For the next two days, Kyte quickly improved. He was almost ready to break through into late Earth stage, and currently he was practicing the Raging Palms technique.

-BOOM-

"Gosh damn it, what the Hell am I doing wrong?!"

Kyte scratched his head with an annoyed expression.

"You don't have to get so worked up on it. At least it didn't take you like three years to even get where you are. You should be grateful."

"You old man, I bet you're laughing since you know exactly what I'm getting wrong."

"How'd you know? HAHAHAHA! It's great! Seeing a genius like you struggling really lets me get out a good laugh."

Kyte sat down with his back against the back wall of his house. He stared at his backyard and just sighed. Closing his eyes, he was slowly drifting off into sleep when suddenly...

-flap- -flap-

The sound of wings moving through the air entered his ears.

In his half-asleep mode, Kyte lazily raised his right hand and shot out a palm of Internal energy which soundlessly and mercilessly destroyed the bird. Using the Internal energy from the palm, he absorbed the blood that had exploded from within the corpse.

"...Uh...Kyte. Do you realize what you just did?"

"Yea, yea. I'm too lazy to get all the blood..."

"No, you idiot. You just completed the first stage."

"The first?....The....the FIRST STAGE?!"

Kyte jolted up onto his feet. Recalling what had just happened, Kyte sent out another palm of energy, however, it made a popping sound when it blasted forward.

"You're messing with me, aren't you."

"No, of course not. Just focus on remembering what you did when you killed that bird just now."

Playing back the moment when he shot out the palm of energy, Kyte felt himself getting closer to the answer. While he was trying to remember, he would shoot out energy palms to test out different methods.

And then finally...

A silent palm of energy shot into the ground, creating a much deeper dent than the ones before.

"I see...it's not about exploding it forward."

"Heh, you finally got it. I didn't expect you to accidentally accomplish it the first time when you're half asleep!"

"Haha, what was that about me struggling? You think this is hard? HA! It's pretty easy."

"Yea, keep saying that when you get in the higher stages."

After Kyte shot out several more Raging Palms to get it just right, a flow of new information entered his mind.

"Pfft, this is basically saying that I should be in the Spirit stage before I even try it."

"You don't have to be in the Spirit stage. It's just the recommended stage to start the second level of Raging Palms."

"I'm guessing I get something new when I breakthrough into the Spirit stage?"

"I guess you'll find out."

"Yea, I guess so..."

Laying down on the ground, Kyte looked up into the clear blue sky. The hot sun was shining down with intense heat, but it felt refreshing to Kyte for some reason.

"Hey, Sol'keer."

"...What. Your tone of voice sounds a bit weird."

"Is there a way I can make you unable to disappear?"

After about ten seconds of silence, Sol'keer finally replied:

"No, there isn't."

"You're lying."

"I'm not lying, there really isn't."

"You know there's a quote that some dude said in this world. It goes: 'Impossible is nothing.' What do think about that?"

"If you're trying to convince me that there's a way-"

"I know there's a way. You're just not telling me."

After a deep sigh, Sol'keer said:

"Of course there's a way. However, you'll need to be at least stage ten before you can even try to attempt to do it."

"What do I need to do?"

"Kid, are you even listening to me? I said STAGE TEN. Do you even realize what that implies?"

"I do. But what does that have to do with anything? You have to know something: This is not the same universe that you were born in. Something that's impossible in your universe may be possible in this one."

"The way to keep me 'alive' deals with the soul. You have no knowledge whatsoever when dealing with souls. What can you do? Become an expert on something in a few days?"

"I've done it before, and I can do it again. Did you forget? Originally, I'm a genius. It's not that I gather information faster than others. The reason why that even I recognize myself as a genius is because I 'understand' faster than others. I can gather information faster, sure, but my real genius ability is being able to understand that information. We will never know until we try."

"............Alright, fine. I'll let you see the first level of knowledge regarding the soul. You were supposed to unlock this when you breakthrough into the Spirit stage, but I guess it doesn't matter right now."

Suddenly, a flash of white light went through Kyte's mind.

