When David arrived back at his apartment, he felt angry and worried at the same time. Things had finally started to feel stable in his life. He was happy and enjoying it all. Now, the whole situation had been turned upside down.

The reason he had wanted to talk to Karine on a night time stroll on her family's property was selfish....he just wanted to take a walk at night himself and didn't have anywhere to do it. Now, he didn't even know the status of his relationship with Karine. The only other place he had that gave him that absolute feeling of care was when he was in the woods at night. He wanted that feeling. Since Karine's estate was out of question at this point, his only other option was his parents' house and property.

Having an idea, David looked at his phone to check the time. David was checking to see if it was before 10:00 PM. The clock read 9:55 PM. Their time at the zoo's Gala was really limited. They had arrived at around 6:00 PM and it was now only 4 hours later. How could everything go to shit so quickly?

"They shouldn't be in bed yet," David thought while tapping the screen of his cell phone. In a second, the phone started ringing.

"David, is everything okay?", his mom's voice immediately came over the phone line.

"Everything is fine, Mom," David said, "I was just thinking that I needed a break from this place and wanted to visit home for a few days."

"Oh, are you bringing Karine along?" Kathy Knox asked her son.

"No, mom. She is having some problems at her house and can't come with me," David answered his mom's question although he never asked Karine...she rejected him for a simple walk around her family's property why would she go on a trip for a few days with him.

"Okay David," David's mom said in a tone that said she knew something more was going on,"When are you leaving?"

"Probably first thing in the morning. If I leave around 6 AM, we should be able to have lunch together," David said.

"Okay sweetie. See you then. Drive safe. Love you," she said through the phone.

"Okay, love you too Mom," David said back into the phone before hanging up.

Before leaving the Carmine's complex, David was required to 'check out' with the details of his travels. This condition was part of David's and most other guard's contracts with the Carmine Family. Essentially, they wanted to put some sort of restrictions on people from having them run off an become rouge cultivators and risk exposing the existence of the other to the general public.

David sort of disliked the contract clause because it meant that he could leave town without informing the Carmine Family. However, he did not have any restrictions against him so he could freely travel anywhere he wanted.

Picking up his cell phone, he text messaged Mr. Gauge the information about his trip. He would be driving to his parents house to visit due to personal reasons and would be staying for three days.

David decided to have a few snacks and get ready for bed.

After waiting for about 20 minutes, David was interrupted while brushing his teeth with a phone buzz. After rinsing his mouth out, David picked up the phone for Mr. Gauge's response.

"Request received. Processing should take about an hour," read the text from Mr. Gauge.

After getting the formalities in process, David started packing up his overnight backpack. He assumed that the request for leave process would go through smoothly. Why wouldn't it?

After about 20 minutes of packing, David had finished up getting ready for his trip tomorrow and decided to sit down and train. He always had a feeling that he needed to be stronger. If he was strong, he wouldn't have been dismissed so much tonight. He would have been respected.

Luckily, David seemed to have a talent for cultivating. Since 9 months ago, he had progressed well in his "pretend" darkness training with Mr. Gauge. As far as everyone knew, he was at Level 2 Darkness Foundation Stage. This sort of progress was shocking to Mr. Gauge. If anyone knew that David was actually at Level 6 Darkness Foundation Stage, they would probably loose their mind. David also understood that his level of talent would bring him troubles if other knew about it, so he kept it to himself. After faking like he was inept in some of the darkness skills for so long, David had developed an ability to manipulate and control his darkness skills to a point that they were perfect. For example, he would perform the Darkness Shadow skill and could now create gradient shadows in the area around him. Mr. Gauge could only create a single shade of darkness at a time. For example, David could make part of a room darker than another. Mr. Guage could only make the room the same darkness throughout the entire room. Of course Mr. Gauge didn't know that David could do this exceptional skill control, David had practice this skill usage on his own.

Although his darkness skills were exceptional, David still knew that his body was his weakness.

With his lack of body strength on his mind, David decided to train his Body of Recovery skill. David's talent in darkness and his dreamworld didn't seem to carry over to his Body specialty training. David has always thought that must be the difference between a physical skill and elemental skill.

Elemental skills required a chant or hand motion to focus heavenly energy into a particular arrangement for the execution of an elemental skill externally.

Physical skills such as body, feet and fist skills are completely different. Physical skills trained the heavenly energy to function in a particular way inside the body. No hand gestures or chants were needed. The heavenly energy in the body just had to function in accordance with the skill peculiarities to train the body itself.

David knew that sword and saber skills were even more different. Those skills required both the internal and external focus of heavenly energy with a weapon as a conduit for the energy. Weapon skills were the most complicated to learn but were very special if executed appropriately.

