It was Dawn.
Watching Houses go up each week, most of the Sect was feeling a bit fatigued. The Cheng Twins had gotten a lot of experience working with their powers everyday helping to build the city. Even Genba had gotten a lot of work done by creating Metal bars day and night, filling storage rings for the future.
The best part of their work was that with the City's Infrastructure nearly complete. Sixteen Bath houses spanned across the 10sqkm city interior. Every building had its own water source and toilet just like they had at their Tea Shop in the Old Capital and Portano's Royal Palace. Waste disposal was a big deal, and now the Locals didn't have to deal with it.
All sewage led to an Incineration Furnace down the Mountain and away from the City, there wouldn't even be a smell.
Elemental Orbs were not simple to create. Wu Hai had been reading several books in Master Jiang's collection that spoke of them. Even as an Elemental, Prince Wu Hai couldn't produce them at all. It was possible to create an Orb but it would immediately dissipate. For Zao Wu Hai, who was trying to fuse two types of magic, one made of Lightning and the other made of Darkness, it was abundantly more difficult. They would only last a moment before they vanished and he still wasn't sure what he could use them for.
None of the books in either of the collections helped Wu Hai with the creation of Orbs, even a Shadow would dissipate in the Light. When Darkwing had condensed Darkness and Lightning, he created Space magic that had been an inspiration to Wu Hai.
There were too many opportunities and too many ways to challenge himself. Wu Hai had been learning from the memories of his past life, the books in the libraries and the others. The momentary glimpses of another world were too hard to ignore but for some reason they still held answers. It drove his interest in transcending all that Great Master Jiang had taught him.
Master Jiang had consulted Wu Hai since he was a child. It was appropriate to say that as his disciple, Zao Wu Hai would be well taught about such matters.
Wu Hai would struggle during all hours he wasn't working to manifest the ability but all he produced were Orbs that crackled with the power of Lightning. The Liquefied Essence of Lightning could not be stabilized in of itself into a solid mass, never Crystallizing no matter how hard he was trying. His efforts seemed almost useless at times. The one reprieve was that he had been training so regularly, his control of his current Lightning abilities had really reached a new all time high.
Canceling the mixed spacial abilities didn't always give him his power back, sometimes he would lose a tremendous amount of his Mana.
When he found that he was retaining some of the energy that was constantly disappearing, he knew it was better than he expected.
Rarely benefits bred from hard work but when they did, the results were often times amazing. The worse thing for a struggling talent would be to giving up and stagnation.
Wu Hai's new hobby after the City's construction was complete, was to focus on the concept of Space Magic. The City had only just started to go up but the pace of the group and new settlers was astounding. Since the Family had started their new City, they assumed the position of Royalty over the region and were treated as such.
One day while reaching out he thought of moving from one place to another, how Darkwing had blipped from one side of an Undead Cavern to the next. The feeling wasn't hard to imagine but manifesting it was a completely different thing. Wu Hai was tired after a few hours and decided on putting his magic to rest for the night, he pulled the energy back into his body but as it was returning he felt the energy dissipate into nothingness again and frowned.
His face wrinkled and he closed his eyes to go over what had happened. Wu Hai had been curious about why his power kept disappearing. His biggest assumption and hope, was that it was half-assed spacial power that he just couldn't manifest at the time. If that were the case, the best case, he would eventually be able to display the ability. He was very curious about the other abilities that he had at his disposal, the allure of the Gygax tempted him to try new power sets and forms.
Wanting to Change bodies frequently was already a big deal, it was a luxury that no one but him possessed. He didn't know if he would get a better affinity for spacial magic in a different form but he had several options. Going over them in his head, while thinking about it some more, Wu Hai slapped himself in the forehead. He facepalmed afterwards and said, "I'm such a lazy idiot, I should have done this weeks ago."
Pulling the Cup from his storage, he also pulled out one of the Dice. Wu Hai tossed the Size Die it into the cup and rolled until he got Medium or Small for his Elemental form.
Tiny form was about the size of his Sister Lei. After a moment of consideration, he shook his head. Lei Lei would want him to play too much if he was her size.
Four rolls later, the best Wu Hai was able to get was large. On the fifth roll, he was finally medium sized. His overall size was about the same as the Cheng Twins or Genba, Darkwing was still a little bit taller.
Relieved he cried out, "Finally!"
Though Wu Hai wanted to get back to training quickly, he still wanted to give his mind a break and paced around the pagoda. It was still the middle of the evening when no one was sleeping. Zao Wu Hai had been roaming the upper floors of the Pagoda looking through the materials that they had collected over the past 2 years. It was hard for him, he never imagined that he would be in the position he was in just that short time ago.
