"So you know him?" Sally asked. Andrea and Rina's reaction was too obvious.
Andrea shook her head. She didn't want to involve herself with an unknown being. She wasn't even sure if it was the same Maxwell they knew.
"No.." she stammered. She went silent for a moment then said, "the name was just too familiar and it shocked me to hear it."
Sally obviously didn't buy it but wasn't planning to pressure her. She just said, "It's okay. It would be weird if you were related to a hundred year-old legend," she shrugged.
This time, although Andrea was shocked a little, she tried not to show it. She even felt a bit relieved since it would be impossible for the Commander to come here before them. It would be ridiculous.
'Sally, do you mind keeping off Andrea's mind for a while?" Rina said lackadaisically.
Andrea was shocked and wanted to reprimand her but Sally raised her hand.
"It's okay if you need privacy," she said with a laugh. "Go see old uncle, he'll teach you a barring spell."
Andrea was surprised by her openness but also felt a bit suspicious. Nevertheless, she walked to Old Zen and found him still in his rocking chair but unbound by the vines.
"You are quite strong," Andrea said sarcastically. She knew the old man was actually too strong for his appearance and never expected the measly Mutant vine to hold him.
"And handsome," old Zen winked perversely. Andrea felt her eyebrows raise and she felt like laughing. She struggled to keep it down but it burst out of her like a broken dam.
HAHAHA!
Old Zen didn't seem offended though. He just kept his face straight and chin high in the sky, such a thick skin.
"Ehm.. sorry about that," Andrea coughed. She still felt like laughing since Rina was laughing even more.
"Sally said you had a privacy spell?" She asked seriously.
She waited for the answer but suddenly a piece of paper flew out of one of his pockets. Andrea caught it and walked back to her room.
The old man looked at her and said, "What a rude little girl, I'll teach you respect one day.." he gnashed his teeth.
Back in her room, Andrea looked at the piece of paper and saw it was a set of instructions. Reading it, she understood how easy it was.
'It seems like the people here are quite used to the energy called mana," she thought to herself. 'They even discovered how to manipulate it and shield themselves, Rina, you know what this means?"
Rina nodded and said, "The energy is flexible and only need a good thinker, can be quite useful.'
Andrea agreed with her. If earth had such a resource, maybe their war with the naga would be a distant memory already.
'That's right,' Rina chimed in. 'If it can be a shield why not a bomb?'
Andrea had an idea, but first of all, she needed to manifest that mind shield. If anyone learned of the things she knew, only God knows what might happen then.
Following the written instructions, she moved the energy through her nose, mouth, ears, even pores in the skin, and gathered all around her skull.
The process was a bit weird since the connection between the energy and her mind allowed her to see her body in an x-ray like vision.
The energy moved around her skull and circled it like a bubble but Andrea felt it wasn't enough yet. Summoning even more energy from the air, she continued to thicken the layer until it was around ten centimeters thick.
In another room, Sally had "overheard" Andrea's conversation with Rina and was shocked by the words she was hearing.
'Bomb? Naga?! Why do I feel like I've heard these words before!' she wondered.
While mulling over the matter, her connection to Rina and Andrea was suddenly cut off. Her head jerked in surprise.
'She put up such a thick shield! Her body must be so resilient!'
Little did she know that Andrea's body wasn't always that strong. At the moment, Earth's technology had developed so much that genetic enhancement was common for soldiers.
Andrea was a scientist of some sort and thus her body had the best gene enhancement one could get. After all, she was quite the figure.
After developing the shield, Andrea and Rina discussed what they had discovered about mana.
Rina had concluded that mana was responsible for their combination of souls. She was also sure it was what had cut her off from her other half in Midnight still up in space.
She also told her friend that the same energy was what kept them from scanning the planet while out there.
She had a theory that if they could imbue the signal waves sent to Midnight with a shield of mana, they should be able to communicate.
Andrea reminded her that there was no way for signals to come back down since there was no one in the ship who could shield the signals.
After brainstorming for a while, they came up with the idea of using mana to create a mana-free tunnel to allow signals to freely move. Their theory was okay and they were surprised it could work but it needed a lot of energy to do it.
They had no choice but to shelf the idea for now.
Going on, Andrea also shared her experience with Rina, but it was only because they decided to come up with ideas together.
Andrea told her that the so called Martial Souls were actually the souls of the beasts they killed and they had some similarities to the original beast.
For instance, Andrea withdrew the mantis Martial Soul and when it was out, it covered her body in a black stoney armour.
The armour was quite sturdy and even a knife couldn't pierce it. The result was the same even when she added mana to her stab, which shocked the two. It was like some supper amour.
After the armour test, Andrea and Rina also developed some theories on some spells they could make use of with mana. They didn't try them out, however, in feet of something going out of control. After that, the two friends chatted until supper then went to the dining room.