After Jack ended his practice he headed back upstairs to see what the family was doing.
As soon as he entered the living room, Jack saw David and Sarah cuddling together on the couch and watching TV while Angelica played with her toys.
Jack saw that nothing interesting was happening, so he joined them on the couch to watch TV while he regenerated his energy.
'Should I go back to practice or regenerate and just be prepared for when the crew comes over?'
Jack thought about it for a while but decided to just continue practicing and experimenting.
To him, it seemed like that was more worthy of his time now considering even if he saved his energy for tomorrow to scare the investigators again he wouldn't level up but he should be able to get some good experience.
The experiments and practice seem like they would pay off more for whatever happens after he clicks continue on the system notification that he got after the crew ended their investigation.
.....
A few hours later Sarah put Angelica to bed while David got ready for sleep himself.
Fortunately, the family has taken to the habit of turning the volume on the TV down and leaving it on all night for Jack, so he wasn't bored after they went to sleep and he didn't have to spend energy to turn it back on.
Jack sort of felt bad about them leaving the TV on constantly for him, their power bill might increase a good bit and they didn't even know if he was watching it or not.
'I don't want to waste energy but I guess since they're being so good to me, I could turn the TV off when I'm not watching it so they save some money.' Jack thought to himself.
...
It was halfway through the night by the time Jack regenerated almost all of his energy.
Jack turned the TV off and made his way down to the basement.
After he got to his typical practice and experiment spot in the basement he wondered if he should continue practicing the time it took to form an image or the shape.
Jack thought about it for a few minutes and then figured that the forming time takes precedence since it was still a bit too long.
So Jack got right to it.
Jack focused on his hand and pictured the ball of mist in his mind.
Then he willed it to happen.
It took 9 seconds before a swirling ball of mist gathered and formed in his hand.
After it formed completely he let the image in his mind fade.
The ball of mist slowly dissipated.
'9 seconds, a little faster than my last try earlier in the day.' Jack thought as he checked an old clock that he found down in the basement.
....
An hour later.
After he pictured the ball of mist in his mind and willed it to form again and again until he used up half of his energy.
Jack had gotten the formation time down to 5 seconds.
He was getting better and better at it.
However, he was getting bored so he decided to experiment with changing the shape.
But before that, he tried healing himself just to make sure he was good.
He activated his ability with his hands facing his chest as his hands glowed green.
Seeing that he didn't lose any energy, he felt relieved to move on.
This time Jack pictured a square instead of a ball and willed it to form.
10 seconds later a thick mist that looked like a clear box was holding it inside it formed in his hand.
After it formed, Jack let the image fade from his mind before the mist looked like it was suddenly released from the box, falling out from all sides, like a wave.
'10 seconds, double what I got the ball to... That makes sense, I guess...'
' after all, it's my first try with a different shape.' Jack thought when he checked the time.
'Might as well try a bunch of different shapes.'
After Jack had that thought he put it into practice.
Over the next hour, Jack tried to make many different shapes in all sizes.
A pyramid took him 9 seconds to form, and after a few different shapes, a cylinder took him 8 seconds to form.
Jack noticed that as he tried shape after shape his time to form them slowly met his best time at 5 seconds.
Halfway through the hour, Jack got his forming time of any shape down to 7 seconds.
But he had a thought.
Realistically why would he ever need to form a pyramid out of the mist?
It's good practice but totally useless in reality.
So he started to focus on shapes he could find use in.
For example a human-shaped mist.
He could use it as a clone for a distraction or something.
However, he wasn't confident enough to make it human-sized just yet so he practiced making it doll-sized first.
It took him half a minute to make a human-shaped doll-sized mist figure.
Unfortunately, as he imagined it, he realized he had no idea how he looked to outside observers when he willed himself to become a mist.
He has no idea the amount of detail in his mist form that they can see.
Luckily he might get a chance to see himself later when the crew shows the family what they caught on camera.
So for now he just made it as simple as possible with just the body shape being made with no minute details.
'Too long...' Jack didn't even have to check the exact time to know that it took so long.
' But this shape is a bit more complicated.' Jack thought as he let the image fade from his mind.
After the mist faded he tried over and over again for another half an hour before he was close to running out of energy.
'It still took too long, About 20 seconds.' Jack was disappointed but as they say, practice makes perfect.
'I guess I'll have to try to make it human-sized next time.'
Jack thought as he made sure he was ok by trying to heal himself before he went back to the living room upstairs.