Zaria suddenly took off her necklace and showed it to Zen
"Oh yeah, I wanted to ask you about this.
Zen tilted his head curiously.
"It's Yang" He said like he didn't understand the question.
"It looks like yours"
"No it's the complete opposite" Zen took it from her and studied it closely. It really did resemble his.
"My mom got it a few days ago. She said that there was some kind of legend behind it"
"Not a legend, more like a concept" Zen took off his necklace, placing it side by side with hers and continued.
"Yin and Yang represent darkness and light respectively, and were usually considered two sides of a whole, with neither being able to exist without the other. It's all pretty dumb actually "
Zen didn't seem at all interested in this, but Zaria hurriedly stopped him and told him to keep going.
Zen shrugged and continued for a few more minutes, explaining a few more things to her.
Zen checked both necklaces with his read skill, and they both showed up as useless trinkets without any stats or skills. Zen are expected this
He had tried taking off the necklace and even keeping it a long distance from him, but nothing changed with the system, leading Zen to suspect that there was no connection between it and the system,or that whatever link was between them was temporary and had ended.
Thinking about Chinese concepts had actually reminded him of his throwing star.
He brought it out, allowing Zaria to see it for the second time and examined it.
[First tier shuriken:流星 (liú xīng)]
[Strength: +0]
[Agility: +5]
[Stamina: -10]
[Intelligence: +10]
[Durability: 100]
[Active skills]
[Flame burst]
[Drill strike]
[Stun]
[Heal]
[Freeze]
[Flare]
[Solid]
[Poison](stacks)
[Passive skill]
[Lucky star: Every time you throw the weapon, randomly activate a minimum of one and a maximum of two active skills. The number of skills used is also randomly selected]
[Boomerang: always return back to who threw it if they are within range]
[Description: A powerful weapon that was forged by a master blacksmith from eight different first rank beast cores, results in eight different first rank active skills]
[Evaluation: Epic]
Zen looked and was satisfied with what he saw. Most of what he learned about this gear had been learned the hard way through trial and error.
Freya giving him this had been a deciding factor in Zen's personality as he had come to accept that some things couldn't be controlled and just had to be taken in stride. It was a bit mind boggling that Freya had decided to solve her young ward's depression by introducing him to the mindset of a gambler and teaching him to take risks.
"How many others are like you?"
Zen was snapped out of his thoughts by another question.
"Rogue agents that survived the destruction of your agency"
Zen thought for a bit and answered.
"Other than Keith and I, not a lot"
Zaria nodded slowly. She realized that she may have been asking a bit too much so she kept quiet as they walked around for a few more minutes before Zen suddenly broke the silence.
"When do you want to start?"
"What?"
"You wanted to learn chinese, right?"
Zaria suddenly remembered.
"We can start tomorrow"
Zen nodded. He didn't have much to do other than ruin Clyde's life, and since tomorrow was a saturday, his schedule was very free.
After walking around for a few more minutes, Zen and Zaria went back to their rooms and got in bed.
************
The next morning, Maximilian, Xavier and Neo woke up relatively early.
Xavier wanted to wake Zen but was stopped by Maximilian.
"Leave him. I'm pretty sure he takes his naps pretty seriously. He'll wake up in time for breakfast. It's the only part of the day he seems to take seriously to be honest "
Agreeing with him,they all quietly left and just like Maximilian said, although he woke up late, he got up in time for breakfast, though it wouldn't be surprising to learn that he didn't bother freshening up as he came out looking like the walking dead. Infuriatingly enough for the boys in the school, he still managed to attract looks from all around.
Their breakfast was pretty uneventful and when he noticed Clyde wasn't here, Zen asked Black about it to which it replied that it would keep Clyde in an induced sleep till he missed breakfast.
Zen didn't really care as it didn't affect the core of his plan and kept eating, even sliding a few pieces of food to Black, to see how it reacted to human food"
Zen finished two of his daily quests and left straight for the training area to complete the rest were,a bit surprised to realize that there were more people in what used to be his private spot.
He eventually left for the forest behind the school as he didn't cope quite well with crowds.
Black jumped off his arm and took the form of a bat as it glided after Zen in the air.
Once they reached a relatively deserted area, Zen started his daily quests, while Black said it wanted to go explore before taking off in its bat form. If Zen ever needed it, he still had a small piece connected to his brain,so all he had to do was call it back.
Black glided around the forest and even into the city for a few hours, discovering some interesting things and causing some mischief along the way. After it was satisfied, it came flying back to Zen, confident in its ability to find him since a piece of it was still with him, and when it found Zen,it was suprised to see him climbing a mountain.
When it asked Zen why it was doing this, Zen replied that he wanted to see if he could.
Black was curious, and Zen revealed that most of what made him who he was was his connection to the Arcade. Now that he wasn't with them and with the academy, things were a just blank for him. He had no goal, motivation or anything like that.
