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Felix and his relatives also left soon after due to a distress signal he received from his wife, so everyone let them go, but Tuña, who just entered Carna's library, was stunned as it was just a dark cave with a podium in the centre.

It had a colourful spider web like design on the surface and that was it.

Tuña was baffled till Carna asked,"What you expected something like this?"

She touched a section which instantly connected with her mind and went to the exact segment she wanted to go to and showed the endless array of books, and endless arrays of... herself.

"Uuuh...who are..."

"Astral forms of myself, they make studying the never ending books more efficient."

"...but how will you know which one is real, how will I?!"

"Astral doubles are like robots, they only do what they are programmed to do, in this case, it is to study, nonstop."

"Could I borrow one to go back to my planet and finish the mating ritual I started, I'd do it myself except for the death part, since I am needed to protect the universe."

"Web of skyscrapers of Multiverses to be specific and sure..."

It snatched a book from one of the astral forms and asked,"How do these even work? Could I like change the past by writing something else in it?"

"You cannot change the past, only learn from it."

"Then how do we go back in time literally like all the time?"

"That is a situation on its own, where we do the changes at a secondary level and even then, we merge two different realities, and thus, two different books, which is the reason Vivid visions occur, to set things right."

"Okay braniac, so what are we looking for?"

"Leads on Portia's family."

"But didn't you say the gem would erase all memory?"

"I did, but there's a chance she didn't, all I have do is say... Portia's parents."

Somewhere in the back, a book flew out of the shelves, and flew to her, followed by another which was bonded to it by a thin but virtually unbreakable string.

She opened the books and when she reached a segment, they both merged into one, that was their marital life.

She closed her eyes as the knowledge floated up in the form of a white mist and flowed through her closed eyes and Tuña was weirded out.

"Are you like on brain booster drugs or something?"

An astral form slapped it hard in the head and vanished into the crowd and it was confused then angry as it heard her laugh.

Back at the mansion, Yui, the wielder of the crystal of the undead, was training by himself.

Unlike myself and the undead wizard, he used Soul puppet strings, which were actually more powerful than my Soul stealing silk and the wizard's ghost chains combined...in his hands.

They could do everything ours could do, the sucking and giving of souls and whatnot, but could do much more including controlling a person's actions by manipulating their soul, like a puppet, or forming a forcefield which could protect against anything that had a soul which was virtually everything, when in this form, it still sucked the soul of whatever touched it, so got stronger the more you hit it.

He could also merge two people's souls together and make them fall deeply in love and possibly marry, at the dismay of their own families, friends and wiser colleagues and finding out later that they had made the worst decision of both their lives but still loved each other to the core, or could hold two people at ends with each other and make them hate each other, he could basically induce any emotions he wanted with the strings and do more as well.

Alex came back first and found only Jonita around.

Jonita touched the leaf of a dragon's blood dracaena then it made a fuzzing sound as the leaf divided into colourful fibres which remained of the vascular and palisade tissue of the leaf.

Then she touched a baobab tree leaf which also divided into a network of intricate interwoven fibres then she touched the stem and the bark puffed up as it turned into a basket like array of cellulose and lignin fibres, then she swiped her arm as the bark of the tree started disintegrating into fibres in a sequential array which spiralled up the tree and went to the leaves and bloomed the white powderpuff like flowers, making them seem like a woven straw hat and turning the virtually indestructible fruits into delicate Chinese lantern like fruit with the seeds being held by delicate strings.

Alex flew down then asked where everyone was.

"They went to find the truth about Portia's parents."

"All of them?"

"We're family, that's what we do."

"...come to think of it, I've never actually seen any other planet or universe as a whole apart from this one, do you think you could give me a tour?"

She looked at him and smiled, then touched the tree and said,"Hold on."

He knew he was going to regret this..."

***

"Electro Skiffer, activate lightning laser."

The pangolin like creature went into a defensive cat like stance as eight scales removed from a ring on its body with electric sparks jumping between its body and the scales.

They then started building up charges then each fired a blinding blue bolt of lightning which went and melted through the debris and charged the lava to make it get stuck to the floor, freeing the people trapped within.

The scales returned to the Skiffer's body as it happily pounced on him.

He laughed and ran his hands over its scales, building up charges, as the freed people came to give him their thanks.

In his world, there were certain species of creatures which had amazing abilities, humans being exempted from this rule.

Despite this, some humans had learned to form relationships with some of those creatures and those humans were called Beast Tamers.

Beasts in their world were used for all sorts of things, agriculture, search and rescue, exploration and archaeology, entertainment and even education.

Some of those Beasts were trained to battle with each other for money and entertainment and this special division were named Trial Beasts.

A person was allowed to have as many different Beasts or even Trial Beasts as they wanted, as long as they could control all of them.

The use of Beasts for aiding man in his everyday life dwarfed the use of highly advanced artificial intelligence and technology found all around, a small village with a Beast Tamer living within its soil was considered lucky and rare, most of them moved to the big cities where they could find better jobs and lives as with this advancement in human colonization, poverty was still a problem.

Collins was having a snack with his Skiffer when someone slapped a coin card on the table.

He looked up, indifferent, at the girl looking at him with sheer determination in her eyes.

She then said,"When I got into this side of town, there was word of this Beast Tamer who had not once been defeated and I knew that was impossible, so I tracked him down."

Stalker much.

"To you, and I wanted to know, is it that you have a rare trial beast of some sort?"

"You can say."

"And what's up with the Electro Skiffer? Why don't you show the true beast you own?"

"What is that to you?"

"I just...I just wanted to see how good you were, maybe we could do battle?"

He swallowed the middle mist moss bread hard then asked,"Are you sure about this?"

"Positive."

"Okay."

He payed for his lunch then said,"Let's go."

"Wait..."She said,"... don't you want to like prepare beforehand or something?"

"And what would be the use of that? That would either just be postponing your inevitable defeat or gaining an unfair advantage seeing that you are from a nobler background."

She looked away then back at him with burning cheeks then said,"Alright, let's do it."

He spat out the toothpick from his teeth and walked out with his Trial Beast and opponent beside him.