The Burning Fiend

During their next rest, the four brothers when to Fenlai city and parted ways after accompanied Linley to deliver three statues to the gallery. George for once decided to join Yale and Reynolds to drink at the Water Jade Palace, this time they were worried and did not request accompaniment. They only stayed for a couple of hours and decided to return to check on Linley.

As they were making they way back they found Linley vomiting blood, they ran to him and took him back to their dorm. He was silent during the way back but sadness was clear in his eyes. Bebe looked distressed as well. As soon as they reached the dorm Linley took his backpack and may his way to the training grounds.

"Second brother, fourth brother you go and keep an eye on third brother I would go and find what happened". Reynolds and George made their way to the training grounds and found Linley seating on top on a boulder with his eyes empty as he looked to another stone boulder.

"Third brother?" George tried to talk to him but received no answer. "Second brother, perhaps we should wait for eldest brother to find out what happened in order to help third brother. For the time being lets just keep an eye on him, should we?"

Linley did not move for an entire day and just kept looking at the boulder in front of him. Reynolds could feel that he was in some sort of meditational trance and relaxed. He even took his spear to practice for a while waiting for Linley to recover.

It was until the second day that Linley moved but he remained in a trance as he started to sculpt. The feeling was similar to the first time Reynolds had witnessed his meditation by sculpting but the realm seemed to be many time higher than that time.

Reynolds started to think in what could have caused Linley to achieve such a state, it wasn't because he was hurt that had helped for sure but it was not the main reason. He noticed as the boulder started to take form revealing a rough figure that seemed to be Alice. Then he thought he is deeply concentrated and synchronized with his emotion while meditating.

He had a flash of understanding and started to dance with his spear as he usually do imitating the nature of fire but this time he tried to add feeling to it, the warm of family the burning fury of seen his brother hurt the explosive emotions of killing in assassins by counterattack at the Mountain Range of Magic Beast. Influenced by Linley he managed to enter a similar state as he danced with his spear causing the fire elemental essence to become visible with his movements.

The poor George was left alone with two training maniacs without knowing what to do and could only wait for Yale to come back.

Reynolds continued being nurtured by the fire elemental essence as he danced with his spear unconsciously acompaining Linley sharing the warm and the rage and expressing it through his fired elemental essence. It took ten days for Linley to finally stop and Reynolds who had been acompaining Linley stopped as well, both Yale and George were tired and worried about their idiotic little brothers who decided to go mental for ten days, but finally they were able to relax as the saw that their had regained their senses.

"Third brother, fourth brother are you ok?" Reynolds was startled and understood that he had worried them so he smiled and said. "Sorry to worry you guys, Linley was in a meditative trance and I seemed to be infected by the mood and ended joining him on his crazy trip. But this might be a blessing in disguise as our spiritual essence has increased a lot, isn't it?"

Linley smiled at Reynolds and said. "Fourth brother is right, my growth during this time has been impressive and I feel better now. I do feel a little hungry". The four brothers smiled and moved to prepare the food that Yale had already brought so they could enjoy it together. After a while Linley said "Boss, can I entrust this sculpture to you? I plan to head to the Mountain Range of Magical Beast for training as this year I missed the opportunity. Do not worry I am much better now, it's just that I decided to make up for the lost time".

So they parted ways again while and life returned to normal, except for the family of Alice's boyfriend as Yale had shown how vengeful he could be when someone hurted his brothers. Reynold smiled happily at this, he had learned during his trips to the Mountain Range of Magical Creatures that in this world the strong ate the week and been merciful was looking for an early grave.

After calming down, Reynold found that his spiritual essence had reached the seventh rank and that he only need to gather enough fire elemental essence to formally become a magus of the seventh rank. He also was sure to breakthrough the sixth rank as warrior on a few months thanks to the blessing of life magic so he decided to ask Yale for help.

"Eldest brother I need a favour, I was hopping that you will be able to help me." Said Reynolds as he looking with hope at Yale. "Fourth brother what is the matter, you only need to said and I would do my best to help you". Reynolds smiled as he was happy to have a good brother who was also very rich.

"Eldest brother I need you to keep this a secret, I think that in a couple of months I will become a magus of the seventh rank and my body will also reach the sixth rank as a warrior. But I'm reluctant to graduate as my family will force me to join the army reducing the time that I can dedicate to training as well as missing our visits to the Water Jade Paradise. I'm also reluctant to join any force as that would be a betrayal to my family and the O'Brien Empire so I have no way to obtain spells of 7 rank and up as well of a qi method with fire attribute to train as a warrior".

Yale stood frozen for a while before reacting and almost falling to the ground. "Fourth brother you are not lying to me?". Reynolds smiled and said. "Do you remember the meditational trance that Linley and I experienced a few days ago? Well, I'm sure that Linley also reached the seventh rank in spiritual essence and he would return already as a dual seventh rank magus and graduate to obtain glory for his family".