Veil

"I feel more comfortable sending my life force through my palm instead of the fingers," Xavi concentrated a lot to manage the tiny ball.

Sweat ran down his face and his breathing was rapid.

"That's good. As long as you feel comfortable," frankly Lia was amazed by Xavi's ability to successfully summon his power the first time.

It took her at least a day. Xavi was still at the beginning of his journey and needed to train. So, it wasn't clear yet what kind of ability he had.

For another week, while Lia trained her corpses, Xavi made progress with his powers faster than Lia did in the past. Rather than envying him, she was happy he grew so much. Maybe because he just looked like a kid, she basically treated him as one, constantly making his poor ears turn red.

Lia acted as Xavi's teacher. She saw the results of his training and was impressed. However, his power was completely unexpected.

"Show me what you can do," Lia enjoyed having a cute disciple but she wouldn't admit it. Xavi nodded, assumed a fighting stance and without blinking charged at Lia.

His hands at the side of his body charged a white ball that flew and attacked Lia once he was close enough. Lia dodged and the balls faded becoming one with the air. However, this didn't discourage Xavi.

Having two more white balls appearing he kept attacking Lia. She had to admit that he was good at charging his power and endlessly used his life force without getting exhausted quickly.

"You have good endurance but your orbs are neither fast nor have a long attack range."

Lia decided to call the power Xavi had as orbs. Power orbs. She let one of his orbs hit her corpse and the impact was strong enough to cause the corpse to stumble backwards, only for a bit though.

"And lack strength but you're making good progress."

Xavi caught his breath and excitingly nodded. It was a refreshing feeling to finally be able to do something. Even though he didn't get tired using his life force, he was quickly exhausted from just running a bit.

His orbs only flew a metre long meaning he had to get pretty close to the target. They were also slow enough to be caught by someone just walking next to it. However, Xavi was still proud of his progress.

"Young Master, you were great," Lily brought some refreshments.

"Truly amazing!" once again the red hue didn't leave Xavi alone.

"Power orbs are very strong," Lia lamented "Is this your family's power?"

Xavi shook his head, "It's weird my powers also don't have anything to do with yours."

"You're special, young master!" Lily wasn't wrong.

"The power matches the owner, maybe because you lack strength, it tries to make it up to you? With a power orb, the enemy will take instant damage, that is if you manage to hit them."

"I will train my best, teacher!"

Lia's fingers sneakily pinched Xavi's cheeks before he could notice it.

"H-Hey!" Xavi felt embarrassed and quickly went back training.

There was something that was bordering Lia. She walked up to Lily, "Are you not going to ask me for powers?"

Lily understood what Lia was playing on. After a few seconds, Lily shook her head, "I don't need it."

"Are you sure?"

"It's going to be better for you, right?"

"What do you mean?"

"You can fool young master but you can't fool a woman's intuition. You sacrifice something giving others powers, right? It's best to save it for the other hidden families," Lily gave Lia a warm smile before she dashed off and ran after Xavi calling him a young master and making sure he wasn't going to get hurt.

Lia never imagined Lily would be this sharp. However, if Lily didn't want any power then Lia wouldn't force her. Only if in the future they might have to struggle, she would need Lily to become stronger.

The rest of the day passed by quickly. The trio non-stop trained before finally taking a shower and getting together for dinner in Xavi's room.

"Xavi, please don't practise while we're eating," Lia eyed the white ball under the dinner table. Xavi sulked and retracted his life force, "You sound like Lily."

"I didn't even notice…" Lily also sulked and poked her food.

"Don't stab the food."

"Goodness Lia! You were trained to have manners, me not, ok! If I want to stab it, then I'm going to stab all I want!" with that Lily stabbed her piece of meat off her plate and put it on Lia's meat before retracting again.

During the whole interaction, Lia's face remained blank and only after Lily ate the meat, Lia exclaimed, "Childish."

The piece of meat fell off Lily's mouth and her ears turned red, "Stop that! I'm not, young master, I'm not right?"

"You're asking a child," Lia really loved teasing the both of them.

