The Roamer

Chapter 7: Evolution through combat

As Aeolus closed in on the geezer, he prepared to touch him #anywhere, so that he could hurry up and inflict his second tier attack, which he named ‘leech curse’.

Meanwhile, the geezer closed his eyes, and suddenly disappeared from the location! It was highly reminiscent of his son, so Aeolus immediately remembered how that technique worked and prepared to slip through it with his own.

He felt a killing intent from above him, so he immediately lowered his head and jumped back, just to be safe. As expected, a old geezer was in front of him with his fist stuck in the ground.

‘This geezer has the exact same technique as his son, but his physical prowess and planning during combat are far superior, even going as far as to utilize the dust from the previous battle!’ thought Aeolus, keeping his guard up for this old geezer of an opponent.

The geezer once again disappeared from the human eye, but Aeolus was prepared even more this time. He focused most of his spirit into his eyes, and he was immediately able to detect him, although it wasn’t very well since he could only see the afterimages of his technique.

Aeolus then began to infuse some of the #mid-layer of his spirit, and was able to see the old man vividly now. The geezer was closing in on him from the front, and held his palm out towards Aeolus.

Aeolus ducked and avoided the palm, but took a knee straight to the chin. He went flying, but he was able to touch the old geezer, and was preparing to inflict the attack.

‘Too late now, I’ve alre-...’ was going through the head of Aeolus, but he suddenly felt extremely dizzy, and his eyesight became blurry. He could barely stand anymore, but he was trying his hardest to stand just so he didn’t give the match to the geezer.

“You won’t be able to move until the next time I make contact with you brat, as that knee to the chin really messed ya’ up!” yelled the old man in a domineering tone, which clearly indicated that he had the upper hand.

In reality, the knee to the chin got transmitted through Aeolus and his body, and was one of the weak points of all human bodies. Even a light fist would be enough to put you in a state similar to the one Aeolus was in, so a knee was really bad for him at this point!

“Meet your demise you brat!” roared the old man, and threw a flaming fist right towards the chest of Aeolus. Suddenly, the geezer began to feel something was wrong, and began to back up in fear of Aeolus suddenly standing up and attacking.

*KSHH*

The geezer had guessed wrong, as it was not Aeolus that was the issue, but the leeches going through his body that were the issue! The leeches had already dropped his flaming arm onto the ground, and had moved onto the nerves throughout his whole body, ready to disable his body.

“Then you can just die before the leeches kill me!” roared the geezer, and once again began to move, this time even faster so that he could stop the spread of the leeches quicker, since killing the caster would immediately disable the attack.

In reality, even attacks that brought in living creatures such as leeches were able to be cancelled if the caster died, as the living organisms that had been created during the attack were ultimately just a part of the spirit of the caster, and would immediately return to the body if the caster died.

Fortunately, Aeolus woke up just in time to see the incoming attack. Though he had fallen into a dizzy state, he was still able to keep a portion of his technique since it really did take almost no concentration to keep up, so he immediately tried to dodge the flaming fist coming at him.

Though he didn’t get a hole in chest thanks to the technique, he still took a hit to his shoulder, but it wasn’t much of an issue except for pain since the arm from that shoulder had been cut off in his first ever battle within the arena.

“Old geezer, it’s about time that you drop dead and give me your number within the slave prison!” hollered Aeolus, clearly ready to deliver the final blow. He then pulled out the wind symbol from within his spirit, and began to utilize his comprehension relating to the affinity of wind, and took flight.

Though he could only fly for about eight seconds, that was more than enough to utilize a foundation level technique he had learned from one of the books, and began to spread his spirit throughout his whole body, and keep it in constant flow.

This technique allowed him to infinitely heal his injuries, although it would take ten minutes even to heal a scratch, so it really did go by slowly. Still, this technique allowed him to slowly heal his shoulder, so it was better than nothing. Along with that, since the spirit was just flowing through his body, it wasn’t actually being consumed, which meant he could use it as long as he didn’t rashly use all his soul in one attack.

