A Familiar Ceiling

This was a different forest. Tall and leafy trees filled the place, all in different tones of a vibrant and lively green, flowers of different colors made this place look like if it was taken from a fairy tale. A river crossed the whole forest from side to side.

In the center of the forest, there was rock formation covered in flowers, three rocks were glowing, white, a dark silver, and cyan… on an empty patch of dead grass, a weak looking five-headed snake was gazing with a rebellious attitude towards me. A three meters high panther was staring toward the snake ready to jump, and a little white bunny was hiding behind me.

In the sky, three moons were illuminating the forest that appeared to be taken from a fairy tale. This same light was vanishing the poison that came from the soul of the Alpha snake.

I didn't know that the Alpha had a soul related power. His soul poison tried to corrode my forest as we talked. Additionally, I had to pass some of my own energy to prevent the Snake from disappearing forever…

"Keeping you alive is difficult, are you sure you don't want to?"

I didn't expect a real answer, I can't talk Snakenese… Snakish? Whatever is called… but I didn't need to understand his hissing… I could feel his answer from his will and the way he was looking at me …

If it could talk, it would say something like.

'Shut it B!tch, I prefer to die than take you as my master!!'

The snake Alpha will never be able to go back to the material world. His soul will remain and wander for a while but since he is not a creature that was born or is related to the Astral realm the soul was going to be rejected and will slowly wither away…

With a lot of effort, I was able to protect it to some extent as long as it was in my realm, but I can't keep him here like this forever.

The snake disappeared from my soul, leaving a patch of dead grass behind. The dead grass got a new life and started to recover as soon as the snake vanished, shortly after the grass was the same vibrant green as the rest of my realm as if nothing happened.

*Sigh*

"Too bad it would have been nice to have a pet that strong…"

*GRR*

"I know, I know. You will be stronger than him."

I petted the jealous panther, and it started to purr.

I had no clue about the time that has passed until now, but I felt like I was finally about to wake up…

…

It was raining…

I could feel the water drops hit the window, I couldn't move, I was conscious, but my body doesn't respond… I feel the warmth from Spencer who is at my side sleeping too. Where are we?

I fought to open an eye, but it was impossible… my abilities don't work… I think I might have overdone it… using that ability and then keeping the Alpha for a while has been a lot more taxing than what I thought it would be…

The only thing I could feel was my connection with Spencer and the warmth of his arms… he is recovering fast…

'Dante?'

…

No answer, if Spence weakness was an after effect of them achieving resonance, it might have been more taxing for Dante… I could feel him near too, but this is the first time that he doesn't respond when I call him…

I hope he is okay…

A warmth feeling spread on my chest… Spencer has woken up, and he noticed that I was conscious too… he is moving me, he rolled me on my side… I could feel something bitter on my mouth, I coughed, and a hand wiped the liquid that came out… maybe I was poisoned… I felt his lips on my forehead… I will sleep for a while now…

___________________________________________________

A familiar ceiling…

I'm not sure if I spend more nights in this hospital bed or in my own bed at home…

Rose is still between my arms, how did we get here? She is awake but can't move, before I panicked I noticed that despite the situation she was calm… it must be temporary.

*Cof *Cof

I used detoxification on myself, I don't know how much time I was unconscious, but I was breathing smoke for a while… I put Rose on her side to use detoxification on her too, I don't want her to choke herself with the liquid.

She coughed, and a black liquid came from her mouth, I cleaned it with some cotton that I found on a tray…

I looked around. Hope is sleeping on a chair…

Dante is on what seemed to be an infant incubator… he is receiving liquids and oxygen.

I kissed Rose forehead and got on my foot, she was going to sleep to recover her strength…

I was worried about Dante he must have breathed a lot of smoke too.

The same as me and rose a black liquid came from his mouth… besides that, he seemed to be in a pretty bad condition… he had burn marks in most of his body.

How much time had pass?...

I looked at the timer… if I'm not wrong, it should have been about 5 hours…

I opened the incubator and started to treat Dante's injuries, it will take a while, but I think I can heal him…

…

I was softly petting Dante as I rewind the time. Since this was going to take a while, I tried to put everything that I knew in order… there is still 1 day and 3h for the surviving mission to be completed, so I wasn't unconscious that much time…

Everything that happened after Rose's appearance was like a dream… I tried to recall what exactly happened, but it was confusing… did that really happen?

I looked at all the notifications but finding something here was going to take forever…

'System can you filter the notifications?'

[Yes, what do you want to see?]

[Eliminate the notifications from killing beasts that just gave me system points]

The number of notifications was reduced by a lot… I have no idea how many beasts a killed, but they were a lot…

Even if I wanted to look at all the notifications remaining, I jumped directly to the ones I was interested in.

[Mission Complete: Defeat the Alpha Snake with your party.

Reward: 500 System points, 10 attribute points]

[Mission Complete: Achieve Soul Resonance with the Dante

Rewards: INT/WIS +2, Mind Shield (Shared)]

[Intelligence already Maxed out, points saved for later]

[Wisdom already Maxed out, points saved for later]

[Skill Obtained Mind Shield]

[Skill Obtained Resonance: Killing Intent (Telepathy/Fear Inducement)(Special)]

Some memories of the moment after Rose appeared became clearer on my mind, I was so enraged that the resonance became like that …

I still had to figure out how did Rose defeated the Alpha… all I knew about it was that she touched it and it disappeared. Since the mission was completed, I think that I don't have to worry about it for now. If my mind is not wrong, I fell unconscious after the fight so how is that we ended back here?

It was unlikely that Dante helped us… his condition seems to be worse than ours. I will have to ask about it later

'System Explain me the two new skills'

[Mind Shield, the objective of the ability became immune to mind reading, memory modifications, feelings manipulations, and is more resistant to most of the forms of mind attacks. Currently, the effect works to defend against D-Rank abilities or lower. The objective must be assigned by both the user and the pet, the current limit is two. The max rank this ability can work against depends on the ranks of the user and the pet.]

[Resonance: Killing Intent, the will and hate from the user are imprinted in the deepest layers of the mind of the objective, making him something to be feared on their minds. Multiple conditions must be fulfilled for this ability to work, being the most important the mental state of the user, besides that the strength of the skill also depends on the current abilities of the users.]

Mind shield was a good ability, and it will get better as we got stronger… about Killing intent I wasn't sure what to think, it worked as I wanted, but the way my mentality affect the result is something unexpected. Also, the backlash was too big, my brain can't handle that amount of information right now.

Overall they were good abilities… but seeing Rose's and Dante's condition, I wouldn't say that it was worth it.

"Spence?"

Behind me, Hope's voice sounded, and after a quick movement, I could feel her hugging me from behind.