Controlling Destiny - 12 Unconventional Conventionality

In a dark dorm bedroom, Ultrix lay resting on his bed, with his clothes still on him.

He had fainted in this position the night before and had not moved all night.

Very slowly, the first rays of sunlight pierced through the wooden shutters of the window and landed upon Ultrix’s sleeping face.

“Humph, close the blinds, will you?” Ultrix said in his sleep. He then promptly rolled over away from the sunlight and continued to sleep.

Elsewhere, the rest of the Academy were also mostly still sleeping as it was a rest day, and the usually crowded roads were now empty and void of nearly all signs of life, except for a few more diligent pupils who were already up and about.

It was such a lazy feeling day that even the rooster did not feel like cock-a-doodling and had also promptly returned to its pen to resume sleeping after a small stretch.

However, as the sun slowly rose higher, the shutters also began to fail to keep out the flooding sunlight, and eventually, the streets started filling yet again with the bustling noises of people going about their day.

Ultrix, too, eventually woke up and slowly started getting out of bed. He checked the mirror and realized that he had not taken off any of his clothes the night before, and his robe was quite disheveled.

His hair looked like a hen’s nest and even more embarrassingly, he had dried saliva stains on his cheeks.

However, none of this bothered Ultrix too much as he did not seem to care much for his appearance. He wiped the stains off of his face and leveled his hair a bit, but besides that, he did not do much else.

Besides, he was not planning on going out much for the day anyway, so there wasn’t any real reason to look nicer.

It was at this moment though, that Ultrix’s stomach started to growl with hunger. Suddenly remember that he had not eaten anything for a day, Ultrix searched his pantry section for anything that he could use to make breakfast with.

Looking around, he finally found half a cup of uncooked rice and a bit of dried fish in the pantry.

Ultrix took the rice and made sure to wash it under running water before cooking it, and also threw the dried fish into the rice to cook along with it as well.

Seafood congee, Ultrix thought to himself. This shall be a very nice breakfast.

Looking further through his pantry, Ultrix also found some green onions, ginger, and coriander.

Chopping up these 3 vegetables, Ultrix threw them into a mixing bowl before adding a touch of salt and mixed them.

With all this done, Ultrix drew out a sigh of relief before sitting down.

[Ah, thank goodness I don’t have to go outside and do any grocery shopping today.] Ultrix thought to himself.

While waiting for his congee to cook, Ultrix prepared a hot needle once again and started to transmute his body into a runic.

As the needle branded Ultrix’s skin, he grimaced at the pain that it caused.

Interestingly enough, Ultrix noticed that although the heat of the needle did not bother him as his affinity with combustion helped him with heat immunity, the process still hurt because it felt as if he was branding his soul as well.

However, clenching his teeth and hardening his heart, Ultrix thought about how there could be no progress without risks and hardships, and as such, he pushed on.

The branding was extremely intricate and Ultrix dared not to rush the process in fears of destroying not only his arms but his soul too.

The book had warned that any mishaps in the process would not only create a severe backlash on the user but also could cause irreversible damage to the environment if the imbalanced energy leaked out.

Thinking about such, Ultrix’s progress slowed down as he tried to be as accurate as possible. As such though, this also caused the needle to linger longer in some areas, which caused Ultrix to feel a pain that he had never even felt before.

There were many times when he was tempted to give up as the pain became nearly unbearable. However, thinking about how much he wanted to be the best and how he did not want to be weak, he continued.

Ultrix had only worked up to his elbow when he heard the lid on his congee start to lift up and down, causing quite the ruckus.

Deciding to take a break, for the time being, Ultrix put down his needle and lifted the lid off of his congee pot. Instantly, the aroma of steamed fish filled the air and Ultrix couldn’t help his mouth from watering at the smell.

Carefully scooping out a bowl of congee, Ultrix took a few pinches of his vegetable mixture as well and lightly sprinkled it onto the congee.

[It’s a shame I added a bit too much water though,] Ultrix thought to himself.

His congee was a bit too watery and sloshed around quite a bit when he rotated his bowl.

To his delight though, Ultrix quickly realized that this was not a bad thing, as it made eating the congee a bit easier.

Instead of needing any utensils, Ultrix could easily just drink the congee from the bowl, which was a lot more efficient as well.

Chugging down his congee wolfishly, Ultrix made sure to even lick the bottom of his bowl.

Finally, after ensuring that not even a speck of congee was left in the bowl and the pot, Ultrix felt full and quite satisfied with his breakfast.

With that task out of the way, Ultrix continued with his branding process.

As Ultrix slowly branded more and more runic characters onto his arms, he also realized that the pain started subsiding and the sensation became almost natural.

As Ultrix got better at the process he also was more confident in his speed and wrote the runes with greater speed.

By the time he finished his right arm, he had used the same amount of time, despite having to use his left hand to do the rune carving.

Ultrix drew in a sharp breath as he waited in anticipation to see if his body would keep or reject the runic drawings.

Several moments passed and nothing happened. Ultrix waited patiently until finally the branding on his arms slowly started to glow.

Ultrix’s breathing grew quick and a flash of excitement flashed in his eyes. [It’s working!] He thought to himself.

The glowing of the runes glowed until it kind of hurt to look at, and then, as suddenly as it started, the glow extinguished. Along with the light went away any signs of branding as well.

Ultrix had expected this though. The book had told him that the branding marks would disappear if done successfully. That was also why Ultrix went along with this method, to begin with.

He had thought he needed to wear long-sleeved robes everywhere he went in the future, but with the branding disappearing underneath his skin, this solved a lot of issues.

[Time to try out some new moves!] Ultrix thought to himself.

Ultrix flicked his hand and channeled a bit of energy to attempt to form a fireball. However, all he managed to do was gather a small pocket of warm air on his palm.

Ultrix’s face darkened. [Well, that was anticlimactic,] he thought to himself with embarrassment.

He tried many times over and over again until the flicking motion seemed natural. Finally, with a couple of more failures, he succeeded in creating a few sparks.

Ultrix’s heart was beating so fast from excitement at this point that he felt like he was going to have a heart attack.

“I finally did it!” he cried out loud.

“Yes!! I finally did it!”

Outside his window, two senior pupils were drawing a runic circle.

“Did you hear someone scream just now?” One asked the other.

The other pupil shrugged, he was too busy trying to draw the circle.

“Eh, must have been the wind,” he nonchalantly replied.