“Armor!” Yelled Koren as he jumped out of the sand ship. The liquid metal squirmed out of his body and started to form into the Guardian Armor.

“Repulsors!” Koren activated all the flight functions of the Armor, and before his feet could touch down on the sand, the Armor was formed, and the plasma jets fired.

The Armor blasted into the sky, quickly overtaking the domain of the birds of prey.

Koren looked down, and he could spot the tiny ship sailing on the sandy dunes.

‘This is incredible, when will I be able to do this on my own.’ Thought Koren.

“With me by your side, it won’t take long.” Said Hope trying to wake Koren up from his dazed state.

“Where to now Big sis, I’m not sure where the underground tunnels are, will we have to find them again.” Asked Koren with some concern.

“Don’t worry, I’m familiar with all of your geo-location’s since the day you woke me up. I can find the exact spot you were standing on when we found the tunnels.” Said Hope as her floating form appeared next to Koren.

“Big sis can you stop doing that, it feels like your teleporting, and it makes me feel dizzy.” Said Koren as he adjusted his display and saw a mini map pop up.

“No can do Koren, this is how I roll. Oh, I created a mini map on your display, fly to the location marked with an X quickly. Our current power reserves are at around 0.09%, and that’s after the chaos energy from all those shards and that ore fragment was absorbed by the Armor.”

“OK big sis” said Koren with a sigh, giving up on trying to reform Hope’s behaviour.

The smaller repulsors on the Armor fired and allowed Koren to adjust his orientation as he flew to the location on the map.

Koren looked at the small bar showing the Armor’s power reserves, and curiously Asked “Big sis, isn’t there any other way for the Armor to recharge its power supply.”

“Of course there is, but all of those power generation units are redundant in this world, at least for now.”

“Like I told you when we met, the laws of this world are very different. I’m hoping that you can help me understand the laws of this world so we can make adjustments to the technology and make it more compatible.”

“The Chaotic energy found in the shards is a lucky find, but it’s not really a permanent solution as it is an extremely inefficient power source. On earth, every pandora class battle ship and above is fitted with a solar harvester unit, it allows a ship to literally harvest power from a stars corona.”

“Your Armor also has a similar unit installed, but the so called Spiritual power creates too many problems, it’s present in every strand of energy, so unless I can understand it and isolate it, the power generation units can’t work.” Replied Hope keenly.

“Does that mean if I can create my own path, it will automatically make the world accept human technology as a type of power system.” Asked Koren.

“Yep, at least that’s the idea.” Replied Hope flatly, before her eyes went wide in panic .

“We’re getting close to the location, this is incredible, we’ve only been flying for 15 minutes.” Said Koren, not noticing the alarm in Hope’s eyes.

“Koren!!, Dive now!!” Yelled Hope.

Koren who was still dazed by the speed of the Armor’s flight system, couldn’t react when to Hopes voice in time.

He could feel something pluck him from the sky, and push down on him with enormous serrated claws, and for the first time since he gained the Armor, he felt something penetrate it.

‘…Armor integrity 32%, contusions detected, activating life support systems…’

“Koren, activate the force field and dive, now!!” Shouted Hope.

Koren was hurt, he felt his leg get pierced, the Armor barely protected against the attack.

“Koren, NOW!!” Hopes voice finally got to Koren, and he quickly activated the forcefield.

The force field was one of the technologies Koren saw when he was looking at the Armor’s utilities menu. He couldn’t activate it then because of its enormous power requirements.

As the force field activated, an invisible barrier expanded from the Armor. It forced the gigantic claws to open and allowed Koren to go free.

He used the plasma jets to quickly make some distance between himself and his opponent.

Koren finally had a good look at what had attacked him just now. It was a gigantic Spiritual Bird, with a very large hooked beak, it was as if it was made for ripping apart flesh. It had large and strong muscular legs, with powerful talons, Koren could see a small trace of blood on one of those talons.

“this thing looks like an eagle. No doubt it thinks of us as prey.” Said Hope.

