The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'
Chapter 109 - Coastal Class! Mentorship, Without The Bodily Efforts

Chapter 109: Chapter 109 - Coastal Class! Mentorship, Without The Bodily Efforts

As her disciples worked and took breaks, the illusionist ’moved’ between them. She *actually* sat still, with her eyes closed, on her flat stone perch - offering guidance and corrections to their attempts at improvement... with a trick of their senses. Elua wasn’t particularly ashamed of doing that.

’If they can practice, then I can too. With those few unpleasant things at my wedding, brushing up can’t hurt.’

To Nohre, she lectured on how to sense past the ’muddy’ feeling she described and touch her essence only to the parts she was attuned with. To say there was a great trick to the skill was wrong. It was just developing the control through practice... and she was quite sure the Astralism she unlocked would help.

"Learn this step and one day you’ll be able to pull your Element from the very air around you. Just like I can strip the air of its vaporous water by... well to be honest my method is a little different, but we won’t get in to that."

"There’s another method?"

She didn’t think explaining atmospheric pressure dynamics to an Enchanter in a backwater was going to help... currently. She planned to get around to it later! Probably after making sure Fusand learned first - so he could field any persistent questions.

"Learn to walk first, disciple."

To Fusand, who had been too busily making bigger and bigger copies of crabs, she pointed out the patterns in the wind blown dry sand. She made him pay attention to the way individual grains moved and clustered. The heiress could tell that he was really trying to puzzle out the reason for her requirement, so she threw him another cryptic bone.

"We don’t know what your Element will be, so it is always good to study worldly phenomena. Also... emulating the realistic movement of fine grains is quite the Projection challenge."

With a flourish of her hand, a pillar of falling purple sand flowed downward. It spilled across the surroundings, covering the boy’s feet and pooling around so believably that he would have thought she was really pouring it from a large container.

’She’s so amazing!’

His jaw dropped as he gawked at the immense amount of detail. There was so much that he didn’t even seem to notice the intentional flaws she added... but not every test was expected to be passed. Sometimes a trial merely showed your current capability - and that had a lot of value to a teacher.

"Just keep an open mind to the possibilities, disciple. All experience has value and all information can be used to improve your spiritual control. Good things. Bad things. Strange and wonderful as well as mundane and commonplace."

’In fact, common is sometimes the trickiest. I made it purple... and with that alongside the strangeness of it falling out of nowhere, he failed to notice that the grains moved more rapidly down the pile than it really should - or that the wind blowing steadily around us didn’t send any flying.’

Despite her inner critique, the training session progressed as both disciples showed visible improvement. The water-deer managed to lift small beads of ’purified’ seawater after a few hours. Her face and bright green eyes relayed her delight when the illusive form of ’Elua’ gave her a bite of praise.

Meanwhile, the more fox-like disciple focused on making his Projections more detailed and stable... with a goal for accuracy in piled particles of sand. He realized it was a lot simpler to imagine a whole pile as a single thing than to actually try and Project hundreds of grains at once.

The illusionist chose not to correct that behavior... as every practitioner learned best when they came to certain conclusions on their own. Forcing the boy to do it the hardest way would do nothing for his confidence when the easy way was showing stable progress.

Though she *did* show off a swirling dance of gold dust flakes with a ’look’ leveled at him to *suggest* he had more room for improvement. Unlike his delighted partner, Fusand was forced to let out a chastised laugh.

"You’ve been at it for a while. Would the two of you like to join me for lunch?"

"Oh, I guess we’ll have to climb back up-"

"Now, now. Why would I make you work so hard after working hard? Am I so cruel to you? It will be here in a few more minutes-"

’Ah, and speaking of forcing them to work hard for me.’

From atop the rock, Elua opened her eyes along with a grumbling stomach. The version of her talking to them paused and stared up the cliff while her real body started to move towards the illusion of herself. She got into the same position and used her Astralism to softly meld her movements together as her continuously taxed spirit ended its work.

"We’ll also have another pair of people joining us. I apologize for not asking until now about your little mission. How did you find the temperament of the Talcres?"

The pair of orphans looked at each other. Nohre, having already received compliments once and hoping for more, decided to start things off.

"Master, you explained to us the Talcres’ past trauma but it was even more evident in person. Especially when discussing the aftermath of the Descent."

Fusand raised his hand to interject, causing the small brunette in front of him to raise her brow. He lowered it sheepishly... realizing that they definitely were not in the orphanage classroom.

"I noticed something interesting. When I mentioned working on my essence cultivation, Dame Zyris’s reaction was... peculiar. Her smile tightened like I seemed to touch a nerve."

The Goltbred *was* interested. She had not told them about the woman’s cultivation problem - merely suggested that they should talk about their own progress lately. It let the schemer understand that she was uncomfortable enough to react even in front of people that did not know.

"Speaking of nerves, they were remarkably patient with us. Even when Fusand asked some rather *direct* questions about their children. Meyran, in particular, tried to keep the mood light despite the heavy topics."

She tilted and shifted her head allowing her dark braided hair to climb over one of her shoulders. Her fingers pinched at it worriedly, still feeling bad about forcing them to talk about those things. Even if it was a mission from her master!

"Oh, that’s true. They were also quite open about sharing cultivator wedding traditions and their own experiences with them to make us more comfortable with the event."

The sandy haired boy babbled quickly, hoping he would be blamed for upsetting the couple while questioning them. Elua honestly thought it was a good tactic... but wasn’t going to tell him so. She stared at him until the mild ’defiance’ in his spirit gained a small touch of ’contrition’.

"Master, there’s... something else. When I was near Zyris, I felt a strange... tugging sensation."

The girl seemed hesitant to talk about it, but mostly due to the ’confusion’ pulsing through her.

"It was as if my new Aspect was trying to tell me something about her - or maybe do something to her. I’m not sure what it meant, but it felt important... so I didn’t want to leave it out."

"You didn’t tell me about that."

"When did I have the chance? We were with them all day and most of the night. Then we were both so giddy about finding her for our gifts. I... I forgot, okay?"

Nohre retreated defensively at Fusand’s rather calm probe. The heiress policed her smile by dropping her facade quickly.

’Interesting. I guess I’m learning more about the temperament of *two* couples today~’