NOVEL WEB 17 – New Toys
Hisashi had finished his patrols for the day early and finally had some time to experiment with his new powers. He asked his sister for a rather large mirror, she found a full length mirror which she brought outside putting it down in front of him. Thankfully their father was at work and mom was out to visit a girlfriend of hers so there was no one to judge his sister for dragging a mirror out into the back yard for no apparent reason.
It took a moment before he got a good feel for his Illusory Aura, suddenly it clicked in his mind and an iridescent shimmer seemed to flash across his body before his body started fading until he had completely blended into the background no longer being visible in the mirror.
"Woah... so cool!" Reina yelled."Are you still there?" she was wondering exactly what he had done.
"Yeah this is an illusion skill, not a movement skill. I'm still in front of the mirror though it's a little weird looking into a mirror without seeing yourself." he quickly answered her. When he looked down at himself he could still vaguely see himself and of course feel his body so turning invisible didn't have a major effect on his own direct perception of his body only on others or if he indirectly perceived himself such as in a picture, video or mirror like now.
He was glad that it didn't take much effort to get down the basics of this new skill, now it would be a matter of improving the speed of the skill and also thinking of various unique and effective ways to employ the skill both in and out of combat.
With a just a thought slowly only his mask become visible again, the rest of him remaining invisible.
"Alright, controlling smaller areas seems to have no additional cost in mental strain nor spirit power beyond consumption increasing with the degree I'm altering reality with the illusion so I seem I have just about absolute control on what is seen within the range of Illusory Aura. That's good." he nods, though with only his head being visible it looks rather awkward.
"Well, for stealth this is already 100% a success, as long as they don't hear me there is no way for them to see me nor are they able to sense my spirit power due to the concealment skill." he thinks out loud.
"Yeah, that's going to be so useful." Reina adds with a wide smile. Her curiosity is getting the better of her again and all of this is stuff that's just so out of this world. Who doesn't want to see supernatural powers and events? Well at least if you aren't endangered by them.
"Reina can you help me with something?" he decided to move on to the next step of testing.
"Sure thing, what do you need?" she said turning serious.
"I'm going to make my head invisible again, once I'm completely invisible I want you to watch where I was. I'm going to move with some speed and I want to tell you if the effect slips or has other problems once I start moving a lot or quickly." he tells her.
His head fades away. Looking in the mirror as he does it seem to be the case that the process is slowly getting faster as he gets used to controlling this power. After a few moments he starts dashing around the back yard. He kept doing this for about a minute.
"How about it?" he asks reappearing where he was before.
"Uhm...did you move?" she asks quite unsure. From her perspective he disappeared, a minute went by with nothing and then he reappeared.
"Yeah I moved all across the yard even circling around you." he added.
"What?! I didn't notice. Wait shouldn't you still make sound?" she wonders out loud.
"Unless I move quite fast or with excess power I'm able to keep my movements very silent. If you had some kind of enhanced senses you might be able to tell a little, but as a human your sense of hearing is quite weak." he explains.
She starts pouting.
"Like it's so cool to be a hollow." she says looking away.
"What did my sister turn into a tsundere?" he teases.
"I'm not a tsundere! I'm just annoyed that you get cool powers. It's not fair." she quickly retorts with a dash of embarrassment.
"Well it's not as fun as it looks or at least wasn't before you could see me." he says mumbling the last part.
Without warning his sister suddenly he manipulates his illusory aura and a second right arm seems to appear from his should identical to his regular one.
"Did you just grow another arm?" she asks him in shock.
"No it's still the same thing really. Try touching the new one." he told her.
She carefully tries grabbing the dull side of the blade, but her hand just passes through it.
"That's so weird. It really messes with your mind." she mumbles.
"Ok, now on to the second part." he says and goes back to focusing on what he really wanted to test. Suddenly the real version of his right arm disappears leaving only the fake one.
"Alright, now this could be extremely useful though to really make full use of it I would need to be able to do all parts of this at high speed while in combat." he decides he is going to need to practice a lot to speed up the process if he wants to make the most of this power. It's perfect for sneak attacks and misdirection. Combining it with his rapidly growing dexterity this could be extremely dangerous. Well to his enemies at least.
"The spirit power cost also seems very manageable. I should be able to use it along with other skills quite regularly in a drawn out battle without being concerned I will run out of spirit power before my enemies do. Once I grow and rank up though it should go from a small amount of consumption to pretty much negligible barely being different from a passive I can control at will." he predicts.
Reina was just watching the entire thing in amazement not sure what to say as it was all very unreal, at least as unreal as things could get considering her dead brother came back as a hulking monster. She really wanted to help though.
