Ability Wielders

"Talk." Hayden leaned in on the priest-doctor, who remained paralyzed as Aiko"s paralytic gas would take effect for thirty minutes succeeding its reabsorption. The man"s face, despite being a coward, wouldn"t back away from a mere Level 2 wielder. "You won"t talk, huh?"

At that moment, Hayden"s voice turned deep akin to a demon"s voice, his eyes emitting cold-blooded killing intent. "Would you talk, or do you want to do this the hard way?"

Regardless of Hayden"s killing intent directed solely to the man, the eleven CHORUS members in the room were still chilled, gulping, with some even involuntarily shivering a bit. That killing intent was so thick, and if they didn"t understand that Hayden wouldn"t and couldn"t do any harm to them, they would have killed himit in an instant.

Needless to say, as the target of this killing intent, the man"s eyes froze, fear radiated from the deepest depths of his heart when he made eye contact with Hayden. This wasn"t the type of killing intent that a mere Level 2 wielder should possess, much less someone as young as that!

Why? Because of all the killing intent, Hayden"s killing intent was the type that wouldn"t hesitate to kill at all. You see, killing intent isn"t actually "killing intent," that can be seen from movies, wuxia, xianxia novels, or other literary fiction. The killing intent in real life is simply a bunch of intimidation factors slapped together, executed in such a fashion that would intimidate your opponent scaring them off their feet; though in wielders" cases, aura does indeed have some effect on the state of mind of someone.

In truth, Hayden wouldn"t be this scary if it was only him, however, he had a bunch of Level 3 and Level 4 wielders behind him, and the fact that his voice was how demons are imagined by the human race for centuries, and those abyssal cruel eyes that emitted the aura of a killer that doesn"t hesitate to kill…

Those were the most terrifying type of people, not counting psychopaths, of course. As the eyes are the door to the soul, the man could deduce immediately that Hayden was the type of serious, ruthless, heartless, and frighteningly cunning man… To make it all worse, the man hated pain.

Taking this into account, the man blinked Morse code as he stared straight into Hayden"s eyes, which was picked up by Hayden because he researched Morse code back in his un-Awakened days and Divine Perception conferred him the power to remember this vividly.

"Okay, good." Hayden retracted his killing intent, noticing a slight change in the man"s heartbeat and blood pressure. "Wait…"

Forcing his hand into the man"s mouth, Hayden sensed straightaway that there was a small spherical object in between the man"s teeth. Hayden was genuinely impressed, "Oho, a loyal man who"s not afraid to die to keep secrets, yet scared of being killed…"

The room was filled with silence with Hayden"s strange compliment. Eun-ha and her single co-members found it weird indeed, but… Why was it kind of appealing… And cute? What the h.e.l.l was up with that? It"s so… Bizarre

Walking back to Eun-ha"s side, Hayden wrapped his right arm around Eun-ha"s waist, his impa.s.sive countenance returning.

"Let"s eat first." Aiko was the first one to break the silence, going to the table with the served bacons. The only ones who didn"t sit on the table was the Level 4 wielders, Mi-sun, Sayuri, Mieko, and Eun-ha, as well as Hayden. "Mi-sun, you won"t eat?"

"I"m not hungry." Mi-sun lifted the priest-doctor and put him down on the armchair, sitting down on the couch close to him. "Also, we don"t want to let him escape."

Shrugging, Aiko rushed to the bacon, fighting for it with Madoka. These two people have always been the glutton of the group, always eating. Sitting on the other armchair, Hayden watched the seven people suddenly rumbling for bacon, culture shocked a bit.

Nevertheless, he was delighted that they were fumbling around to acquire the bacon he left for them. Sitting on Hayden"s left lap, Eun-ha said with a hint of pride, "They really like your cooking, heh."

Embracing Eun-ha"s body, he activated Heavenly Sense, checking each and every one of the auras of the people in the room. Most people at the table had grayish auras, with Sayuri"s the whitest. Surprisingly, the priest-doctor"s aura was grayish, not at all black, nearly the same color as his own aura.

"Not an evil guy?" Hayden was confused. A person in a cult with a grayish aura? Based from the priest robes, he was a pretty high authority on the ladder, probably even something like a "reverend." "What the h.e.l.l is he doing?"

Shaking his head, Hayden turned off his Heavenly Sense. Abruptly, Sayuri approached him, sitting on the right arm of the chair he was on. "So, Hayden-ah, what do you like about our beloved Eun-ha?"

"Everything." Hayden reflexively replied. "Flaws included, even though there"s none, the whole package."

