine available, but you have said it is better to try to heal without.
Barrett nodded, “Every wound is a learning opportunity. Let me take a look.” Barrett gently held Piera’s hand. Though knowing everything that went on in his own body was trivial, it was a bit more difficult to sense into other’s bodies. However, just from looking at it externally and gently touching a few places, he could tell what had gone wrong. “Hmm, it was certainly overextended. The muscles and ligaments have torn. The body won’t necessarily know how to heal this on its own.” Though Barrett had a True Immortal Body, he had done much of the healing of difficult wounds himself. Perhaps it was easier for him to succeed, but he still knew how the process should function. “The healing should proceed like threads knitting together into cloth… or perhaps the restoration of individual threads would be closer.” Sometimes, words weren’t enough, so he decided to show an example. He pulled back his finger beyond what it could manage- though his body was so flexible he had to somewhat artificially tear the muscles. He cut open his finger, pulling away the blood so he could show the process. Piera’s eyes went wide during the process, but she watched intently. Barrett recovered at more than five thousand times the normal speed, and when he concentrated on one spot it could be even faster. On the other hand, wounds like he was showing wouldn’t really heal naturally, so they took longer. Even so it took less than a quarter of an hour for Barrett to fully heal the wound. “See? Try to replicate some of that, one little bit at a time. Once you figure it out, it will get faster.”
Piera nodded. “Okay. I think I understand. Thank you, Master Ravenhall.”
Barrett smiled to himself. Now he understood how those who had taught him felt. He had the luxury of being able to demonstrate things like that- unlike Master Alnherr, who could not because of his age and relatively normal healing rate. Master Hykel had been able to demonstrate healing, but only of ‘normal’ wounds, and if things healed normally… then there was little need to show it.
The rest of Barrett’s students who had survived the first destruction were doing fairly well. Rolph was still in line to reach Second Tier in a year and some months, assuming he failed no destructions. The further the students got, the less of a setback an individual failed destruction would be… so Barrett hoped the best for them. Some had already failed one or two, which was relatively bad luck… but of course the worst off was Hayden. Even so, Hayden was on the path to recovery. He would be more than two years behind the rest of the group, but while that was a huge gap early on… eventually it wouldn’t matter so much. What mattered most of course was future results and keeping up with training.
—–
Barrett stared at the stone pit in his hand. The problem had stumped him for several months, but he wasn’t willing to give up yet. The issue was… there were just too many differences between a peach pit and a human. That much was obvious to anyone. However, what mattered more was the internal details. While the structure might not have been the same, the stone pits were alive, and recovered as long as they had the ability to intake energy or mana- or stamina transferred from Barrett.
Before he was a master, he doubted he would have been able to puzzle out what he was looking for, but every technique that existed was developed by someone at some point. Someone had to be the first to figure out how destructions worked in humans… Barrett felt he should be able to do the same for this stone pit. Unless he needed to have a grandmaster’s level of understanding… but Barrett knew that at least some of those who had first developed the Immortal Berserker Technique had been at the master level. There had been some people with True Immortal Bodies that needed to heal faster to take advantage of those abilities. Master Hykel had told him that long before, and Barrett had looked at the records. They weren’t entirely complete about those points, but it was enough.
Of course, it was a bit more difficult to discern how something worked inside another entity… but in a way, the stone pit was part of Barrett. His attunement though Pure Body Tempering made that the case, so it was possible he could figure it out. In fact, he felt he was about halfway there… he’d noticed a few points that could be what he was looking for. However, destroying too much or too little would result in guaranteed failure. That meant death. Though he wasn’t using a human life, there weren’t exactly an infinite number of stone pits either. Barrett had a handful himself, and there were more around, but they didn’t total over a hundred yet. More trees were being grown, but that took time.
Speaking of trees, Barrett was taking careful care of the Vitality Pear’s sapling. It had really started to grow… and in theory it could be a powerful asset for Pure Body Temperers. However, it would take time before the tree matured and then started to produce fruit. At least it was actually a bit easier to manage than the stone peach trees. In fact, it didn’t take anyone special to tend to them… or maybe it was the opposite. It required those without energy or mana- or who could restrain it. That ruled out those from the main sect, because even a little bit of berserk energy could kill the whole tree… but there were plenty of auxiliary members as well. Barrett’s students would be suited as well, though Barrett wanted to take care of the first tree himself as much as he could.
Barrett found it satisfying to be building things up. He understood why his father had run things the way he did. Leaving your mark on the world with something you had made was a wonderful thing… even if it was a very slow process. Though Barrett had long surpassed being despondent about what happened to his family, having gotten revenge for them… he was still aware there were people even further behind the scenes responsible for what had happened. The fact that they weren’t personally involved didn’t absolve them of guilt- in fact, casually allowing for what happened was probably even worse. Somewhere in the Ostain Empire were more people who were generally making life worse for others. The same was probably true elsewhere, but Barrett had a personal… or perhaps impersonal grudge against some of them. Now that he was a master, he couldn’t say he immediately obtained the qualifications to affect all the nations around, including Stredo… but he was at least within sight of the opportunity, even if it was still far off.