The Astral soul system

Chapter 239: Different points of view

Zaine was on his way to his room. He’d gone to check on Jade one last time and left Black there to watch over her

He reached out to open the door when he suddenly felt a pang in his chest. He instinctively reached to touch it but by the time he did it was gone

"What was that?"

He mused

"Ever since I became this thing,pain makes no sense"

He muttered gruffly. By normal human standards he might as well not feel pain but he’d been experiencing nothing but it for a while. That breif pang was almost enough to bring him to his knees

"Theia?"

"Sorry,no clue"

She didn’t even bother coming out. She’d been rather quiet today.

He didn’t really care though. It wasn’t his problem.

He started inputting his code

"Right now all I have to do is worry about saving that stupid Hun-"

Zaine froze as the door opened

"Oh, Zen. You’re finally here. Look who’s back"

Zaine raised a brow, looking at the person standing right in front of him. It was Maximilian, alive and healthy.

"Hey. Looks like you finally made it"

Zaine didn’t reply,instead opening his read skill and checking his stats.

He was... fine. A bit hungry and slightly bruised but otherwise unharmed, and he wasn’t an imposter either

"How did you get here?"

"That’s your idea of a greeting. How about "Wow, you’re alive" or "i’m so glad to see you"?"

"Answer the question"

Zaine demanded impatiently

"Hey,geez,calm down "

Neo said, stepping up, trying to calm them down

"Everyone’s safe,Max is alive. Can’t we all just be happy about it?"

But Zaine didn’t respond, eying Maximilian suspiciously.

This time Xavier answered

"We found him,tied up near the school "

They were all looking at him strangely but he didn’t care

"They just let you go?"

Maximilian nodded,a strange expression on his face

"Didn’t any of you think to call me or at least send a message?"

They all exchanged glances, looking confused

"We did"

"And of all the idiotic...What?"

"We called to let you know we found him this afternoon. You said you were busy but you’d get here as soon as possible, though that last part was definitely a lie"

Zaine didn’t respond for a while and just said

"We were unconscious in the infirmary for the entire day"

The three exchanged glances at that revelation but.

"What exactly did you say,word for word"

Neo tried his best to remember before repeating

"Hey,Zen,or whoever it is in there right now. You’ll never believe it,we found Max, we’re taking him in. You can tell Giovanni to call off his goons off"

Zaine just groaned and turned around to leave

"Where are you going?"

He didn’t reply and just left.

Barreling down the hall, he kept muttering under his breath

Zyro’s voice rang in his mind, trying to calm him

"It’s not like we didn’t expect this to happen. In fact we expected exactly this"

"Black"

The watch morphed into a pile of sludge, completely abandoning the old form. Whatever hack she had over his watch couldn’t be used if there was no watch.

Luckily he’d been prepared

"Switch with me"

Zen said

"Fuck no! I’m dealing with this "

"I don’t doubt that but I can just use shadow tracer to send us to her instantly. Our abilities are already well known so it wouldn’t be drawing any more attention to ourselves "

Zaine scoffed

"Who said anything about me going?"

"You just said...oh"

Realizing what he was planning to do, Zen kept quiet , his last words being

"I hope you know what you’re doing"

A card suddenly appeared in Zaine’s hand with a familiar insignia and silhouette in it

"Let’s see how tough this bitch is when I’m not playing around.

Theia suddenly appeared in front of him

"Um...big guy, I’m not sure if you should be getting into a fight right no-"

"Move"

He said, walking past her. He wasn’t listening at all

Theia looked concerned but just shrugged, disappearing back into the system.

It was far too dark for anyone to see, but just in case he opened his shadow realm, dropping in.

He took a good look at the card and suddenly took off his glove. His mark was already glowing.

He held the card over the light on the card, similar to what he did with the ill-fated. He moved his hand away and the card stayed hovering over the mark. The whole process was reminiscent of scanning a card at a checkout, which was funny since the mark technically was a barcode

The card suddenly started spinning and slowly disintegrated into fragments of light which attached themselves to Zaine, covering him completely.

When they faded,he was fully clad in his player uniform.

A faint growl came from where his face would usually be if it wasn’t blocked out by darkness

He moved to a different shadow, somewhere far from where he’d entered. He’d avoided security cameras so far but he wasn’t taking any chances.

He looked around and decided to try something

"Soul movement"

He muttered, trying to fly again.

After a few seconds he lifted off the ground but now it was even worse than ever. He was already awful at flying but now it was truly horrendous.

He decided to spread his wings and unlike with normal clothes there was almost no disturbance with this. The clothes were solid but whatever the material was made of allowed his wings to pass through.

It was slightly better now but he could barely maintain it for a few seconds.

"Grounded"

He said, folding his wings back up but not retrieving them. It sounded weird but he preferred them out.

"Fine then. Old school"

He said, immediately climbing up a building with relative ease, making sure to stay in the shadows.

Like a ghost in the night he barely stayed in one place for long, disappearing into one shadow and reappearing out of another, all without Zephyr’s power.

