The biggest room in the inn sure was true to its name, although it was not as big as hotel sweets from back on earth, it was spacious enough with a private bathtub and three beds, which was perfect for the three of them.
Though the sun was close to setting, Sen was not planning on idling by. He first sent Leonas and Risa to scout for information while repeatedly reminding them to be careful and not attract attention, meaning to not make noises while moving and other actions that might give off their invisibility which was quite easy for them since they are used to hunting back in the forest.
While the two were out, Sen laid on the bed. He finally decided to explore his powers. He first drank a potion that increases mental awareness. He did not have much of those, just about a dozen. But they were incredibly effective as Sen immediately felt calm and collected. He now had his eyes closed in a meditative pose, otherwise, he would've seen that golden threads formed a bubble that surrounded him and showing no sign of vanishing. In fact, it continued to inflate the more Sen stayed in that state.
Within the world of his subconscious, Sen felt himself floating mid-air. All around him was a vast sea stretching far beyond the horizon. A very familiar term appeared in his mind once he saw this sight.
Qi Sea!
Although he was sure that the qi-whatever did not exist in LR, he had a killing feeling that this sea was the energy within his body.
Right in the middle of the sea, there was a blood-red sphered floating calmly in the air.
Internal energy, and Mana, these two types of energy were both existent within his body, but he only saw the clear water of the seawater. There was no sign of any other substance.
"Is this internal energy or Mana?"
A thought suddenly flashed through his mind. Although he was in a meditative state, he still had control over his real body. Sen did not know how to explain it other than him having split his consciousness between the real world and the world inside his body.
Rotating his palm, the air around him bent and the candle at the corner of the room was extinguished. This was the skill 'sound wave' of the body enhancing art that uses internal energy. The moment he performed it, there was a ripple on the vast sea.
Feeling himself getting close to his previous assumption, he tried another internal energy skill that was on a higher level than the sound wave, and the sea this time had a small wave that quickly faded as he ended the skill.
"So this sea represents the inner energy…although it looks vast and endless, I felt that each skill took away a considerable amount of it. Maybe this is not a sea after all and I'm the one looking at it from this small perspective". This simply meant that he had no idea how big this sea was. But he was certain that the amount of energy each skill consumes is not proportionate to the size of my internal energy.
This he clearly felt, when he used a kill, the according amount of internal energy vanished from his energy sea and was being slowly regenerated. He reckoned that if he used one of his ultimate skills then the majority of the sea would vanish. His regeneration wasn't that high leveled when he was in LR, so it would take hours and hours for the sea to fully regenerate should it be consumed wholly one day.
Moving on to the next problem, he couldn't feel his Mana. This time, instead of an energy-based skill, he used a Mana based one. Could the red sphere represent his Mana?
Before he became a Fanalis, Sen did not have much magic skill, only had about a couple of them. After his last evolution, he acquired the two arts of magic. His strongest, the hellfire that harvests souls and incinerates without getting extinguished. The other one is True ice which he did not manage to unravel it well back in LR and only had a few spells to it. Nonetheless, it was very powerful.
A small flicker of bright green fire appeared floating in front of him, lighting the already-dim room green.
Within his consciousness, Sen felt the air above the sea turn misty. This time he directly used a strong spell so the misty air quickly condensed into blue thick smoke. When he retracted the hellfire, the smoke disappeared and Sen clearly felt again something diminishing within him.
Using more magic spells, Sen finally confirmed his suspicion that the Mana and internal energy both existed within his body and that the Mana was not coming from the red sphere. Now that he knows that, he suddenly had a thought.
He was no longer playing LR, this was real life. Meaning that he was not restricted by the game system. All of his spells and skills were acquired from loot, quests, and given by the system. But now there was no such thing.
He now had total freedom to create his own skills by shaping the energy to his will, as long as he finds the correct way to control it. He can even learn more about magic. With the huge amount of Mana he has, there should be no problems, he guessed.
Moving his attention to the red sphere of blood which he did not know what it was. Sen touched its surface and suddenly felt that he was touching his bare naked heart. Quickly retracting his hand, Sen gasped, "that feeling…like someone just reached out for my chest and grabbed my heart…."
The most plausible conclusion at the moment was that it was his life force or whatever is keeping him alive.
'Maybe my heart?'
It was noticeable how the Mana cloud and the energy sea were feeding the blood sphere through veins. Back in LR, he had read in one of the quest lore that energy and Mana are used to feed the body, slowly altering it for its peak condition and only a few who knew how to do that.
At first, he wanted to join together two veins on energy to create a bigger path for the energy to pass through. But he gave up that thought since he had simply no way of doing that. But then again, there was a skill stone in his mind, Fusion Orb. This skill served to fuse together two substances of different kinds. Back in LR, it had been a good help for him in a few quests but he quickly threw it to the back of his mind after seeing how useless it became.