"Woah..."

The soul.

The thing that differentiates a living thing and an inanimate object. It gives life to everything that is living. It is the essence of a living thing, the very root of its existence. Without it, there is no consciousness. Without it, there is no life.

It can be said that people who are experts with the soul are the ones that decide the life and death of living things. They can manipulate a soul in a way that was never supposed to be found. A forbidden skill that the laws of the universe never expected to be discovered. However, when one person learns of it, it naturally starts to spread. From one to two, from two to three, from three to five, and so on and so forth.

And now, Kyte has gained the information on the very most basic training in the soul. This training came from a complete master of the soul, Sol'keer himself.

Training with the soul requires a sharp and solid focus. It requires monumental amounts of effort. And of course, through all of these hardships will come skills that may decide the life and death of Kyte, as well as others. Training with the soul is not only a great way to find ways to fight, but it also helps to strengthen the foundations of practice. A stronger soul means a stronger Internal energy and a stronger mind, which leads to faster perceivable levels.

The only real way to train the soul is to first be able to manipulate the soul. Being able to manifest the soul and manipulate it is the first step to training the soul to become stronger, as well as absorbing the spirit power and/or energy from other living things.

However, just like with practicing Internal energy, gaining too much Spirit energy can disrupt the natural flow of Kyte's Spirit energy, which will cause serious consequences to appear. In the worst case scenario, Kyte's soul could explode from being unable to handle so much Spirit energy, thus erasing Kyte's soul from existence.

Of course, there are always exceptions. Apparently, in Sol'keer's world, there were some ultra-geniuses that did not have limits to how much their soul could grow. They would continuously kill others for their Spirit energy, increasing the power of their soul so much that they didn't even need a physical body anymore.

However, throughout the trillions of years that Sol'keer's world has existed, individuals like those could be counted with your ten fingers. Although, even if Kyte's universe is different, the chances of an individual like that appearing is still possible.

Opening his eyes, Kyte was astonished with the new knowledge he had obtained.

"This stuff seems a little overpowered, don't you think?..."

"Ha! That's the best part! Now, the first thing you need to do is sense your soul..."

"Yea, I already got it."

"What?!"

"Even when I first got the Bloodrage technique, I could feel a slightly different energy within me. Though at the time it was so small I didn't really pay attention to it."

"Holy cow...It might be because you were either born with a rather strong soul to begin with, or your mind is more advanced than others."

"I did say I understand things easier than others, didn't I?"

"A-alright, um..yea then next step is to manipulate the Spirit energy inside your body."

Kyte sat down in his breathing position and began to try to manipulate the surging Spirit energy in his body.

"Wait, why do I have so much Spirit energy?"

"You what?"

"I have loads of Spirit energy, what the Hell is this? Did you do something without me noticing?"

"No, of course not! I can't even feel any Spirit energy coming from you. I just thought your soul was weak."

"What the deuce is going on?"

"It's YOUR Spirit energy, you tell me."

"I have no clue what it could be."

"Well, maybe something huge had impacted you which made your mentality and way of thinking change very significantly."

"...Huh?"

"What, you didn't know that everything you experience in life changes your mind?"

"Of course I knew that! So that's what it was. I guess that explains it."

"What, did you do something super awesome before you met me or something?"

"No, nothing much. Just...a little something happened and well, here I am living by myself. Alone."

"...I see. Well, don't dwell on it too much. Look on the bright side, at least you naturally have a strong soul!"

"Heh, I guess that's good. Well, enough chit-chat, let me focus."

"Alrighty-o."

Kyte began to move his Spirit energy around inside his mind, trying to create a shape from it. A hand, a square, a triangle, pretty much anything. Just as long as he was able to create something, he will have accomplished the next step.

Not even ten minutes go by and Kyte has already began to create multiple shapes at the same time. He even felt his Spirit energy becoming stronger the more he played around with it.

After another ten minutes of this continuous practice, Kyte thought...

This isn't enough. I need something more...like an actual soul.

