Vallen stood on his raft as he held a small black sphere in his hand. The sphere was the size of a marble and seemed so fragile to hold. Yet, Vallen just sat there looking at it. Soon, this small sphere began to crack, and small black smoke leaked from the cracks.
But before it could fully hatch, the egg suddenly began to squirm and small bumps began to form. Like something inside of it was banging at the shell, trying its best to get out. Suddenly, the entire egg popped and black smoke puffed out.
Seeing this, Vallen only sighed as he shook his hand side to side. Waving the black smoke away from his face, he only watched as it slowly floated to Rose.
Rose was standing at the edge of the water, staring at the stars reflecting off the surface. Whether Rose was aware of the black smoke being absorbed into his body didn't even enter his mind, just the sight of the stars.
"Another failure," Vallen said as he fell on his back and stared up at the night sky. His brown hazel eyes stared high into the night sky. He breathed out and watched a white puff of smoke leave his mouth.
It was freezing at night.
Or at least that's what Vallen believes. He couldn't really tell since the glasses that he wore sort of blocked out the pain which, funnily enough, worked with the bitter cold. Though it was still strange, he could still feel the pleasant feeling of the wind gliding across his face.
Vallen wasn't going to question this. Why should he? It was nice having something like this blow on your face once in a while.
"Why won't you form?" Vallen said as he raised his hand up to the night sky, Prana condensing and twirling around his fingers. Soon, the smoke came together and formed a small black marble once again.
He put his thought into the egg and watched as it began to hatch once again. Its shell pulsed at his fingers before small ripples formed once again. Cracks slowly appeared as black smoke tumbled out and fell onto the metal floor.
Everything seemed fine, but the egg slowly began to squirm. Small bumps began to appear on its surface, and shortly after, the egg popped once more.
Vallen sighed as he commanded the Prana to enter Rose once more.
During his time on the raft, he tested the range of his abilities.
For instance, he learned that if Rose, and possibly any other avatars he makes, gets too far from him the connection between him and the avatar gets complicated. This doesn't mean complicated, as in not being able to connect, he could still connect and even control Rose. But complicated as in, Rose enters a sort of animalistic state.
Vallen watched, in Rose's own eyes, as Rose shot out the roots that were buried under his skin from the palm of his hand and skewered a fish. Rose then proceeded to drain and absorb the Arcana in the fish. Or at least that is what Vallen believed, as all he saw was a blue hue leaving the fish's body and draining into the roots.
Once the fish was drained of its Arcana, Rose dived even deeper and skewered several more fish. Only stopping once Vallen gave the mental command for him to return. Now this wouldn't have been a problem for Vallen, in fact, he would have let Rose continue to his underwater fishing. But the problem is that, in Rose's animalistic state, he forgot to gather more of the excess Prana floating in the water.
So Vallen called Rose back to the surface to take a break and guard the raft. Though there wasn't really much to guard from, maybe sharks.
It didn't really matter, since in the meantime, Vallen was able to get two more abilities. In the past couple of hours of fishing, he had only managed to fish out two abilities.
—
[Living Mail]- An ability that allows the user to create physical paper that can store any written message or picture from either written action, voice, or by memory. Once the message has been written, the paper will transform into a paper crane and fly towards the intended target. Once it arrives at the target, it will unfold and revert into an ordinary piece of paper.
[Blowing Wind]- An ability that allows the user to generate and control wind. It can generate from a small gust to a hurricane, but it strength ties to how much Arcana the user uses.
—
Of the two abilities he managed to catch, one of them seems to be the only one he could use and it wasn't even a combat one.
[Living Mail] seemed akin to everyday life. Sure, he could use it to maybe send messages out and hopefully be saved, but the problem is that, from what the text says, you need a target. Now, Vallen didn't know what it truly meant, but if he had to guess. You would probably only be able to send the letter to someone you met.
Not an ability that can be of use right now, but maybe later down the line.
But compared to the other one, this one at least seemed usable.
[Blowing Wind] is strong, don't get it wrong. Being able to control and even generate winds that scale to hurricanes is probably something many people desire to have. Maybe?
It didn't matter, what did matter was that with this ability, Vallen could have finally been able to control the direction of the raft that he was on.
He did try using Rose to push the raft in a different direction, but for some odd reason, it didn't even budge. In fact, Vallen didn't even know if the raft had moved since he first entered this world.
But with the help of [Blowing Wind], he could possibly be able to move his raft.
The problem is that it requires Arcana, which didn't seem like a problem at first. But with the ability called [Prana Blood], all the Arcana in his body had been replaced with Prana.
Now you might be asking, why not give it to Rose since he has the ability to absorb Arcana?
Vallen did, and before his hand touched Rose, he felt a dreadful feeling course through his body. As if something was telling that putting this ability inside of Rose would be bad. Vallen didn't question it since everything he did up to this point was because of instinct. So if something in him told him not to do something, he wouldn't do it.
But still, the ability was tempting. So Vallen tried creating a new avatar so it could hold it inside of it, and at first it seemed to be working. But every time it reached the end process, the egg would just pop into a pile of black smoke. Vallen did it at least ten times, and each time ended the exact same way. He did everything he could to allow an egg to hold the ability.
These failures allowed Vallen to learn a few things about his abilities. He could shrink the egg down to the size of a marble. The fact that he could use his own Prana or the failed hatching's Prana to strengthen other avatars and also the fact that any abilities associated with Arcana cannot be held by an avatar.
Which brings us to now.
Vallen lying under the night sky, basking in the cold air and staring at the stars above. His mind was drifting away from the failures he had made. Though he didn't feel pain, there was still a small, uncomfortable feeling in the front of Vallen's mind that resembled that of a headache, minus the pain.
"Man, I think I need a break."