Energy stone metamorphosis

Ajay decided he had to find the other guys. No matter how much they joked about their adventures, they were not involved in this kind of unforeseen circumstances. So he had to use the help he could get.

"System Status," he called in his mind.

["Online."]

Dhvani immediately responded.

"I need some clothes corresponding to the era of this place. Can you do that?" He asked her very seriously. Having never the urgency in his voice like this, Dhvani answered him in the affirmative.

["Yes, I need to see them once and then I can give you the copies."]

Ajay then slowly moved towards the place where he could see the smoke was coming from. He understood that this was an establishment of some kind of forest dwellers. So when he saw people wearing crude cotton cloth, he knew he wasn't in his era or any developed era at that. Dhvani scanned the place and quickly copied the clothes. She also got some wigs and accessories. Ajay then changed his clothes and went to look for the other guys and this task wasn't very hard. Thinking that they would again go in search of a water source, he found them near the nearest pond arguing.

"You idiot, why would you touch anything? Don't you know not to touch unknown things?" Vihar was still scolding Manav which seemed to amuse Garv.

Because Ajay went to look for local people, he was the last one to arrive.

"How did you become a sage here? I can hardly recognize you?" This was from Akash.

"Why didn't I get long hair when coming here?" pouted Garv.

"Do I have to wear such crude clothes?" piped Hiten scrunching his face and he still remained handsome, unlike his sister who looked like an idiot when she did the same action.

"You should keep your mouths shut. Nothing good happens when you guys are together. Let Ajay speak about what he found?" Vihar managed to admonish them again.

His words gained him eye rolls simultaneously proving that they had performed the same actions innumerable times.

"We are in some kind of backward era. I hope we have not traveled back in time. Nothing good ever comes out of time travel in my opinion. I got clothes for you. You should all change quickly."

"You stole them?" Manav finally spoke after he stood aside as a kindergarten kid caught for doing mistakes.

"Just change, "Vihar ordered, he was not particularly fond of Manav at the moment.

Dhvani being the conscious system closed her channel for the second time after they arrived here. She wanted to see if she could contact Tarsh. She could so she had no problem getting food here. These guys would not able to eat roots and fruits which should be considered a staple food of this era. Spoiled rich boys.

Tarsh was very excited when he knew that she had time-traveled. She forbid him to say anything about this to others. He was good at keeping promises because he had never told Ajay about her. Seeing how much children like to share things they know, this could be considered a gifting transformer toy gift. She could give him a virtual one in her space and add it to the children's mini playground and amusement park. What can she say? He had her wrapped around his fingers. So she ordered more toys. Because of the continuous tasks like gain popularity, rewards were still coming in. They added points to her but not Ajay. He would only get skill points and coins when there is a major development or breakthrough in any task.

After the group assembled again, they talked about the reasons why they arrived here inexplicably.

"Duh, it's simple. It's because Manav had itchy hands," Garv gloated.

Akash gave him the exasperated look that adults often gave children. But that didn't dampen his enthusiasm.

"I think that painting had some of the password-lock combinations. Only power users touching a particular color would be able to pass through. It must be something here that should be important so we had to pass through to find it."

Ajay analyzed his thoughts and put forward his ideas.

The group felt silent for a long time. They looked at each other and Ajay could see the nervous excitement they had. Like they were nervous because they came to a place found nowhere in the world but they were excited about the same fact. He didn't want to tell them that this could very well be dangerous otherwise no sane person would make a channel connecting two worlds hidden by a password mechanism.

The books he read had this kind of scene and the people who passed through were generally used as sacrifices or cannon fodders or they were stuck there forever. Then their family members or some protagonist group would come and uncover the whole secret. He read this in all the system stories he found.

So he thought that they had to be cautious.

"We have to get intel first. So who's going?"Vihar asked.

The question was answered by a tournament of rock, paper, and scissors.

Each member played against others in singles and in groups. And the final winner was no one. They could easily guess the move of the opponent. So the situation was at a standstill.

They then used magic to fight. They formed two groups and against Garv arguing that he and his cousin were a team, they were selected into opposite teams.

Ajay, Akash, and Hiten vs Manav, Vihar, and Garv.

It was like a pokemon battle but without a trainer so Dhvani gave a commentary herself.

First battle- Ajay vs Manav

Ajay was a rookie compared to water magic user Manav. So the battle was hoped to be done pretty fast. But the spectators quickly cheered and made a ring for the battle to start. Vihaar impressively cleared the vegetation and made two concentric lines, the inner one representing a warning and the outer one representing defeat.

Both the players entered the inner circle and stood at the opposite ends of the diameter.

