ch 6: Black Rhino

From a young age, Xasha loved to experiment. His philosophy was always, 'Question Everything,' and that's what he did. The more he learned about magic, the more he learned that he or anyone else in this world knew nothing about magic.

"What was magic?"

"How does it work?"

"Why does it work that way?"

Nobody could answer his questions in a way that gave him full clarity. So, he searched for all the answers himself.

From his study so far, he concluded that magic was energy and energy was magic; it permeates everything in this world, and everything contains magic energy, the sky, the earth, the plants, the rivers, and the seas.

Living Beings are not made up of magic energy, but they need magic energy to survive and the more magic energy their body consumes the stronger they become. When humans consume more energy than their body uses. The excess is stored in their energy sea, however, the energy sea as well as every cell in the human body has a limit. There's a certain amount of magic it can hold. Whenever this limit is reached one's body does two things.

One; every cell in the body duplicates themselves and creates new unenergized cells that are born ready to be filled with mana.

Two; the energy sea compresses the energy into energy Crystals. To create one full-size energy crystal, the energy sea needs to hit its limit then compress the energy ten times. Each new crystal is twice as powerful as the last and each crystal has unique attributes depending on the realm the being has reached, the first crystal is Copper, the next is Silver then Gold then Diamond then Platinum then Thorium.

Thorium is the highest rank recorded in Human history, there might be higher ranks, but nobody knows. There have been people trying to Transcend the peak of Thorium Realm for millions of years, but it was impossible for them to absorb all the energy needed to enter another Realm before their life span ran out.

Saxon was at the peak of Diamond Realm and he was 39 years old. The lifespan of a human in this world is 1,000 years, but it was even impossible for him to Transcend the Thorium realm in the 960 years he has left.

The human cells only double when the energy crystal is created. When new cells are created the body doesn't swell to twice its original size. The cells get packed closer together in the limited space, as a result, the tissues and muscles and everything that's made up of those cells become stronger.

After observing this phenomenon, Xasha tried to replicate this using energy particles. Forcing energy particles together in tight spaces and ended up creating solid and more powerful magic structures with this method. The thing is controlling large amounts of energy particles in such a way takes a lot of concentration and it's hard for others to replicate. He taught the process to his parents; they achieved different levels of success with it. His mother was progressing faster than his father, but neither could manipulate energy particles with as much ease as him.

The air disk he flew to the black plains on, was created using this method. Other wind users would use two jet streams of air underneath their feet to propel themselves into the air. They couldn't fly as far because they would waste a lot of energy and they couldn't bring groups of people with them.

In Semeria there are endless varieties of energy particles. Everything in this world is born with what's called an energy core. An energy core is like a magnet that only attracts one specific type of energy particle. There has been nothing in recorded history able to attract more than one type of energy particle to its energy core.

As to which type of energy particles each energy core attracts, it's completely Random as far as Xasha could tell. He couldn't find anything that dictates it. What he could tell was that it is not passed down from parents.

Not all energy particles have cores that can attract them. There are countless magic energy particles that no human or magic beast has the cores necessary to attract. One example Xasha discovered was gravity, there are gravity particles in the world but there has never been a human, energy beast, or plant that can attract gravity particles. Xasha's own core attracts air particles, his parents attract fire particles, and the Dead Black Rhino in front of him attracts shadow particles.

Talents are even stranger and more complicated. The greatest number of talents a person can have is three, and the least is 0. A person with 3 talents is considered a rank S, persons with 2 talents are rank A, 1 talent is rank B, a person who is Rank C has a special "power" but is not powerful enough to be called a talent, so this "power" is instead called a Quirk.

An example of a quirk would be the ability to turn one's skin to metal, but only being able to turn one hand into metal. A person with a similar talent could turn his entire body into metal or even turn other objects into metal. Rank Ds are persons with no talent at all, these people are even rarer than rank S's, most people fall between C and A.

The number of talents in the world is limited. There's a little over 3 million talents with many people having the same talent. Some are more common than others. Talents are also random. A person may get the same talent as their parents, or maybe they don't. Maybe their talent is the same as their affinity, or maybe it's the opposite. There is no coalition between them.

Another thing he noticed was that when a person has multiple talents, their talents are always of the same attributes and they often complement each other. One used to make the other stronger, or one used to cover for the shortcomings of the other.

