Acacia's words resonated throughout the clearing, causing Icarth to fall deep into thought. It was clear to him that Acacia was not going to help him in any way that required Icarth to remove Jade as his partner.
'Although...this might be for the better,' The reason that Icarth hadn't tried to do anything drastic by himself was due to the other incidents that he had heard about.
Someone trying to use their gift "Void Stomach" as a subspace ended with a life-threatening situation where he had crossed the limitations of his own body's holding capacity by swallowing too many things. In the end, after an emergency surgery, the person had been unable to hold anything inside him for longer than 4 hours.
'I need to focus on what I can do right now,' Icarth affirmed to himself.
"Master, what should I do then?" Icarth asked out loud, conviction laced his voice.
"You must treat Jade as an equal from now on," Acacia answered with a gentle tone. Before Icarth could ask what that meant, his master continued, "It means that you two must spend the maximum amount of time together so that you can get used to each other."
".....So I have to live with...him?" Icarth asked stupefied while pointing to Jade whose ears were perked upright.
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Seril's crimson-red eyes glowed with power as she stared down at a nurse.
"W-w-w-hat a-a-re are you g-g-oing to d-do to me?" The poor nurse stuttered, pressing up at the wall behind her trying her hardest to get away from the monster in front of her. The young nurse didn't know what it was about the person in front of her, but every bit of her being just screamed in fright, an action down to each and every cell of her body.
'It's a monster,' the nurse thought to herself. She was sure of it, there was no way that the thing in front of her was a human.
"Oh nothing, I just needed to see if I was right," Seril answered while narrowing her eyes. Seril reached out her partially transformed hand and laid it on the nurse's sweaty forehead. The nurse just watched it all happen, too terrified to move a muscle, even to save herself.
Injecting her universal energy into the nurse, Seril searched for that same universal energy signature that she found in Emmia. Seril was tracking a very small aberration in the universal energy signals of the nurse. It was the only way Seril had to track the parasite.
'Found it,' Seril thought as she narrowed down on a source inside the nurse's liver.
'It hasn't activated yet,' Seril noted as she activated her gift and moved in on the parasite.
Sensing its demise, the parasite started to go wild infecting its surroundings and trying to escape. An extreme pain shot through the nurse causing her to faint on the spot without the time to even scream or shout. Calmly catching the nurse, Seril enclosed the parasite with her universal energy.
'Time to end this,' Seril thought coldly. Her crimson eyes glowed once more and the parasite was crushed by the sheer force of the universal energy surrounding it.
"Tch," Seril clicked her tongue. 'I still couldn't kill it with my gift.'
Even now, Seril was forced just to use a vast quantity of universal energy to crush the parasite. That was all good for smaller parasites, Seril knew that it wasn't going to be enough for the main one.
'Where are you hiding?' Seril thought frigidly, depositing the unconscious nurse onto a nearby bench. Currently, Seril was in a smaller hospital on the outskirts of Aster city. It was one of the leads that she had received after going through the files of all the people who visited her sister.
'I've visited half of them,' Seril marked down mentally.
'And 3 of them had the parasite,' Seril noted in her mind.
'This one isn't connected to the others,' Seril glanced at the nurse one last time and promptly left, retracting her gift which was surrounding the security cameras.
Running through the dead of night, Seril thought to herself, '8 more to go.'
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Sefir woke up and decided that he was still dreaming.
'Must be one of those lucid dreams,' Sefir decided with a short thought.
Currently, a dark brown rabbit was bouncing around the room, checking everything in the room out.
Glancing at Sefir, the rabbit ignored him and bounced up onto the sink. Turning the sink with his furry paws, the rush of water woke Sefir up from his stupor.
"Hey! Don't leave that on!" Sefir admonished as the rabbit hopped off without further thought. Sefir rushed up to the sink and closed the tap shut only to find the rabbit staring at his actions curiously.
"Haah, now what is Jade doing here?" Sefir mumbled out loud, more to himself than anyone else.
