Zen looked at his watch. He suddenly realized that he was completely in the dark on what to do with this thing. He had instinctively decided to take it back, trying to treat it like it was just his watch, but it seemed like only now was the fact that this thing on his wrist was a living creature, with its own mind and consciousness beginning to sink into his head.
"Black" Zen called.
Immediately his watch slowly began turning into a black slimy substance that wriggled and convulsed.
Others might have seen the sight as horrific or disgusting, but Zen had no problem with it.
After a few seconds, the black sludge symbiotic parasite that Zen named black,was back in his original form, and on Zen's open palm
"Do you wish to stay with me?" Zen asked it.
Almost immediately, the black slimy creature transmitted its thoughts to Zen mentally, and although there were still no words, Zen was a hundred percent sure it was a yes.
In response to this, Zen promised he'd try his best to be a good partner and try to take care of it when he received another telepathic message.
"You're hungry?" Zen felt it made sense. Afterall, this creature had just been awakened after several centuries of what was basically an induced comma. He was just confused about what to actually feed it,as it didn't even have a digestive system or any organs. Exactly how and what would it eat
"Try injecting your aether into it"
Zen didn't understand and waited for her to explain.
"These things are parasites. They've lived off of the energy of their host's for centuries now. He's already been passively absorbing your energy, might as well see how it takes to active consumption ".
Zen felt like it was plausible. He held out Black in his hand and prepared to attempt to feed him, however he couldn't have expected what would happen next.
Zen was somewhat new to the process but had already conducted extensive research,so it came naturally to him. He took a deep breath and closed his, envisioning the whole process as he began to slowly and extremely carefully draw the energy out of his heart, through his veins and out through his pores on his fingertips.
Zen suddenly received mental waves from Black.
"He's satisfied with it" Zen decided to inform Freya
"I can tell. Look how cute little black is wiggling around happily".
Zen didn't get the sentiment. Cute or not, he just cared that it worked.
This kept going for about five minutes. Black didn't seem especially impatient as he simply consumed what Zen fed him, not bothering to try actively draining Zen, that being something Freya had told him they could do. Zen on the other hand just kept feeding him slowly. He didn't rush the process. He was still unfamiliar with the process of actually using aether, so he didn't want to make any stupid mistakes and hurt himself.
It was insane that he was even doing this in the first place when he had only awakened a few days ago. Aether was stored in the heart and moved through the veins and bones, Just a slight misstep was enough to kill someone. If anyone heard that a person who awakened a few days ago was trying something like this, they'd call him crazy.
[AE: 35/100]
"Okay that should be enough" Zen spoke as he stopped injecting aether into Black.
Black showed a little unhappiness but didn't react much as he just wiggled his little body in discontent for a few seconds before calming down.
Zen was honestly amazed. He felt like if he hadn't stopped, Black would have consumed and consumed until he was dry and still have an appetite.
Black suddenly began to slide his little formless body up Zen's arm while wiggling and signaling to Zen.
Zen understood what it wanted and brought his arm closer to his head, and the little black directly in front of his face.
"Hmmm? What's this?"
Zen had received another mental transmission.
It seemed Black was asking for his....trust?
Zen thought for a few seconds and realized that it was more like it was asking for permission. It seemed Black wanted to attempt something that was either super personal,or had a level of risk, and was asking for Zen's permission to proceed"
Zen thought for a few seconds and accepted. He himself wasn't too sure where this trust was coming from, but he didn't think that Black would try to harm him.
Black seemed happy with his acceptable as it extended its body and touched Zen's forehead.
Zen only felt a cold slimy sensation on his head before the part of black that was touching his suddenly seemed to merge with his body as it seeped into his body through the pores in his skin.
[Ding! An unknown entity has invaded the host's body]
Zen suddenly felt an inexplicable sensation in his head that was composed of 70% pain,20% discomfort, and the remaining 10% couldn't be explained .
[Ding! Threat has accessed the host's brain]
[Terminating unknown entity]
Hundreds of Zen's memories suddenly started running through his mind, however Zen noticed that almost every single one had something in common.
Throughout the whole process, Zen tried his hardest to keep the arm that Black was on, steady, and not drop him, not just because of the pain, but the bloodlust flowing in him as every single cell in his body kept screaming of danger, as well as the confusing feeling in his body that was telling him that Black wasn't trying to hurt him.
