Maximus thought while stirring the mixture of mana crystals and hot water,
'I should start with giving a name to the energy I get from souls? How about spectral? Nope. Aether? Ether? Nope. Astral? Chuck it, how about calling it spiritual energy. Yup, sounds basic and relatable enough.
'So only I have this spiritual energy… at least till now, I haven't heard anyone else mention it. Assuming that thread absorbs the spiritual energy they produce, does one need to cut off their thread so that they can start not-losing their spiritual energy?
'Seeing how others can use mana to fuel their abilities, basically both these energies can be used as fuel to use the abilities, since I am pretty sure I didn't have mana before. I was using spiritual energy.
'On that note, since I was using spiritual energy and, from their reactions, others couldn't sense it, is it safe to continue using it? Or should I stop after someone spots me using it? Meh, sounds stupid. No one knows if the exposure would be good for me or bad.
'I should start using mana when I am out in the open too, can never be too late to start being cautious. I can use spiritual energy when I am somewhere private.
'It will increase my expenses though, but well, one can never be too cautious with his own life.'
With all the thinking done, he moved on to the next part, he tasted a bit of the hot mixture and found that the taste was kind of bitter, not extremely so but faintly. He wasn't willing to go through meaningless torture so he simply downed the entire mixture in one go then quickly began reciting the scripture while focusing on his legs.
He figured that reinforcing his legs would be better since it would increase his survivability. His life was above everything, he didn't care about anything else for now.
Approximately two seconds after he finished reciting the scripture, he felt a flow of energy waft through his body and enter the muscles in his right leg. Just then, an insane amount of pain rushed to his brain as he clutched his right leg and buckled down on the floor screaming.
He didn't anticipate the pain. As much as it was easier to upgrade his abilities, it was nowhere even enough to upgrade his physique. He had no idea how Adrian even managed to upgrade his physique to such an insane level.
But he didn't stop, not now. He had already downed the whole mixture. He had no idea if the efficacy dropped with time, so he continued reciting the scripture.
Another bout of pain followed as mana entered the muscles of his right leg. To not make it uneven, he then concentrated on his left leg and similar pain followed. It was approximately after twenty minutes of continuous painful moments of writhing around on the floor like a worm that he finally felt like there was no more mana left as reciting didn't bring out any more energy.
He noticed that he had dirtied his room a bit, with sweat coming off his legs especially looking filthy and smelling dirty. He wasn't even sure if it was sweat. He tried waking up to clean his room but as soon as he pushed down on the floor to get up,
"Fuck my legs are sore as hell." He plopped back down.
He went through a couple of stretching exercises to relieve the soreness and cleaned his room, taking around a good twenty minutes to bring it back to its pristine condition and erase all the traces.
He tried moving around, testing if his legs had grown. They hadn't. But it certainly felt they were stronger. There was no tangible proof so just a vague feeling. It could be the placebo effect at work so he planned to next time see what could be his max weight before and after taking in the mana water, to see the level of improvement it brought.
He settled down on his bed and began wondering, 'Since the Gardeners are near the forest at the outskirts of the city, it should be alright to go and hunt a few gang members right? In the good case that Gardeners had brought their army with them, I could effectively lose their tracking for tonight. Seraphina's Gadgets would only make it easier. Wait, should I notify her?'
He thought for a while then shrugged, 'Might as well'
He dialed her number and let her know of his intentions. As expected, she gave him a buttload of information and didn't stop him from hunting gangs. She had the same thought as him, but asked why he wanted to hunt the gangs when it would do nothing but antagonize the Gardeners. He simply gave her the same reply of justice, he couldn't tell her about his spiritual energy, not yet.
When their group hunted the gangs, it was a signal to the Gardeners to send one of their members their way as they were getting short of mana crystals. Seraphina also had enough discretion though to not overdo and cross the line so as to not get chased by Gardeners with their full force.
For some reason she insisted that Gardeners could always catch them no matter how much effort they employed in hiding, just that doing so was not in the interests of the Gardeners either, probably because the cost of chasing them down was higher than the returns they would get after catching them and saving on the continuous drain of mana crystals. Might be why they had always been safe.
Maximus put on his vigilante suit and set off for a new round of hunting.
He skimmed over the information sent by Seraphina then shortlisted a few places himself after filtering through the deeds they had done. Since he wanted to fill his gene strands with spiritual energy of the soul, he might as well send a few pieces of trash to the afterlife.
He planned to go to the outskirts of the city in the south west. Majority of whom he wanted to kill resided there.
*****
Xander was leaning back on his chair, not taking his eyes off the space rift in the distance but suddenly, it vanished.