"Good answer." Sayuri chuckled, brushing Hayden"s head. "You got a nice man right here, Eun-hya."

Eun-ha rolled her eyes. "Stop teasing us, will you noona? Jeez…"

Sayuri laughed, ignoring Eun-ha"s supplication. "Polygamy is not so rare and frowned upon these days, you know? Isn"t building a personal harem the dream of countless men?"

Her words were all true. With the inception of the World Government, all forms of non-religious marriages are legal as long as long all parties consented. The two types of polygamy, polygyny and polyandry, is actually widely practiced, with over 0.75% of the population, about 97,500,000 people, involved in a consenting polygamous marriage or relationship, with 55% of that being polygynous.

Meanwhile, polyamory is more commonplace than polygamy, which was also legalized as well, with approximately 10% of the population, around 1.3 billion people overall, in a polyamorous relationship or marriage, with the average being two women and two men.

"No, thanks." Hayden immediately replied upon hearing Sayuri"s words. He understood she was joking, but Hayden instinctively spoke. "I mean, getting Eun-ha noona is already out of my expectations, I wouldn"t want anybody else."

"Another nice answer, sweet guy, heh." Sayuri chuckled, with Eun-ha glaring at her. Noticing Eun-ha"s vermillion cheeks, Sayuri slyly smiled. "Okay, okay, I"ll stop."

8 minutes went by in a flash with CHORUS members back in the living room, finished eating, conversing with each other and letting Hayden join in casually. In the interim, Sayuri, in spite of saying she"ll stop, continued to tease Hayden and Eun-ha. "She"s this talkative, huh? Well…"

Hayden didn"t mind as he viewed this as a privilege instead of a bother. If he did, millions of crazy fans would want to kill him if they knew his thoughts.

"Should I explain or…" Despite finally capable of movement, the priest-doctor didn"t move an inch, merely speaking. Hayden didn"t find it strange at all that the priest-doctor could already move as, after all, he was a Level 4 wielder solely affected by a Level 3 wielder"s Ability. "You promise not to kill me, right?"

With Hayden tapping Eun-ha on the shoulder, she shifted to sit on the armchair. He whispered in Korean, "Protect me."

Under the vigilant eyes of CHORUS members, he loomed in on the priest-doctor. In front of the priest-doctor, with a smile, he said in English, "I promise I won"t kill you… I don"t know about them though…"

Moving to the side, he pointed his thumb to Eun-ha and her co-members, who were observing the priest-doctor carefully. Picking up his intentions, Eun-ha released her killing intent, with the others following suit.

Gulping the priest-doctor spoke in a trembling voice, "O-okay, I"ll teach you, alright? I"ll talk, I"ll talk."

"Hey," Hayden talked in Filipino. "What"s your name?"

"C-Colton Hidalgo." He answered obediently. A Level 2 wielder accepted as a de facto leader of a bunch of Level 3 and Level 4 wielders, no matter what perspective you looked at, it was dreadful. "I"ll teach you everything I know, j-just don"t kill me."

Nodding, Hayden sat back to his armchair, looking at Colton. Standing up, his former distraught changed into solemnness. "Okay, I"ll start by saying that the man who taught me this is an unknown ent.i.ty, I have never gotten his name and disappeared without a trace, so asking me and torturing me for this information wouldn"t gain you anything at all."

Hayden perceived that Colton wasn"t lying at all, based from the smell he was releasing. What was this "smell" you ask? Well, back during the six months he was training in Puting Araw, he didn"t only learn martial arts and useless skills, he also brainstormed on how to expand on his own Abilities.

That"s when he vaguely recalled that sometimes, when he"s with people, this unknown smell would waltz right into his nose, sometimes it smelled sickly sweet, sometimes it was fishy, sometimes it"d smell "sour," and all that. Whenever this happens, Hayden remembered that he was in a crowded place or with people in general.

Subsequent to that, Hayden recalled that emotions release scents called chemosignals, which was proven a long time ago. In fact, there are also a ton of other stuff that happens in our body when we experience emotion, such as the increase of the speed of heartbeat when lying or stressed, howbeit, that"s for another time.

Consequently, Hayden started to research, and concluded that Divine Perception allows him to smell these scents. Especially succeeding his evolution to Level 2. The stronger the scent is, the deeper a person feels of the emotion connected to the smell is.

Happiness has a sweet odor, sadness smells bitter, anger smells akin to metal, calmness has the aroma of a tree or wood or nature, fear smells sour, confidence or a.s.surance has a floral fragrance, disgust/repulsion has a rotten food scent, and attraction smells kind of like petrichor.

