"Just like with the rock, and how you practiced with the bracelet, try infusing your soul essence into the daggers," Amelia explained, while standing in front of Caecus. They were currently in the area of the training hall, where the floors were padded so that they wouldn't be injured in case they fell to the floor; perfect for duels.
The black-haired boy, who stood in front of the brown-haired maid, gripped his daggers tightly. Slowly, he infused his soul essence into them, until they were both augmented with around ten percent of his soul essence.
"Good, now try to attack this dummy." Amelia grabbed a training dummy, while he was infusing his soul essence into his daggers.
-Screech!- the sound of it grinding on the ground echoed through the training hall.
Finally, Amelia stood in front of Caecus and presented the dummy before him, tapping against it a few times so he knew where exactly it was and wouldn't cut her by accident.
He raised the blade, and in a quick motion, he sliced downwards with it. Even though this was solely a wooden blade, it cut through the dummy's material like butter.
"W-what? I thought it was going to… like you know bounce off. This sensation felt more like I was gliding through it…"
"Yes, this is a training dummy designed for training without soul essence. We have a few that are designed to be able to withstand soul essence attacks up to rank three, just like the sandbags, and they are able to move too," she explained. "Anyways, you said you can kind of echolocate, right?" Amelia took out her notebook and opened it, flipping through the pages.
"Yeah, I can kind of do it, when I infuse soul essence into my ears and hum, or generally make sounds with my voice," Caecus explained.
'Maybe she can show me some way to use it better?'
"I have written down a few different ideas in my notebook throughout the day. Let's try them out."
"Okay!" Clearly excited, Caecus put the daggers away and walked back to Amelia, standing in front of her again.
"First of all, I want you to try and infuse some soul essence into your vocal cords, and make a pitch as high-pitched as you can."
Listening to her instructions, Caecus did exactly as told. He felt the warm feeling of soul essence rushing through his body, until it finally reached his throat. Slowly, he infused his vocal cords with soul essence, one by one, until all of them were augmented.
" "
'What? I didn't hear anything.'
" "
"Why am I not hea—" Caecus stopped himself from talking and held his ears. It was simply too loud for him. He had forgotten to withdraw his soul essence before talking.
Amelia just chuckled, finding this whole situation amusing. "Enhancing your vocal cords makes your voice more powerful. As you just noticed, it got louder, which is one of the effects of enhancing them. The second effect is an increase in vocal range. The reason why you were unable to hear your voice is solely due to your ears not being able to handle a sound that high-pitched. This time, when you hum, try to infuse your ears with soul essence too."
Soul essence rushed into his ears and vocal cords, and Caecus started humming again. Indeed, he heard the pitch as soon as it reached them.
"Now try to keep this up. If you were to constantly hum, everyone around you would be confused, and after some time annoyed. This is why I told you to enhance your voice. This way, nobody will pick it up unless they enhance their ears."
'I feel my surroundings way better, but when I inhale it stops…'
"Whenever I inhale, my humming stops, and I stop feeling my surroundings. Wouldn't that be a disadvantage in combat? And not to mention me needing to infuse two places at the same time, while also infusing other places when I am fighting…"
"You're right… well, I have a few different ideas, so worry not! Um… for now, just don't use this version of echolocation when you're in combat. I'm pretty sure it should work well outside of combat. Next thing, try to infuse your soul essence into your bracelet. It's made out of steel, so try to use your soul essence to make it vibrate."
Infusing his soul essence into the bracelet, he tried bringing it to vibrate, and it actually worked. He didn't hear anything though, so he infused his ears with soul essence again, and this time it worked way better than humming. He felt his surroundings well, and actually could make out the shape of Amelia's body and face to some degree.
"You're taller than me by… fifteen centimeters."
"It seems to be working well." Caecus could feel Amelia smiling. This was huge, before he was happy to be able to make out movements, but wasn't able to feel small things like this. The soul essence made the bracelet vibrate so fast that he was able to feel the world around him at around eighty frames per second, his fast comprehension speed made this possible too.
"This works well, but again, in combat it will be quite annoying to use my soul essence to augment my bracelet and then need to augment my two daggers as well. For now, augmenting things is way harder than just assimilating…"
"The bracelet is just for out of combat. You should be able to recreate it with the blades of your daggers as well. You'll be augmenting them anyway, so it won't create much of a burden." She nodded her head and placed the two wooden daggers, that Caecus put away, back on the wall where all the different weapons were. Then she went to the section where steel weapons were and grabbed a copy of the wooden daggers, just made out of iron.
"These daggers are made out of iron, try to do the same thing you did with the bracelet with the blades of the daggers. The sound waves should transfer well, since they are made of iron."
Caecus felt her approaching and then her hand moving to place the daggers into his hands. He simply reached out and grabbed them from her hands by the hilt. Amelia was surprised for a moment, and then that confusion shifted into genuine joy.
"Wow, I don't even need to place things in your hands anymore, you can grab them by yourself. But watch out, these are sharp," she said, the pitch of her voice dropping at the end.