The Zao Family had been accused, hunted, exiled and now finally.. Finally started to recover into a thriving Community.
The Sect had finally been created, their marvelous city was going up faster than ever imagined. When they had some Craftsmen enter the City, they had a lot of trade being created, their forces could grow exponentially.
"This doesn't seem like something I picked up." Wu Hai muttered to himself as he approached a shelf with Magic Crystals.
Wu Hai encountered a barrier around a particular Crystal. It glowed with a silver luster, like the one he had gotten with the pile of gems from the Minaurs. However, this crystal had a glow that accompanied its shine and was nearly twice the other's size.
It happened when Wu Hai was fumbling around the casing of the crystal. The Tower Spirit, the Bastet Monk Qu showed up. "Master." Qu called out.
"Qu, Why is this Crystal guarded with a Barrier?" Wu Hai wasn't angry at all but curious. He hadn't found any other restrictions in the Tower until that point.
"The barrier exists so that the Crystal doesn't leak energy. It's a Teleportation Crystal, a big one. They have a tendency to lose power when not encapsulated. If it remains inside the barrier it will last nearly indefinitely, however if I remove it. after a while it will lose all power. One of my first masters left it in the tower as a means of escape. By directly pushing my own essence into the crystal, I can shift the Tower to somewhere else up to five thousand kilometers away. The stone would be destroyed in the process and I can only do it once. The stress it would cause on the Tower would be enormous, repairs could take a long time." Qu didn't leave anything out.
If his master used this crystal to move the Tower, great damage could occur and that was something Qu very much wanted to avoid. The Tower was his body, for all intents and purposes.
"So, what you're saying is that this stone can teleport me anywhere?" Wu Hai was very happy with that thought but Qu quickly shut him down with the shake of his avatar's head.
The greedy look on Wu Hai's face didn't dissipate.
"I'm sure that it could be done, however I cannot say for certain if damage would apply to your Majesty if you used the crystal and not the Tower! Do you see?!" Qu wanted to illustrate the cost of the use of the item.
Qu wasn't satisfied with the humbled look on Prince Wu Hai's face. "The crystal could be put into a ring but I don't think it's advisable. If you bring it out, it will still deteriorate. Also, I do not suggest you use the crystal at all. The cost could be too high. I don't know of way to supplement it's destructive nature towards it's target and I do not know of a way to refine it."
Knowing his Master was part of Qu's responsibility, he was quite aware of the Prince's desire to tinker with things. Much like a Forbidden Spell that had a Blood Cost, the cost to use the Large Silver Teleportation Crystal blindly could prove to be catastrophic when un-refined.
"The Tower was inanimate and could be repaired, If the Tower's Master were to use it directly however," Qu's mind went into a downward spiral. He drew circles in the corner after noticing that Wu Hai had already gone off.
"What if I use Water Demon Body with Healing Magic and Combat Oriented Skills? What then?" Wu Hai needed to understand the scope of the damage that could be caused. In such a form, he knew that combination could regenerate very fast. The real question was whether it could keep up with the strain.
The Prince never fully ignored Qu's warnings but he rarely sat around idly whilst Qu spoke either.
"It would be ill advised, your suffering would be so great that you could die of shock. Knowing this, would you still choose to try?" Qu listened to his Master's mutterings and inner thoughts before returning a question with a question.
"I think its best that I get my powers up to speed. One more question before I go, What would happen if I ate the crystal like the others?" Wu Hai asked.
"If you ate the crystal and Human's can't.. Master, this idea could work." Qu's Avatar perked up, "Elementals could consume the crystal and gain an understanding of its function. Master, I had not considered this option. When you arrived at the Tower, you were still a human, sadly the option did not come into my mind until you mentioned eating it. Would Master like to consume the crystal now?" Qu was interested as well.
Qu had been watching Wu Hai's struggle with the manifestation of Space Magic. There was little he was able to do to coach him but the Prince had his own way of figuring things out.
"You're agreeing with me to use it? Now your saying I can eat this?" Wu Hai's eyes got bigger.
He had been struggling with the power for a few weeks. It was time for him to understand the power, and time to take control of it.
"Lower the barrier" Wu Hai didn't flinch at the chance when Qu opened the barrier. He swiped the crystal quickly and threw it directly into his mouth.
When the Crystal touched his tongue, there was an immediate difference in the overall energy within his body. It became chaotic at first, his quick act of swallowing probably saved quite a bit of the power contained within the crystal itself but it was a wild power.
Wu Hai hoped he would be able to manifest the power after he swallowed it, he sat down in a lotus position like he had seen Qu do many times and raised his palms up to condense and saturate his energy into a Liquid.
