Unmoving, unexpectedly, cold on the stone black floor. Simone was gone, with her last sound still echoing in the room through the air, with crude finality.

It took the two boys a good seven seconds to realize what was going on.

It was like some spell had locked them in place and they were suddenly freeing themselves from it.

Ethan was the first to run and slide down at Simone’s side, immediately turning her on her back with both hands using not too gentle of a touch.

He noticed her chest wasn’t inflating and confirmed she wasn’t breathing by putting a finger under her nose... Feeling her wrist he knew her heart wasn’t beating either.

Tommy, in the meanwhile, still not totally firm on his legs, heavily dragged himself over to her side and crashed down, more than kneeling.

-She is dying. You need to give her CPR. Five compressions here!

Ethan indicated the right place on her breastbone

-Then you breathe in three times. Try not to break her bones.

Before he could finish what he was saying though, the young man noticed the flames from the walls were sliding down ominously, like responding to Simone’s lack of vitality.

Ethan couldn’t help but twitch slightly thinking about the “sentient” fireball which Simone had eaten before. He wasn’t sure the room was going to spawn another one, but he didn’t want to risk finding out.

-On second thought, I have the impression we really don’t want to stay in here. The lights are moving and we might get roasted.

Feeling like his light bulb had just gone on, Tommy painfully tried to stand back to his feet.

Once again without too much tenderness, Ethan helped him up before grabbing Simone in his arms as he half ran to the door.

When they were by the stairs, Ethan decided to let Tommy go first: the flames in the room had reached the floor and were joining back together. Sixteen deep red and yellow fires became four, releasing a considerable heat wave which rushed in all directions.

Tommy had only gone up five steps when the remaining four flames had already crept close to two meters from the middle of the room.

Two more steps and one meter apart... There was simply not enough time, for them and for Simone.

Ethan keeled forward and slipped his head between Tommy’s legs, pushing down on the floor with his tail for leverage. His Rokian innate strength came in handy as he started running up the stairs, propelled by the roaring sound of an angry gurgling explosion behind his back.

-Hey, dude! Easy, man. Ouch. Hey! Easy I said!

Tommy banged his head a few times while running up, but he too couldn’t complain too much, feeling the scorching heat growing closer to their rears.

When they finally got to the last flight of stairs, even though the torches had given out, the hall they were in was even too bright.

Not stopping to think about the chance of his legs giving out, Ethan rushed through the door and used Tommy’s body to close it shut just one instant before the rolling fireball came slamming at it, seeping through just a little from underneath. Ethan dropped both the humans on the hard floor and reminded Tommy

-Five compressions, three breaths, alright?

The other man half alarmed, half angry answered

-You are on fire!

Ethan didn’t think that was the moment for compliments, but tried to say

-Thank...

Before he could finish though, Tommy pointed out at him

-Your tail, you moron! You are burning!

Ethan, realizing he actually was ablaze, jumped all over, patting his appendix with both hands, half slapping it. It was indeed painful but he didn’t have time to take it too seriously.

Simone still needed him.

While rushing to the back of the house the Rokian started screaming

-Hugo! Frap, where are you? Hugo!

Frap was the swearword he had just invented for the occasion.

Hugo arrived from a side door as soon as Ethan had reached the medical room.

Hugo looked at Ethan with slightly angry eyes, but that changed as soon as Ethan told him

-Hey, I need your help. Simone has collapsed, in front of the weapon room. We need to get her here on a stretcher.

In that moment, Hugo’s eyes became alive, sparked by an overwhelming worry. The massive Rokian ran inside the medical room and came out crashing the door open a second later pushing the stretcher, rushing through the corridor at a break neck pace.

Ethan followed him almost at the same speed, being not quite as muscular as the older Rokian.

When he arrived in front of the war room, Hugo arched backwards and billowed in a crazy lament. A moment later he was scooping a very startled Tommy together with Simone from the floor and putting them on the stretcher, ready to push them back towards the medical room.

After a few seconds of surprise, Tommy went back to the CPR, while Ethan followed them close behind.

As the latter entered through the door, Tommy screamed

-She is still not breathing, how long should I keep on going?

-What kind of question is that? As long as it damn well take! Has her heart restarted?

-I... I don’t know. I didn’t check.

-Alright, let me take over.

Ethan said still too loud.

Simone’s heart hadn’t restarted yet.

-Tommy, please turn that defibrillator machine on. Just flip the big red button and put it on “charge”.

Ethan in the meanwhile cleared Simone’s chest from her clothes, using the same emergency medical knowledge she had bestowed on him the day before.

Ethan never thought he was going to need to use it quite so soon, and on her to boot.

The tension in the room was unreal, while Ethan begged inside of himself not to screw up.

After two uses of the defibrillator, Simone’s heart went back to beating, albeit very slowly.

She still had trouble breathing and Ethan decided to intubate her.

This process was way harder than he had ever imagined: he had to carefully look at her throat, trying to avoid all the important parts while going in.

In the end he wasn’t any good, but still managed to attach her to a respirator.

Simone was still far from being stable though and Ethan had already gone through all that he knew about first aid.

She was breathing, but Ethan knew that could end at any moment... And he had no idea how to use any of the very complicated diagnostic instruments in the room.

From the moment Simone had collapsed, nearly twenty minutes had passed.