He always has had this power. He just didn"t like using it on people as he wasn"t fond of the smells at all, with it overwhelming his sense of smell. In addition, it kind of took away the purpose of socializing and knowing people, don"t you think. This time, Hayden chose to use this as it would be useful for this situation.

With this, Hayden got a whiff of the scent that Colton was releasing and it was a combination of fear, a.s.surance, and a bit of sadness. Surprisingly, there was no hint of attraction whatsoever.

From the combination of this and Colton"s own expression, perspiration, heartbeat, blood pressure, and everything else, Hayden couldn"t find the telltale signs of a person lying to save their own a.s.s. In short, Colton was speaking of the truth.

Moving on, Colton first explained what this secret art was. Apparently, this secret art was a utilization of the body"s natural essence energy. This bodily essence energy is produced by the body to let a human function, or any being really, function.

What"s wrong with this is that all creatures have a fixed amount of bodily essence energy storage in their body and is dependent on the power and makeup of their cells. When a wielder runs out of bodily essence energy, they will not be able to move and will go into comatose state due to what Colton calls as Essence Malnutrition. This is also the reason why this particular essence energy is called life force by the man who taught Colton.

Thankfully, as wielders, this life force regenerates while they circulate, technically allowing them infinite use of the secret arts as long as they have the capability.

Taking this into account, as life force is independent from the essence energy flowing in the environment, even a Level 2 wielder like Hayden, and even Level 1 wielders, are capable of sensing their own and manipulating it.

Of course, as Level 3 wielders and above, the CHORUS members didn"t have to use their life force, though Colton warned them that essence energy from the environment is more violent and cannot be easily controlled. He then said that if they don"t usually use any kind of essence energy manipulation, they shouldn"t attempt any environmental essence energy manipulation as it was dangerous and may backfire.

At this point, Colton explicated the importance of concentration whenever using this secret art. First, concentration was important because a wielder would want to gather life force from all over their body to equalize the consumption of their execution throughout their body. This was much better than fueling the art with a single body part, especially when fighting. Of course, this remained to the user"s discretion.

Second, the core of the essence art was concentration. This is due to the fact that this art was all about "programming," which brought them to why Colton was forming baybayin words when he uses it.

As you can see, this secret art depends solely on the apt.i.tude of the wielder"s mind to imagine and command the essence energy on what it"s going to do when it leaves the executor"s control. This is why Colton used baybayin for his method of execution as, whilst in the process of forming it, he"s able to "program" what the properties of the life force would be. Plus, onlookers wouldn"t know what it would do as almost no one in the Philippines even know what baybayin was.

Subsequently, he demonstrated that this method of execution wasn"t indeed necessary by creating a square shape and pushed it into Hayden"s white tattered shirt, repairing it. It was quite a magical sight, whetting Hayden"s interest by the minute.

Following that, Colton expounded the very basics of the secret art. The core of the secret arts was conversion, and when a wielder masters this, they could basically execute any kind of secret art they want.

By first gathering life force from all over, Colton demonstrated this conversion by first creating a white smoke, the gas form of this life force. Succeeding that, he created a white semi-transparent liquid with changing consistencies, that was the liquid form, and a white block, which is a solid.

"However, it isn"t as simple as it looks like." Colton shook his head at this point in the lecture. "You see, conversion isn"t all about "converting," you have to have specific properties in mind, for example, will your gas be flammable? If yes, you would have to think of it as a flammable gas. By default, this gas compacted from life force has no properties at all, odorless, rises, weightless, non-flammable, and generally acts like air, intermingling with it. Needless to say, you can emit the energy form of it, but you can"t manipulate any of its properties as life force is basically essence energy."

He proceeded to do all sorts of things, creating light, changing the color of this light, and many others. Seemingly, anything went as long as it is programmed and concentrated upon. Needless to say, there are still limitations, such as the amount of life force needed for the type of matter you"re going to convert life force into.

In that instance, he shared his discoveries such as light would naturally need less life force than a solid as photons has no ma.s.s, while solids are dense. Following this rule, the three states of matter is easy to create, with gases requiring the least amount of life force and solids needing the most.

Lastly, Colton clarified that this method isn"t also as plain as it is on the surface as life force would decay within 30 seconds of losing control on it. That"s the third importance of concentration, if there is a lapse of concentration on the part of the wielder, the effect would either be minimal, or wouldn"t last.

