I stared at the small, smokeless flames that were floating just on top of her hands in amazement.

“How…how are you doing that,”

“Ow, ow” she suddenly closed her palms and started fanning her hands as if it got burned.

I grabbed her shoulder and shook it. “How did you do that? How did you create that flame?” I asked in excitement.

“Eh, well I saw- wait. I'm seeing more words"

Right. it must be reporting her affinity. It must be fire or heat or something. “What is it? “ I asked impatiently.

“Um…, Affinity found…. Prana?“

“Prana?” I repeated after her.

“Yeah, also Soul level…1”

Prana?, not Fire or heat? What is that?

“Can you explain to me how you made that flame?“

“Yeah…well, after everything went dark and quiet, I saw the soul you were talking about. But I also saw some kind of energy being created by them, flowing and filling my entire body. And when I looked at things more closely, I saw a different kind of energy flowing just outside my body.“

Different kind outside? I didn’t see that.

“The flow inside- “

“Aura“ I interjected.

“What?”

“Aura, that’s what I call the energy flowing inside. It’s for making things simpler”

“Right.” she continued. “I could control the…aura that was inside my body pretty easily, but I couldn’t do anything to the Energy outside, at least not until I left that state. When I tried to do it again after I left, I could do it.”

“What! that’s grossly oversimplifying things. How did you control it?“ Also, did she say that she could control her aura easily? It took me hours to move them into my arms.

“Hmm…Well, I kind of projected my aura outside my body and kinda controlled?... or enveloped? the flow that was on the outside and suddenly I could feel it and understand it the same way I could my own aura. It’s kind of hard to explain, but I felt I could do all sorts of stuff with it and when I tried to change its nature, it went up in flames. Just on top of my hands. “

“You get it?” She asked as she looked up at me.

So, there was some kind of different energy flowing in the air that I didn’t know about, and she could control it using her aura after enveloping it, moreover, she could change the nature of this energy into fire?.

“Can you try it again, “ I asked her “Try to make it bigger this time.“ This ability was frankly amazing, but it wouldn’t be of use with its size right now.

“Yeah, “ She replied as she proceeded to open her palm and glare at it. After a second, like before, a small flame appeared, this time slightly farther away from her hands.

“Its…kinda…hard….to keep it away from my hands….to not burn me.“ She spoke as she continued staring at the flame, strugglingly.

I guess that makes sense. It would be, since it required her to project her aura farther away from her body and, on top of that, envelop this unknown energy in the air.

“Can you make it any bigger? “

She did not reply, but she doubled down her stare into the flame while holding her breath.

After a few seconds of intense glaring. “…..I CANT.“ She spoke as she loudly let out the breath she held and drop her hands.

“It’s straining to take control of more of that flow, it’s like trying to lift something way heavier than you can actually lift. “

“I... See.“ I replied discouraged. I looked at the torch that was lying on the ground to our right, pointed towards the doorway. It has perhaps been 20 minutes since we got inside the room. We had less than 2 hours to figure something out. In the worst-case scenario.

“You keep on training on that. I’ll try to think of a plan meanwhile, “ I said as I got up and walked back to the light.

Lea’s ability was frankly amazing. It was basically magic, creating fire from will and out of nothing. But the situation still hasn’t changed. Her ability was not of much use other than being a substitute match light or an emergency light. Hopefully, that will change as her soul gets stronger as mine did.”

But what to do…. What can we do?.... I thought anxiously.

What could we do with the tools that were available to us? Maybe we can make a fire? No, a fire in an enclosed space would kill us faster with smoke. More torches? No, more torches were not guaranteed to work against the giant creature.

What about their strengths? What is it about them that makes them a wall to us right now?

Their numbers. The dark environment that Favours them. That enormous owl.

Wait…if you think about it, the darkness was actually their weakness if you look at it from another perspective. The sunny environment favoring us instead of them. They had to stay in the darkness.

But how to bring them to light? I began thinking again.

Break the windows? Switch on the lights? Nah, that big creature will act way before we can reach any windows, and the electricity has been dead since yesterday. Can’t bank everything on the slim chance that this specific building still has it.

‘Goddammit, it’s that fucking Big Bird that’s being a tremendous problem in every direction. The me right now could probably take on all the smaller ones.’ I thought frustrated as I gripped my pitchfork hard.

“Wait, a second,” I spoke out loud as I got an idea. Not an idea that could solve all our problems, but one that would solve half of it.

I sighed.

Guess it’s time to put my money where my thought is.

I walked back towards Lea to bring her up to speed with my plan.

………….

……

…

.

“You ready?” Lea asked while holding the torch in her hands.

“Yeah,” I replied back with a pitchfork in mine while staying at the center of the room.

She turned the light away from the doorway, the only thing that was keeping the creatures outside.

Three of the creatures instantly vaulted over the box of products that we just put in front of the door to keep the flow of creatures to a minimum.

Lea quickly pointed the torch back to the doorway, preventing any more killer birds from getting inside.

I watched as the 3 owls that just jumped into the room, stop as they saw me and size me up. Coming slowly closer, and trying to surround me. I know I said that I could take them all, but facing 3 monsters with some intelligence in their eyes walking closer while clearly thinking on how to kill me was still scary.

