The Astral soul system

Zen made it down the mountain after a few hours climbing down with Black's help.

Instead of heading straight for the dungeon , Zen had one final stop to make. Heading towards the site that was filled with beast corpses, Zen had to climb again, but he didn't really mind.

As soon as he got up, Zen stretched his hand.

"Here you go"

Black immediately wriggled free from Zen's wrist and straight into one of the corpses. From the outside it looked like it the corpse had suddenly began rapidly decomposing as Black started eating voraciously at the beast corpse, having no trouble breaking down the bones and flesh before putting it in its seemingly infinite stomach capacity.

Zen watched with interest. It was the first time he'd seen a creature with no physical form eat. He'd originally thought that Black would only eat a little, but the little guy had already finished a whole beast in a few minutes and was moving on to the next.

"Aaahh ,fuel in the tank" Black spoke.

"I don't get tired like humans, but I still require energy for everything i do. And in case you were wondering, i don't get full, but there is a point where I reached my max and i don't get any more energy from food, luckily I'm no where near that point yet "

Zen sat down, not meditating but just watching him eat. He had a feeling he'd be here a while.

"I thought you couldn't survive long without being attached to a living creature"

"Yes but as I'm eating I'm replenishing the energy i loose. As for what happens when I'm out of energy, I'm not sure, I'd probably either die or go back into hibernation. Something just doesn't feel right when I don't have a host, it's like something terrible will happen to me if i stay too long without one,as for what that is? I don't remember "

Zen went quiet after that, watching as Black ate.

"Aren't you hungry?"

Zen was suprised by the question.

"I thought humans ate meat"

"They do, but beasts are mostly poisonous and undesirable to most. Not that poison bothers me"

"I know. You grew up with someone possessing the poison ability. You were their first and only friend as a child "

Zen stayed quiet for a while before speaking.

"True"

Black also went quiet. Although it had seen some of Zen's memories,it hadn't seen them all, and the ones it had seen were... disturbing,at least they would have been if that concept applied to its species. Perhaps being together was affecting them both in strange ways.

Zen suddenly remembered Theia saying there'd be some changes after his evolution.

He looked at one of the dead beasts that had began slightly decomposing, and after a bit of thought, cut a small piece that was still fresh.

He didn't bother cleaning the blood and threw it into his mouth.

"Hmm, that's different"

Zen had tasted raw meat and things like that before, and although there wasn't a big change, Zen could feel something extra beneath the usual taste.

"That's the residual energy" Theia pointed out.

"Unfortunately there's almost none left, otherwise it would taste better"

Zen shrugged. He wasn't very hungry anyway.

Theia went back into the system to do whatever it was she usually did.

For the next hour, Zen just watched Black eat for a while, come back to him for a quick break, probably because he still felt uncomfortable outside his body, and then go back to eat.

"I'm good now. We can go"

Black jumped back onto his wrist, briefly remembering something.

"Hey i wonder what Zaria is doing"

********************

"Aaargh!"

Zaria kicked a stone, thoroughly frustrated.

"Hey, tone it down a bit."

Diane carefully hushed her.

"We're not out of danger yet"

Diane sighed, looking around at the army of beasts surrounding them.

How had things gone so wrong?

They had been seperated from their friends at the very beginning, with little to no hope of ever seeing them again,then they had been forced to go on this stupid expedition while the higher ups "figured something out".

They had been sent to this earth like planet, covered mostly by huge mountains and rock formations. Zaria and Diane were already disinterested in this whole thing, planning to just forget hunting beasts and go with the group until they could go back to earth and find a way to help the others, but they had been surrounded and attacked by a pack of high level monkey beasts, one thing had led to another, and here they were.

Zaria looked at the beasts keeping them hostage and was confused with the whole situation.

Intelligence increased with evolution, and evolution was decided by rank. Looking at these beasts, none of them should be intelligent enough to command such a large pack of beasts. Of course,things were always different with primate beasts.

Zaria tapped her fingers on her arm impatiently. Diane and her could have easily escaped or maybe even fought back, but if they did, there was no way to guarantee the beasts wouldn't go feral and start slaughtering the other students.

"Where the fuck are the teachers?" Diane spat, cautiously looking around to see if there was any way out of this mess.

"What do you think they want with us?"

Diane shrugged

"Food? Entertainment?"

Zaria sighed.

"We're down half our year's strongest fighters. If only Zen and the others were here"

"Yeah. Max would have seen these guys coming almost a mile away. I doubt Zen could have done much though "

Zaria went quiet. She had a different opinion. Something about Zen just wasn't normal. She found it disturbingly easy to read him, and whenever she did, she noticed something different about him. Maybe all people like him were like that, but she was sure of what she felt.

"You called your sister, right?"

Zaria nodded.

"Yeah, before we left, but for some reason I'm not getting any signal anymore, I can't call anyone "

"Same,i called my people before I left too, hopefully they'll find out something is wrong "

A huge shadow suddenly covered Zaria. Looking up, she saw a massive black gorilla beast looking down at her with its bloody red eyes.

Zaria looked back up at it, staring it in the eyes fearlessly. The beasts had been doing this for a while so although it was strange, they were used to it. Besides,if the beast tried to attack her she could just kill it, though, looking around, she realized that might not be the best idea. She knew the effect her transformation had on beasts, and she wasn't willing to use it with so many lives at stake.

The beast suddenly started beating its chest and screeching loudly.

Zaria was confused, this was new, but wasn't unusual considering the fact that they were primates,so she ignored it.

The beast suddenly slammed the ground in front of her, looking like it wanted her attention before pointing at one of the caves in the mountain.

Zaria clenched her fist, thinking things were about to get violent, but Diane hurriedly stopped her.

