Results of training

Morning, 14th day

Rocky shores of the Dragonmont Volcano

Kai had a busy week. To keep Selene in the best of her state had become his priority in the last few days. The raw heat of the lava had been troubling her despite her searching for the egg in her Intangible form, Kai had found out. It was a weakness he had expected but not tested, what with her having a combination of ghost and ice-type powers. He could see the obvious, but equally grave and perplexing, effect on her white dragon-like scales that would glow white-red, like hot iron, after every excursion into the depths of the volcano.

Selene was extraordinarily vulnerable against heat, Kai had concluded. And by extrapolation, against anything related to fire and its infinite forms. So most of Kai's time had gone into hunting fish for him and Selene. She had eaten not one of his catches without severely and dismissively hissing at him, though. 'I must hunt by myself,' she had grumbled every time, swallowing the fish whole. 'I must always.'

Kai couldn't have that. It had been already becoming a task more than he could chew with Selene's every tired and burned return. He couldn't afford her idling in the seawater, slithering, and chasing after some fish, a case in which he could outmatch her easily in his Golduck form.

All this had made him realize one thing which demanded no refusal and objection. He must have a mobile lab on him. All the time.

Still, not that he could do something about it now, he had concentrated his efforts on his Abilities.

Kai was sitting over the same boulder, but now his hair looked rough, and there was a darker tinge to his skin. His eyes were closed, his pupils fluttering under the eyelids as if he was having some terrible nightmare. Several sharp-edged pebbles were hovering around him in a 10-meter radius. Sometimes they were revolving clockwise, sometimes they halted before resuming their revolution in the opposite direction. A few of them halted longer than the others as if they were trying to cling in the same direction of clockwise revolution but ultimately failed.

Suddenly, a few pebbles jolted, and like the vortex of a whirlpool, rushed towards Kai while revolving at the same time.

Kai squinted his eyes, pressed his brows, and gritted his teeth. A perceptible mass of white-blue frost burst out of him. The closest pebbles that had already approached the radius of 3 meters around him froze instantly, and the pebbles outside the 3-meter radius also got covered in a thin frosty layer. Farther the pebbles, the lesser the frost over them. The pebbles at the furthest boundary of 10 meters didn't even seem affected at all.

"Ahh!" Kai let out a powerful shout, putting his hands together. Thick, viscous blood seeped out of his nose and ears, as veins popped up all over his body, but mostly on his forehead. A ballistic headache pounded his brain against his skull, and blood tears ran down his eyes when he snapped them open. "Cold… Reversal."

Another equally powerful burst of cold happened around him, but this time, its direction was reversed. It didn't burst out of him. It traveled inward, beginning from the boundary of spherical zone of 10-meter radius.

The pebbles which scarcely had any frost over them froze, and got covered under a thick layer of white-blue frost like a blanket. Then, as the cold burst traveled its way inwards towards him, it kept freezing the pebbles, spreading another layer of frost over them. Before the pebbles closest to him could even touch Kai's body, this incoming cold burst hit them; so minuscule was the time difference between the outgoing burst and then the incoming.

Only then did Kai use the Telekinesis to stop their charge.

The pebbles fell, and Kai almost fell with them. 'My fucking head!' Kai swore, pressing all ten extremities of his fingers into his skull, trying to keep in something whatever was pounding its way out.

This was the outcome of his last week's labor, continuously plowing away his time into trying to figure out the limits of his Telekinesis and controlling the output of his Cold Suppression. In both cases, he was miles away from the intended outcome. He couldn't revolve some pebbles in one direction, and some in the opposite. Nor could he mimic the effect of "Cold Reversal" without sending out an initial burst of cold. Still, it wasn't like his efforts had birthed nothing.

[

Advance Telekinesis: Proficiency 3% (+2%)

Advance Cold Suppression: Proficiency 5% (+3%)

]

This was an ingenious way Kai had found to increase both these Advance Abilities simultaneously. Both had a limit of 10 meters, and their use exerted his concentration tremendously on the brink of losing consciousness. It wasn't something he could replicate in battle yet, but it was a method that would bring extraordinary results in the long term, he knew.

Kai panted, marveling at the sight of this notification, and thought of his other Ability that had risen by quite much. It was Filth Manipulation. Now standing at 75%, by the grace of all the rotten meat and fish he had eaten in the last two weeks and before, it was just a few weeks short of hitting the limit. Kai had never stopped eating rotten food whenever the time and occasion hadn't demanded it of him.

'I miss my sabers,' Kai thought, recalling his Twin-Saber Style Ability. 'I miss my fangs.' Item-M had counseled him against getting Sabers made of low-quality and low-graded materials. Sabers weren't favored weapons in the Primordial Tower, to begin with. Most of the Contestants used either spears and double-edged swords or they didn't use any melee Items at all. So she had convinced Kai to wait before reaching the 4th-floor. There he could get some decent Items, including Sabers.

There was another thing he had been thinking about. The list of scientists Item-M had prepared for him on his orders. 'The Tales of Beedle the Bard has one more tale left to devour before upgrading,' Kai had noted. 'I must get one of those Characters before leaving this world if time permits.'

He also dearly wanted to experiment with his privilege of assigning Side Mission to himself and then, using the Mission Credits, teleport to a different Random World from within his current Random World. It would be an extremely pricey service, he had always known. And that's why he was keeping it for last, trying to have a sense of how much time he would have left after completing the mission.

A painful, yet thrilled, hissing sound enraptured Kai's attention out of the blue, overpowering the loud crashing of the waves down on the rocky beach.

'Selene?!' The name exploded in his mind.

He stood up so fast that he almost lost his footing, and darkness covered his eyes momentarily.