Aeolus dropped down onto the ground, and began to utilize both the flowing water and spirit infusing technique, as the latter didn’t even take concentration. He rushed towards the old geezer, who seemed to have lost control of his left leg, probably from the leeches.

“Take this, you damned geezer!” yelled Aeolus as he threw a punch infused with spirit. A creature could infuse spirit into anything, even things such as a simple punch or flick of a finger, so his punch was already strong enough to shatter rocks and trees, although they couldn’t be too big. If he was already able to shatter stuff like that while he hadn’t even reached the first layer, just how much could he destroy with a single punch once he reached the third layer?

The punch connected with the old geezer, and sent him flying into the wall. His right arm was stuck in it, along with his left leg, so he couldn’t quite get out. At this point, the match had basically already gone to Aeolus.

Yet, the old geezer still struggled, clearly not willing to give up.

“You… even if I lose this match and die, you won’t be leaving here alive either!”

roared the old geezer, clearly unsatisfied with such an end result.

Suddenly, some purple tinged haze came out of the old geezers body, and gave chase to Aeolus, not willing to let up.

“This… did he release an attack directly from the soul?!” yelled Aeolus while running from the attack, clearly not willing to take the risk of taking that attack head on. Based on the geezers attacks from before, along with his quick thinking, his cultivation should be extremely strong, and could probably get a first layer attack easily even from the mid-layer!

Unfortunately, the hazy mist was extremely quick, and all he could rely on was floating into the sky and the flowing water technique to escape. Aeolus first stalled as much as he could with the flowing water technique so that the leeches would hurry up and finish the job, hopefully soon.

At some point during the stalling, the hazy mist seemed to become stronger, and Aeolus knew he couldn’t handle it, so he took to the skies in the arena to escape it. His affinity with the wind, along with his experiences of floating before, immediately let Aeolus become faster than the hazy mist, avoiding it for the eight seconds he could float in the sky.

As soon as he reached his limit in floating, he threw a fist with a layer of spirit infused within at the hazy mist. In reality, almost nothing in the world is able to make physical contact with a spirit, so that’s why you’d have to cover whatever it is you’re throwing at a spirit in your own spirit to make contact.

‘What is this?!’ Thought Aeolus, reluctant to continue trying his luck against this spirit attack. For as soon as his fist and this spirit made contact, his fist immediately got pushed back, and even the layer of spirit surrounding it was beginning to shrink down. As soon as the layer of spirit completely disappeared, the attack would finally make contact with his physical body, and the true assault would begin.

Yet, he couldn’t do anything else, so all he could do was continue to try his luck with his level of cultivation against this spirit attack. In reality, the old geezer probably went to the center of his spirit and somehow came out with a second tier attack, which was extremely lucky!

A few seconds later, his spirit layer thinned even more, and was only as dense as a sheet of paper. Aeolus could tell that it couldn’t take more than ten seconds now, but he truly had nothing else to rely on, so he didn’t know what to do.

After ten seconds, his spirit layer finally disappeared, and the spirit attack was beginning to make contact with his fist!

*KSHH*

Suddenly, on the other side of the arena where the geezer was at, his head had fallen off, and nothing was left of his torso, except for a few bits of flesh that had fallen from his body, and his spirit.

The hazy mist that was confronting Aeolus and his fist disappeared, and what replaced it was a cold feeling at his fist. Aeolus looked at his fist, and saw that two of his fingers had completely disappeared, and were nowhere to be seen, while the rest were all mangled terribly.

Still, this didn’t matter at all to Aeolus as he ran towards the old geezers soul to test out what the announcer had done before, to suck in the spirit of a body! The announcer had clearly gotten a power up back then, and his supreme aura had risen by a lot! It was clearly more than the announcer could conceal, since it was just oozing out of him by the second.

