With the groups new power their travel in the morning was easy. Yet their powers were unfamiliar to them.
It was going to take some time for them to get used to their powers. Alex still had not even been able to conjure his power.
As unlike his the other two were manifested immediately as passive powers. His on the other hand needed him to do something.
He had still not found out why to do bringing him great anger. Mad that the others were able to show off their new power while he couldn't even create tinfoil.
Luckily Alex had unlimited free time at his hands. They only needed to worry about a couple monsters and finding the group.
Every other moment of the day was left to Alex's choice. He always chose to practice trying to create metal, yet this was hard to do while walking.
Not a moment had the group stopped for a break a yet. Instead Alex was forced to try and concentrate with all his efforts while walking.
This usually caused Alex to trip not noticing his surrounding. Or it Alex would lose concentration trying not to trip.
This led to an inevitable failure every time Alex tried to practice. Lyra who had received the heat shield was forced to practice controlling the tempature.
If she didn't she'd accidentally burn anything to close to her. This was true for Xavier to who had received the snakes molten body.
Xavier to had to learn quick or he'd burn everything near him. Luckily through pure force Xavier was able to hide the magma on his body.
To The groups luck a bear arrived in front of the group. As it let out a fierce roar, threatening to rip them to shreds.
Yet they did not fear such a creature, instead excited to test out their new power. Alex on the other hand was fin spy given a moment to stop.
Without the constant moving Alex was able to concentrate without distraction. As he focused within himself trying to find his power.
Yet he had had never searched far enough to realize that their wasn't something in him. Or at least their want something he could sense.
Instead this time Alex tried visualizing heating up the ground. Immediately he switched to imagining the heated ground getting smushed into itself, compressing it.
Finally Alex willed the newly formed metal to shape into a cube. Sadly Alex had kept his eyes closed the entire time.
Yet to his immense shock a metal… blob was shaped in front of him. He was so surprised that his ability had finally worked that he decided to try it again.
Except this time Alex kept his eyes open to pay more attention to the shape and formation of the metal.
Once again Alex started focusing on visualizing the ground in front of him melt. As he did this he watched the ground in front of him started to shift and change.
Suddenly the ground was melted down into a puddle of magma, while bubbles of air climbed their way out of the puddle, causing satisfying molten bubbles.
After being dazzled by the oddities of the puddle of molten Alex shifted to the second stage. This time he focused on pressure.
He then started commanding with his mind for the molten to condense. This took a lot of focus to keep the molten to continue condensing instead of exploding in his face.
Yet after a bit of will and concentration the pool of molten was gone. It was now replaced by an odd and changing shape of bright red metal.
Then for the final part Alex started shifting the metal with his will. He had a limited time for this step before the molten would cool against his will.
To him it was just going to take more practice to heat up the metal while in its condensed state. Yet Alex pushed away his theories and started to shape the metal into a shuriken.
Alex's idea was to create a large shuriken then throw it at the bear for fun. So he started to stretch out the metal and keep others in place.
Eventually after a bit of hard work and concentration the shape had finally formed. Yet it was still molten and could easily lose its shape.
At this moment Alex needed to dove fully keep the shirking in shape. Suddenly he realized he was missing the step of cooling the metal down.
Slowly Alex focused on the temperature surrounding the shuriken. Then he started to drop the temperature around the shuriken rapidly.
Alex was able to do this by envisioning a molten sword being dipped in cool water. Then he transformed the thought into reality by imagining the shuriken being dipped in cool water and taking form.
Finally the shuriken had been created, allowing Alex to grab it off the ground and take a look at his craftsmanship.
Then after glancing the bear basically being tortured by Lyra and Xavier Alex threw his huge shuriken at the bear.
It twisted and spun through the air as it rapidly approached the bear. Making a smooth whistle sound as it cut through the air in elegance.
Suddenly Alex had a sudden question, pondering why the snakes metal creations had always been burning hot.
He the realized it had two reasons, one of them being to allow it to shape for longer. It had also served as weapon, burning things on impact.
