Three Dragons

As Asura and Xia laid on the scorched ground, time passed mercilessly, not waiting for anybody. After who knows how long, Asura suddenly opened his eyes as a green radiance illuminated the world within them. The reason for his abrupt awakening was a pain he felt coming from his index finger. Naturally, his hand subconsciously pulled back.

He took a while to sober up from the unconscious state he was in up until then and when he saw sleeping Xia, his eyes softened and became moist.

Asura: 'It's good that you're okay. Everything else is meaningless if you aren't here, Xia.'

Sighing with relief, he felt something heavy on his legs and his head turned back from Xia to the culprit responsible for that feeling. It was a small snow-white fox barely the size of an adult's palm. It sat on Asura's leg and looked deep into his green eyes, as if there was an abyss in his eyes that mystically absorbed its entire soul inside.

After a slight surprise, Asura looked at his finger and found a thin streak of blood building up at the end of a thin cut. He almost jumped in fright when he saw how fast the cut was healing. He could see with the naked eye the speed at which his wound was disappearing as if it was never there.

The absent-minded fox hurriedly ran up to his finger and sat down in front of it. What gave Asura a surprise was the strangeness and intelligence of this cute little thing. It was using its nose to point in the direction of the drop of blood on Asura's finger, after which it used its front paw to point to the spot on its forehead.

Asura used his hands to make gestures and spoke aloud at the same time: "You... want me to place this drop of blood there?"

The fox's eyes shone with expectation as it made a nodding movement with its small head. Its fluffy tail started jumping from one side to the other in uneven intervals, which made the fox look even cuter when paired with its godly cuteness.

Asura didn't think much about it and did what the fox wanted, and only when three patterns started spreading from the blood-dyed fur all across the fox's body did he realize something wasn't quite right.

He quickly glanced around himself and saw only a barren land with black ground as far as his eyes could see. He subconsciously focused on his eyes and suddenly, the reflected world in his eyes changed. The feeling he had at this moment was as if he was a God, controlling everything in a hundred meter radius around himself. Everything within that radius was crystal clear in his mind, but the most shocking fact was that he could see it in real three dimensions.

Usually, humans see in two dimensions but because of the difference in light, they are able to perceive the depth of an observed object. Nonetheless, that doesn't change the fact that humans see in two dimensions, because they can't see what's inside the object at the same time while looking at its exterior. However, what Asura saw right now was true three-dimensional feedback of the world around himself.

No. It can't be said he could 'see' it, more like the information about everything was rapidly transmitted to his brain. Even if he closed his eyes, he would still be able to feel everything within those hundred meters. The feeling was so strange that he didn't know how to explain it. The shock rapidly skyrocketed when he focused on the three seed-like cores in his and Xia's bodies.

The white seed in Xia's heart gave him a feeling as if it could melt him down into pure energy any instant, while the black core in her belly sent him shivers along with a feeling of wanting to burn everything, including Xia herself. He was frightened beyond anything he'd ever been when he realized a possibility.

Asura: 'A-are these... our Soul Spirits? If that's the case, then Xia might have some problems with that black thing...'

The purple core in Xia's forehead, contrary to other two, gave him a feeling of immense closeness, as if it was a part of himself instead of some shiny seed-like crystal. The three cores were spherical and their size was small. They weren't even a centimeter in diameter, yet the density of the energy inside was frighteningly high. If Asura knew that was all the energy from the serpent beast condensed and split among six parts, who knows what he would think.

To make things even more interesting, Asura could 'feel' the inside of his and Xia's body and see the veins and blood vessels, as well as bones and everything within. It was a rather strange feeling that can't be put to words unless one experienced it themselves. Luckily for him, he could limit the effect of this ability by thinking about what he wanted to happen and what not to happen, that's why after the initial feel, he figured out that he can limit this ability to show only the 'contours' of objects instead of their entire content.

In other words, he could turn this ability that fed back the information to him into a bird's-eye view and prevent it from invading the insides of Xia's and his own body, as it was rather uncomfortable 'seeing' how the blood flows with every heartbeat while organs squirmed around.

