Bab 32: City of Ravens (18)

I walked through the streets, bought sunglasses, a baseball cap, hoodie, and backpack. I changed my look completely. I walked casually to the bus station and took the next bus to Ottawa.

The last twenty-four hours took a toll on me as I fell asleep the moment I sat down on the bus.

In Ottawa, I changed the bus for the one going to Algonquin town. I couldn't sleep anymore, so I analyzed the events of what happened. First was the fight with Alex, it was hard, but on a level, I could manage. Him being an Arcane Artist made the fight me trying to approach him.

I had superior speed, but Arcane Artist have many ways to keep their enemies at a safe distance. His and most of the Arcane Artists style of fighting is centered around their safety, keeping the distance from the enemy, which in most cases are monsters. If it is a Martial Artist the situation is the same, they only have some problems when fighting against other Arcane Artists.

But now I see the limitation of Soul Artist, at least on my current stage. I had some predictions of how I will develop and to utilize my power, but all of it required more control. In other words, I need to get stronger!

As for the fight with the man chasing me, he was a Martial Artist with a mutated elemental essence. Ice element was one of the mutations that everyone is familiar with. His use of Ice was genuinely amazing.

As a close combat fighter, he dominated the fight, superior strength and defense with attacks that could shatter my soul image if he wanted to. And the Ice needles he can deploy, in other words, he was prepared to fight close and long distance, even if his aim was terrible.

There are no tricks which could defeat him, only through pure strength!

Back at the apartment I gave Emily the picture and told her what happened.

"Now we know that they are defiantly after us. Rat helped me to clear your name from this building, so they shouldn't find our address. But he can't change anything in the MCA servers."

"That's already good enough. Hopefully they won't find out who I'm, either way, I will be going into the hunting grounds for a while. Just in case I will leave you my phone, there is only one number so if anything happens, call it and say that I told you to do so. Maybe he will help you."

"Sure… but really? A flip phone?"

"I know. You don't have to tell me. Just remember to use it in an emergency."

Before leaving, I repacked my backpack, bought some additional resources and next mooring left for the hunting grounds! My lungs filled with fresh morning air and body full of energy, I moved through the forest like wind looking for pray.

I had to increase my strength, and the fastest way was to do it was with the help of the black feathers. I repeated what I did previously first kill and take monsters soul until my soul was reached the limit. When that happened, I went to the cave that I found after escaping Leshy and made a primitive wall that would block anything from getting inside.

Relatively safe I could train control and condense my soul.

A week later. I just finished my tenth cycle and was now practicing my control. First was Transformation, the degree I could change my soul image finally became large enough to do something more substantial with it.

As I mostly focused on punching, soft targets that would be more susceptible to slashing were my bane. But now not only I could change my fingers into long sharp claws. But that also has its limitations, what was more useful was the ability to extend a soul image in the shape of a blade from the side of my fist as if I was holding it.

It was about thirty centimeters long allowing me to make deep wounds. Usually, I would stop here as I reached the limit, not this time though. I began to train more complex shapes and ways I could utilize the soul image. What I found the most useful form all things I tried was transforming mid-motion.

Mid-swing I would change the shape of the blade making the attack more unpredictable, especially if the degree of change is large. But it required me to make these changes in less than a split of a second.

And that gave me another idea that could be useful in a fight, if I manage to stab the enemy with the blade, I can change its shape inside of him.

The possibilities were endless, and I was just scratching the surface of what I could do.

Next on the list was separation. Now I could separate a much bigger chunk of my soul image as well as move it further and with more ease. But separating a fragment of soul image in the shape of a ball wasn't any use.

To solve this, I used Transformation and started to manipulate the shape of it. This task was proved to be harder then I could've anticipated. After many hours of trying my efforts didn't go to waste! A dagger was floating above my palm shining brightly.

I grabbed it and made a few swings before the dagger disappeared. The soul image that I separated lasted for a few minutes, but most of the time it was there I spent shaping it. But when it was finished, I realized how stupid I was.

What I should've done was shape it first and then separate it! When I did that the results were much better, I could create the dagger faster and control it for longer. And in the distance of a meter around manipulate its movements as I wished.

There were still three problems with this… technique? I should give this a name. A dagger that is flying… Gliding Blade? Sounds good enough. And the blade that I can make with transformation… Soul Sword. It may be too short to call it that yet… but why not. Also, the claws, let's go with Vicious Claws?

… I should just call them Claws.

Either way. There are still three problems with the Gliding Blade. First is the time limit, if the fight prolongs it can disappear mid-fight. Second is the concentration needed for me to use it. But this is something that can be easily corrected with training. Lastly, the distance limit. It was barely a meter thus while I hold a Soul Sword my reach is the same.

The only thing I could do was wait as I get stronger and the distance expands.

Lastly, I trained with Expansion. For a while, I tried to apply separation and transformation to it, but with little success. But I knew it was possible, in the future I should be able to do it. For now what I should do… is to continue getting stronger!