The Liquefied Lightning and Darkness oozed from between his fingertips after filling his palms and creating an incomplete ball in each hand. Then, Wu Hai drew them together so they would begin to swirl and intermix. The power he had absorbed from the silver crystal was accumulating into his palms without his permission or understanding of it's nature. It was a very bad idea but it was also the road not taken.
The result wasn't space magic.
The effects of the swirling Magical Orb caused a few items that were on the shelves to pull from their places and fly directly into the flexing, swirling orb.
Qu watched patiently and with shocked eyes, he could clearly see random bits and small items lift from their places, they were pulled directly into the sphere that was being condensed in Wu Hai's converging hands.
A large pile of crystals near Wu Hai's position slipped off the shelf and drew themselves into the vortexing orb. Wu Hai's clothing was starting to rip and separate from his body. If not for their strength, his pants would have long since gone away as well.
"Master, your fingertips!" Qu cried out and Wu Hai opened his eyes.
He opened them again and saw the Orb in front, the motes of energy swirling within nearly made him dizzy. Wu Hai was filled with excitement.
What excited him the most was the silver glow at the tip of his fingers. Just the tip of the nail was coated in a fine silver light.
Wu Hai stopped condensing the orb and was about to try to pull it's power back into his body when he noticed something different about this orb. It had undergone a dramatic change from the previous orbs that had been condensed by Wu Hai.
Wu Hai had made many orbs of Fire and Ice but they were never combinations.
The Vortex was actively sucking in gems and crystals with its gravitational effect, the orb had taken on properties and distinctive characteristics it did not previously have.
The condensed orb was now mottled rainbow in color, more than a dozen colors could be seen throughout the surface. There was even a streak of black and a streak of white that seem to battle each other inside the crystalline structure of the orb. The imagery that it presented was spectacular.
The Prince could feel power radiating outward.
"Master, I suggest putting that Orb into this case." Qu noticed it's fluctuating energy levels and repeated what he had to say, "Master! That Orb will lose power if left out!"
Wu Hai looked at the Orb and put it away. "I'll take this with me, the Orb should be fine in the storage ring if I don't take it out? Right?"
"Yes Master." Qu understood, Wu Hai would take his advisement in protest. It wasn't a problem if he kept it in the storage ring, Qu just didn't want to see his previous masters efforts or the materials go to waste.
'So many Crystals... will it really be okay?' Qu was lost in thought. The scene just a moment ago had been unprecedented. Without fully understanding what Wu Hai was doing, he had still done something unique and mystifying.
The absent minded Guardian was helpless in front of such a stubborn Master.
If the crystal was unstable, it was possible for it to have a reaction that exceeds the containment abilities of the storage ring.. that would cause it to either lose power, emit it, or explode. The newly formed crystal was unique, in that it had absorbed a great deal of crystals from the shelves. A lot of gem dust got pulled in as well. Reproducing what had just happened was likely impossible since the ingredients were entirely unknown and the catalyst was a magically driven experiment.
Flicking his fingers, Wu Hai could sense the power of the Teleportation Crystal at his fingertip. Focusing, he tried to get the silver glow to encompass his hands, as Darkwing had done. However, Darkwing wasn't a Human.
Darkwing was a Magically evolved Duck. A mysterious Duck. Then, Darkwing evolved into a dangerous and formidable Humanoid. Darkwing's power was leagues ahead of his previous incarnation but his ability to traverse space was something he couldn't explain well enough to teach others.
The differences were just too great between Wu Hai and Darkwing.
Wu Hai considered using a Qilinkin body instead of the Elemental the next time but changed his mind when he thought about it some more. 'Elementals always had the highest affinity for Magical Sources.'
"I'm not a Duck, I'm Human!" Stretching himself to his limits, he tried sitting down to condense the power again. He could only get the tip of his index finger to glow with a silvery light.
"Aggggh!" Pounding his fist on the ground to disperse the power in his fingertips, Wu Hai was a bit angry at his progress. Despite just having gotten to the point where his power could emit a faint silver glow, he was still dissatisfied in his progress. The Prince thought about Master Jiang and how the Old Man had introduced Magic to him.
Most importantly, he remembered about how his Master always made him train with it. Wu Hai once again started his compression rings. This time instead of fire, he was going to try out the Power of Darkness and Lightning combined. He was human after all and had to find his own way.
"Master.." Qu showed his distress but Wu Hai was incapable of seeing anything else around him when he began manipulating his abilities.
Pushing his Darkness magic out into a ten meter ring, Wu Hai compressed it down to a smaller diameter. Soon the Darkness Ring was at about a third of it's original size. Wu Hai remained silent while he compressed the ring to a comfortable density, flattening it and began throwing out lightning orbs to follow the ring's disc in an opposite and counter force.