After a few seconds, the small piece of Black that entered him, came out through his pores.
[Unknown entity leaving host's body]
[Unable to restrict unknown entity]
[Unknown entity escaped]
Zen lowered Black slowly while sighing in relief
"What did you do?"
Surprisingly, this time, Black's slimy body actually contorted to form words on his palm.
Zen was surprised. He suddenly realized that almost every memory that passed through his mind was one involving him learning a language or some other form of communication.
"You read my mind so you could learn to communicate"
"I'm not Azrael"
This time, Black simply formed a question mark on Zen's hand instead of asking a question.
"It's a little hard to explain. If you access my memories again, can I choose which memories to show you?"
"How"
Zen read the words on his hand, noticing it was smaller but didn't bother asking as he knew that Black was using his actual body to write, and probably needed to make the writing smaller due his body's size,as well as the size of his palm.
Zen once again brought Black close to his forehead and as the creature once again entered his head and accessed his brain, Zen who was more experienced than last time, began running a few specific memories in his mind.
The process this time was shorter as what they were doing wasn't as grand as learning languages.
Zen sighed once it was all done. Even if he was more used to it, it was still strange.
<-I understand>Black wrote on his hand.
Zen took one last deep breath but didn't say anything.
"Nice to meet you too"
Freya suddenly interjected at this point.
"I'd love to stay and chat with little black but I think it's time to go "
Zen agreed with her. He suspected the time to be around 9:00 pm,in other words,it was time to get going.
"Black, could you transform back into the watch form. We need to get back to our current residence, and i need to keep you a secret,at least for now "
Black didn't exactly understand. Zen asked a few questions and realized that Black had absolutely no memory of anything before waking up . They hastily did one final mind link where Zen taught it the basic knowledge of the world,as well as its own current situation"
Black hastily absorbed all the information and quickly understood the situation. If one was to look at what the government did the last time,then it wouldn't take a genius to know that Black would be in danger if found out.
Without writing a word, Black wrapped around Zen's wrist, turning back into the watch.
Zen didn't waste any more time and sprinted out of the cave at full speed. He knew if he was seen it might cause some problems if he couldn't explain why he was out so late.
*************
45 minutes later
Zen arrived at his dorm, and luckily he wasn't seen by anyone"
He opened the door and found only Maximilian and Neo.
They were both doing something on their holographic screens in front of them which was projected from the watch, and had a strange amount of semblance to the system screen. It even had a function to make it invisible to others but you, but that would require an expensive implant mod directly on the eyes of the person.
Neo sudden noticed that Zen had returned.
"Zen, you're back. Where have you been? We got worried"
"I was in the forest behind the school" Zen answered
"Well it's good to have you back. If you're looking for Xavier, he's taking a shower"
Zen simply grunted and went to lay on his bed.
Neo simply smiled and went back to what he was doing.
Maximilian looked up from what he was doing and noticed that Zen wasn't doing anything. Confused, he asked
"Zen, have you already picked which one to check out?"
"Which what?" Zen asked.
Maximilian looked surprised and even Neo dropped what he was doing.
"You mean you didn't get the instructions?"
They noticed Zen still didn't look like he knew what they were talking about, so Maximilian simply told him to check his watch.
Zen did so, already knowing that Black didn't mind this, and had told him on the way here that he had no nervous system, and didn't feel pain.
Opening the holo screen and noticed that he had a new message.
Zen skimmed through the screen and realized that it was a basically the scheme for the school year. Appearantly they would take normal classes from eight in the morning till noon and from them till the evening was the special classes.
The message also included instructions for students to pick one special class that they would do after normal classes. There were multiple choices to pick from and they were even allowed to visit one class a day for the rest of the week so they could be able to make better choices, however by next week they would have to pick something to specialize in.
Looking through the list, Zen could see wilderness survival training class, blacksmith and forging, even mecha engineering and piloting.
Zen didn't see a reason to choose now. Most people were going to just visit a class a day for the next week, so he was just going to do that.
"So what do you think?" Maximilian asked
"I'll think about it tomorrow. I'm going to bed" Zen replied as he closed the holo screen and pulled the blanket over him as he closed his eyes and went to bed.
Maximilian simply let out a sound of acknowledgement as he watched Zen go to sleep, noticing that it seemed Zen preferred to sleep on his stomach.