"Wait,its trying to tell you something"

"How do you know?"

Diane glared at Zaria for a few seconds before trying to diffuse the situation.

"Just wait"

True to Diane's words, the beast didn't attack and simply kept pointing at the cave while slightly nudging her towards it.

"I think it wants you to go in the cave"

"And how do i know it won't attack me?"

The beast seemed to understand what she said and suddenly turned its back to her and sitting on the ground.

An act of trust,or perhaps goodwill.

Diane and Zaria looked at each other. They obviously didn't trust the beast , but if she didn't do as the beast wanted,a blood bath could be the only possible outcome.

"Can I come with her?"

Despite not being able to speak, the beast seemed to understand human language as it nodded affirmatively.

"What are you doing?" Zaria whispered

"Watching my friend's back. I'm not letting these hairy assholes try anything on you. Besides,we can just fight our way out,worst case scenario...we escape...and they all die"

Zaria gritted her teeth and looked at the beasts. It looked like they all had no intention of following them.

Together they walked into the cave slowly.

Diane suddenly stopped and sniffed the air.

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know"

They kept walking for a few seconds until they reached a larger chamber in the cave. Taking a good look at what was in the cave, Zaria's eyes widened.

"Isn't that -?"

*****************

Zen walked into the dungeon and found the others awake.

Other than Sable, they were all on their feet again, although not fully healed.

"Hey, Zen. Come on,we were waiting for you"

Zen walked over to join them and sat down.

"What's this?"

"Well we figured we're going to have to know more about each other if we're going to be a team"

"Team?"

"Look, like it or not, you're stuck with us for now, and we're going to need to work well together in case anything else happens"

Zen went quiet. He understood Maximilian's point. Yesterday was a computer disaster mostly because they had absolutely no teamwork. The only people who were actually working together with the rest of the team rather than just doing their own thing were Jade and Neo.

Seeing that Zen didn't seem to disagree, Maximilian nodded.

"Alright, I'll start. My ability,sense,is both an active and passive ability. My usual senses are multiple times better than a normal human even without actively using it, but when using aether i can concentrate on a few specific senses, increasing it to absurd levels"

Maximilian spent a few more minutes explaining some more

Zen raised a brow, not believing that they were actually doing this. Although what Maximilian said didn't seem to be a big deal, his family would probably kill everyone here except for him if word got out. No one knew the details of pioneer abilities, and the rumors had gotten insane. Some even thought they were completely different from regular abilities,or ran on something else completely.

"Guess it's my turn"

Xavier stretched a bit before sharing.

"Basically, Void is a total energy blackout ability. At lower levels,all it does is grant ability immunity, which is basically like a personal forcefield, protecting from most elemental and other energy based abilities. From level three upwards,i can expand the forcefield in a sort of invisible dome with me at the center. Then basically all abilities inside it are unable to work, unfortunately that includes allies too."

There was a bit more detail, but that was the general gist of it.

Jade and Neo were next. There wasn't much explanation needed for Jade's ability, and they all knew what Neo's ability was.

When it was Zen's turn, they asked him which of those abilities he was going to be using in public, obviously realizing the folly of letting people know he could use more than one.

Zen had already thought about it, and there was no reason for him to act like he didn't have an ability. He'd already considered just pretending he was powerless, but Theia had already said it would be pointless since the system would force him to get increasingly stronger, and he wouldn't be able to hide it forever.

Zen quickly displayed the new ability he had gotten from the unknown soul, explaining its pros and cons, surprising them all in the process with his new ability,one they had never seen before.

After a bit more talking they did the only thing they could think of and started practicing their skills with each other. Although none of them said it, they were unimaginably close to dying just a few hours ago. None of them wanted to go through that again, and the only way to make sure they didn't was to get stronger

Xavier and Maximilian were sparring,Neo was practicing with his ability and Zen was about to start meditating when Jade walked up to him.

"H-hey,Z. You're not busy,are you?"

"What do you want?" Zen asked, opening his eyes.

"W-well..."

Zen suddenly heard a groan from inside his mind, and a voice belonging to Freya.

"Jeez. You clearly know what she wants,so stop being so mean. She's trying her best, okay?"

Zen agreed, but he wanted Jade to say it.

"What do you want?"

"..."

Jade suddenly bowed down fully with a pleading look on her face,her shoulders slightly trembling.

"I want to get stronger. Can you please teach me how to fight like you?"

A few seconds passed and Jade looked up, realizing Zen was no longer there.

Her eyes darkened and her shoulders fell. She clenched her fists and grit her teeth, thinking she'd been rejected.

"Guess I'm too weak to even teach"

"Come on"

Jade jumped and stumbled, almost falling down due to suprise. Hurriedly she looked back to see Zen standing behind her.

"H-how did you...?"

Zen ignored the question.

"Let's go. You start now"

Jade nodded slowly,a bit absentminded.

Zen sighed. She hadn't heard him at all. He repeated himself and this time he got a reaction as she looked at him in suprise.

"W-what did you say?!"

Zen heard multiple voices giggling in his mind. It seemed Jade's charm had gotten to all three of Zen's companions.

This is going to take a while.

*****************

Jade looked up at the huge mountain in front of her and nearly fell from nervousness.

"I-im climbing that?"

"WE'RE climbing that" Zen said, already getting ready "

Zen checked the firmness of the rope around his waist that linked him to Jade and was satisfied. Luckily, Maximilian had prepared an emergency kit which included rope.

Jade gulped and looked at Zen nervously.

"Guess training's already begun?"

Zen wanted to tell her that this wasn't part of the training, and just them getting to their training area, but Freya quickly shut him down, saying that morale and motivation were the most important things when it came to training, and he shouldn't mess with her morale.

"Let's start"

Zen said, finding something to grip on