Cleaver Of Sin

Chapter 477: Flight

Asher could be seen standing within the basic Gravity training chamber as the door sealed shut behind him with a low mechanical hiss. The sound echoed faintly across the metallic walls before fading into silence, isolating him completely from the outside world. As usual, he took a deep breath and slowly lowered himself into a lotus position, his movements calm and deliberate, the posture one he had long grown accustomed to through countless hours of cultivation and training.

He had paid for three hours to push his Gravity element to the next level, and he intended to create something meaningful, something practical, something powerful, something that could truly help him in battle, just like intangibility and stamina rejuvenation had.

This time, he wanted something just as transformative.

His mind shifted through a variety of Gravity applications, cycling rapidly through possibilities like pages flipping in a book. Since he had only three hours before he retired to his room, he had to pick something he could realistically train within that time frame in order to make final and cumulative progress for the day. There was no room for wasted effort. Every second inside the chamber cost points, and every point represented hard-earned resources.

’Hm...’ he hummed quietly in his mind, brows furrowing. For once, he felt indecisive. "I guess this is the side effect of having too many ideas," he mused to himself with faint amusement.

Having options was good, too many options, however, slowed action. He exhaled slowly and focused the next moment, pushing away the excess thoughts like dust blown from a table. After a few seconds of silence, a small smile appeared on his face as clarity struck him.

He had finally picked something to train.

Flight.

The very word alone stirred something deep inside him. Flight was something every human back on Earth had dreamed about at some point in their lives. The fantasy of soaring freely across the sky, unbound by roads, gravity, or limits. Sadly, only birds could truly enjoy such freedom.

But this wasn’t Earth anymore.

In a world like Crymora, such a thing wasn’t fantasy.

It was achievable. It was simply a matter of understanding the laws that governed reality... and then bending them. With a Gravity application chosen, his mind immediately got to work.

’Where do I begin?’ he thought to himself, after a brief pause, the answer came naturally. "I should feel the space and gravity around me first."

With that, he closed his eyes and entered a state of perfect calm, his breathing slowed, his heartbeat softened. Astra energy flowed gently through his body like a quiet stream, circulating smoothly through every Astra vein and pathway as he tried to get a deeper sense of space and gravity around him. Asher didn’t let the Astra energy flow outward or surge in any way. For now, he allowed it to remain beneath his skin, circulating internally, brushing against his muscles, bones, and nerves like a second bloodstream.

Still, controlled, patient.

Then, he felt it. The pressure. The weight.

Gravity.

The invisible law that kept everything grounded.

The silent force that dictated up and down, that chained the sky to the earth and the earth to the sky.

His Astra energy brushed against it for a moment, cautiously, like a hand testing unfamiliar water.

Immediately, he felt gravity react. But not violently.

Not defensively. It didn’t resist.

It simply acknowledged the presence of Astra energy... and nothing more. Like two strangers recognizing each other’s existence.

Asher cut off the connection between Astra energy and gravity for a moment and stayed silent, contemplating what he had just sensed.

It wasn’t hostile. It wasn’t chaotic. Gravity simply... existed. Constant. Unchanging.

’What if I flip it?’ Asher thought. The idea lasted less than a second before he discarded it. Flipping gravity wouldn’t grant flight, it would only change his orientation in space. He would still fall, just in another direction. That wasn’t freedom. That was displacement.

His mind shifted to memories of the past, times when he had jumped down from the tenth floor of his residential building. Moments where, upon reaching the ground, he manipulated space to soften around him, reducing his effective weight to that of a feather for a brief instant, canceling the accumulated momentum and allowing him to land with a deft, silent touch instead of crashing into the ground.

A clever trick, practical and efficient.

’What if I apply that method?’ he wondered.

His reasoning was sound. After all, Space and Gravity were interconnected. Two sides of the same fundamental coin. Similar principles could be applied to both to a certain extent. With that theory in mind, he immediately got to work.

Astra energy flowed out of his Astra veins once more.

It coursed through his body, steady and obedient, before spreading outward, he applied the same principle he used on space, only this time, to gravity itself.

Immediately, Asher felt the difference, the pressure on his shoulders thinned for the briefest moment, as though gravity had loosened its grip, a wide grin spread across his face. The instant that grin appeared, gravity pressed back down again, reasserting itself.

But Asher didn’t care, he had made progress, real progress, he could already picture himself flying through the air. He let his Astra energy flow again, but this time he manipulated gravity around his entire body. He started slow and gentle, refusing to force it.

Force created resistance, control created harmony.

The moment he connected with gravity through Astra energy,

He felt it, a shift, it felt as though he wasn’t sitting on the ground anymore, but he didn’t suddenly rise into the air, there was no rush, no dramatic lift.

Instead, there was an absence, the absence of weight, a quiet realization that something fundamental had lessened. With growing focus, Asher manipulated gravity even further, his mind snapping into peak clarity.

Then it happened.

His body left the ground, but barely. A finger’s width of space opened beneath him, so small it might have gone unnoticed by anyone else. But to him, it felt monumental, he was floating, even if only slightly.

As Asher rose a bit higher, gravity reacted again, pushing him downward, he didn’t fight it, didn’t clash against it. He simply allowed gravity to guide him down, landing softly on his feet, he already knew brute force wouldn’t work.

He had learned that lesson the long way when training intangibility, with another thought, he lifted upward again, slow and steady, his control over levitation was basic for the moment, clumsy even, but Asher didn’t care. He simply hovered there, suspended between earth and air.

The atmosphere felt no different, his body felt no strain, the only difference, Gravity’s silence.

A small smirk tugged at his lips, ’flight isn’t about leaving the ground,’ he murmured inwardly. ’It’s about convincing gravity there’s nowhere to go.’

Then he willed himself forward, Gravity curved around him, pushing him ahead, he shifted backward, then sideways, each movement rough, yet functional.

Even while floating, he staggered midair once, his balance faltering, but he quickly corrected himself.

The next moment, he rose higher into the space, Astra energy still humming beneath his skin as his connection to gravity remained stable.

Then he cut off his Astra energy completely, his body plummeted, wind rushed past his ears, but just before he struck the ground, he reconnected, Gravity halted.

His descent stopped abruptly, a slight jolt traveled through his legs.

It wasn’t perfect, nor smooth, but it was controlled and most importantly, progress.

A satisfied smile slowly spread across his face as he hovered once more. Three hours suddenly didn’t seem nearly enough.