He didn't aspire to become powerful or the best student,or even a good student at that. Zen said that after a bit of thinking, he would have either done this,or just slept through the whole day. That was why he wasn't surprised or even motivated by the system and its ability to give him strength. Quite simply, he wouldn't know what to do with the strength once he got it. The honest truth was that he had no idea what to do with his life. He'd probably be satisfied living averagely until he died of old age if it was an option.
Black realized that Zen was suffering from a lack of purpose, but it also realized that Zen didn't really care. Black itself didn't see the point of so called purpose as it still didn't understand much. In many ways, Zen and Black were quite similar. Neither of them had any goals or motivation. Both of them could care less about lives, including their own, and they both just went with the tide even though they could easily resist with their joined strength, simply out of sheer boredom with life.
Black did a mental equivalent of a shrug and flew back onto Zen's hand, attaching itself to Zen's nails and creating tough bone like structures over them.
"I modelled this substance after the structure of bones, specifically yours, after spending some time in your body. Its just as tough as regular bones and should be unidentifiable from the real thing, even at the molecular level"
Zen acknowledged it with a grunt. He already knew it could do this, and other than the fact that the bone nails were pitch black, he could tell they really felt like real bone.
Zen continued his climbing much more smoothly with Blacks help as he easily pierced through the rock to pull himself upward.
Zen got to the top fairly quickly and decided to just sit there until he found something else to do.
Black once again decided to go explore,, but this time turned into a snake and slithered through some holes and cracks in the ground.
For the next thirty minutes, Zen just sat there, using his read skill on whatever he could get his eyes on, watching as the completion bar slowly increased, satisfied with the excruciatingly slow pace.
He had no other choice. The only way he was going to level up now was to fight, however the students in the hand to hand combat class were too weak to cause significant increase. The only other choice he had was to wait for the schools regular planetary expedition in two weeks to fight beasts.
Zen suddenly heard Black.
"This is interesting. Zen, you might want to see this"
"Hmm?"
Before Zen could ask, Black in his snake like shape slithered out and told him to follow it as it led him down.
Zen didn't think much of it and followed it down. They only went down a few steps when Black stopped and pointed to a well hidden inconspicuous little opening in the mountain.
"Another cave?"
Zen was surprised he had missed it. The entrance itself was surrounded by a wall of loose rocks which could only be passed from a specific direction at the right otherwise someone would completely miss it. And even if someone did see it,it was easily mistakable for a regular pile of rocks.
Zen climbed through the small opening, careful not fall, and finally saw the actual opening to the cave and walked in together with Black
It was fairly large and spacious, with Zen being able to move perfectly freely.
After a few steps in and a few turns, Zen noticed a light coming from inside the cave , which made him suspect that there was another entrance which sunlight came through, but he quickly realized that couldn't be true as the color of the light was wrong.
Zen got cautious, suspecting someone else was here, but Black calmed him down, saying it had already searched the entire cave and that the light was something else.
Zen eventually got to where the light was coming from and understood Black's excitement.
In front of him was a cavern. The inside was like a large dome with no holes or cracks for sunlight to get through. There were about a dozen more tunnels similar to the one he had come through which probably led to different entrances. In the very center of the cave was a fairly large pond or lake with water as clear as crystal.
Surprisingly despite the lack of sunlight, the floor was completely covered with dark green grass, some strange flowers, and other plants .
The source of the blue light in the cave turned out to be hundreds of crystals embedded in the walls and ceiling of the cave that completely illuminated the place with a slightly dim dark blue light, giving off the feeling that it was nighttime moisturizer in the cave.
"What do you think?" Black asked.
"It's beautiful" Zen answered as he picked up a flower
"Read"
[Moon flower]
[A rare plant which feeds on moonlight. Although it is perfectly capable of surviving during the day,its true beauty can only be fully appreciated under the full moon. It has mild pharmaceutical properties when processed and can be eaten raw as well. It can be used for many purposes like detoxification]
[Grade: Excellent]
Zen looked around where he was and saw dozens of these flowers,if not hundreds. He read through it again and it definitely said it was rare.
Zen looked at the crystals and suspected that the light they were releasing probably had the same effect as moonlight for these plants as he couldn't see anywhere light could come from.
Zen went to a random bush and used read.
[Nightshade willow]
[This rare plant hates sunlight and must be grown under very strict conditions....]
Once again it said rare, but this place was practically full of them.
Zen moved to another which looked like a lily
[Shadow lily]
Another
[Moonlit myrtle]
[Dreaming Daffodil]
Zen finally stopped.
"I had a feeling you'd like this place. Zaria has her place, now we have ours" Black said.
Zen nodded and sat in front of the small clear pond, and looking into it, he noticed it also seemed to be slightly glowing.
Curious, he decided to use read and....
[???????]
[???????]
[??????]
"Well that's interesting"
Zen suddenly received a notification
[Analysis complete! Congratulations to host for discovering a dungeon corpse!!!]