PoV Ben
It happened soon after the explosion. What was once just a relatively harmless girl had now begun to exude so much mana that it started to affect her surroundings. The air got colder and colder while she was on her knees puking up everything she had left in her stomach.
I tried to absorb most of it, but I ended up getting attacked by her mana. Almost immediately, I knew that thing had consciousness. It formed the shape of one of those eastern dragons, and it was made entirely out of ice.
It was definitely influenced by the passion Aisha had for dragons and that specific kind of snake-like dragon.
That strike didn't do much in the way of actual damage; it was more of a warning. That thing didn't want me to interfere with its life and was ready to attack me in case I went against his wishes; whether he could kill me or not was a different matter.
It didn't take more than a couple of days for her mana to start affecting the weather, causing a never-ending snow area around our block, making the temperature drop significantly, and ultimately killing a lot of the people that couldn't escape in time or that were still stuck under the rubble.
During the same time, she caught a very bad case of fever; her body temperature was extremely high, and I wasn't very healthy either. Breathing all that mana felt suffocating, and I could barely function properly for more than a couple of hours at a time. But I was the only one that could still walk among us two, so I pushed through those hellish moments just to keep us alive, not just me.
I never got an explanation why she killed her father; something had surely gone wrong back then, but I couldn't exactly figure out what. She had become extremely possessive and self-loathing by the time we reunited. She had me locked up in an apartment that she used as food storage. She used her mana to fortify the prison and made sure I couldn't escape.
She would visit me just once in a while to deposit more food and maybe have some sex if she had found some condoms while she was gathering food. Every time she came back, I could smell the scent of blood permeating her clothes and her body. Our bond wasn't broken, but she had started to put less effort into maintaining it. I could barely feel her presence or her emotions at that point; it was just a matter of depositing her excess mana.
Even the few moments we had together weren't all that great; she was angry at anything I did; she would cry whenever I yelled back; she would avoid discussion; she would threaten to end me; and when that didn't work, she simply stopped talking to me. What was left were just some sexual acts we performed in complete silence without even looking at each other.
Common sense would dictate that I just abandon her and focus on my own survival; that way, I would've become a free man once more. But I didn't.
Things didn't get any better with time; the cold got stronger and stronger while that thing was growing bigger and bigger each day. It was so bad now that even our stove had stopped working.
It was probably around the second week after the incident that I also started to feel feverish. Our only source of heat was the fire I could create using the mana she stored in me. Each day the excess that she would transfer to me was increasing higher and higher, till I also started feeling the limits of my body, or that is what I believed at least.
Once I reached the right threshold, I also started to feel extremely sick until that god appeared again. He said something about growth and some other stuff, but we were too sick to understand any of what he was saying, so he put some seal on us.
From that point, things kind of got a lot more stable.
The next day I woke up just fine; at least when compared to the previous day, the area that was subjected to Aisha's mana was still expanding, but it was a lot less cold. She still had a high fever, but our situation had drastically improved. The god had implanted some sort of game-like system on us; it resembled a lot the system of a particular monster-catching game. There were many options, and among those were the account options.
I was curious, so I checked, and there I found all my personal information, such as my height, weight, the color of my eyes, my hair, et cetera.
It was pretty much like this:
Name: Ben Adosim
Level: 10
Race: Human Variant I
Forced Tutorial: phase 1
Age: 17;
Birthday: August 29;
Eyes: model 34; model 34j
And so on and so forth. I didn't bother to scroll down; it was pretty much all information I already knew.
The forced tutorial part was highlighted, so I pressed it, and there I found a brief explanation of what Variant I is and what it is capable of.
Variant I: An anomaly caused by excessive exposure to a particular energy during the pregnancy stage, this variant specializes in the creation of a special base that will use mana to produce all kinds of objects useful to the variant.
'A pretty lackluster description.'
There were some images of weird trees, mountains, or weird constructs underwater created by other variants. As I scrolled down through the images, I started seeing instructions that were paired with easy-to-follow illustrations on how to create the base.
Aisha started puking on the ground; her fever had gotten worse overnight; she was coughing blood; she could barely talk; and she was now getting worse. I had to clean up her mess, change the sheets, and keep the room relatively warm to not make her situation worse. It was after I finished all of that and sat down next to her that she repaired the bond.