All races have talents, they share from the same talent pool as humans except Beastmen that have their own talent pool. There are talents that overlap and are in both pools, but mostly, they are mutually exclusive.

"This magic compression technique that you've created is amazing kid. Once you perfect it I'm sure you will change combat magic with it. In fact, I have something to show you too," Saxon had a wide grin on his face. He snapped his fingers, creating a spark, and in no time it turned into a 100-meter sea of red flames burning at 15,000 °C.

He waved Red Fang; the flames shrank and compressed down until all the flames were contained on the blade of the Red Fang. This sword was made from a legendary Red Dragon Snake. A mature Red Dragon Snake grows to about 5.5ft long and is at the peak of the Gold Realm.

The sheath of the sword is made from the scales and the blade is made from the spine, the Red Dragon Snake's flame is one of the hottest in Semeria reaching up to 240,000°C and it's resistant to heat. It was the perfect weapon for a flame user. The compressed flame on Red Fang's blade burned at over 130,000°C. The air immediately lost all its moisture and Xasha felt like his skin would be burned from his body just by standing so close to it.

"Impressive right. You're not the only one who's been practicing, haha," Saxon so excited, he started laughing out loud and jumped off the disk and into the crash of Black Rhinos, laughing all the way.

"Show off," Xasha was annoyed at his father, he decided to take him down a peg. He waved his hand and erected wind walls along the ground, separating the Rhinos from each and making it so that they couldn't turn around. This made it easier for Saxon to kill them.

"This damn kid," Saxon looked up at his son. He turned around to see an adult Black Rhino charging at him. He jumped over its head with a somersault and pushed the flaming sword into its weak spot. The Rhino stopped running and fell to the ground. Before Saxon had time to celebrate three more rhinos were charging at him.

In the span of a day Saxon and his son worked together to kill nearly 800 Black Rhinos, which was considered impossible for someone of their strength. There were around 70 Black Rhino calves left alive. They were only a few days old and Xasha wanted to take them home and raise them, so he made a pen with the wind walls and kept them inside. Saxon was back on the disk looking down on the calves, "how are we going to do this, we can't hunt down wind spirits with nearly 100 rhino calves in tow."

"Why not?" Xasha waved his hands 2 disks appeared the top and bottom of the pen he had made from wind walls creating a cube. The cube floated up into the air, Saxon was amazed as he could see the Rhinos crying but he couldn't hear anything, "won't they suffocate if the air can't pass through these walls?"

"Haha, the walls are made of air, the air circulates inside the cube sustain them, they will be fine, and they will be quiet and won't disturb our hunt."

"And bringing something that heavy won't be a problem for you?" This worried Saxon.

"I think it will be fine, this doesn't take any magic energy, and with my mind being as powerful as it is, I can carry 10 times this all day, no problem."

Saxon ruffled his son's green hair, "damn kid," he was happy. He couldn't wait to see what this kid will do in the future. He jumped from the disk again. This time it was to collect the Black Rhino corpses. He put them in storage packs, then he collected all the blood in storage bottles.

After an hour the place was clean as if nothing happened here except for the large amounts of rhino footprints. Saxon and his son started heading deeper into the Black Plains. On the way, they met more flying energy beasts that were taken care of by Saxon. They got stronger and stronger the deeper into the plains they went.

After 4 days of traveling none stop, they still had found no signs of wind spirits and were ready to give up. Xasha was looking out on the plains while chewing on a mana berry. He felt closer to rank 8 than ever. Especially after using his power so often lately, 'practical experience really does help one develop much faster,' he thought to himself.

Suddenly Xasha who was heading east looked north. He stopped the cube for a second, then headed north at full speed.

Seeing this shocked Saxon, "Did you find something?"

"Yes, remember when I told you about air pressure?"

"Yes, cold air rises and hot air falls, right?"

"No, well yes but no, I've been checking for changes in the air pressure. I know that wind spirits love strong winds that's why they live in the black plains. The black plains have some of the strongest winds in Lithuania. Just now I felt some strong air pressure concentration in the north and I think I know what it is. If I'm right, I'm 100% sure we will find wind spirits there."

"What's that?" Saxon asked curiously.

"A tornado."