A girl with blue hair lied on a bed, a book in hand. She resembled Eris to the point that took the saying ‘made in god’s image’ a little too literally. Her room lacked any modern furniture. In fact, there weren’t that many: a desk and a lamp on it, a wardrobe. The window was on the left hand side of the bed and revealed a charming park with dozens of ice sculptures.

The girl was Liliana Lionheard, otherwise known as Lily. Without much delay, a series of knocks penetrated the door, alarming her. She hadn’t really made any friends in the House, and was oblivious to the identity of the uninvited guest.

Unlike the school cabinet doors, this one had a scope to see who was outside. As her eye met the scope, she was presented with the all too familiar dragonman she befriended before coming here who also happened to be someone summoned from another world, just like her.

She opened the door carefully, as if not to hit him or make any noise and quickly dragged him inside, not letting him have a chance to open his mouth. She then whispered “Why are you here?”

The black-scaled dragonman named Raven answered “Robert is berserking back at the dorm, so the instructor made us stay here.” Lily had heard about Robert, who Raven described as a kind senior of the House Tyrannos.

The girl then let out a sigh and said in her non-whispering voice “Oh, I was scared that you sneaked in.”

“It seems I left a bad impression on you.” said Raven with a sarcastic voice.

The chat then continued on until everything was settled and Raven directed his eye to the book lying on the bed. It was a book on Rune Engraving, which Lily was actually quite interested in. During her last life, she was in a family of Onmyodo, Japanese ghost hunters who use enchanted paper to fight them. By that conversation, it was revealed that she was of Japanese origin.

Lily thought that she could somehow replicate it by combining [Enchantment] and [Rune Engraving]. But it would be quite challenging, considering everything starting from the most basic laws of physics were different, although it didn’t bother Raven as much.

Another knock was heard from the door, as Lily answered the door. It was a maid bringing everything Raven needed to pass the night. Although it wasn’t as comfortable as a bed, it was better than sleeping without it.

The awkward silence from the time Raven stayed in a hotel with Lily came back from vacation as they both slowly walked towards dreamland. However, Raven found himself in a nostalgic black room with Eris lying on a sofa, half-asleep.

“You’re late.” she said, lazily getting up as Lily who he didn’t notice before appeared next to him, patting him on the shoulders.

“An illusion, or something from my head? Don’t tell me that I have to fight my inner demon or some Miyagi stuff.” said Raven with some anger behind his calm voice.

“Nope, I’m the real deal. She said that we should try sparring.” said Lily, who was quite up till now.

“That’s absolutely right.” perked up the goddess.

“But I have to ask something from you.” said Raven, as the goddess tilted her head, signaling that she was listening.

“Why does Lily not have the [Soul] talent?”

“It’s kind of complicated, you don’t expect just any reincarnated person would get it as a starter pack, do you?”

“Well, I kind of thought it as that. And what is this [Disease] thing, and why did I forget about [Air] somehow? Is this one of your meddling?”

“That’s your faulty memory, and time’s precious, Battle Start!” said Eris as Lily used [Summon Hawk] and called forth a giant hawk, approximately the size of Raven. An airborne fight wasn’t to his advantage, so he decided to use brute force to fight with it and used [Lightning Movement], hitting the hawk.

A puff of smoke appeared as Raven lost his vision, a silent voice entering his ears [Gravity x 4]. Suddenly, Raven could barely keep his flight and fell down. His body weight was several times of what it was at the start of the fight.

Lily used [Ice Pillars] as suggested by the name, dozens of pillars appeared and hit Raven, supported by the ground or the momentum of a fall.

“You don’t have to hold back, it won’t damage your real bodies. Your magic is limitless too.” said Eris as an idea came about. He wouldn’t have used a dangerous spell like this without further knowledge in real life, but this place was different.

He then recalled the second move used by Crow, but to use it, he had to get clear of these attacks. A large amount of magic was poured into [Shock Blade], as bigger than usual and more solid looking blades appeared out of Raven’s hand, which resembled a hidden blade.

He then did movements that could only be called dancing, the blades shattering the pillars into mere shards of ice.

“Too bad, [Ice Coffin].” said Lily, as the shards covered Raven’s body and as she clenched her fist, it was the size of a ball.

“Too bad, [Disease Wave]” said Raven from behind her as he pointed his finger at her. Realizing something was wrong, she quickly evaded, but her hand was hit by the deadly grey wave, resulting in the same outcome as the sun god, or slightly worse with it having taken a little more than a hand. Nonetheless, she was alive.

