7 Training and New Ability
In the middle of the desert, a lone figure is seen doing push-ups while carrying weights on his back. Moving on to doing weighted squats, arm curls, pull-ups, and sprinting drills in the sand.
"I guess [Astral Form] has more uses than just battle." Indeed all of the training equipment Adriel is currently using was made using astral formation.
'Whenever I increase the density of a construct the weight also increases, really useful for training.' Adriel's able use 'his astral solidification' to create his own training equipment - maintaining it also uses up his astral reserves, killing two birds with one stone, as he's able to train his body while also training his control and astral reserve.
Whenever he gets dangerously close to emptying his astral power (A/N: astral power is gonna be 'AP' in the future), he dispels the construct and focuses on sprinting drills or endurance running.
'Doing so in the blazing sun and hot sand makes it extra effective' (A/N: running in sand is how many sprinters train their leg muscles and speed)
Once his AP is replenished he goes back to training using his constructs.
Using this routine, Adriel kept training until the evening when he would go to the shore and swim attaching weights to his arms and legs.
He would do so until becoming exhausted after which he'd head back to the inn to eat, shower, and sleep - in that order.
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{Time skip: 6 weeks}
After a month and a half of continuous training where he would only take 1 day off a week where he would only practice fighting with his knuckle dusters - clear results were starting to show.
His overall aura changed, from just a 'big young man' - to an intimidating figure - just walking down the street would force people to clear a path and move out of his way.
His muscles became more defined and he was oozing confidence - itching for a fight.
At one point a gang of thugs approached him while he was working out, wanting to steal his 'training equipment' i.e. his astral constructs - and sell them.
He easily one-shot each of them with one punch - making him feel accomplished as his training was showing clear results but also disappointed for not having a serious challenge.
After defeating the thugs, he became their de facto leader and started using them for miscellaneous tasks such as fetching water, food, cleaning his room or washing his clothes.
He also gave them a more important task.
"Sir boss, we found the location of that person." - one of the thugs that were previously in charge bent down on one knee and dutifully reported.
At first, they planned to wait for Adriel to go to sleep and then gang up on him together. But after witnessing his insane training they started becoming hesitant - once they found out he was a 'devil fruit user' any thought of rebelling against him vanished and they listened to any of his orders without question.
If he told them to cut their own arms off... they probably would have.
"Good. You can fuck off now." - he ordered impatiently still in the middle of working out.
"Yes sir boss, sorry for disturbing you." - the thug bowed down sweating anxiously, and quickly darted away.
"Croco-boy enjoy your last days of freedom." - he spoke to himself while grinning.
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'In the past month, I managed to drastically improve my astral control and AP reserves to the point where I can easily last 30 minutes or more summoning the odachi ' serpent slayer' or something similar, and fully strengthening it this time - quite an improvement from the previous 5-minute time-limit.'
"There's also this" - stretching out two of his fingers a small mist-like green energy floated just above his fingertips. (A/N: name suggestions for this ability?)
It manifested one week ago when Adriel tried gathering astral power in his hand without using 'astral form' - the result was this small mist appearing on his fingertips - while using up about 70% of his total AP reserve even after increasing it, which made him dispel it and almost drop to his knees in shock.
After gathering his courage and his AP reserve filling back up (which currently took a full 24 hours to replenish), he tried summoning the 'green mist' again this time prepared for the extreme AP cost - he was surprised to see however that once the initial 70% was used, his remaining astral reserve would remain constant.
This meant that unlike 'Astral Form' which has a continuous cost to maintain the formed construct, the 'green mist' had a fixed 70% cost, and once summoned it wouldn't cost any AP to maintain.
However, whenever he summoned the mist - it only seemed to last a maximum of 3 minutes before automatically disappearing by itself - no matter what Adriel tried this time limit seemed to remain the same.
Halfway into his testing, he realized what this ability should be.
[Container Imprisonment] - the ability to trap other beings/entities in containers or other objects.
Even after all of his abilities and their basic description were transmitted to him when first received them. This one remained the vaguest and open to interpretation.