Standing up, Kyte decided to go outside. Of course, using a Concealing Mask so he won't be caught by that other person.

After changing his appearance, Kyte used the Windwalker technique to leave his house. Quickly traveling along the sidewalks, jumping high to move from the tops of houses to the next, he moved farther away from the central city.

-Thirty minutes later-

Softly landing on the ground, Kyte looked in-front of him to see a giant farm. In the fields were several cows, pigs, horses, and other farm animals.

Well, sorry to whomever these animals belong to.

Jumping onto the large field full of animals, Kyte appeared next to a cow. Putting his hand on its body, he focused on searching for its soul.

Are all souls in the mind?

Sure enough he was correct. After finding the cow's soul inside of its mind, Kyte quickly injected his own Spirit energy inside. This only works if Kyte's soul is stronger than whatever he is trying this technique on, so he has to first figure out how strong each soul is. Although, being a cow, its soul wouldn't be very strong to begin with.

After using his own Spirit energy to destroy the cow's soul, all that was left was its Spirit energy. Kyte's own Spirit energy, being far more powerful, naturally soaked up the Spirit energy that was lingering in the dead cow's mind.

After successfully retracting his Spirit energy from the cow, Kyte stepped back. The cow was already on the ground, no longer moving. Kyte then inserted his Internal energy into the corpse and absorbed all of the blood.

Holy shit. There's like a hundred times more blood in a cow than a bird. Why didn't I do this sooner?!

After absorbing the cow's life force, Kyte felt a significant increase in his power relative to the increase from absorbing the life force from a bird. Like Kyte had guessed, the amount of life force from a cow was astronomically higher than that of a small bird.

According to the new information I got, killing something and letting its soul escape is a much faster method, but it's almost impossible to do correctly on the first few tries....but hey, I don't have time on my side.

Moving from animal to animal, Kyte used Raging Palms to completely decimate each one. He would spread out his Spirit energy to sense the animal's soul, and then he would trap it inside of his own Spirit energy. He failed the first few times, but he started to succeed over and over again. Probably because his soul is so much stronger.

After about thirty minutes, all the animals in the field were dead. There were body parts lying everywhere. If a normal person saw this, they would've thought that someone put explosives inside every single animal and blown them up. Except, there was no blood.

In total there were two fields of animals. The other field only had horses, and there were roughly a third of the amount from the first field. Kyte quickly traveled to the other field and mercilessly wiped them all out.

Suddenly...

"Kyte, watch out!!"

Looking behind him, Kyte saw a circular blade flying toward him at a very fast speed. Kyte quickly surged his Internal energy outward to form a wall in-front of himself.

The blade, which looked like a chakra, smashed into Kyte's wall of energy. The blade stopped, but Kyte's wall had several cracks all over it. As if it was on a string, the blade retracted back toward a tall metallic-like figure.

"What the fuck is that?"

Standing about thirty meters away from Kyte was a tall figure about a foot taller than Kyte. It was completely metallic in nature, and the sun shone off of its surface.

"This energy....Kyte, that's one of the hidden weapons that belongs to this country."

"What?! They're hiding something like this?"

The figure jumped toward Kyte and once again threw its blade, except this time there were two.

"Shit."

Kyte used Raging Palms to knock the blades off-course, and he quickly began to run.

If those things can almost break my defense wall then how am I supposed to defeat it?!

"Kyte you coward why are you running?! This is a great opportunity to test out your fighting talent!"

"Are you crazy?! I'm not fighting against that thing!"

"I guess I was wrong about you. You say that you want to become the most powerful being in this world, yet you don't want to fight? You're the biggest coward I've ever known!!"

Kyte stopped in his tracks.

"You...fuckin' old man."

Turning around, Kyte used Windwalker to move closer to the figure. This time, three blades appeared from its grip, flying toward Kyte from different directions.

Shooting out Raging Palms several times, Kyte shot the blades away from his direction again. He moved closer to the metallic figure and covered himself in Internal energy.

"Ahhhh!"

Punching toward it, Kyte's fist smashed into the figure's chest and blasted it tens of meters backward. The blades that were flying toward it started to fly without direction, aiming toward the ground.