“How did this thing suddenly appear out of nowhere, the Armor can detect any threat within 10 kilometers. Also, how did it break through the Armor’s defence and pierce my leg, I thought that was impossible.” Asked Koren, trying his best to cope with the intense pain emanating from is right leg.

“You Dummy, look at its stats.” Shouted Hope.

Name: Sky Eagle

Spiritual Path: Level 18{Realm: Incarnation}

Harmonization: ??

Elemental Power: 100 (Wind)

Koren stared at its stats, he was flabbergasted. “Incarnation, and level 18 at that. There’s no way I can fight this thing right now. But that still doesn’t explain how it suddenly appeared above us, and why isn’t its harmonization visible.” mumbled Koren as he saw the bird open its beak and screech.

“Look at its wings, the were glowing a brilliant green just a moment ago, now they are so dim. It must be its inherited ability, it charges its wings with spiritual power, and releases it in a gush of incredible speed. Speed that allowed it to appear right above us before the Armor could detect it. I’m not sure about the harmonization, it’s roll after breaking through to incarnation is still a mystery to me, I need more data.” Said Hope.

“We can’t waste any more time Koren, you need to dive now. The force field will drain all of your power.” Hollered Hope.

Koren listened and immediately turned the force field off, then he adjusted his orientation and dived down towards the sand.

This whole exchange happened in mere moments, in the eyes of the sky eagle, the shiny creature slipped out of its grip using some strange ability, sprinted back to make some distance, and then dove down to run.

The sky eagle let out a loud screech, and the glow on its wings started to intensify. With its piercing gaze locked on to Koren, the sky eagle dove.

Just before the eagle dove, Hope, who was staring at the bird, trying to understand its behaviour, yelled towards Koren “Activate the Kino’s, and give me total control NOW!!”

Koren didn’t hesitate, he immediately activated the Kino’s, and 15 Kino’s squirmed out of his Armor.

The eagle dove down, its wings releasing a brilliant green glow. Everywhere it passed, it would leave a cloudy trail of green mist. In a mere instant, the sky eagles talons were above Koren, ready to clamp shut.

Hope knew that with Koren’s speed he would never be able to out run the sky eagle. She arranged the Kino’s into a defensive formation right over Koren and as the talons were about to clamp shut on Koren, she yelled “Self-destruct!”.

‘boom…boom…boom…”

One by one all fifteen Kino’s exploded. The force of the explosion provided Koren with the inertia he needed to avoid the sky eagles talons.

The explosion didn’t harm the eagle at all, but it did cause it to stall a bit, it screeched in anger, as it looked down again, but all of the smoke from the explosion blocked its eagle sight.

The sky eagle used its massive wings to clear the smoke away, but by that time it was already too late, as its prey was nowhere to be seen.

The eagle screeched a few times, and continued to fly around over the region, finally it gave up trying to find the shiny creature, turned around and flew away, slowly gaining altitude.

After the explosion, Koren was able to increase his speed and finally touched down on the ground. He had already changed all of his spiritual points to earth, hence as soon as his hands touched the sand the jets blasted with full force and he sank down.

“Where to now big sis, we are not at the location marked on the map.” Asked Koren as he felt a warm feeling fill the wound on his leg.

“No need to worry, we just need to wait till this thing decides to give up and fly away. Also can you stop twitching your leg, it’s just the Armor’s healing protocols. Your leg will be as good as new, only if you let the Armor do its job.” Replied Hope.

Koren turned the Armor’s blasters off, but continued to use earth spiritual power to sink into the ground.

“Koren, stop using your spiritual power, we don’t need to go deeper underground, this is more than enough......” said Hope before she furrowed her brows and yelled “No wait, continue to sink. I think I detect a signal from one of the Kino’s we left behind to survey the tunnels.”

“Yep, it’s definitely one of the Kino’s and it’s got the telemetry information of all Kino’s. Let’s see if they found the source of that ore, hmm.” said Hope as she closed her eyes and scrolled through all of the data collected by the Kino’s.

Suddenly Hope opened her eyes and looked at Koren with an apologetic gaze. She sighed and then said “I’m sorry Koren, but we can’t get the rest of that ore”.