'It's weird to be able to feel my surroundings this well all of a sudden, but it certainly makes me very happy.'
The weight of the iron replica of the wooden daggers was much heavier. When Caecus infused them with soul essence, he left a portion of it in his arms so that he would be able to move the daggers with ease.
Zrrrrrrr.
Strongly vibrating, the blades were also able to make him feel his surroundings. The pitch was perfect. He didn't need to infuse soul essence into his ears to perceive the vibrations, but a normal person wouldn't be able to pick up the sounds.
"Are you able to hear this?" Caecus asked Amelia, wanting to know if even she, a rank two soul core, could hear the sounds without enhancing her ears.
"No, I can't."
"Great! I don't even need to enhance my ears to perceive this. I think this works perfectly!"
"It seems that your raw ability to pick up sounds without enhancing your ears is on par with someone who has a rank four soul core," she said, Caecus feeling her soul essence drawing toward her ears. "I have one more thing to try out. Put the daggers back, please, you're able to feel where they were now after all." He could feel the expression on her face shifting into a smile.
Doing as told, he strode to the wall and placed the daggers in place. Then he walked back over to Amelia and sat down on the bench that was next to her.
"This time you should try something crazy. I want you to augment the floor."
"…"
"What?" she asked.
"How am I supposed to augment the floor? T-that's just way too hard," a frown was clearly etched onto the teenage boy's face.
"So remember how you imagined the iron as yourself when you stepped into augmentation? Do the same thing. Imagine the floor as an extension of your body. This should make it significantly easier."
Nodding, Caecus sat on the floor and pressed his palm against it.
'I am the floor. The floor is me. I am the floor. The floor is me… I am the floor. The floor is me… … I am the floor. The floor is me…' he kept repeating the same sentence over and over again, just like he did yesterday when he reached augmentation.
Slowly, with time, he felt the resistance that was between him and the floor ease up. When it got easy enough, he pressed his soul essence into the floor and it slowly entered. The good thing about soul essence is that when you put it into a foreign object through augmentation, it naturally spreads out. Caecus used this to his advantage here and infused around fifty percent of it into the floor.
"Very well. Now try to feel anything that touches the floor."
Caecus extended the limits of his mind, accepting anything and everything within the vicinity of his soul essence. Slowly, he felt that he could also infuse the objects touching the floor with soul essence. When he did, he felt anything and everything solid that was touching the surface of the floor, including Amelia and himself.
"Wow, I can like feel my surroundings this way too…" he exclaimed, amazed by the whole thing.
"Nice, this is what I wanted to know. When you further your control over augmentation, this should be a viable technique too. For now, I think it's a bit too hard for you though," Amelia said, scribbling into her notebook again.
…
"The best way to get better at something is always doing it in action, especially if you're doing it against someone better than you. If you want to get better at boxing, box against someone better. If you want to get better at running, push yourself to your limits and just run," Amelia said, while getting into a fighting stance in front of Caecus. She had a wooden sword in her hand, meanwhile Caecus had the twin daggers, of course made of wood.
Daggers infused with thirty percent of his soul essence, Caecus spread sixty-five percent of his soul essence throughout his most important muscles. Unlike before, where he was only able to infuse two places at once with soul essence, now he was able to do it with his entire body. Caecus remembered Amelia telling him: "Don't infuse your whole body with soul essence. The more soul essence you use on one spot and the more concentrated it is, the greater effects it will have. If you use it everywhere, it's just going to be wasted, and the muscles you should have infused more into won't reach their full potential."
Tightly gripping his daggers, he got into position as well. And then, he lunged forward. Assimilating five percent of his soul essence in the process, Caecus dashed toward Amelia at incredible speed. The normal human eye would have only seen a blur, but Amelia wasn't a normal human. Quickly, she intercepted his lunge and swung her sword. Caecus reacted instantly, parrying and letting the blade glide off one of his daggers. Swiftly, he spun around, and the blade of the other dagger sliced toward her throat, but Amelia wasn't that easy to hit. She leaned backwards, the blade missing her skin by just a hair's breadth.
Not wasting any time, she kicked him in the stomach, her attack infused with soul essence.
"Guh!" All breath escaped Caecus' lungs when the kick landed. Amelia used that opportunity to put some distance between them. Slowly, she approached again. Vertically, her sword drew an arc through the air. Caecus felt the strike approaching his right trapezius and rolled his shoulder, narrowly dodging it while closing the distance again. He was now on her left side and used his dagger to attempt a stab. Face-first, he lunged forward again, dagger pointed at her obliques.
'Yes! This hit will land for sure!'
He was certain this was a win and let his guard down for a second, but this was a grave mistake.
Splat!
Amelia's knee connected with his chin. All control left Caecus' body, and he felt his consciousness slipping away.
"You did extremely well, for using daggers for the first time," Amelia complimented him. She threw him over her shoulder, and he was already unconscious. Carefully, she checked for any major injuries but didn't find any. A sigh of relief escaped her, and she carried him back to his room.