She flooded my mind with all the emotions she was feeling at the time, along with the mana. She was angry, sad, scared, and sorry. That was the first time she ever apologized to me. She had resigned herself and apologized to me about everything.
"Don't worry, we're gonna survive this." I said to comfort her.
That night, we had to suffice with just a couple of packages of instant noodles. It wasn't something I wanted to feed her, but now that was all we had left for food. In my mind, I thought, "It's still better than nothing at all."
In the middle of the night, I woke up due to a sudden stomach ache. It was so bad that I curled up in a fetal position and was breathing heavily to alleviate the pain. It was a pain so strong that I would've gladly stabbed myself in the stomach to simply take out whatever was causing the pain. At first, I also felt a sense of nausea while I continuously burped.
Then I started feeling cold; I felt something clogging my throat, slowly rising. If I drank some water and did not puke it, the stomach pain would increase tenfold. Nothing I tried alleviated that pain—not medicine, not magic, not those trashy natural methods. So I left Aisha on her own and closed myself in the bathroom with my head inside the toilet, just waiting to puke.
A couple of hours passed, and only when I was about to puke did I feel that Aisha was in pain. In those hours, my body had drained her of all of her mana and was asking for more, to the point that she was in pain. What I puked was just a single seed, a seed that was as big as an avocado seed. After spitting it into the toilet, I passed out from exhaustion.
PoV Kane
"Nina, stop trying to fly using that technique; you're only going to hurt yourself." I shouted at her.
Lately, she's been trying to use the flash fire technique to fly.
"But I think I'm ready to start flying."
The flash fire is a technique mainly used for repositioning during a fight. It uses the propelling force of the fire aura while also solidifying it to literally surf on top of solid objects. Needless to say, it's a technique that puts a lot of strain on the knees and can't be used for long periods at a time.
A technique that works best with the properties of the fire aura, it can work with wind as well but it's not as cost efficient, water is also not cost efficient as well as not as powerful, while the earth aura is just too slow, and the fastest one is of course the lightning, but if not handled correctly it could also easily cost your life.
She saw someone in the survival show using it, and since then she has become obsessed with it. At first, I didn't want to teach her that technique as it's still too early for her to use it, but I found myself obligated to since she almost blew off her legs while training to mimic that technique.
'Of course you can't tell anything about a technique if your only reference is a short clip on a screen.'
As soon as she started getting used to it (albeit not in a fast or powerful way), she started to test how fast she could fly with that technique.
"You're barely ready for this technique; trying to reach the sky would only destroy your legs."
"But you-"
"There's no need to rush things; we still have plenty of years together. The same goes for you, John; don't rush into things. It's true that I don't want you to become hunters, but I won't hinder your growth either; that will only get you killed, and you know that's what I'm trying to avoid." She remained silent for a while after that, so I gathered the two of them and gave them a big hug.
At the same time, Daniel came out of the building in a hurry, holding something in his hand.
"Kane, the units dispatched in area-"
"I'm busy, plus I still haven't memorized the area codes, so you're just talking nonsense from my perspective."
"It's an emergency," he added while catching his breath.
I gave both of them a kiss on the forehead before saying.
"We'll resume our training later on, and like always, make sure that if you're training, there's someone watching; otherwise... you know what happens."
Before they even had the chance to respond, I grabbed Daniel and jumped from the ground floor to the rooftop.
"So, what's going on?"
"Some soldiers have confirmed the presence of at least four other variants; two of them are located in the same city, with one of them confirmed to be a witch."
'This is the eleventh variant in the past month; how come there are so many on a single planet?'
"Wait, a witch?"
"Yes, the order is to capture those two variants and make sure they'll join our ranks."
'His Majesty still hasn't given up on the university of magic... Still capturing a witch...'
"Isn't Hollis better suited for the job?"
"C'mon, you know that once his battle instincts kick in, he rarely stops himself; if I remember correctly, he killed the last witch we spotted."
'Yeah, he had to pay a huge fine for that accident.'
"And you think I will?"
"I'm sure you can if you just put in your best efforts."
"Ok, then, open up the portal."
"Sure thing."