The dinner turned out to be quite eventful with Lia constantly poking Lily's sore spot. Xavi silently wondered if Lia wasn't the childish one.

"Wait don't go yet," after the dinner was over Lia prepared to return to her room. She turned to Xavi, "What's wrong."

"We should discuss, I'm planning to leave in a few days."

"Already?" This came as a surprise to Lia.

"Yep, that's why let's talk about it."

Lia sat back on the table while Xavi disappeared in his bedroom. Minutes later he came back with a roll of paper. He spread it on the table. It was a world map of the immortal world.

Unlike the mortal world, the immortal world had no large oceans and the land wasn't spread across the map. Instead, it was all just one land with several rivers and mountains running through and separating areas.

The immortal world painted on the map was round. Four circles drawn around each other depicted the layers, 1-2 core, 3-Veil, 4- Mistand and Neverland.

Xavi pointed at the third circle, "This here is the Veil. We're here, as you can see we're located south-west pretty close to the Veil."

Xavi drew a dot on the map to indicate their positions, "Truthfully, I have never left the core, this place specifically because you know. That's why, it's also my first time going out."

"You have no contact with the families in the Veil?"

"No, Maria has. Not me. There are three hidden families in the Veil, the D, U and I. The closest would be the D in the West or the I in the south-east, however, we should go for D then I, lastly U. I only know the rough location of the D family. U would be the hardest to find."

"Alright," Lia memorised the map.

"One more thing, the veil is close to here but stepping into it will be like stepping into a completely different world. Maria said that the Veil has been divided into several small areas managed by so-called Lords."

"A Lord, like a perse king of that land?"

"Yep, the hardest part is to converse from city to city. You need the approval of the Lords and some of them are quite… twisted."

"Because there was no king and the council wasn't active until 10 years ago, the outer layers haven't been managed at all," Lia thought.

"Yea, strong people tend to want to rule over others. Maria was able to pass because she works for the Ghost King but we don't have the benefit. We can only try to slip through without raising suspicion," Xavi circles a spot in the Veil, "We'll go through here. I don't know what to expect but let's do our best."

"When do we leave?"

"In three days."

"Ok."

After the conversation, Lia headed back to her room. It has been almost three weeks since she has stayed in the A family. A lot of things have happened and a lot of information has been revealed.

Secretly, Lia wished to continue these peaceful days here but it wasn't possible. Min wouldn't stop his plans and they were wasting time with every day that passed.

It was obvious that Min was trying to locate the hidden families and now after the complete extermination of the G family, his private force was going to be even stronger.

He might have also established another facility creating ghosts. Lia didn't fight Kil but if she were to, she knew she wouldn't stand a chance.

She needed to train more, completely master the Immortal King's powers and gain more allies. With that thought, she fell asleep.

Over the course of the next three days, Lia and Xavi didn't rest and constantly sought to improve their abilities. Lily could only try to tell them as often as possible to rest properly.

Despite immortals not needing to sleep as frequently like mortals, Lia and Xavi were non stop using their powers.

They had to recharge. There was only so much that could be done in three days. On the last day, Lily lost her patience and forcibly dragged the two fighting maniacs to bed.

Lia knew that she wouldn't improve so quickly but she felt restless. She hoped this time, there wouldn't be any careless mistakes or surprises waiting for them.

She wished that this time things would go smoothly without any interference, but the Veil gave Lia and headache.

Maybe if only she had ventured there back then when her parents asked her to go along to purge ghosts. They didn't want Lia to go alone but if it was with them, they didn't mind.

Lia took a deep breath and closed her eyes. It was time to sleep and not overthink.

The next day, the three of them were ready to depart. However, the farewell was more emotional than any of them had anticipated. Xavi's men literally sobbed and waved with tissues while pleading to go with them.

Xavi grit his teeth in embarrassment and told them they'd be back soon. His men also grabbed Lia's hands and prayed for her well-being. One smile of hers sent them into a wonderful coma.

Sadly, Lia couldn't bring any corpses along with her. And so, they made their way to the Veil.