Wanting to test this Alex focused back on his shuriken. Then after concentrating for a while Alex felt a connection between it and him.
Once he felt this connection he tried to heat it up, and it worked. As the color of the metal slowly started to become brighter, yet its shape also became droopier.
Yet Alex held on letting the shuriken heat up as he at the same time tried to hold its form. This was an extremely difficult task, especially because of his distance with the metal.
Eventually Alex's grip on the shurikens heat and formed stopped. Yet to his surprise when the heating was forcefully stopped the shuriken took its shape almost like it instantly cooled.
It had also reached its target as it cut through the bears head in one clean strike, freeing the bear from its misery cause by the two devils next to it.
Xavier and Lyra looked back at Alex in shock.
"Why the hell did you kill my test subject!"
"No way your powers are working!"
Alex was extremely confused by one thing though, almost completely ignoring their questions, deciding to gaze at the bears neck.
On it was a coating of dried blood and clumps of air. This should've only been possible if the shuriken and not cooled fully and still retained some heat.
Oh that should've been obvious, I just need to cool it where its shape won't drip but have it hot enough to sear the skin.
Alex started practicing on more metal testing its shapes structure and its heat. Until he eventually found the right way of cooling it.
This was all happening with Xavier and Lyra walking towards Alex getting more and more annoyed the more and more questions Alex ignored.
Until eventually Lyra and Xavier were close enough to slap Alex out of his 'study' mode, and that's exactly what Lyra did.
As she slapped right across the face getting his attention immediately. Alex shoved his hand on his face feeling it, while staring at Lyra in shock.
"Jeez what did I do!"
"You ignored me… us."
"Sorry I was to focused on this, gotta get better you know."
"So, you should've listened to us."
Alex let out a groan trying to detest Lyra's rules. Yet this was a huge blunder on Alex's part, as Lyra did not take kindly to his rebellion and kicked him in the shin.
"Ouch"
Alex let out a shrill shriek while Lyra let a smug grin form on her face.
"Guys come one we got to keep moving."
"Boo."
Both Alex and Lyra said their displeasure win synchronization letting Xavier now of their disagreement.
Yet they followed anyway. Ignoring their childish acts Xavier moved forward while looking for any signs of their group.
After traveling for a while Alex needed to stop and rest, so did everybody else. This was mostly due to hunger.
Luckily they had just hunted the bear earlier, now they were going to have a feast. As Xavier once again created a fire.
The fire burnt bright dancing with the wind and glowing like a star. Alex was instead glowing like a hungry beast, brimming with hunger.
Once handed the meat by Xavier, Alex quickly shoved it one his skewer and started roasting it above the fire.
Alex watched as the meat slowly grew crispier and crispier. At the perfect balance point between juiciness and crispiness Alex took the meat out of the fire.
As both him and Lyra almost at the same time started devouring their own slabs of bear meat. In almost no time at all Alex and Lyra had finished their lunch.
To their dismay they had to wait for Xavier, who unlike them took his time eating his meal. Lyra and Alex grew more annoyed by the second.
Eventually they resorted to threatening him to eat his food again. Fearing his food being taken away Xavier quickened his pace finishing fairly quickly.
They went back to their searching, following the tracks of the able until finally they reached the spot where they had been with the entire group.
This was the same spot they were when they suddenly encountered the snake. They had told the group to go hide until they won.
So Alex, Lyra and Xavier all split up to check their surroundings. As they all wandered around a pretty big area they were surprised to not find the group.
They even resorted to calling out for them, yet to their dismay no one had answered. No one had even been found.
This of course brought worry to Alex and the others. Despite their obvious strength there was benefits to numbers.
"Hey guys come look at this."
Alex and Lyra walked over to where Xavier was to see what he had found. Once there they looked at what Xavier was pointing to and suddenly rolled their eyes.
It was an arrow engraved into a tree and pointing them north north east.
Both Alex and Lyra let out a sigh.
These damn people couldn't just wait.
Alex gave a middle finger to the tree before turning to Lyra and Xavier.
"Seems we have to follow these arrows. They'd better have a damned good reason for ditching us!"