“What’s wrong with your hands?” Voidrin looked across at Aaron, who appeared lost in thought.

  He had barely heard the cyclops, going into a little bit of a trance as he looked up from his hands, and the transparent spirit that lagged alongside his movements.

  He wasn’t sure exactly when he had achieved this latest breakthrough, but somehow he had managed to anchor his spirit to his physical form. It still required concentration to keep himself from breaking contact with the spirit plane, but he no longer had to focus on controlling his spirit itself.

  This was… great. But it still needed to be tested out, and without further thought, he charged another group of hyenas.

  Flying into combat, he was trying to make sense of whatever this was, and how exactly he could capitalize on it, and integrate it into his style.

  Slamming through a wall of angry furries wildly swinging their rusty weapons, Aaron’s fists and kicks went berserk, landing flush against his opponents several times a second.

  Even though it wasn’t his main focus, everything he did was getting better with every fight. By now, he almost instinctively read fate and saw the threads imposed over everything else. This allowed him to weave through countless enemy attacks and land his own, whilst also working on figuring out how exactly his new technique worked.

  In fact, this kind of distracted fighting might have actually been a boon. It forced him to compartmentalize more than he had previously, and was passively improving his ability to track multiple things at once.

  However, none of that was what was on his mind. And as impressive as he had become, he still took a few strikes here and there.

  Ultimately, even though he could easily defeat these hyenas if he paid them full attention, they were still at a higher level. And whilst using them as training props, he gave them opportunities to land against him, and by doing so, he died a few times in the process.

  But what were a few deaths to Aaron Dober? As long as his aether reserves were not drained to zero, he could continue on, and he wasn’t about to risk delaying breakthroughs over something as inconsequential as death.

  It was almost insulting how little he cared for the counters being offered up by the hyenas, sending several of them into a rage, charging him with wild attacks.

  But that did little to drag his attention away from his ghostly fists, and the focus he spent on aether as he blasted strikes into his attackers.

  He could feel it every time his spirit attacks landed. His enemies' energy values swung violently. Still, he had some way to go before it became a truly viable attack, but if he was correct, he was sure it would lead to something, for he was certain that he was onto something.

  There could be little doubt that his physical strikes would cause far more damage to the hyenas than his spiritual fists, but with each attack landed, he felt himself growing closer to something useful.

  What if I…? Let’s see here.

  Even though he had been using it for a long time and had unlocked his aether soul, the energy was far more difficult to control and cycle whilst in his body than the other energy types.

  This was a difficult hurdle to overcome when trying to use an attack that relied upon it. Even though he was using a combination of his spirit and physical self with this style, he had to remain in control of his body. Leaving it for even a second would make him far too vulnerable to attacks. And dying wasn’t something he could just let happen whenever.

  Death was still energy expensive to survive from, and even if he were to weave it into his style, and even if he were to accept that he could let an enemy kill him from time to time, he couldn’t do so willy-nilly.

  Resurrecting himself was best left for times when he either couldn’t avoid it or it would provide a clear advantage, like when he used it to trick Yendal and land an attack.

  This put taking full control of his spirit in the middle of a fight out of the question.

  No, that would be a corruption of the technique. A cheat that would make it far weaker in the long term.

  He was more than happy to use cheats that made him stronger, but there was no way Aaron would take shortcuts that would weaken his style.

  There was only one way to do this, and he bit down as he flung himself into battle, determined to improve his floundering foundation.

  Aaron knew that if he could figure this part of the puzzle out, he might just be able to land an attack that did something to Mo’han, assuming the asura didn’t have a means to resist this.

  He still needed to strengthen himself enough to either dodge or survive one of the big guy’s attacks. He also wanted to strengthen his own energy reserves before the fight, not to mention get back into the kitchen and create a dish to buff himself.

  But this might have been the most important piece of the entire puzzle. If he couldn’t hurt Mo’han reliably, nothing else really mattered.

  ***Voidrin***

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  “What is going on in that mind of yours? How’d you get even weirder?” Voidrin said as he slaughtered a dozen or so hyenas with his flying cutlass. “You still there? Or has all that dying finally sent you mad?”

  Aaron’s eyes had gone blank, and he didn’t even hear the cyclops as he focused on his spirit fists, cycling aether through his soul and into his body and attacks.

  To onlookers, this scene no doubt looked even stranger since Aaron didn’t even react as he casually took strikes, bled out, and then bounced back to his feet.

  “Bah!” Aaron gasped and broke his engagement with the hyenas briefly.

  “You there, back with the living?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, a bit of a headache, that’s all.”

  “Hmm,” Voidrin raised a brow, but didn’t question further; instead, he chose to watch, allowing his clones to deal with the beasts. He sensed something different in Aaron.

  Is this it? The smoking gun I was looking for. Keep going, Aaron boy, show me whatcha got.

  “You tired or something?” Voidrin probed as Aaron leaped back and kept himself out of danger.