As for why Hayden"s clothes hasn"t returned, it is because the essence energy he induced was simply for "mending" the broken bond of the molecules. Hearing this, Hayden was startled as essence energy was unexpectedly linked with real-world science.

"I wonder how deeply connected is this essence energy to the world of science?" Hayden"s appet.i.te for answers grew into the size of a behemoth. "I"m going to have to research everything."

"And that"s the basics." Concluding his elucidations at 1:00 AM, he said with nervousness. "S-shall I move on to the second part…?"

"I"m out of here." At that point, Madoka spoke, returning to the right wing without another word. Most of them followed her, Jin-ae, Chung-hee, Jae-hwa, Aiko, Mi-sun, and Shu-Ching. Those that remained were Sayuri, Mieko, Eun-ha, and Hsiao-Han, the four Level 4 wielders.

"You guys finish up by 4:00 AM, we"re still going to check other things out tomorrow." Jin-ae said, going back to her room.

Afterwards, Colton continued. The last thing that Colton showed them was the usage of what the man who taught him called formations. Formations act akin to magical circles seen in fictional movies or anime. With Colton"s research, he has discovered that "magic" indeed existed in the olden times, like runes and rituals. As Colton"s research was cut short, reaching a dead-end and making no sense of anything at all, he stopped trying and was on a break from all the research.

Similar to the secret art, the creation of formations need "programming." There were two types of formations, the embedded formation, and the shaped formations. The embedded formation is the easier type of formation that requires an external source of energy to activate and doesn"t need essence energy to shape. Think of a magical summoning circle written on the ground with chalk, it was like that.

As for the second type, the more complicated one, was the shaped formation, using life force or environmental essence energy to instantly induce the wanted effect. Colton spoke, borrowing the words of his teacher ad verbatim. "Formations use the power of the universe to manipulate essence energy."

That was all that Colton got, and even he couldn"t precisely crack the words of his own teacher. Despite this, Hayden"s eyes were wide all this time.

"f.u.c.king h.e.l.l… Formations? Isn"t this exactly like a wuxia or xianxia novel, albeit, modernized?" Hayden thought to himself. As an avid reader of novels himself, Hayden has heard of the terms "formations" countless times. After all, he went through a phase of, in spite of not acting akin to possessing powers, he wanted to get powers.

And those hero stories in Chinese novels were much more interesting and in-depth in comparison to western novels. Needless to say, he liked western superheroes, but, Eastern Fiction was just too d.a.m.n interesting, hooking him.

With that, Colton has finished everything. "May I go?"

"Well, you have nowhere to return to, I reported your cult…" Hayden wandered to himself. "Why not work for me? Would your teacher mind that?"

"Hayden-ah?" With an astounded tone, Eun-ha turned to Hayden. "What do you mean hire him? You can"t possibly be thinking to hire someone we paralyzed, threatened, and forced information out of, right?"

Regardless of understanding Hayden"s nature, she couldn"t help question him as he was acting too… Peculiar.

"Don"t worry." Hayden smiled, kissing Eun-ha on the forehead as he stood up. He walked to Colton. "I know you"re not precisely a bad person, I just don"t know why you"re in a cult… However, your eyes, it craves knowledge… I offer we crack the secrets of this secret art and essence energy, shall we?"

…..

Random World Lore (RWL), Category – Politics: With the creation of the World Government, every country has switched to Democratic Republic, where the voice of the citizens is more important than the leaders themselves, and the well-being of the citizens, as well as freedom and impartiality is what important when making decisions for projects during World Summits. With this, the political structure of the World Government is as follows: The 10 World Leaders (Philippines, Luxembourg, USA, Nigeria, Morocco, Australia, UK, j.a.pan, South Korea, and Greenland), the Presidential Committee, Vice-Presidents, Local Regional Authority Positions, City Mayors, and the Ma.s.s Populace. Despite being ranked in the bottom of the ladder of the World Government, the Ma.s.s Populace plays a pivotal role, though it is only in their own country (Natural Citizenship, i.e., Sayuri doesn"t play a part in South Korea"s progression unless she chooses to become a genuine South Korean). In their country, the Ma.s.s Populace are the one who decides if the law would be incorporated into the current law through voting, remove laws, vote for the President, and many others. Of course, there are the Basic Human Laws that the World Government provided that cannot be removed as they are what makes civilization in order. The voting system for everything is through the internet or public terminals omnipresent in the world governed by the World AI, the AI that governs the Phantom Defense System of the Cyber Guards to ensure fairness.

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