After ten minutes of walking through the jungle and nothing jumping out to kill him, Xander thought it was time to check out his trait. So, he paused and put his back to a tree.
[First trait: Reaper's Revival] - [Death Charge: 7.5%]
[First trait Rank: Divine]
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[Second Trait: Mirage Realm]
[Second trait Current Rank: Dormant - Unlocked]
His first trait, 'Reaper's Revival, ' couldn't be used currently because it wasn't charged up, and he was also pretty sure it only activated upon his death. But his second trait, 'Mirage Realm,' from his brother, was now unlocked even though it was still technically dormant.
Xander had never done this before, so he didn't really know what to do, but he had to start somewhere. So, he just willed his second trait to work, and that's when he felt the connection to 'Mirage Realm' for the first time.
He could feel several things. There seemed to be this alternate reality that he was now connected to. He could sense it, but he couldn't see it.
He then tried to bring it to the real world, and immediately all his qi in his core ran dry and nothing changed.
'Ok, I think I know where I went wrong that time,' Xander thought. He had tried to bring the Mirage Realm to the real world, but he now realized he had tried to bring the entire Mirage Realm to the real world all at once, causing nothing to happen except all his qi being drained instantly.
After sitting down and meditating for roughly two hours, pulling the surrounding qi into his core, it was finally filled back up.
'Ok, this time I'm just going to try and do one thing.'
This time, instead of trying to bring the entire Mirage Realm into reality, he just tried to bring one leaf from a nearby plant into reality, and it actually worked. It phased into reality, and he could not only sense it, he could see it. It was see-through, but the outline was there.
The only problem was he was burning through way too much qi.
'I guess this is the downside to it being dormant ranked. Everything costs way too much qi.' Xander assumed once he ranked the trait up, it would be more usable.
After filling his qi back up after 15 minutes, he tried to do the same thing. Only this time he willed the leaf to change colors. This time, instead of the leaf being see-through, it turned blue.
"Wow," Xander was amazed that he was actually doing this. He was, of course, burning through like 1/10 of his qi reserves every couple of seconds, but he had managed to bring something into reality from the Mirage Realm and change its color.
He then tried to touch it, and his hand went straight through it while pushing the original leaf it was based on down.
'So I can't make the illusions reality,' Xander wasn't sure if he would ever have this ability, but he could dream.
After messing around a little more with creating small illusions and burning through tons of qi, where he realized that it didn't seem to matter that he was using death qi for his mirage/illusion trait, he started to try something else.
Another one of the feelings he got from his trait was he felt like the Mirage Realm was calling to him. He felt like he could jump into it like a fish to water.
He assumed this had to do with the part of the ability description 'where the seen is unseen,' and bringing illusions to reality had to do with this part 'the known is unknown.'
So he grabbed hold of that connection and willed himself into the Mirage Realm, and while nothing seemed to change, he could sense that he was no longer in the real material world. He was in the Mirage Realm, and while this part of the ability was still burning through qi, it wasn't nearly as bad as bringing illusions to reality.
This seemed to be the main aspect of the trait.
He felt like he could currently spend about 30 seconds in the Mirage Realm before he ran completely out of qi.
At first, he thought that was amazing, but then he realized that he would have to be really careful about using this in a fight because if he used all 30 seconds, he would be completely out of qi for the rest of the fight.
'I hope the time increases once I upgrade to G-rank and beyond,' he didn't think it would be the case, but it would really suck if he could only ever spend at most 30 seconds per fight in the mirage realm.
'Now the real question was who all can sense me when I'm in the Mirage Realm.' While he still wanted to get through this jungle with no problems, he still wanted to be able to test this ability on someone or something.
There was still something else he could feel. At first, he couldn't tell what it was, but then when a bird flew by right next to him, he finally realized what it was.
While he was sensing the Mirage Realm, he could somewhat sense movement.
At first, it was all jumbled up because everything was technically moving, from the leaves to the trees to every little bug or critter around. But after sitting down and really focusing for two whole hours, he started to be able to tune out some of the smaller stuff like the sway of the trees, but he knew it would be a long time before he could fully use this ability to perfection.
After another 30 minutes of playing around with the trait, he sat back down, filled his qi all the way back up, then pulled out his spear and set back off.
He walked slowly through the jungle, trying to sense out with his Mirage Realm since it burned no qi to just sense it. This was a tough process, and he had to learn how to multitask by focusing on both the real and imaginary worlds. But luckily, when he upgraded to a G-rank human from a dormant one, his mind seemed to expand a little. It didn't necessarily make him any smarter, but it seemed to give him more brain space, allowing him to do a complex math problem and read a book at the same time with little to no problem.
After another 45 minutes of walking through the jungle, he finally spotted something, and this was exactly what he hoped wouldn't happen.