'What does 'trap other entities in containers' mean? Can I trap people? Objects? Souls? Devil fruits?? - there's too many questions and not enough AP to find out the answers.'
Summoning the 'green mist' once again, this time he took out a hollowed-out bottle groud he previously got from one of the thugs - after dumping out the alcohol he held the gourd while touching one of the chairs in the room with the mist.
Slowly the chair was surrounded by the mist, becoming a small ethereal glass bead the size of a marble with the picture of a miniature chair spinning inside.
Motioning towards the gourd the 'glass marble' quickly flew inside and remained there after Adriel put the cork back on the hole nothing special seemed to happen and it just looked like an ordinary bottle gourd - although Adriel could feel the 'glass marble' inside, and mentally see a picture of the chair inside.
Removing the cork from the gourd and pointing forward, the glass bead came flying out and materialized the chair in the same way as before - with green mist expanding and the chair then popping into existence.
"..." - speechless, Adriel stood unmoving for a solid minute before laughing like a madman.
"AHAHAHAHAAHAHAH - who needs a storage ring when I can make my own - hehe" - widely grinning he fantasized about how he could use this ability and what the limits were.
After dwelling on what he just did, Adriel realized that this ability would be one of the most crucial ones in helping him achieve the goal forced upon him by that annoying fairy.
He'd rather not spend the rest of eternity floating around in limbo bored out of his mind.
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One day later, after some thinking, another great idea came to him. Making an evil smile he summoned one of his 'minions'.
"MAGGOT" - shouting at the top of his lungs he called and waited.
"YES, SIR BOSS - w-what happened, is the room not clean enough?" - almost in the next second the same thug that initially gave him the report came running into the room afraid of what might have happened.
"For your loyal service, I'm about to bestow upon you an extremely valuable gift - what you gain from it is up to you and your talent - sit and close your eyes." - trying his best not to cringe while saying this, Adriel motioned out to the thug and gave him a solemn look.
"YES YOUR MAJESTY THIS MAGGOT UNDERSTANDS" *gulp* - starting to tremble while taking a seat on the floor, the thug bowed his head and closed his eyes.
'Okay maybe I went a bit too far with the roleplay' - making a sour face and internally cringing, Adriel stood there for a second before taking out the same bottle gourd he previously used on the chair.
He summoned the 'green mist' and directly touched the thug, slowly surrounding him in the same way as with the chair - a 'glass marble' with a miniature version of the thug inside appeared, and when he pointed to the bottle it flew inside without issue.
"Alright this is really cool... and also really terrifying..." - shocked that the ability worked on a living person - Adriel thought of the endless possibilities.
'I doubt I could use this in a fight currently - it takes too much AP to use and the process of surrounding something with the mist is too slow for actual combat - still this is an invaluable skill - maybe if I only focus on a certain part of an object or body it would decrease the time and make it combat viable.'
Although he said this, Adriel knew that this 'green mist' was much harder to actively control and currently it would just cover whatever he pointed at with no involvement on his part.
Still, if he could actively select what he wanted to contain... the thought was spine-chilling.
Adriel then removed the cork from the bottle and pointed forward on the same spot the thug initially stood, the marble flew out and once again materialized the thug.
"Well... what did you learn?" - Adriel questioned while really curious about the answer himself.
"M-my lord... I've failed you, it felt like a really comfortable sleep, I couldn't learn anything, This slothful one accepts any punishment." - the thug slammed his head on the ground which stared to bleed and zealously awaited his punishment.
"That's alright - you can go. And stop calling me 'lord' you bastard" - Adriel angrily answered while kicking the thug out of his room.
"YES SIR BOSS I APOLOGIZE." - shouting out he ran out of the room with tears forming in his eye's from the pain and his head still beading.
When the other thugs saw this, they started trembling and another layer of fear was added to their hearts.
"Hah..." - letting out a puff of air, Adriel went back to his thoughts.
'Interesting so it seems whenever a person is 'contained' by the mist, they still retain some awareness but feel as if they're in a 'comfortable sleep' - still I wonder if that's their consciousness or their body 'sleeping'...' - he reflected while waiting for his AP to recover.
"There's much to find out."