"It's a fucking robot!"

As Kyte punched it, he got a good look at what the thing was. He clearly saw only metal, no flesh whatsoever. Those mechanical eyes that looked at him were void of life.

Still looking in its direction, Kyte watched it stand up. When it had stood up, it unbent its arms which then transformed into two long blades. Kyte could see an indent in its chest, so clearly he had done some damage.

The robot jumped toward Kyte once again. This time, Kyte's Internal energy remained on his body, and he shot out several Raging Palms toward the robot.

The robot used its blades to slice the palms in half, although its blades took noticeable damage by doing so.

Kyte jumped backward while continuously shooting out palms of energy toward the robot, and it kept slicing through the energy. Even though Kyte was moving away from it the whole time, the robot was clearly faster than him as it crept closer and closer.

Damn, I'm not fast enough. Guess I'm gonna have to do hand-to-hand combat...for the first time in my life.

Kyte suddenly stopped moving away, and instead blasted toward the robot. As if it was waiting for this moment, the robot's forehead opened and a small gun appeared. A green energy accumulated in its barrel, and a small laser shot out from it.

"Kyte, dodge!"

Quickly moving to the side, the laser just skimmed Kyte's outer defense. The laser cleanly shot through the defense, barely missing Kyte.

Holy fuck! I'll die if I get hit by that!

Continuing to use Windwalker, Kyte sprinted toward the robot and shot out a powerful palm of energy. However, this time, the Raging Palm had a trace of Kyte's Spirit energy woven into it.

Slicing at Kyte's energy with its blade once again, the Raging Palm smashed the blade to pieces and continued forward to directly hit the robot in the shoulder. The shoulder was cleanly destroyed as it was dislocated from the robot's body.

A green liquid flowed out from the destroyed shoulder, and the robot knelt down on one knee. Suddenly, the bottom of its feet opened as it stood up, blasting itself backward as it wanted to flee.

Without giving it a chance, Kyte quickly utilized Windwalker and jumped forward to grab the robot's head in his right hand. Quickly using his Spirit energy to search around in it, Kyte was not surprised to find no soul or Spirit energy of any kind. However, he could feel that green liquid circulating around just like a normal body's heart would circulate blood.

Kyte shot a point-blank Raging Palm which was infused with his Spirit energy directly onto the head of the robot. The head exploded, spraying green liquid everywhere. Kyte fell to the ground with the robot's body.

After he landed, he dispelled the Internal energy around his body, thus making the green liquid all over it to fall to the ground.

"Kyte, it would be best to get out of here. I felt a pulse of energy come from the robot just before you destroyed its head. It probably signaled for back-up."

"Yea, you're right. Plus, I got what I came here for anyway. Some battle experience is always good too."

Quickly swallowing a pill from the storage necklace, Kyte traveled back to his home as fast as he could. He ended up using another pill from the storage necklace, as well as another Concealing Mask to change his appearance once again.

___________________________________________________________

--Betty's Orphanage--

"Akina, you have to look at this!"

"Hm? What do you want now? Didn't I already give you your allowance?"

"No, it's not that! I was searching around the perimeter of my assigned area today, and, well...I found this."

The young teen handed Akina a picture of the farm fields, and the body of the robot.

"Jol, did you do this?"

"No, I swear! I didn't do it! I found it when I was looking around the perimeter..."

"You don't have to lie to me you know-"

"Please believe me! It wasn't me I swear!"

"...Well, you are right. I couldn't imagine you committing a massacre. It might be that boy..."

"...That boy? Who's that? Did you find someone new?"

"You don't have to worry about it right now, alright? Just keep training so you don't accidentally go out of control, like last time. I don't want to have to keep fixing all the plates and dishes."

"Ahahaha, yes Akina."

"Good, then you can go rest for today."

"Yay! See you later~!"

Akina smiled as she watched the young boy skip away to the other young teens. She looked back at the picture and had a bad premonition that...maybe, this boy isn't as kind-hearted as she may have thought.