Meeting the parent.......I'm pissed

It had been practically a day since Jack carried Alice to her broken down house. For the time Jack waited, he began to play around a small ice ball that he created for the first two hours. Having the ability of ice really excited him, and he wanted to practice his skills, however he wasn't able to do anything huge with the power as he did not want to accidentally destroy this place without even getting some clothes. When he became bored of playing with his ball, he destroyed it.

Jack decided to stop covering himself up as it took a lot of his energy away, plus everyone was asleep so he doubted someone would see him naked at this time of night. He settled on being in a meditative state to see if he could hear that voice he heard when he was frozen, and try to ask it some unanswered questions. But after a few tries, he had no luck with it, and everything he tried to figure out just ended up leaving him more confused at the voice he heard. It got to a point where he started wondering if it was all in his head, but deep down, he still hoped that the voice wasn't fake as it was the only thing that he didn't feel any negative emotions towards. As innocent Alice seemed to Jack, he still felt a slight annoyance towards her and a lot of distrust.

Jack soon gave up on trying to hear the voice, and decided to focus on discovering more about his new found powers since his previous powers were stripped away from him. He continued meditating till daybreak, reactivating his cold mist after recharging his energy and deciding to see if Alice was awake, which she was not. He waited for her to wake up but soon grew impatient and let out some ice mist near her small nose, making Alice's nose tingle which resulted in an obnoxious sneeze. Jack laughed in his mind while Alice woke up and after realizing how she woke up, she shot him a harsh glare, threatening him with her eyes.

"So...can I have clothes?" Jack asked, pointing at his body, "this cold mist around me takes a lot of energy to maintain."

Alice blushed and ran down the hall to her mother and after a few minutes, returned with a smile and gave Jack an old, dusty, brown and overused cloak. Jack looked down at the cloth and back up to Alice, then let out a small sigh but had somewhat seen this coming. The moment he entered their house, he had guessed by the interior of the house that the 'clothes' wouldn't be much better.

He took the cloak and put it on, relieved it was his size and managed to cover his body up til his kneecaps. With the cloak, he put the hood on his head which gave a mysterious aura around him. Alice was surprised by how well it looked on him, even though it was very old to the point you can see it being teared with little effort, but her amusement was short-lived and she proceeded to thank him for helping her mother rejuvenate by dropping the insane temperature she had last night. He had helped so much that Alice's mother walked out of her room and greeted Jack. She was much taller and skinnier than Alice, a result of the lack of food she had been able to intake due to her sickness but it gave her a delicate feel.

'What is with this family and its frailness?' Jack thought to himself as he inspected them, 'Are they seriously not slaves?'

"I would like to thank you for helping me in my time of need," Alice's mother thanked Jack in a soft tone as she led them to a small table and sat around it, "My name is Shana."

"My daughter told me you came from a block of ice…" Shana asked, pausing for a moment before continuing, "How did that happen?"

Due to the lack of trust he had to them, Jack instead refuted the question with questions of his own to learn any changes about this world. "I don't want to talk about it. However I believe I was inside it for 1,500 years," Jack muttered, giving a little bit of information on him to set the stage for them to give him information.

Alice and her mother exchanged shocked glances with each other, surprised at Jack's comment. They would not have believed it if it wasn't Alice that had seen him trapped in ice and the fact that Shana was unable to see Jack's level.

"Do you know about levels?" Alice asked Jack.

"Levels??" Jack repeated in confusion.

"I guess you haven't, you must have been there a long time. You see everyone in this continent has a level as 1,400 years ago, humanity discovered a more efficient way of measuring people's power level which is levels," Shana began, "After a 100 years passed since the discovery, humanity managed to make it so most people have a magic sign planted to them that can determine your level in real time. Shortly after, humanity managed to create a technique called 'soul absorption' which allowed people to get stronger at a faster rate than just training."

Jack cocked his head, prompting Shana to explain more.

She gave a little smile before continuing, "The way it works is when you kill a living being, your able to extract their soul essence, which is left behind by dead people or creature for a few hours or days depending on how powerful it was, and by using the technique, you absorb the essence which causes you to become stronger or as we refer it to receiving 'exp,'" She paused for a minute to make sure Jack wasn't confused by her explanation, then continued again, "By common sense the higher you level up then the stronger you become but also its gets much more harder as you progress meaning you would have to beat higher leveled creatures. Also thanks to the concept of leveling up, magic and techniques had a recommended level to learn because not only was they able to measure people's or creature's level but basically anything that had magic."

"Ah.." Jack gave a small gasp of understanding.

And Shana returned it with a nod, "No matter how hard you try to learn a certain magic or technique if you were not at the recommended level or higher, there will be a very slim chance of success."

Jack was shocked to hear such a thing as in his time the only way to get stronger was to train and learn new magic and techniques. However now just by killing stuff and absorbing the so-called soul essence, people are able to become stronger in mere months rather than years of work. Learning new skills also seemed to be much easier than they previously were. The big advance in people's power impressed Jack and gave him some anticipation to the chance of fighting powerful people, since in the past he became so strong that no mortal posed a challenge to him.

"You also most likely don't know this but the world has split into seven continents," Shana continued, "The one we are on is the smallest and is known as the Hero continent. In our continent it's split into 7 territories with each one ruled by an empire. Each territory is named by the seven hero's specialized element, It's to thank the ancient heroes from 1,500 years ago for protecting this world many times."

Shana stated the 7 territories as water, fire, lightning, earth, air, holy and ice. When Jack took in all this information, and heard that the 7 territories were named after the 7 hero's element, he laughed and asked about the hero they missed, the 8th hero who had no specialized element. They looked at Jack and their eyes visibly staring at him questionably.

"Oh dear, what are you talking about an 8th hero? There was no such thing" Shana began to explain in an apologetic voice.

"I know there is an 8th hero since, I. AM. HIM. I was known as the god of hero's, the absolute strongest, even stronger then the holy hero who held the most power," Jack sprouted it out accidentally, but didn't care since he felt annoyed.

Shana and Alice held back the urge to laugh but didn't because they saw him, and his nonchalant facade and saw he was annoyed and hurt about this so-called 8th hero. But they did believe that the holy hero is meant to be the strongest out of the heroes, yet he said he was much more stronger than that hero

"Jack, are you sure there was an 8th hero or that you are him because not once even in scriptures of the past was there a hint of an 8th hero and the holy hero was the strongest of the hero's because his powers were the closest to the divine." Shana exclaimed carefully as she did not want to hurt Jack who saved her from death.

Hearing this made Jack boil up with rage that not even the voice he heard in the ice would be able to calm it down....