After a few minutes, he stopped in front of a small building. Well small was relative. Considering a single teenage first year student lived here alone,it definitely wasn’t small. Sometimes he wondered why Zaria, Maximilian and the other rich kids that called themselves his friends didn’t do the same. They easily could

He tilted his head, staring at the mansion

A shadow portal opened beneath his feet, swallowing him up.

On the inside he rose out of the ground, like a vindictive grim reaper he looked to the side and immediately saw her standing arched over a high table,her nose buried in a computer, it’s dim glow the only source of illumination in the dark room.

He pulled his sword out of the ring and quickly charging up a powerful soul slash before releasing the attack in her direction.

He watched as it struck her before passing through her, slicing through the table she was bent over and the laptop.

"H-ey there"

The hologram said, flickering for a few seconds before the damaged device could no longer sustain it and it disappeared

He suddenly heard something from behind him

"Gotcha!"

The lights suddenly flickered on to show Ava pointing at empty air

"What?"

I looked around. There was no one here,or at least that’s what it looked like. Sneaky bastard

"Neat trick"

I said, walking around warily. It didn’t matter how confident I looked I couldn’t mess up

"You know how expensive that laptop was? Or how difficult it is to make a hologram with no illumination in a dark room? You’re already messing up my stuff,you might as well be a decent house crasher and say...hi!"

Gotcha!

Or at least I thought so

I immediately threw something into a corner of the room and a second later it exploded.

Bombs. In my own house. This is what I’ve been reduced to

"What do you think of the kitchen?"

I asked, throwing another bomb.

This guy was so dull sometimes. He might as well give his opinion on it since he just destroyed it. It was that tacky color mom junior picked anyway

Where the hell is this guy?

I’m not just guessing. I’m currently connected to everything tech in this house and I’m using it all to look for any trace of him, but I’ve missed twice now. Don’t tell me he’s an actual ghost

She suddenly heard a crash and the entire room suddenly went dark again

*Bang*

A bullet tore through the floor, missing completely.

Skulking around, i snarled, why is this brat so hard to hit?

How did she know everything i was going to do?

And why won’t she stop talking?

She’d just disappeared.

Maybe she got scared of me and left? It was possible,it might even make sense but .

A light bright enough to blind a normal person suddenly appeared out of nowhere on the walls, revealing strips of backup lamps disguised as decorations

"What do you think of my party lights. I don’t have night vision or whatever it is you got,so I have to improvise"

I said said, moving around carefully. My heart was practically in my throat at this point but I was still confident I could squash this bug that wandered into my den

If only I had more time to prepare though.

I suddenly felt something grab my arm from behind and before i could react,one of my party lights suddenly fired a thin beam at whatever it was. It immediately let me go, disappearing to wherever it came from and by the time I looked back there was no trace of anything having been there.

That was too close. I figured it’s time to make it clear just how screwed he is, immediately activating the lights

"Looks like you’ve seen what my babies really do. They aren’t just lights"

Dozens of laser sight beams appeared pointing at different points in the room, covering almost every angle at which he could approach me. And one of them was controlled by me personally

The moment any of them detects him, he’s fried... and at my mercy

Surrender damnit

*Clang*

*Boom!*

Multiple lasers suddenly fired off into one direction and by the time i turned around,it was gone, but there was something,smoke. I hit something. Unfortunately so did he,he destroyed one of the lasers

He’s injured. There’s no way he’s going to destroy every last one one at a time

And I was right,he wasn’t.

I suddenly heard something spinning before destroying another light strip, somehow it was frozen over with a star stuck into it

"What the-"

I turned around but suddenly heard the sound of footsteps behind me. He suddenly grabbed me by my shoulders from behind, pulling me back and a felt his body behind me, holding me close

"Are you insane?"

Though I knew he wasn’t,my lasers had a failsafe that made sure they wouldn’t shoot me, and right now I was his shield. He knew it, somehow he figured it out,nice guess.

Five of them refused to fire without a clear shot and he took advantage af that, pulling out a weapon that looked like a blaster,he fired, quickly reloading with his ammo in the same hand in three seconds flat, getting rid of them all.

But that was all the time he had before the rest of them hit him in the back, and seeing as I’d given him three seconds to impress me,I activated my forcefield, running about ten thousand volts through him. I’m no one’s fucking shield, bitch!

"Grahh!!!"

I heard him let out a sound. I hurt him,bad it seems. For the first time it felt like I was fighting an actual person instead of schizophrenia.

Another four of her lights were gone before he suddenly disappeared again, leaving the room in darkness again.

I huffed and panted. As the last of the light disappeared I felt a bit stronger, the shadow fueled me,protected me.

She was gone again, after shocking me no less. What a bitch. More than half my HP was gone.

Hopefully that was just luck, and she didn’t know.

I looked up and saw a light flickering in another room. It only took a second for me to realize it was morse code. She was calling me, taunting me.

A shadow portal appeared under each me and I fell into it slowly

Round two