Aeolus reached the geezers body, and extended out his arm towards the spirit which looked like a flickering ember floating in the sky. He sent out his own spirit towards it, just to test the waters out. As expected, nothing weird had happened, except for an odd drunk feeling, but Aeolus already knew that he was about to get drunk from the amount of spirit he was about to absorb!

The spirit he had sent into the geezers soul had come back, and brought with it most of the spirit the geezer had! The spirit moved to enter his body, but as soon as it did, a pain that Aeolus had never felt before began to appear and disappear.

It felt as if his whole body was rupturing from within; All the bones, flesh, and liquids within him were spasming crazily, and he immediately threw up a puddle’s worth of blood.

‘Since this is my first time absorbing another’s soul, this should be the lashback from my own soul which has never done something like this before!...’ thought Aeolus while holding on for his life.

The pain then began to disintegrate, and was almost fully gone after a minute or so. It seemed that the lashback was gone, and that he had successfully taken in some of the soul, but lost a majority of it since it was his first time and he didn’t know how to control it. If he had to guess, he had probably only kept about thirty percent of the amount that came in.

Still, this was a plentiful gain, and was even more impressive when the two spirits began to merge.

‘It seems as if two spirits couldn’t remain separated within the body, so they probably have to merge!’ thought Aeolus, who was suddenly beginning to comprehend what was actually going on.

Just like he guessed, as soon as he looked within his soul, all the layers seemed to have grown in size, especially the outer layer within his soul. He had also noticed that only the center of the geezers soul merged with his center, while the mid-layer merged with his mid-layer, and that the outer layer merged with his own as well.

‘So all the specific parts of the soul merge together, and since the outer layer is naturally the largest part of the soul, that part has become the biggest!’ Aeolus realized, and immediately began to memorize within his head, for this information would probably be useful to him in the future.

Suddenly, the very center of his soul began to shake, and the mid and outer layer began to shake as well after a bit. Some sort of circular object than emerged, which looked to be some sphere. The sphere just sat there and floated in the center of his soul, and didn’t move at all.

Although it seemed as if it was nothing big, just a sphere forming in the center of his soul, Aeolus immediately understood what was going on, and all the questions he had before were immediately answered, as if the sphere had brought some wisdom to him.

“This… this is the first layer that I have formed!” yelled Aeolus in a excited tone, as he clearly couldn’t believe what had happened.

Before the sphere had formed, he had already powered up quite a bit just from absorbing some of the geezers soul, but after the sphere had formed, he felt as if his power had increased by three fold, maybe even four fold considering the amount of spirit he felt surging through his body.

‘With this power, I feel like I can reach not only into the top five hundred, but probably the top three hundred as well!’ thought Aeolus, who’s mind was currently filled to the brim concerning the current situation.

“Slave, hurry up and get back in your cell!” yelled the announcer at Aeolus, not willing to spare a second more.

“Yessir…” said Aeolus who was clearly not paying attention, while walking to the cell.

At the same time that he had formed his first layer, he also realized that he could now sense the spirit of others even if he didn’t try to take it for himself. For that reason, as soon as he felt out the spirit of the announcer, he felt as if he would shatter just from the aura.

‘The announcer… is much stronger than I thought, maybe even stronger than every slave within the prison…’ thought Aeolus, who was clearly reluctant to try and rebel in the arena.

“He’ll definitely be one of the issues that I’ll encounter when I try and break out of this prison one day…” muttered Aeolus as he sat within the cell. Just like always, everything outside the cell turned black, and he then appeared at his usual location, the cells of the top six hundred.

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ABOUT ME

Name: Abdul Kareem

Age: 13 (Almost 14)

Occupation: Middle school

Goal: Idk, I’m just making a novel for now

Location: Why would I say that?

Relations: I’m not married (duh)

Anyway, as a side note, this is my first novel I’ve ever tried writing. Thanks for being with me on this first experience!