I invoked vitality and shot my weapon as soon as one came close to my range. The middle one, unable to dodge it, got skewered in the head. The other two instantly reacted as soon as I moved. One going for my thighs and the other going for my face.

I let go of the pitchfork to protect my face and grabbed the neck of the one that went for my face. It was surprisingly lighter than one would expect from being almost my size. I kicked the other one that was clawing and pecking on my legs painfully with a vitality empowered kick.

The one on my hands didn’t just sit still as well, clawing at my hands that were holding it up by the neck with its sharp talons, digging into my hands deeply.

I grabbed its neck even tighter and slammed it into the ground. Knocking the air out of it. I looked over to the one I kicked to see it already beheaded by Lea with an axe.

“Phew….” I let out a sigh of relief that it went well ”You can kill this one as well,” I said to Lea.

This was the Plan we were going for. Divide and conquer.

This way, we could lessen the number of creatures outside by killing them one by one while also simultaneously get stronger as well.

The best way for Lea’s ability to get more firepower, literally, was to kill these creatures and get her soul stronger as mine did. If it worked like mine, then it should get stronger as she gets more kills, So I gave the kills of the creatures that didn't die immediately, to her.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that the previous overwhelming feeling I get when killing these creatures now felt a lot... muted. I equated that to adding a cup of water to a small jug and a big one. The small one will feel the difference much easier.

All the more reason I should give the kills to Lea. Or the metaphoric smaller Jugg.

Perhaps, if I keep at it long enough, there will be a time when I feel nothing when I kill these creatures. But I wonder what my state will be then, after taking in all those parts of these foul creatures into my soul.

We repeated the same tactic again, after wrapping the wounds in my arms with a cloth. I was looking forward to bringing back actual medicines to treat my multitude of wounds when all of this was over. This time Lea brought back the light faster than last time, bringing in only two of the night’s creatures inside the room. And me, instead of gawking at the creature like last time, instantly skewering one the moment it got inside, the other was killed by us both with a series of poking and swinging.

We repeated this tactic 3 more times, killing 8 more of these creatures while getting more skilled at killing them as well, but Lea still hasn’t got the Level up message as of yet. But if we go at this pace, we should clear this place of these rotten creatures soon enough. This thought was immediately followed by a loud, deep hoot noise that reverberated the entire mart.

The mother owl surprisingly acting up after ignoring all previous deaths of its younglings. Though in hindsight it was obvious that she would act. One or two, death was simply 'the survival of the fittest', but even she would have to act if her entire youngling were about to be systematically massacred.

But it was fine. We were under the safety of this room. The door could barely fit her entire face. She couldn’t do anything to us as long as we were inside. But I fear the moment I get out of this room. This again was followed by a sudden impact on the wall in front of us. We both fell to our butts from the shock of the sudden impact.

I looked towards the door to see what happened to see a big face right in front of the door staring right at us.

“Oh”

It screamed right into our face, losing all of its earlier regal and calm persona. It backed off again and charged into the small opening of the room. Its body slamming into the entire wall as the entire room shook again.

We held ourselves closer in fear as it single-mindedly repeatedly slammed itself into the concrete wall.

“Its… not going to break the entire wall, is it?.“ Lea asked in fear

No way it will. It was not just a brick-lined wall. Steel pipes were going through it, forged by cement to make it even stronger and cohesive. No way a biological creature could break through that entire wall, no matter how scary it looked.

It was going to hold.

The wall started breaking, lines appearing with an audible cracking sound.

It was not going to hold!

We backed off into the far end of the wall, staring at the widening cracks in fear. A moment later, another slam resounded and the big avian crashed into the room, breaking the entire wall, along with the ceiling crashing onto its head.

The creature crashed into the ground hard with giant piles of concrete and parts of the broken ceiling falling on top of it, landing right in front of us.

We stared with our backs pushed against the wall, dumbstruck. Only the sounds of our ragged breathing and small rocks falling from the ceiling accompanying us.

I walked closer to its head. Was it dead?

It clearly wasn’t, its head moving with a visible breathing movement. I stared at the opportunity.

Imagine the amount I get if I kill it right now.

I picked up the pitchfork that was lying behind me and went up to its head. It was still completely unconscious.

I invoked vitality and stabbed it with everything I’ve got. The monster jerked suddenly from the pain and started waking up, trying to move the immense weight on its body with the pitchfork completely stuck in its head. Unable to be pulled by my measly strength.

Ok. Bit more than I could chew. Run. “Run.” I screamed as we ran over the debris and towards the backdoor. Sounds of rocks falling and a giant creature trying to stand up, getting louder from behind. Lea grabbed the bag that was lying on the ground with all the supplies in it.

“Run, run,” I screamed as a loud, angry hoot resounded behind us. Fortunately, we were already through the backdoor and into the glorious safe sun.

We ran a few meters away from the building for safe measure and observed the bright and beautiful day. Feeling as if it has been days since we last saw one.

We both screamed into the sun, praising it.

“Finally......”

“Yeaaaasss”

I looked at Lea, covered in scar and blood, the same as me. We both smiled as we looked at the road back to home.

A few demonic dogs that were too thin and too black to be true, were wandering on the streets in front of us as they looked towards the sound, locking their eyes on us.

“No..no... please no...” I muttered under my breath. As they recognized us as a threat and came sprinting towards us.

“Oh, my God. Just give us a break already,” Lea screamed to the air what was on my mind.