  “No, it’s not that…”

  “It’s not?"

  Oh, Aaron, you can’t hide from Voidrin. I see all, and I see someone oddly scared of dying again.

  “Just give me a moment,” Aaron huffed.

  There was something else going on, Voidrin realized. He could vaguely sense it, though he couldn’t quite figure out what it was… it was a form of energy, he was certain. But it wasn’t stamina, mana, or health.

  What is this? Aaron… you little savant. What are you up to?

  No matter how hard he focused, he couldn’t decode the source of this strange energy, but he was certain that Aaron was cycling something. And even though he didn’t know what was going on, he felt like thanking the mad human.

  This had gone beyond just scoping Aaron out for weaknesses to exploit in a rematch. He was learning something from this level 29, who had entirely missed out on the Tutorial. It was absurd, but Voidrin wasn’t too full of himself to turn his back on something potentially helpful.

  He turned his focus to Aaron’s combat and the strikes he was landing. It wasn’t all of them, but some of them were very different. They contained this same foreign power, and Voidrin’s eyes widened a second later.

  The energy fluctuations he felt in the beasts Aaron was beating down were abnormal, to say the least.

  What was he doing? It was bizarre, and furthermore, it wasn’t a Skill.

  Maybe I’ve underestimated the benefits that man has enjoyed coming here early.

  Voidrin already knew Aaron was strong, far, far stronger than he should be for his level. But he was not truly appreciating how the man had grown when forced to find new forms of strength between leveling.

  Unlike normal people, who leveled relatively linearly and would be best suited to finding weaker opponents than challenging something sure to kill them, Aaron had been forced to find alternative means of progression, and it was a sight to behold.

  I am glad I joined you on this one.

  At that moment, Voidrin looked at Aaron in a different light. He was going to want to work with him in the future. To form something more than this. Because Aaron… he was headed somewhere.

  ***Aaron***

  Aaron panted just out of range, cycling and recovering as he ate.

  His aether reserves had grown dangerously low thanks to his carelessness, and another death would seal the deal for real. If Voidrin understood this, he could potentially create a strategy around it, and that wasn’t something he just wanted to hand to cyclops on a platter.

  The moment his reserves had recovered enough to survive a death or two, he was back into the action.

  His attacks were passing through his enemies better than ever, and he even managed to extend the range of his ghostly attacks.

  The results were still mediocre, but he had reached a point where he mostly understood how it worked, and that meant he didn’t need to prolong this trial more than necessary.

  The following line of hyenas fell against his barrage of attacks, and Aaron landed by the doorway.

  “Not bad, my boy,” Voidrin said, dusting his hands as he casually strolled toward him. He didn’t look like he had even been fighting, and several of his clones were still engaged in a battle at his back.

  “You done?” Aaron asked.

  “Me? Ha, I’ve been done for a while. What about you, pal? Got everything you needed?”

  Oh, great.

  He probably should have realized Voidrin was scoping him out. Not that he was too worried about the guy. He didn’t get villain vibes from him, but he also didn’t want to lose their rematch, even if it was just bragging rights.

  “No, I-ahh–”

  “Wow, you really are a terrible liar, aren’t you? Oh well, I can’t say that’s a bad thing.”

  Aaron grimaced. He had been read, and there wasn’t much to do about it.

  “Don’t worry. I won’t go sharing anything with the freaks back in the trials. Your secrets are safe with me. I will exploit them, though, when I beat you in our rematch.”

  “I had a feeling you’d say that,” Aaron groaned as they passed into the next room.

  At the center of the room was a dial to end the trial, and they both walked toward it.

  Chain Quest: The Shadow Trials

  Stage two of [ Trial of Companionship ] COMPLETED!

  You have tested your teamwork against the endless foes found in several rooms and managed to survive.

  Quest Rewards: Flare Wand [ Rare ], Communications Room upgrade to stage 2!

  Experience rewarded for completing a quest stage!

  Aaron swung the wand around as he reappeared in the trial hallway. Shooting flares was not something he really cared about right now, but wands were cool.

  “So, what have you got planned now?”

  “Oh, I’ve got some moves to work on,” Voidrin grinned. “I’ll see you around, pal. Don’t be slacking, now. I don’t want any excuses when I beat your ass.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about me. That’s the last thing I had in mind, mate.”

  Waving goodbye, Aaron got to walking. It was about time he paid a visit to the crafting station.

  Now that he had a way to potentially damage Mo’han, he needed to come up with a solid plan to make the most of the rest of his time in the Shadow Trials, and that started with a new recipe.

  At the end of his previous trial, he had gotten a little distracted and still had yet to see what ingredients he had unlocked.

  Besides, he needed to ponder on this new attack, something he might be able to do whilst cooking up a new dish.

  Hopefully, by the time he had figured that out, he would be on track to making his next step towards solidifying his ghost punches into something more useful.

  I really need more dueling partners to practice this stuff on, don’t I?

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