'I must be dreaming still,' Sefir continued his line of thought. And that thought was immediately expelled as Jade started to hop around the room once more, spreading water everywhere from his wet feet.
"Shit," Sefir cursed and lept for Jade. Sensing Sefir's approach, Jade activated his gift and shot forward, causing Sefir to swerve to avoid the bed frame right in his way. Off balance, Sefir pushed down on the ground with his hands and propelled himself towards Jade in one motion. Surprised, Jade tried to change direction and almost ran into a cupboard if it weren't for Sefir grabbing him right before the collision.
Skidding to a stop, Sefir breathed a sigh of relief, "Phew, I guess I'm not dreaming this." The burning sensation on his body from the skidding proved to him that he was awake.
"Anyways, be careful next time," Sefir scolded Jade softly.
"Do you understand?" Sefir asked Jade.
To his surprise, Jade nodded in response, which prompted Sefir to question if he was truly dreaming.
Impatient, Jade started to wiggle and squirm until Sefir let him go. Pushing off the ground, Jade resumed his laps around the room. Sefir continued to eye Jade for a while before giving up. Taking a deep breath, Sefir thought to himself, 'He probably forgot to take Jade back to the BC building(Beast Containment Facility).'
Glancing at Icarth, who was sleeping like a dead man, Sefir shook his head and moved to continue his morning routine.
Exiting the room, Sefir was once again stupified to see one of the wardens of the hostel half asleep on a chair right outside their room.
Sefir stood there hesitantly, trying to decide whether he should say something or not when the warden woke up by himself.
"Ah Sefir," The warden called out groggily.
"Yes, warden Uto?" Sefir answered politely.
"Is Icarth awake?"
"Uh, no, he's still asleep. Why do you ask?"
"Just a few hours ago, that kid brought in a beast into the hostel. By all the rules, this shouldn't be allowed. Please wake up Icarth and ask him to remove that beast from the hostel," Uto huffed, finally awake.
'Just great,' Sefir groaned internally. 'Just what I needed right after I woke up.'
"Sir, it's just a rabbit, I don't think there should be much of an issue for him to stay in the room until tomorrow morning," Sefir explained calmly.
"It's a beast," Uto repeated. "It doesn't belong in here. Just send it to the BC facility."
"Jade is Icarth's partner, sir," Sefir responded. "I don't have any say in the handle and care of Jade."
Before Uto could say anything else, Sefir continued again, "And sir, I don't think you have any power to remove a non-dangerous beast from the hostel."
Sefir stressed the sir and narrowed his eyes at the warden.
Uto shivered involuntarily. 'S**t. Why won't any of these kids listen?'
"Alright," Uto responded curtly and grabbed the chair to leave.
"Haah," Sefir gave a short sigh after he saw Uto disappear down the stairs.
'Why do some people have such a big ego?' Sefir thought plainly. He had already figured out why Uto was in front of their door when Uto revealed his reason.
'Ica must've pissed him off or something like that,' Sefir guessed as he shut the door behind him.
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Upon returning to the room, Sefir stared blankly at Jade and Icarth curled up in two different places, both deep in sleep.
'Yep, they are meant for each other,' Sefir thought to himself.
"Wake up Ica," Sefir called out as he headed for the bathroom.
Surprisingly, Icarth's eyes started to flutter at Sefir's voice.
'He really is sleeping lightly these days huh?' Sefir noted impressed. If it was before, Sefir would literally have to throw Icarth off his bed. But now? All he had to do was call his name and Icarth would get up, albeit extremely slowly.
"Mmmm," Icarth let out a noise as he pulled the blankets up over his head.
"Hey, don't blame me, you were the one who wanted me to wake up up today," Sefir responded as he got ready to take a bath.
"Mmm," Icarth said softly and continued to lay down on his bed.
Hearing the sounds of running water coming from the bathroom, Icarth started to ponder the meaning of life and why he had asked Sefir to wake him up so early today.
'Oh right,' Icarth finally remembered. 'Masters....." assignment"....'
Thinking about Jade, Icarth let out an internal groan and tried to prepare himself mentally for what he was about to go through.