The Spirit Eyes!

Is this Kairi's doing? No, she is still in her cocoon. Hm? How do I know that? She didn't contact me after the forest fire. Now that I thought of her, I can feel a connection with her.

What's happening? First, I need to calm down. Take a deep breath and calmly think. Something changed, is it around me? No, it is in me. My eyes... Did they evolve? Everything around me became more clear. I can feel great power in them.

I don't know more about the eyes so I focused on the runes. They are the same runes that appeared on my arm when I made a contract with Kairi. So what about this power? It is similar to the dense mana Kairi had. Mana of the spirit. But what does this mean? Also, I can feel a connection with her.

"Oscar, are you alright? Your eyes look strange."

"Are you the one who's telling me that?"

There is a faint red light around him. Is this his affinity? Fire. I can see his aura now. Then the faint light I saw around my left arm. It must be water. Then why the hell my right arm is glowing pale grey. Is this, lightning? I guess.

Lydia saw my eyes glowing golden before. Right after the forest fire. So this is because of my contract with Kairi. I wonder what kind of power it gave me. I get up and walked the lake.

"What are you doing?"

"My eyes, they evolved. I'm going to test them."

"They evolved? Cool!"

I could see my reflection on the surface of the water. My eyes are glowing golden, just like the runes on my arm. Unlike mana eyes, I have no pupil this time. Except for sclera everything else is glowing golden. The longer I looked at the water more ripples appeared on it. Huh?

I tried to control it. And it moved. It has no mana but I can control it. Am I a water bender? No... Is this the power of these eyes? Manipulating the water without the need for mana. This is good. No, this is amazing.

*Ba-dump*

What? I felt... What did I felt?

*Ba-dump*Ba-dump*

This is my heartbeat. But... something is wrong. What is this bad feeling? Ugh! My eyes, they are burning! I fell on my knees. closed my eyes and focus on my heartbeat.

*Ba-dump*BA-DUMP*BA-DUMP*

This is not my heartbeat. It is so close but not it. Then whose heartbeat I am hearing? And it gets louder too. Not getting quicker but louder. Is this the doing of my eyes? But why? Kairi... This is her heartbeat. The connection is getting stronger. I did use water manipulation without mana. Then it triggered the connection? Wait, why would this trigger it?

*BA-DUMP*BA-DUMP*

Unless this is something at the level of spirits. Manipulating an element, without mana. Only with will and intent alone. And my eyes gave this power to me. Spirit Eyes! Well, maybe I should worry about what to do now.

"Hey, what are you doing? For some time you are just staring at the water."

"I can control water. Without mana."

"Oh! That's... Is that a good thing? I mean you said to me before that water without mana couldn't stop the fire with mana."

"You are right about that. I can figure it out later."

I tried to deactivate the spirit eyes. I had to focus for a few seconds. Seems like it is hard to activate and deactivate it. The moment I deactivate it I felt most of my mana deplete. So, it consumes a lot of mana. Everything we do consumes mana. If spirits start to appear we can't do much at this rate.

"We need more mana, Jason."

"Yeah. We need more of it. But we can't drink liquid mana nonstop. I can't even drink more than one liter a day. I felt like I was gonna explode if I drink more."

"That is a problem. Another problem is the side effects. Right now there isn't any. But we can't know the future."

A lot of questions and uncertain things but so little time to solve them. I... need to get stronger. Maybe, if I get strong enough and somehow help the guardian spirit the stop the collapsing of the spirit realm... There is no other way to go through with this. At least I can't see any.

I need to figure out a way to get strong fast. The speed liquid mana helps is decreasing for me. Wait a minute. I had a mana stone which I couldn't do experiments on. And the church. There might be more secrets there.

*Ba-dump*

What? I deactivated them. Are the effects still lingering? Hmm? This heartbeat isn't Kairi's. Neither mine.

*Ba-dump*Ba-dump*

It is getting closer. No way!! This is a spirit! And it's close by.

"Jason! There is a spirit close by! This is bad!"

"What!? You said we still had time!"

"I know. This is why it is so bad!"

We get up and looked around us. There was nothing out of ordinary. Where is it? I can feel the lingering effects of spirit eyes are fading. While I was looking for the spirit Jason pushed me away. Before I could say anything the place I was a moment ago was struck by some kind of spear made out of rock.

From the direction the spear came, I saw the spirit. It was a turtle that was 2 meters tall. It had brown color and a shell made out of rock. Its amber eyes shined with hostility directed to us. It opened its mouth and two rock spears appeared midair next to it.

*Grauw*

With a strange roar, it sends the spears to us. I was barely able to dodge them. But it didn't leave me a breathing room and keep sending the spears. I gathered a lot of mana on my right hand and send a lightning bolt to its eyes. Against my powerful bolt of lightning, it just closed its eyes.

*Wzzzz-boom*

The lightning bolt exploded with force when it hit the turtle on the face. But that thing was left unscathed from it. Right after that lightning bolt appeared on its face again and exploded one more time. So this is the power of Jason's eyes. It can somehow ignite the mana traces. It's awesome but it didn't damage the turtle.

"Hey, Oscar."

"Yes?"

"If we give it some pizza, would it leave us?"

"It's not a ninja, you know."

At that moment something strange happened. The ground beneath the turtle glowed crimson and melted. When the turtle fell into the melted ground it let a loud cry.

*Graaauuuvvvvvvv*

From the woods, a cat appeared and it landed on the crying turtle. Cat put its paw on the head of the turtle and from the paw of the cat came out a condensed flame pillar and it pierces through the head. Turtle died with a hole in his head.

"..."x2