Thanks to this ability, he was certain that Xia and him were not in any danger of hidden wounds, because he 'saw' the insides of their bodies and checked for bone fractures or any pierced tissues. After finishing that check-up, he finally noticed that the fox from before was missing. When he thought about that fox, a white beam of light shone in the position of his heart and shot out, falling on the ground and transforming into that fox.

Asura looked at this cute thing again and couldn't help being surprised when he 'glanced' at it with his new eyes. What he saw inside the fox's body was a complex set of channels carrying pure Spirit Energy and a ten-colored crystal core at the center of the fox's body. He limited the '3D X-Ray' ability only to show blood vessels, heart and that crystal, because it was truly too uncomfortable when the entire structural arrangement was fed back. For example, the special cuteness of this fox would vanish when he 'saw' the muscles around its eyes and groups of muscles surrounding bones as well as other parts of its body.

Asura: 'As expected, everything in this world has its pros and cons. Although this ability is useful, if not restrained, it's no different than seeing a dissected organism. I'm not really a fan of spying on others' body content, and especially not on the content of their intestines so...'

The fox merely threw a curious gaze at Asura as its tail swung around uncontrollably. Its body lowered and suddenly shot out, transforming into a powerful jump as the fox landed on Asura's left shoulder. He quickly took the fox in his hands, held it in front of himself and took in all the cuteness of this little creature from up close. The fox's eyes had a silver shine but when one paid better attention, there were ten colors mixed in, but in very small quantities, which made them almost unnoticeable. The depths of the fox's eyes contained a faint green starry glow.

Asura: 'Is this because of me?'

He already had an idea about what happened. If his guess wasn't off the mark then this fox became his contracted Spirit Beast after he smeared that little blood from his finger on its head. When his thoughts reached here, Asura suddenly remembered something. If his Soul Spirits were awakened, what are they? He only saw the tiny crystal cores in his body but he didn't know what kind of Soul Spirits they were.

He tried focusing on the green crystal core in his forehead as fox turned into a beam of light and disappeared inside him and a familiar feeling appeared. The world around him dimmed and in its place came another, very different world. This world was an endless darkness with only one bright point in its center. This bright point was a small green dragon made of stars. The green color seemed to be the purest energy in the world, as if only a single drop of it could create a living entity. Actually, every speck of energy this small dragon was made of had a feeling of being alive, as if every small part of it had its own consciousness.

Asura: 'Are these Spirits? The most fundamental particles of energy that have a life of their own? Interesting...'

The dragon wasn't fully green but majority of its colors were green. The other parts were black, silver and white, which made the appearance of this dragon even more mystical and beautiful. A crystal scale on the dragon's forehead was full of green radiance and it moved around, resembling some kind of green-colored liquid. That was the place where all the energy of this Soul Spirit was located.

Asura tried summoning this dragon to the outside world, but as soon as the dragon appeared outside, it merged with his body and caused a group of green vein-like patterns to start spreading on his skin. What Asura's new ability showed him was a circular silvery green dragon mark on his back. Another interesting thing he noticed is that the seeds under the scorched layer of ground started rapidly germinating and growing, and by the time he retracted this Soul Spirit, a few of the seeds already penetrated the ground, showing themselves to the outside world.

He noticed that whenever he used the newfound ability to perceive the world around himself in extremely detailed and unique way, the green crystal inside his head would release a powerful energy that drilled out the outside world.

Asura: 'This strange ability to see the world in higher dimension should be the ability of the green dragon, if I'm not wrong. I wonder what the abilities of other Soul Spirits are...'

Next, he tried out his second Soul Spirit, its crystal core situated in his heart. This one was also a dragon but the base of its body was white while scales and eyes had different gradients consisting of multitude of different colors. When he merged with this Soul Spirit, he felt different energies around himself rapidly become 'kind' to him, as if they were his closest kin. He felt happiness coming from them as if they were alive. It was a magnificent feeling.

He could control any of those energy particles at will and it wasn't as tiring as he expected it to be. However, when he tried compressing different energies together, that's where he felt strained. He could compress them only three times before reaching his current limit because those energies don't fuse into one. Although they 'like' him, they don't like each other so it wasn't unexpected they won't fuse without sufficient energy. He felt that this wasn't his absolute limit, but it was hard to compress them any further in the outside world. The three cores in his body would automatically compress the energy, but although it seemed a God's blessing, the reality was very different.