Sitting down on the floor of his bedroom, David began to circulate his little bit of heavenly energy though his body. With a move of an knife, David slashed a long cut on his forearm. Immediately, David began concentrating on healing the rapidly bleeding wound. Although heavenly energy on Earth was sparse, it was still enough to begin practicing the basic body methods and perform basic skills.....it just took a significant amount of time to gather enough heavenly energy.

After a few minutes, the bleeding on David's forearm began to stop. After another minute, the skin began to crust over into a scab.

David stopped here and began to examine his injury. If he wanted to, he could stop here and let his bodies natural processes finish off the healing. However, he knew that if he continued focusing then he would eventually fully heal his wound.

After another 20 minutes of concentrating on healing, the scab on David's arm fell off to reveal perfectly smooth flesh. Seeing the lack of a scar, David decided to focus on his existing scars to see if he could heal them. Although he tried hard, the scars on his shoulders didn't show much improvement.

"Guess the damage is too deep," David thought before calling it a night. He had gotten the basics of the Body of Recovery skill down. Now he just need to get to the point where he performed it subconsciously.

When he was just about to cut him self again and continue training, his phone buzzed at his side.

David read the message. As expected, he was approved for his three day trip to his parents house.

"Time to go to bed," David actually said to himself out loud.

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The next morning David has actually showered and on the road 20 minutes before 6:00 AM. Considering that he was ahead of schedule, David stopped just outside of Three Rivers City in a roadside small town to have breakfast. David always enjoyed stopping in small towns to eat when he traveled. He felt that it gave him perspective.

Riding along the highway on a trip, he passed countless towns and cities that he would never visit. Each of these places had people just like him who were trying to live their lives. Everyone had problems just like him. When he visited these places, it made David feel like he wasn't special or unique.

After enjoying a moment of interacting with people in the diner for breakfast, David continued on his way with a full belly and somewhat content. Sometimes he just needed a little perspective to feel better. Everyone has their problems and issues. In the world, there is always someone who has it worse at that moment. David felt that perspective kept him grounded when his life hit troubles.

He thought about the things he could be thankful for on his ride. His health. His parents. His freedom. Some people have poor health, have no family and have restrictions on their lives that limit what they can achieve. David felt that he had none of these. So he just had a little issue with his girlfriend...that didn't change his overall picture on life....it was just one of those things that everyone experiences.

____________________________________________________

As David pulled into the driveway of his parents' house, he felt good about his travels. This trip was already one of those special occasions that gave him some time to self reflect. It was already a successful trip.

David pulled up at his family home to be greeted by his mom sitting on the porch. After pulling up in his usual parking spot, he slammed the door shut and headed up to the porch to sit next to his mom.

"How you doing, mom?", David asked trying cut off the identical question he had coming his way.

"I'm doing okay. I like to sit on this porch and think about your sister," David's mom said in a solemn manner, "We used to sit here all the time together and discuss life."

"I miss her too," David said remember how his sister, Karen, had died one night years ago while coming home from college. She had fell asleep at the wheel and wrecked into a tree. More than half the town had turned out for her funeral. Karen was the nicest human being that he had ever know. She was in college to study nursing. It was her passion to help people. David had gotten pretty sick from a cold and his parents were on the verge of canceling a vacation to stay home with David. His sister had volunteered to come home for the weekend from school to watch her brother so her parents could go enjoy themselves. No one had expected it to end that way. Everyone had blamed themselves...David wasn't spared.

Realizing they were going down a route that would make both of them miserable the rest of the day, David tried to change the subject, "Hey mom, what are we having for lunch?"

David's mom looked at him. She knew that he would always try to change the subject when he realized the conversation was going awry. She was grateful that she had such a thoughtful son.

David and his mom had a wonderful lunch together. He enjoyed spending time with her alone. She was always helpful and gave great advice. The two spent the entire day chatting about general life. David told her about how his new job was going well, but the management was going through changes. He also told her that Karine did not care for showing affection most of the time and that the relationship was a little rocky. Of course, his mom offered all sorts of advice, but mostly David just felt good chatting with someone about his issues. It was good to talk about your troubles every now and then.

After chatting most of the day away, David's dad arrived home early from work. He joined the pair in their conversations about life and eventually it was time to settle in for the night. David's dad had work first thing in the morning and his mom even had to go do some of her part-time work for most of the day. David was kind of excited about having the day to himself at the house. He hadn't had a day like that since high school.

David went to his bedroom and relaxed a bit in his old bed. Nothing felt as good as visiting home. Well almost nothing. After about 30 minutes, David closed his eyes to check to see if his parents were sleeping. Sure enough the couple was already asleep.

David wanted to go for his night time hike in the woods. As usual, he grabbed his backpack and looped his knife on his belt.

David opened the window and was in the process of climbing out when an extremely intense sense of danger assaulted him.....then the house exploded in a deafening roar of heat and pressure.