Lex touched his neck, and was fairly impressed upon feeling the supple, fresh skin that he had since becoming a baby. Divinity was very useful, he had to admit. Originally, he had a negative impression of it considering the fact that it could so easily corrupt him.
As someone with a lot of power in his hands, and a trigger-happy sword in his soul, he was not particularly fond of anything that would influence his psyche. But if he could learn to wield divinity properly, and he could heal as effectively as the suit of armor had, then it was absolutely worth the risk.
Reentering the state of Overdrive, Lex fixed his gaze on the suit of armor and readied himself for the instructions to once again land in his mind.
Their fight resumed, and a familiar scene of Lex being overwhelmed once again played out. But this time, Lex was not so focused on defending himself, which unfortunately resulted in him sustaining more injuries. Instead, his focus was entirely on the additional glow on the sword that appeared in his instructions.
Upon observing them with scrutiny, Lex discovered that besides the physical components of the movements required, the instructions also detailed how exactly it was manipulating the energy to augment the sword.
To do that, Lex would first have to learn to sense divine energy, subsequently learn how to control it externally, and then follow along. But controlling energy outside of his body was harder than it seemed.
When he was doing it subconsciously, such as with spatial energy, apparently, it was easy. But if he wanted to do it consciously, it bordered on impossible. If he could manage to do it successfully even once, and knew what it felt like, he could replicate it easily. But since he hadn't, with divine energy at least, he had to go through this arduous training.
In a way, this training almost seemed unfair. After all, Lex had not been taught the basics of external energy control at all before being instructed to do it mid-combat. But the numerous hints he was picking up from his instructions kept his mind occupied, so that his thought process never went that way.
Besides, with all the advantages he had in almost everything that he did, he was not someone who could complain about fairness.
Little by little, as time went by, even as he sustained numerous injuries and once again became covered in his own blood, he began to grasp the minute details of external control. Without Overdrive it would have taken him much longer, and if he hadn't mastered sword intent, he would not have survived the onslaught for so long. It was as if he barely and narrowly managed to gain something from this training session, but that is not how Cassandra saw it.
In her eyes, the fact that Lex seemed to only barely gain something was a facade. Even if he had been pushed harder, the outcome would have been exactly the same, where he would have used a combination of some other abilities to just narrowly get by. This was both proof that Lex had never trained properly in his abilities, and so did not know how to extract the most benefit from them, and that she was not pushing him nearly as hard as she thought.
A soft breeze seemed to fill the room, but it was one that could only be felt by those sensitive to divine energy. Lex figured out something interesting. His perception of control was incorrect in this situation.
He had imagined controlling and manipulating external energy with the fluidity and expertise that he controlled his internal energy, but that was not what he needed to do. Instead, he merely needed to guide the energy, and allow it to behave according to its own nature to naturally empower him and augment his weapon.
Cassandra's example of the technique the armor could use was slightly misleading, as he was not yet at the level where he could do that. For now, he only needed to focus on mimicking the extent to which his figure in his instructions controlled the energy.
As his sword swung through the air, coated in a thin layer of sword intent, the divine energy in the room seemed to follow its trail, as if he had cleaved a path for it to flow. It was a good first step, but not quite what he needed to do.
He needed the energy to latch onto his sword as he cleaved through it, not follow along. But since he had finally taken the first step, the second step was inevitable.
But Lex felt impatient. Now that he saw the path to victory, his stalwart heart which had resigned to suffering whilst he made progress was no longer willing to suffer so needlessly.
Lex deviated from his instructions a bit to push away the suit of armor and give himself a few moments to prepare. He gripped his massive sword with both hands and blasted his Domination in full.
He wanted to see if he could forcethe energy to behave a certain way. That way, he would skip to the part where he could experience what it felt like, and just directly replicate that in the future.
He visualized the result he wanted, doing his best to perfectly replicate all the subtle nuances exhibited by the figure in his instructions, and swung his sword, this time attacking the suit of armor instead of defending.
The sword seemed to glow, though that glow faded long before the sword itself struck the suit of armor, and hence the augmentation did not have an effect. Lex did not let up and continued to bash the suit of armor.
A small, teeny tiny part of him may just be venting his frustration at the armor. He had more or less been the indestructible one due to his astounding defense. Since when had he suffered so much and shed so much blood in a single session?
As Lex continued to bash the armor, using his sword more like a hammer than anything else, the glow on the sword began to last longer and longer. Finally, there came a point when the sword was still glowing when it struck the armor!
Lex honed in on that feeling, and quickly dropped his Domination. He had no idea if Domination had worked at all to begin with, for influencing and intimidating energywas not in its description. But due to the nature of the technique, it served as an excellent tool to put Lex in the right frame of mind.
Now, with an example to actually mimic, he no longer needed its aid. He transitioned from Overdrive to Flow, and began repeating the process effortlessly. He no longer focused on defeating the suit of armor - though that was not because he wanted it to survive longer so he could beat it more.
No, the real reason he was taking his time was so that he could thoroughly master augmenting his sword. At the moment, he could do it for a few seconds each time, the interval varying randomly.
But with Lex making so much progress, mastering the technique was only a matter of time. As it turned out, when that time came and Lex thoroughly mastered the technique, Cassandra automatically ended the session.
There was an almost imperceptible feeling of disappointment hidden within Lex's eyes as he saw the suit of armor disappear, but Cassandra either did not notice or did not care to comment on it.
"I gave you three hours to learn external manipulation. Do you know how long you took?"
"I wasn't keeping track, but it couldn't have been too long," said Lex hesitantly, wondering if he had been too engulfed in beating the armor.
"You took one hour and thirty-two minutes," Cassandra said. She did not state whether she was pleased with this time frame, or state how she felt about it at all. Instead, after pointing it out, she healed Lex once again using divine energy and began to inform him of how his next class would proceed.
"Do not become reliant on divine energy to heal your body. Extensive use can cause mutations. For most people, those mutations are a welcome boost to their abilities. For you, it would be a drastic reduction in your potential.
"Although, I guess that's not something you should be concerned with any time soon, as you'd have to learn the ability first. Now, we are moving onto the next part of your training. Since you can already control external divine energy, next you have to interrupt the flow of divine energy under someone else's control. You do not need to do anything specific, you just need to disrupt the flow…"
Their next class began immediately, without reprieve in the middle. Lex did not complain of exhaustion either, but that was a mistake he would soon regret. After all, if he never expressed dissatisfaction, Cassandra always assumed he could do more.
