Eventually they went at it again and again for hours. Neo managed to squeeze in a few wins before Zen pointed out how long they'd been here and suggested they leave.
Neo who seemed to have only now realized that he was a bit of a battle maniac,was extremely displeased, but understood what he meant. They had been gone for a long time, the others could be getting worried.
**************
"Yeah, well I'm not the one who summoned a giant ass dragon"
Another monotone and emotionless voice responded.
"And I'm not the one who used an actual star as a laser blaster"
"Yeah about that,why did I get that weird migraine after that anyway? Ugh,it felt like it was going to kill me"
The two came into view as they entered the dungeon which was their temporary base and found the others awake, well...most of them at least , Sable was still unconscious.
"Guys, you're back!"
Jade tried to get up,greet them, and probably get a hug or two, but as she got up, she stumbled,her legs trembling.
"Whoa,chill. You guys still need rest"
Neo said as he went to help her back down.
Zen noticed Maximilian looking at him and asked
"What?"
"You came back"
Zen shrugged and tossed Sable's ring to Jade.
"What have you guys been doing?" Xavier asked
Neo smiled a bit smugly and tossed Maximilian's and Xavier's rings to them.
"Check the ring and you'll find out"
They all looked into the spacial rings and although they didn't say or do anything, their faces were enough to show how shocked they were.
"This is..."
"It's the least we could do besides,you guys did all the work"
Zen left to his corner and sat down, preparing to go back to sleep.
"You're going back to sleep?" Neo asked
"Yep. There's not exactly much to do here, unless you want to find some beasts and go through all that again. Besides, we have no idea how long we'll be on this planet"
That was all Zen said before he closed his eyes to sleep.
Thinking about what Zen said, Neo realized he was right. He was out of energy so he couldn't practice now, and those fights with Zen seemed to have drained him more than he thought as he felt his mind slightly fading.
Going to sleep himself, Neo couldn't help but wonder if there was a way to absorb energy passively without meditating.
Although the others had woken up a few hours ago,they weren't fully recovered so they just sat there for a while before falling back asleep as well.
****************
Zen opened his eyes and the first thing he saw was Theia. He felt like he should have slept for a bit over two hours. Usually he would sleep as long as he could, but in a situation like this,he knew how to enter a light sleep so he would wake as soon as his stamina was replenished.
He also didn't have any of those strange dreams. It seemed they only showed up when he slept deeply.
"Have a nice nap?"
Zen stood up and saw his Astra was fully recovered. It seemed using absorb in his sleep wouldn't be a problem.
He looked around and saw the others were asleep and headed for exit.
"Where are we going?" Theia asked
"Somewhere private"
Zen walked out, leaving no tracks as always, and looked for a place where he wouldn't easily be found.
He decided not to go to to the previous location as he would easily be found, however he didn't want to go somewhere too far,still planning on avoiding beasts.
He eventually found somewhere relatively isolated, but he'd have to climb to get there. There seemed to be a lot of mountains in this area.
He considered using soul movement to fly up.
"One Astra per second"
That meant he could fly for a little over three minutes, and that was if he was flying straight, and not making any difficult aerial maneuvers. This was still much better than Soul form which require ten Astra per second, that was only about twenty seconds.
Zen considered just climbing it, and as the very thought entered his mind, his watch turned into a wriggling black mass on his wrist before forming a bone glove around his hand to help with climbing.
"Guess we're climbing then, Black"
Almost immediately Zen had woken up, Black made its presence known, however it had had to leave Zen when the heat became too much, and had went back to him stealthily.
Zen first used the hand with the bone glove , piercing through the solid rock and pulling himself up.
Zen wasn't a very optimistic person, and even in this situation, he was prepared for the worst. The chances of them finding a way off the planet today were almost Zero,he had time.This could be considered a pre-training warm up.
After a few hours Zen got to the top which, luckily,was round and mostly flat,a perfect training stage, with a few rocks littering everywhere.
At Zen's request, Black hid its entire body back into Zen who was prepared to see what his new skills could do.
"Theia" Zen called out and she appeared in front of him like she had been expecting it.
"Yessir. You want to know about this, don't ya?
[Skills are no longer limited]
She showed him the notification and Zen nodded.
Theia floated around leisurely as she explained.
"Although I don't know how, some skills that don't belong to humans are possessed by you. Due to you being at least mostly human before, those skills were being limited by your race."
"And now?"
"Not so much"
"What skills?" Zen asked, already having a few guesses.
"Any one with the word 'soul' in it, and a few that I'll show you later"
Zen nodded and decided to try one he was more familiar with.
[Soul blade]
Zen suddenly felt a large amount of energy travel from his chest to his right arm, moreso than usual.
A faint incorporeal light surrounded his hand for a second before solidifying into a wide glowing blade.