Wu Hai could see a deep violet glow coming from the Lightning Orbs before he had sent them inside the Ring of Darkness. Suddenly, faint thunderclaps could be heard echoing throughout the Tower.
The distance from the group and the Fourteenth floor didn't stop the sound from reaching the Lobby and everyone's ears. The constant droning of thunder shook the Tower, again and again it could be heard.
The group and visitors below were worried that something strange was going on but none of them had answers.
"QU!" Master Jiang tried summoning Qu but he didn't respond.
Wu Hai was being a reckless idiot again, testing new abilities within a confined space was never a good idea and there had even been some discussions about safety with the group. Last time, a Cavern collapsed and buried his entire adventure team. It took weeks to get free, and many died in the vicinity.
A spark of silver could be seen in the Darkness Ring and Wu Hai was ecstatic. It flickered and teased Wu Hai as it circled.
"Soon I'll be able to go to that place.." There was a haunting dream, it followed Wu Hai into adulthood. He had no control over his dreams but there was a nagging feeling in the back of his mind.
Thinking about the man who was talking to him in the white room, Wu Hai remembered his name and spoke it softly.. "Xuan Kim Li." With another spark of silver from Wu Hai's finger drifting position and into the already Electrified and Compressed Darkness Ring, Space around him collapsed and nothing remained.
The Dust and Magical residuals dissipated.
Wu Hai had disappeared.
"Master?" Qu was confused about where Wu Hai had gone. As the Tower's Spirit, he was linked to Wu Hai and the token, he could feel him anywhere and yet he was unable to locate his position.
Searching the Tower and the surrounding City with his senses, Qu couldn't find any trace of Wu Hai.
Qu quickly teleported down to the Lobby and started explaining what had happened to Patriarch Ooran. "I've searched the Tower and the surrounding City, Wu Hai isn't here. Its the middle of the night, he might not be able to see us. I'm going to illuminate the Castle and give him a clear bearing."
"No! Stop." Master Jiang had heard everything and quickly told him to stop.
"Don't light the Tower up, Wu Hai can find us if he's lost in the dark. You're bound to Wu Hai, it's impossible for him to have gone anywhere nearby and not be detected. In my opinion, he's very far away." Old Master Jiang held his temper.
There were many reasons that he didn't want to act on impulse, "Lighting the Tower and surrounding city does no good at this time." Master Jiang was angry as he continued, "Its dark but we're not the only ones with eyes."
Lamenting his son's actions just a bit, Ooran stopped the others from speaking, "Wu Hai is a resilient young man. We must have faith that he is alive and well.. I have to believe he is in good health. Perhaps it is as you say, perhaps he is just far away."
Ooran might have been Wu Hai's father, but Master Jiang was his master. "Qu, Take me to where he disappeared. I need to see it." Master Jiang wanted to see if there were remains or damage to the area. He needed to have a good reason to keep hope in his heart. If Wu Hai was gone, there should be something left by him. If nothing could be found, that meant he might have been teleported somewhere else. According to Qu, Wu Hai was trying out some new spacial magic ideas and attempting to harness a teleportation crystals power.
"Perhaps he succeeded?" Master Jiang searched the fourteenth floor where Wu Hai had been sitting. He noticed the empty shelves and scattered items that had leapt toward Wu Hai's previous position. There were a lot of missing crystals and minerals, everything else was on the floor.
"You said that a large of amount of Crystals were sucked into one of his abilities shortly before he disappeared. Do you have the Orb he was trying to manipulate?" Master Jiang asked Qu quietly.
"No, Master put it into his Spacial Ring." Qu hung his head but answered.
"Lets explain to the others what I've found, Wu Hai might be fine. It's probably like the Patriarch has said, he's likely very far away." Master Jiang returned to the lobby where everyone was worried.
"Master Jiang, What happened? What happened to Wu Hai?" The Prince's Mother, Zao Calistown, Matriarch of the Sect, was frantic, everyone else had confused looks.
Wu Hai had done some strange things in the past but disappearing without notice was not one of them.
"I hope he's okay." Khan Ni thought about the young boy that she tried to steal from after meeting the first time and how he had become the confident young man. "I know he's okay. He has to be." Khan Ni consoled the Queen and went back to her room. There was nothing she could do, even indirectly.
The Twins nodded to each other and went back to drinking. They had complete trust that their traveling companion would return.
Mu grabbed his brother, with a voice that was full of energy he shouted, "WE MUST GET STRONGER!" then he tried to throw Yu into a fight. It didn't work.
Mu was thoroughly face planted by Yu to the floor.
"Qu said no fighting outside of the Arena." Mu sighed as the Ooran scolded them both.
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