I Hate Systems

There was just the option <skills> left since the options <familia> and <race> were unfortunately greyed out.

<Skills>

<Spirit slash>

<Releases a slash made up of spirit flame to sever a spiritual bond. Minimum cost: 75 Aria>

"Welp, though it is a powerful skill, it is useless to the current me, might as well get a hang of my innate abilities. Then I'll start with Essence Flame. Soul Flame sounds really risky and my instinct is warning me from using it, so my only option is Spirit Flame then".

Based on what was written over in the <Information trade centre> channel, an Aria core was a necessity in order to make use of his innate abilities.

The first process was to sense the presence of an Aria core in his body. This was the most difficult step which required analyzing oneself in a meditative pose ranging from a few minutes to a few hours.

Li Qiu had no clue on how to sense it, so he decided to take a more straightforward approach. He just decided to concentrate on a single part of his body at a time and wait for his instinct to kick in.

Li Qiu started concentrating on his scalp first, and after not noticing any inputs from his instinct after a couple of minutes he moved to his eyebrows, then his eyes, brain, nose, mouth and so on.

After a couple of hours had passed he reached his heart when at the next moment his instinct kicked in, helping him coordinate his concentration accurately onto his Aria core.

Li Qiu couldn't get an accurate feel for any changes or differences that had taken place in his heart because he didn't know how it looked a day before. Since he had never taken any kind X-ray, ECG or anything similar to it, all he had as a reference was those pictures of a human heard used in the biology textbooks during his schooling days.

Li Qiu, on not finding anything different (according to him), started to try and trace out the Aria flowing through him.

It seemed as if all the Aria he possessed were inside the walls of his heart, therefore when he willed it, a small stream of Aria travelled all the way from his heart through his various arteries and capillaries before finally manifesting in the form of a candle flame above his Palm but big enough to cover it. Since manifesting Aria directly was not possible, it seemed that Li Qiu had unconsciously activated his Spirit Flame as he attempted to manifest his Aria over his palm.

Li Qiu noticed that the flame was a shade of translucent Bluish-White which didn't emit any heat. Li Qiu also observed that the more Aria that was gushing out from his Palm, the longer his flame grew since it seemed as if there was no loss in his Aria unless his flame was consumed which didn't seem to occur at present due to reasons unknown to him.

"Since there is no loss in Aria, I can even use this flame for lighting purpose and also to practice a bit of materialization".

Li Qiu observed that his energy levels were currently <32/38> which later became <38/38> after he retracted the flame that had manifested above his palm inside him.

After that, he made a flame about a metre high and tried his materialization ability. The spirit flame slowly changed its shape into a sphere of a metre radius and then started to shrink in size according to how he willed it before finally becoming a ball with a radius of 1 centimetre that looked like a translucent white marble.

This was his current limit, the touch and weight of the marble felt similar to glass but he couldn't test either its hardness or its applications.

Li Qiu saw that his energy levels became <23/38> implying that he used 15 Aria to materialize a 2-centimetre wide ball.

Li Qiu then threw the marble onto the floor which instantly exploded into a metre huge translucent-white coloured flame, the same size it initially was but since there was no wastage, the flame continued to burn there silently, there was no shockwave that was produced when the ball exploded and the flame actually didn't burn anything.

Li Qiu threw a pillow into the flame but nothing happened to it, neither the pillow got burned nor did the size and colour of the flame change. He then repeated the same process with different objects by tossing them into the flame but nothing unexpected occurred.

Finally, as he braced himself up, Li Qiu extended his finger cautiously so that only the very tip of his index finger could touch the flames. On noting that there was still no reaction, Li Qiu continued extending his hand and subsequently his body till most of his body from below his c.h.e.s.t region was within the flames.

On seeing that nothing unexpected happened, it assured his belief that his Spirit flame only burned spiritual stuff, like that blasted parasite that tried to lodge itself within his heart.

Li Qiu further crouched down till his entire self was in the flames but the moment his head touched the flames, the flames which were over a metre high instantly halved in size.

Freaking out by this occurrence, Li Qiu jumped backward, with his face looking just like the dumb goldfish that he had previously consumed.

Hoping to discover the reason for this phenomenon, Li Qiu used his Essence Sense innate ability when the world presented before his eyes changed.

He could only see a world of pitch black all around him with a white glow of flames scaling half a metre in height in front of him while there were small traces of golden particles travelling in complicated pathways from a single giant golden weirdly shaped source the size of his clenched fist, which was probably his heart.

Those golden particles were probably Aria that was flowing through his arteries and veins. And, the next were two glows, one, a small blue flame which he instinctively recognized to be as his soul or soul flame (now he could understand as to why he felt an instinctive danger whenever he tried to use his Soul Flame since it was the component that made up the entirety of his soul. If he screwed up just a little bit, then, there was no next, he as a living entity would cease to exist) and the other was a pale golden egg with mysterious engravings.

"Damn you horse shit... God damn devil shit, so this was a parasite too".

The reason for his exclamation in anger was the two tentacles that had apparently stretched out from the pale golden egg.

One of the tentacles extended out from his body and flowed somewhere far away to only god knows where while the other was slowly coiling around his soul flame.

It has already coiled twice and was slowly forming a third coil around his Soul Flame, but, this time Li Qiu didn't panic as usual because he could guess that even though there was danger due to the existence of the pale golden egg, but it wouldn't be able to pose any harm to himself anytime soon in the near future.

This didn't mean that Li Qiu wouldn't take any action until the time was perfectly ripe like those armoured protagonists that were usually depicted in the movies.

Even though he couldn't use his spirit slash skill, he could still use his Spirit Flame which he immediately channelled towards the coils around his soul flame. Li Qiu didn't worry about his soul being damaged because his Spirit Flame was only capable of burning away spiritual stuff.

The moment his Spirit Flame started to burn through those coils, Li Qiu felt the exhaustive rate at which his Aria was being rapidly consumed. Just burning the tip of the tentacle that connected to his soul consumed about 5 Aria.

But just when the tip of the tentacle originating from the pale golden egg was completely burned off, Li Qiu found out to his disbelief that he could no longer access the internet which brought him to quite a devastating conclusion.

The Ari, it seems that when they searched for 'containers', they didn't necessarily search for living things but any 'thing' that capable of housing an Aria.

That meant any container fit to house an Ari would change completely just like how his phone became a parasitic entity that tried to lodge within his heart and portray itself as one of those 'Systems' usually seen in games and light novels.

That would explain the destruction at the electronic appliance section in the supermarket and the survival of the older buildings in his area.