[-10 Astra]
[-1]
[-1]
"This skill costs ten Astra to activate and one per second to keep it activated. I've muted the notifications for now since we aren't in battle"
Zen examined the blade. It seemed to begin from his wrist, and was about two to three feet long and completely encapsulated his hand. It was pitch black,a little translucent,and looked a bit like a pentagon as it was mostly straight until it reached the top and became triangular.
Zen dashed towards a random rock and took a wide swing, feeling no resistance at all.
A few seconds later, a large portion of the rock slid off smoothly, revealing a smooth perfect cut through solid rock.
Zen looked at his hand and turned it into a fist before throwing a punch. The sword followed accordingly, thrusting forward. Repeating the same thing after spreading his palm, Zen realized that the base of the blade changed according to his hand.
"I get it,I'm the handle"
With this skill,as long as he had astra , he'd never be without a weapon.
Zen deactivated the soul blade.
He had lost about twenty astra. Ten for activating it, and another ten for ten seconds of activation.
"Alright, now let's try soul gun"
Zen read the system description and extended his hand towards his target.
[Soul gun]
Zen felt a similar feeling as a small ball of energy converged in front of his open palm, growing until it reached the size of an orange and shooting towards Zen's target.
"Direct hit on the first shot,not bad" Theia praised.
It took about five seconds to charge before it was ready to be launched , and when it did it completely destroyed the target.
[-5 Astra]
Zen was a bit surprised with how much the evolution had given him. He now had a ranged attack,melee attack, flight, and intangibility.
Now if only he could speed up the time it took for soul gun to warm up,or at least reduce the cost.
Reading his mind, Theia caused a notification to pop up
[Level up Soul gun?]
[Lv1-Lv2 cost 5 skill points]
Zen thought for a bit and checked out how many skill points it would take to level up Read, and it was two. So far, the amount had doubled everytime he leveled up a skill so he was able to do a few calculations before leveling up any skills.
[Read: LV2»»»LV5]
[Soul gun:LV1»»»LV3]
He had one more skill point but he just kept it for now.
He tried the Soul gun again and although it was a bit faster and stronger than before, the cost hadn't reduced and the charge speed was the same.
"Need help?"
Zen nodded
"Alright. You see how before the blast flies out,it looks like energy is gathering in your palm?"
Zen nodded.
"When you feel the energy leaving your body to gather at your palm,try holding some of it back before it fires, and perhaps try directing the energy to a smaller outlet when releasing the blast to make it easier to reduce the energy, maybe your finger "
Zen immediately put her advice to good use and this time pointed his index finger at the rock
[Soul gun]
As the energy left his chest, Zen tried his best to hold some of it back while moving the energy towards his finger.
A thin beam of energy the size of his finger suddenly fired from his hand towards the rock, hitting it in the center and doing considerably less damage.
[Astra -1]
"Success" Theia celebrated.
Zen agreed. Although the damage was a bit weak, this was something Zen could use in a fight with absolutely no worries of running out of energy.
"Awesome...but i have another idea"
Zen raised a brow and decided to listen.
After hearing her explanation, Zen felt it was feasible. It was just a soul gun but smaller,or rather more concentrated.
Zen opened his palm and used soul gun, allowing the normal amount of energy to flow through, and once the ball was fully formed, Zen didn't release it and instead started to focus on the ball, forcing it to become smaller and smaller, compressing the energy in it.
A few seconds after Zen started the ball suddenly blew up in his face, pushing him back.
[-5 Astra]
Luckily he had escaped with barely any damaged,in fact, the only pain he felt was the slight stinging in his palm.
Almost immediately, Zen stretched his hand out to try again. This could work.
After a few more tries, Zen finally managed to get one to work.
Compressing it to the size of a marble, Zen released when he felt like he was about to loose control again.
At double the speed of a regular one, the blast fired straight for the rock, but halfway through,it exploded, and although it had looked very powerful,it had left the rock completely unscathed.
Zen tried again and this time it exploded closer to the rock, and although it obliterated the rock, this wasn't the effect Zen wanted.
Zen tried again and again but it either lost control, swerved out of the way,then exploded,or just exploded before it hit the target.
Zen suddenly stopped.
[Astra: 0/200]
It was already regenerating but it would take at least two hours to fill back up.
"Do you know what I'm doing wrong?"
It wasn't that Zen wasn't smart enough to figure it out, but this was all entirely new to him. If someone had asked him what Astra even was a month ago, he'd have no idea.
Theia thought for a while. She was also suprised with the repeated failures. Zen had followed her instructions to the letter, and he wasn't a person you could call gullible,so there had to be something wrong.
Zen closed his eyes to meditate so he could speed up the recovery, and when he opened his eyes he saw Theia floating very close to his face.
"I've got it"