All the while, Tommy and Hugo had gone on letting out worried sounds, watching up close everything Ethan was doing, but now that he had stopped, so had their lament.

The room was silent, except for the feeble, beeping sound of the heart monitor and the pumping of the respirator.

Ethan wasn’t ready to give up, he was too stubborn for that, but all he could do, was... Look.

Just look.

Suddenly a spark came rushing through his brain. His “Identify” skill.

It was a skill used to look at people and objects in order to find out details about them therefore, at its base, part of it had to be an eye magic.

Ethan acted fast and used “Identify”, at the same time he focused on his vivicar releasing as much mana as he thought his eyes could take.

Nothing happened, apart from him starting to see things very out of focus and feeling a painful sensation at the back of his eyes.

He deactivated “Identify” and started releasing mana from his fingers, moving them suggestively and rapidly like he was painting, soon giving shape in mid air to some sort of looking glass. He then retried activating “Identify”.

Once more he didn’t get the desired effect: Simone was the same as before, just of a different color, but he felt his “Mana Manipulation” had advanced sensibly toward the next level.

Ethan stopped to think for a moment, trying to give shape to another option. He had divined several possibilities from his overexcited brain; in the end he decided to try and release a mist of shadow mana in the air, filling the room with a substantial amount of loose energy, rapidly burning 50% of his total.

Once again he activated “Identify”, but apart from the same bio information about Simone everything else was the same... Ethan realized something and slapped himself on the forehead.

Why should anything be different just puking out a little, or a lot, of his mana?

Is a severed arm something which the body can control? Is a dropped leaf still part of the tree?

He turned off “Identify”, which in that moment leveled up to two and closed his eyes to better feel.

Ethan, little by little, weaved a thin layer of energy on top of his skin and tried to latch onto the closest free mana of his from before.

Some of it actually stuck to him, but at the same time he had to try not to bring it too close.

It took him three minutes to be happy with the result but, by that time, his mana was almost all gone.

Ethan sat on a chair focusing on the environment around himself to absorb as much of the natural shadow energy as possible and refine it back as mana.

Controlling this still unborn technique was most definitely the hardest thing he had ever done.

Not only he had to recharge his mana fast to not let the energy he had released in the air decay but he also had to keep control upon the cocoon he had set around himself.

It felt to him like trying to walk in two directions at the same time while still trying to not split himself in the middle. If it went wrong he knew he could damage his vivicar, but he had the power of desperation and a bucket load of adrenaline keeping him sharp and focused. If that wasn’t enough, the mechanical silence in the room and the looks coming from Tommy and Hugo made him very “aware”: he had to manage whatever it was he was doing.

While maybe no one might blame him for failing, his own ego and conscience would never let him live another day of peace. He was smart and capable.

He was the Rokian Ethan R. Samhal and he would not fail... He kept repeating that in his head, as needing all the confidence he could muster.

After fifteen minutes, all of Ethan’s mana had returned to him in spite of the constant draining from his tentative spell. When he was done, he didn’t get up from the armchair though, wishing to concentrate all of his attention on what he had to do. Had it been possible, had it helped, he would even have stopped breathing.

He tried to ignore the room, the time, the two other people...

Slowly, Ethan released many spikes through the skin layer of energy, which moved toward the far out mana... Needless say he soon realized those spikes were too big to be useful.

Breathing in, Ethan retreated them inside his skin.

Smaller.

Thinner.

The young man’s conscience became as soft as a whisper, and as light as a single speck of dust floating on top of a calm sea.

Ethan then produced the smallest tendril he could, so thin it would take a microscope to notice.

He half nodded to himself and kept on creating feelers upon feelers, pushing them out, trying to revitalize his loose mana from before.

Ten minutes became twenty, then thirty... Almost one hour later he was very close to being out of mana again, but he had connected a room full of mana into his net.

Ethan realized he was covered in sweat from head to feet, but he was finally done with this extremely complex maneuver.

He still didn’t dare opening his eyes, wishing not to lose his soap bubble feeble control over the spell, but right when he had scant twelve mana left, he finally received a skill pop-up.

Ethan hadn’t quite hoped for any skill to be this fast in appearing, still there it was, like a so necessary gift from heaven.

Looking at Tommy he asked

-I think I am almost done... how is Simone doing?

-She could die at any moment... So, nothing new.

Answered Tommy, immediately getting punched in the guts by a grunting Hugo.

Six minutes later, Ethan had refilled his mana pool once more and activated his newest skill, “Dark network”.

At a first glance, the skill wasn’t comparable to the spell which had generated it, being only one third in dimensions, but the mana absorption for keeping it active was “only” one fifth of Ethan’s entire pool. All in all he felt it was quite convenient, although still very demanding.

The young man had to get closer to Simone in order to be sure to include her into his network, which to an outside eye looked like a grey waving halo.

Technically speaking, all the mana into the spell had no mass and no substance, just a strong presence, by design, so to permeate bodies and essences alike.

Feeling as ready as he would ever be, Ethan activated “Inspect” one last time on top of his network, while at the same time he also created an open flow of mana which ran uninterrupted from his vivicar to his eyes and out, latching to his web.

Ethan held his labored breath until...

It had worked.

What he saw scared him to no end.

At the same time, Aw-k passed him the message

-Through a complex series of actions, a new skill, “Spiritual Sight”, has been has been created.