[Summoning: A Thousand Locusts]

A large brown cloud appeared from the transmutation circle-like thing floating in the air above the outstretched hand of Laura, which was the only one left. Something like this appeared when she summoned the hawk too, but he didn’t really have time to examine it that time.

Getting ahead of himself, he used the first spell of Crow, the one that defeated an army.

[Dust End]

As expected, the locusts turned to dust, and it was blown by an unseen wind. But that wasn’t the end. Raven had already used his entire magic container, which was quite large, but it still kept drawing his magic non-stop after the cast. It soon turned Lily and then Eris to dust.

…

It was an hour, but his mana was still being drawn, a little while back, the black room turned grey and Eris was here a few times, instantly turned into dust. Raven had made up his mind, that he would never use it unless it was completely necessary.

He then had an idea, rather than staying in this now grey room all night doing nothing, he would rather practice controlling his Arcane Martial Spirit.

A relapse of the giant crow entering him surfaced his mind, as the mark started glowing, to the point of penetrating the jacked he was wearing. Then after an unpleasant hour of pain later, he had actually learned how to use Aura. He then used different talents of his and realized that [Body Modification] didn’t have a form, so he just brushed it off as it not being an orb resulted in some problem.

He first tried [Disease] as a grey aura with a tint of green covered his body. He could feel the drain of his magic-infused qi, which he was currently burning through non-stop with the [Dust End] skill. All in all, the Aura was difficult to maintain, but he somehow understood the purposes of the different types of it corresponding to his talents. The [Disease Aura] was for prolonged fights, slowly chipping off the opponent’s power.

The next one was [Lighting] which had an electric blue aura. The drain was a lot lesser than the previous one. Maybe the stronger Auras burned more? Its purpose was to show strong bursts of power in a short period of time, which by then would be exhausted.

[Shadow Aura] almost covered his entire body, hiding his features. The drain on magic was non-existent, it was maybe for scouting tasks and made it easy for hiding for long periods of time. The unique ability was that it could generate more power as long as light was here, which canceled out the drain.

The last one, [Soul Magic] didn’t drain any magic, but within seconds, Raven was breathing heavily and very drowsy. It was based around willpower, so it kind of explained itself. The Aura was golden, and he felt refreshed for a moment before he almost fell from exhaustion. This one was more to the cultivation side, as shown in some Wuxia and Xianxia novels. [Soul Recovery] could replace the so-called cultivation method easily, as both strengthened the soul but one was more specific to the use of qi.

He then activated [Soul Aura] in correspondence to [Soul Recovery], creating a balance between the drain and recovery, soon the recovery overpowering the draining rate.

*Crack!*

A strange cracking sound entered Raven’s ear, he wondered about what happened, but cultivation was a little more important. Ever since that noise, he was feeling wet. It wasn’t his mental body, but maybe his real one?

He then stopped both and activated [Soul Aura], and noticed that he could possibly hold it for 1 minute now. There was one additional thing, Raven felt that he could somehow control the qi particles, much like what he does to the mana particles to use skills. He should ask Robert about that [Absolute Force], which was outside of the natural talents later.

He then woke up, due to the wet feeling, but mostly due to boredom. It felt rather uncomfortable, as if his clothes were soaked, which were in fact, soaked in some strange green liquid and there was a coal-like black material all around him.

It was already morning, the first rays of the sun penetrating the blue curtains, illuminating the room in the process. He was already dirty with some strange green liquid so Raven decided to sweat a little.

Raven did a push-up, but it didn’t feel challenging at all. So he decided to do a handstand push-up which became hard after 10 reps and unbearable after 50 so he decided to do a set of 50 handstand push-ups, 100 sit-ups and 100 one-leg squats on each leg for 3 rounds.

When he finally finished his exercise, Lily woke up and her nose caught the pungent smell in the room. Sweat and the stinky green liquid mixed into a horrible stench, which Raven was ignorant to.

She quickly opened the windows and dragged the half-naked dragonman to the shower room. The floor was made of ice, but it somehow didn’t melt in the hot water neither was uncomfortable to the leg when he stepped on it barefoot.

He then left the shower, wearing a set of clothes he wore before, which was inside the storage ring. But this was after Raven looked in a mirror and noticed his muscles were better-toned, he seemed a little whiter and the scales were glowing without the need of the sunlight to shine on it.

Raven wasn’t a beginner to stuff like this, as he read a few Chinese novels, in which some depicted ‘Cleansing of the Body’.