The Astral soul system

Chapter 268: Elementals

Zaine yawned, dragging his feet to his next useless class.

Odd, considering he felt completely fine, then again this vessel hadn’t slept in over a week.

He jammed his headphones to their max. It wasn’t playing anything, just on the noise cancelling function.

"Tsk,tsk,tsk. That’s not a good sign"

Theia said, coming out of his watch so other people could see her.

Him being some degree of troubled or even insane was so normalized by students it had stopped being just rumors in their minds. She felt like this bothered him so little he wouldn’t take any initiative to remedy that so she took it upon herself and decided to appear in public whenever she could .

A students having their own personal assistant AI wasn’t exactly common, but at least no one would call him crazy because of it.

He ignored her comment but she didn’t let up.

"You oughta take better care of yourself buddy "

"What I need is to find that green skinned bi-"

"Whoa!!! Hillcay ithway hetay g-ay ordway. And don’t call her a bitch either. Let’s just give her a chance to explain herself first before we start throwing around words we don’t mean"

He ignored her and just kept walking.

*Twitch*

He suddenly stopped.

Half a second later

[Incursion detected]

"Huh. You’re becoming more perceptive to them. This one should be relatively close by"

The sensation resembled an itch somewhere on his back. It was a bit annoying but not as annoying as the thought of continuing this bullshit. He’d take any excuse to miss class he could get.

He immediately turned the opposite direction and started walking towards the exit.

"You really need a weapon. Your fists aren’t always going to be enough"

"..."

Theia sighed.

"You may think you’re different from the others but you’re still all stubborn as a mule...or a pack of mules...or...Gah! The point is you’re gonna get yourself killed "

"There’s nothing I can do with gear that I can’t do with my own hands"

Hearing that, she deflated and stopped pushing.

"Still,it wouldn’t hurt to pay a visit to that blacksmith friend of yours "

"The one who Freya kidnapped his family member?"

"He was being well taken care of,also it wasn’t my choice"

She quickly interjected to defend herself.

This was the first time a rift had opened midday and he had to be prepared for the possibility of people seeing him, and with the way his mark reacted the closer he got, he couldn’t afford to be seen wearing the academy’s colors.

A few minutes later,a small trip through the shadows and a card toss later he was standing in front of the portal.

And just his luck. People were here. Obviously they started running for the hills but it was less crowded than he’d expected so he just pulled the hood of his player outfit a bit lower, stepping in, ignoring the ones on the outside. The city’s defenses would take care of those.

A few seconds later, before he’d even opened his eyes he could only think one thing

"Hot"

He opened his eyes, looking around he found himself on what looked like a platform in empty space,if empty space was filled with orange swirls.

"This isn’t a dungeon"

"Neither was the last one, at least not entirely. Rifts are caused by overlap between certain realms that cause the creation of temporary domains like this. It’s sorta like a tunnel,or... imagine two lakes, eventually, probably due to rain,water flows from both to a seperate place, and if they’re lucky, both might meet,over time forming its own small pond which is much less stable and much less permanent. Interestingly they can be either natural or artificial"

"So I can use this place to get to another world just as easily as I can go back to mine"

"Correctamundo Mon Frère"

"And you didn’t think to tell me this the first time I went into one of these things?"

"Uh...."

She quickly changed the subject

"Don’t forget your time here is limited. If this place falls apart before you leave there’s no telling what could happen."

He was about to say something else when he felt the temperature start to increase. Looking down he noticed the ground beneath his feet getting brighter and he immediately moved away, avoiding a blast of fire from beneath him.

He watched as the fire left the ground and instead of dissipating formed into a shape that seemed like it was trying to resemble human, though it was nowhere close

"Elementals. Brilliant "

He huffed.

"And just when you got into your nice clothes"

Theia joked.

Well now punching was useless

[Soul equipped: Jörmungandr]

[Soul gun]

The attack left his palm, flying through the air and hitting the elemental, destroying a portion of its flame and knocking it back.

It barely reacted though as the part of its flame that dissipated quickly reconstituted

"Well that was did nothing"

Theia pointed out.

Right on cue about a dozen more elementals rose out of the ground, forming into varying vaguely humanoid shapes,most likely mimicking him since he was the only other thing here

"Oh..."

He immediately unfurled his wings, taking to the sky. Luckily this outfit somehow didn’t get damaged by his wings or restrict them in any way . Unfortunately he had to stay within the bounds of the platform which was about as large as a football stadium. Better than walking though.

Multiple fireballs struck the place he’d been standing right after he took off.

When it came to elementals, there really wasn’t much you could do. They were some of the most annoying enemies to fight, especially when they were made of fire or lightning or something else you couldn’t touch without hurting yourself.

Almost completely immune to physical damage and capable of manipulating their form however they please, though the less intelligent ones often just mimic the shapes of other creatures.

Other than just destroying the crystal that was somewhere in the body,all you could do was stop them from reconstituting the element. And even if you could take out the crystal without destroying it,there was a chance they’d just reemerge from it after some time. As for how humans had discovered that the first time,it was a harrowing story that was still taught to people as children.

In fact it was such an issue that academy protocol for dealing with them was always to destroy the core immediately, which was a bummer because the elemental energy inside one was almost twice as dense as a regular beast of the same rank.

Jade’s earth elemental shoes were thus one of a kind,or at the very least incredibly rare.

The elementals all at once suddenly started flying towards him like human missiles. Knowing he’d be the one to suffer the most from the collision he immediately moved out of the way,an action he’d soon realize was a mistake. In a matter of seconds he had dozens of flaming missiles coming at him from every angle and every direction, and with his supbar flying it was only a matter of time before he got hit.

[-10HP]

He quickly used his wings to correct, making sure he didn’t fall to the ground. Before he could take a break another had hit him from behind.

And then another from the side.

Wasn’t this the same pinball strategy he’d developed himself?

He was about to become intangible to maybe get some breathing room when Theia stopped him

"Don’t! The same concept of binding energy with atoms that allows you to shift your body’s density is what allows them to temporarily become corporeal. Even if you switch they could still hurt you"

And here he thought that ability of his was something unique.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a glimpse of something moving faster than the others and raised his hand to block it. This time instead of dissipating a bit and bouncing away, the flame tore right through his arm, engulfing it and continuing on its path .

He let out a sharp grunt, clutching what was left of his arm.

"Fuck"

He cursed, and started flying higher and higher until he felt the invisible boundary he couldn’t pass .

[Sustained considerable damage]

[Healing]

He watched as the point that the arm had been cut off was covered with a dark energy that slowly spread outward in the shape of his hand. For about a second it looked like how his hand would when it was transformed, then when it settled it returned to looking human.

He still felt like he’d never get used to the feeling of regenerating limbs. Several nerves, bones and muscles all disappearing at once and almost immediately replacing themselves,it was weird but not entirely bad.

The worst part of it was the energy drain.

Looking at his meter he slowly tucked his wings back in, falling to the ground, the force of his descent reduced since he was still using soul movement.

He landed softly, flexing his newly grown arm and looking up at the sky of fireballs dashing forth and back.