First, they used a fire spell to shoot a flame from their palms to greet each other. It was to check if the player had enough energy to use magic. Now, it was time to fight.

Manav attacked with a water arrow and the blue arrow zipped toward Ajay at a very fast speed. Ajay managed to use his sky magic and tried to squeeze out the water which was a very tedious job. He finally made the arrow disappear as its tail was just before him. As the arrow did not touch him, he was considered to have survived the attack. Now it was his chance to attack. He had many attacking strategies. So he simply created a magic vacuum and sent it to Manav who seemed to understand what was happening. Manav quickly absorbed the water magic and made it bubble around him. He looked like he was trapped in water which was crystal clear as a glass shield. As his magic attack was unleashed, it went forward creating a magic barrier and colorful lights sparkled because of their collision with the spell barrier.

The spell whizzed towards the water bubble and surrounded it in a second. All magic users have quite keen senses so they could find this abnormality. The barrier started gnawing on the bubble little by little till it could break it. The barrier which was like glass finally had cracks in it. Manav was struggling to maintain it.

But he didn't quite lose hope. Manav quickly absorbed water magic from the surroundings again and made the shield stronger. If this was allowed to happen, Ajay could be attacking him for eternity and Manav could sustain the shield as long as he could keep absorbing water magic. And the battle would be in a stalemate.

Therefore, Ajay did what he had to do. He surrounded the sky magic tightly around the water bubble so that no water magic could enter inside from outside the barrier. Manav also noticed this so he turned the defense into offense and made the water bubble have spikes and also shot many water cannons so that the barrier would break. But this barrier was somewhat special.

If Ajay had performed this spell prior to binding the system, his barrier would have broken. But now, he had comprehended the basic laws of elements in the system mall space. So he also added water magic elements to the barrier which solemnly rejected Manav's magic and they collided with a boom.

This barrier collision created a mini shockwave that relayed outwards and was felt by everyone outside the ring.

As Manav's supply of magical elements was cut off, his bubble was naturally unable to withstand the pressure from the barrier and it broke into pieces. The pieces then turned into water droplets and vanished slowly. Ajay stopped the barrier from approaching Manav and he waited for his next move.

Manav yelled, "You win."

Ajay thought that he would use some other kind of spell. Why did he think that something was amiss?

Even Dhvani felt wrong. She noticed the strong start Manav had. He could go on for at least five more moves. The game itself stipulated three moves. So she also waited for an explanation from him.

After removing the spell, Ajay waited for his explanation.

The other guys also came to the periphery of the inner ring.

"I did not expect your 'vacuum move'. I have to study how to break it. And this is not a life and death battle, so I did not have to use my emergency moves. We can play again later."

Magic duels were to be performed with a moderator present and what they just did was a harmless match. So it had no point in harming the opponent. Ajay accepted this explanation very calmly.

"Now that you win, it's time for you to go and gather intel," Akash cheered him.

Ajay felt that all the magic elements made him mess up his mind. Where did he see that winner had to go to do a risky job? Isn't that to be done by the team that lost?

"Don't we have to see what is the outcome of other matches?" He asked back.

"You won Manav who is the strongest among us so you are the winner," Hiten chimed in.

"Why does a winner get to do this and not a loser?"

"It's a rule made by your sister. And we will follow it today." Vihar smirked while answering this.

Cue a facepalm moment.

Ajay felt they were having fun taking revenge on him by substituting Indu, his sister with him.

So they respectfully sent him off to check the surroundings and people while they lazily argued about food.

Dhvani wanted to remind Ajay that she had food but held herself back. They had just cheated Ajay, tested his magic level, checked his fighting way, and then squeezed him to work for them. They lived up to their reputation.

Ajay was still confused by the turn of events and he slowly realized what had happened then. So he also kept in mind to get back at them. He know that they would test him so he wasn't much surprised. But they didn't do anything over the line so it was okay. He wondered if initiations in the official magic groups were also like this.

Dhvani found herself reminiscing about her college days. She had to prank a whole class to officially enter the designers' community. So she changed the time of the class and called them early by five minutes. The lecturers were quite surprised by their punctuality and the class gained a good reputation. Her prank got them a good reputation so her prank was considered more on the good side and she shrugged it off.

Ajay waited for the people to return to the clearing where they lived in the huts. And he waited for something out of the ordinary to happen. He had this intuition that something would gradually tip him off to the abnormality present here.

That's, when he saw the place, shimmering like a computer screen reloading and later the surroundings changed again. He also saw that things aligned themselves perfectly. The stones he had moved aside to watch the scene better rolled towards him and he moved out of the way. They then settled in their position and stayed there. It was like everything had reset to its origin.