Now he wasn't sure if he would be able to fuse Mana together with internal energy since practically none of them could be called substances.
But he was here and might as well try it out.
The first thing to do is to isolate a portion of internal energy from the sea and a cloud of Mana alone. Sen did not know what repercussions would his idea bring but he wanted to play it safe. He found that he cannot do that from the inside, so he tried to force his way out while still having a connection to this place.
The process proved to be much harder than he thought as he felt the strain of it was on his mind. If anyone had to see Sen right now, they'll see that his human body was nowhere to be found and instead, his Fanalis body was sitting crossed legged on the now-wet bed from the excessive sweating. The sphere of threads around him was shaking violently before disappearing without a trace.
Swoosh!
His consciousness kicked him out and gasped his breath, eyes wide open.
"I did it," his whisper spread through the empty room. He was now fully in the outside world, but he could still clearly feel both the energy and the Mana within him. That could be considered a step forward.
"Eh? Why am I back to this body" he looked this hands, "probably because my concentration broke"
The next step would be to expel pure energy and pure Mana from his body. Now that he can somewhat control the both of them, this phase was relatively easy.
From one palm, a fist-size, purple cloud appeared while from the right palm, a blue energy ball emerged, the same size as the Mana. Unlike before, these were pure materialization of Mana and energy, not just their aura.
Taking a deep breath. Sen first cast a protective barrier around himself and all over his body. If something did happen, he did not want to alert others while at the same time protecting his body with the second shield which was ironical, made purely of Mana that he cannot control. Some sort of skill-specific restriction was placed on it, he thought.
"This is it" palm facing each other, he slowly and carefully joined them, "fusion!"
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In the room adjacent to Sen's, a figure was quietly practicing with a human-sized fan. If one were to look at the person's figure, they would only know it was a man after careful observation. But the sight was certainly peculiar.
"The first wave enamors" the person diagonally waved the fan.
"The second protects"
"The third breaths life"
"The fourth kills"
"The fifth destroys"
A beautiful dance was performed by the veiled man. He wore silver robes like the ancient people of China but not quite the same, and a black diaphones veil covering the lower half of his face.
A serene expression was on the person's face. His eyes closed, he continued to move elegantly. All of a sudden, he felt something and opened his eyes. From those eyes, one can see ruthlessness and murder fit for a savage on a battlefield.
"This…" a shocked expression on his face morphed into a deadly sneer. Waving his enormous fan twice, a golden shield surrounded him before a silent explosion rang out. The next second, a bright flash of light illuminated the night sky and the entire building suddenly turned into dust.
The pedestrians were scared by the sudden disintegration of an entire building. Dust flew everywhere covering the entire street. The building was destroyed but no single piece of debris was found, all turned into a fine white powder. They could only spectate from the side, wondering what could have happened, but none of them dared to approach for fear something might happen to them.
A few minutes later, an armored group arrived.
"Make way, make way" a crimson armored guard ordered the spectators to move before an old woman dressed elegantly and standing with a straight back came into view.
"That's a royal court mage!" a man whispered.
"Yeah I saw her entering the Zacharias house with the prince"
"What is she doing here?"
People had a reaction of awe and fear. Royal court mages are existences that they could only look up to.
The old woman ignored the chatter and wave both hands before everyone felt wind shacking from behind them. It grew so strong in an instant that some people grabbed into whatever they could find in fear that they might fly off.
The dust from the building swirled high up in a tornado before the old mage shouted, "scatter!" and the condensed ball of dust exploded in all directions above the city. Disappearing from sight.
"Hmm...?" the woman was surprised, she had expected everyone within this building to be dead. But instead, many people were now crouching down holding onto the ground while a golden shield surrounded them.
This old woman's name was Ebara, and she was the personal mage of his highness the second prince. When they received word that Princess Jenna died, the second prince who was nearby, volunteered to go and investigate. Although his father, the king, had dozens of daughters, Jenna was one of the talented ones, thus she was a bit more favored than the others.
That night, Ebara was discussing with his highness the prince about what that Cassil had said when she felt a disturbance of power, a power she has never felt before. She excused herself immediately and came here to see what happened.
Taking care of the dust that obstructed her visibility, she saw the sight of many people some of them who looked like they were bathing when the explosion happened and they were all protected by the golden shields.
"By Evam, what is that?" a shout brought her from her daze. She looked around to see the spectators all taking a step back as they pointed. She followed their gaze and was startled herself at the creature.
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Meanwhile, the southern gate of Tulip city, the silver robed man with the black veil flew on top of his fan, a satisfied expression on his face.
"Someone who found the one power, it's been a very long time since one of them appeared. This world is about to change again…Ahh, I really hope this would be the last time"
The man sighed as he disappeared in the cloud, heading to a place far away from this city.
----Author's note:
power stones keep the work going. If you liked the chapter and have one or two to spare, click on that vote button ^.^