"Put out the fire and try again," Alexis said from the veranda looking over Ning.
"Okay," Ning said and turned to put out the fire. As Alexis had made him understand by now, he was only to use Aether for everything.
He was about to use water to put it out, but he had to redo it again. If he used water, he would have to try extra hard.
'What was it? Oxygen?' he remembered the few books on science he had read for the last few weeks now. He hadn't gotten the chance to read much about it in the tower, so he had to try the books in the city.
Fortunately, they were enough to give him some ideas about it. To put out a fire, he just needed to starve it of oxygen.
For that, he didn't need water.
Some of the dirt on the ground moved up to the burning tip of the branch. Ning continuously absorbed Aether, so as to keep up his supply of it.
Once he brought up all of the dirt onto the fire and completely covered it, the fire went out.
"Phew! That was harder than I thought it would be," Ning thought. He really missed having more Aether, but having less of it right now was helping him understand how to properly use it.
He then used Aether to move away from the dirt as well as he could and started the fire on the branch again.
He looked at the fire before slowly turning back towards Alexis. "What do I do now? Put it out and burn it again?" he asked.
"Yes," Alexis said. "Only, you will take one step back each time you light it up and extinguish it."
Ning nodded and got back to his training. He took a step back and started putting out the fire again.
The dirt was easy to pick up this time now that he was sure what he had to do. Once he put out the fire, he burned it again.
It took Ning 2 whole cycles of burning and putting out the fire to see the purpose of the task. Now that he was about 3 steps away from the branch, the task of burning it started to get harder.
It was just too difficult to create fire at such a distance away from him.
Somehow, before the aether reached the branch to burn, it would dissipate along the way.
This meant that they couldn't properly use Aether at a distance.
Enchantment was easier to perform, and Invoking was harder. Ning had known for a while now, but due to his enormous Aether, it was hard to see the difference exactly.
Now he could. He had to focus very hard to make sure the Aether didn't disappear along the way.
'Maybe I should just create the fire in front of me and send it flying to the branch,' he thought.
He created the fire and was making it move towards the branch when suddenly it disappeared.
"What?" Ning felt confused. 'What just happened?'
"No mixing of Aether uses. Only use one of the two," Alexis said from the side. It had been her who destroyed the fire just then.
'How did she do it? I didn't feel the wind move or anything else appear there,' he thought.
"I created a vacuum," Alexis said. "A small point of reverse gravity that instead of pulling to it, pushes everything out. With nothing to feed on, your fire disappears. You will learn the skill soon, don't worry."
Ning got back to practicing. For nearly 3 hours, until the sun went down, he kept on doing the same thing.
By the end of it he was about 8 meters away from the branch, and completely exhausted.
It started getting dark, so Ning let the fire keep burning for light and left.
"I'm incredibly close to breaking through to the next rank," he said. It felt really weird.
His expensive body had no bottlenecks and he could consistently breakthrough without even knowing he did.
Now that he had bottlenecks, he was coming to understand just how hard it was for the common folks to grow as an Aether artists.
'I was really having it easy,' he thought as he walked back towards the house.
He walked inside to rest while Alexis still sat outside. Only after he entered the house did he realize that he had nothing in it to sleep on.
"Right, the leaves," he thought and went back out.
"Make sure to use Aether," Alexis said from her chair.
"What?" Ning got a little distressed when he heard that. "You can't be serious right? I'm already so tired."
"No, I'm serious," Alexis said. "Although, you may breakthrough to Aether Student before you do so."
Ning felt a little better hearing that. He quickly closed his eyes and started absorbing a bit more Aether.
Once he felt the bottleneck, he pushed past it and broke through. Suddenly, he felt a lot more invigorated.
With the newfound energy, he brought out a gust of air that helped him fly the bunch of leaves to the room.
He then went in and looked at it. Unfortunately, a bit of dust and small twigs followed the wind to come inside as well.
He spent nearly 10 minutes looking through it all.
"Do you want me to set you a bed as well?" Ning asked with a loud voice. However, he got no response in return.
"Alexis?" he asked as he walked outside.
The chair was there, but no one was sitting on it. "Where did she go?" he asked himself.
He went out to look for her, but he couldn't find her at all.
"There's no reason to worry about her," he thought and went back into the room.
She was a goddess, a rather powerful entity. Even if someone wanted to do something bad to her, they wouldn't be able to.
Unworried, he laid down on his pile of leaves and went to sleep.
