Indecision continued to war within John as the 'night' went on. Several times, he managed to convince himself to leave, only to doubt the choice and turn back, heading into adjacent houses to make it look like he was merely searching for supplies. The Aura system must have bought it, because he didn't get any penalties for dithering.

His head told him it was best to stick around them for the Aura. His heart didn't think it could take much more social contact.

If nothing else, he eventually concluded it would be a dick move to leave them undefended while they were exhausted, regardless of the Aura system's thoughts on the matter. He didn't wait in the house, though.

Instead, he patrolled. Sticking around with them until they were awake and aware enough to defend themselves was one thing, but he couldn't afford to be standing around doing nothing in that time. Every moment spent not farming Aura was, strictly speaking, wasted. That didn't mean he was actually going to devote every second of the day to fighting monsters, but he couldn't afford to twiddle his thumbs for hours either.

Moving with caution without looking like he was doing so as he'd become accustomed to, he walked a circuit around the neighbourhood, doing his best to ensure both the Underworld entrance and the house the trio were resting in were still in his range at all times. The monster population around here was far less densely packed than the area they'd escaped from before. Mana Sense and Soul Vision let him pick out blues to bully, and he took the opportunity to try things out.

First, it turned out he could indeed wield two Mana Blades at once with Dual Casting. It made him look like some kind of magical cyborg ninja, and he couldn't help but smirk as he sliced up an ant creature with a furry abdomen that didn't stand a chance against him. With no one there to see it and his 'cool' outfit looking more ragged than it had earlier, he only earned 100 Aura.

Aqua Shot turned out to have more badass factor than he'd expected. All he had to do was point his index finger at a target and cock his thumb back, at which point a marble-sized sphere of water would gather at his fingertip. Bringing his thumb down had the water pellet shoot out at incredible speed—nowhere near a bullet, since he could visually follow its trajectory, but more than enough to inflict fairly serious damage. As was becoming commonplace, the only limitation was his physical capability.

It allowed him to stand there with a hand in his pocket and a disinterested slouch, firing off watery bullets with an affected casual air. He got a pretty decent Aura return for that.

Electric Shock basically just did what the name implied. When he touched something, he felt energy flow through is body to the point of contact, and electricity would surge through his unfortunate victim. It was remarkably effective on the blues he was hunting, frying an unsuspecting mushroom monster in an instant. The limitation there was obvious: physical contact, which was incredibly risky. He hoped it would get better with upgrades. For now, he didn't think it would see much use.

Rock shield was pretty cool. Clenching his fist summoned a thick circle of stone from the ground regardless of the actual environment he was standing in, just so long as he was at ground level. The shield itself's radius was about the length of his forearm, and it attached to his arm without any need for handles or straps as long as his fist was clenched. It looked heavy, but he could wield it as if there was nothing there. In the time he was testing it out, he primarily used it as a bludgeoning weapon, and it was pretty damn effective.

Flash Freeze turned out to be another Spell that required physical contact, and from there it did what the name implied. It was pretty much an instant kill ability against blues, but it did allow him to take inspiration from—read: steal—Arnold's Mr Freeze puns, which yielded enough Aura to more than offset the cost of the Spell. He felt like a total dork the first time he snuck up on a monster and said, "ice to meet you," but he couldn't complain about the results.

Light Burst was basically a flash grenade activated by snapping his fingers. It temporarily blinded anything within ten metres or so, excluding John himself, which was useful, and allowed him even more leeway in how he approached killing off blues. How long it lasted depended on the monster's strength. Blues seemed almost indefinitely deprived of vision, while the one green he tried it on recovered in about ten seconds.

He decided to pick up the Level 0 Spells still available too—Purify Water and Sparks—because why not. Naturally, they weren't any use in combat, but learning that he could stick his finger in a murky puddle and, after a few minutes of watching cleansing light radiate out, turn it into crystal-clear drinkable water was worth his while, he reckoned. Sparks, meanwhile, just sent a stream of sparks from his fingertips, hot enough to light kindling and maybe irritate an enemy, but not much else at the lowest Level.

After that, he turned his attention to the Level 1 Skills still available.

Grappler and Striker performed as expected. In his next encounter with a relatively humanoid blue—an emaciated deer-like thing that walked on two legs—he beat it to death with just his hands and feet. Just as Marksman didn't give him perfect accuracy and Duelist didn't turn him into a one-man army, these two new Skills didn't suddenly make him the deadliest black belt to ever live. Unearned muscle memory and instincts simply kicked in, and he knew how to throw his weight into a punch or kick, how to get his opponents in a submission hold, and that sort of thing. He'd give Luke Farnell a good fight now, but he wasn't going to be matching any master martial artists.

It was also worth nothing that he found hand-to-hand combat deeply unpleasant. The monster was a monster. He felt no moral compunctions about killing it whatsoever, knowing that the blood that had dried onto its rancid muzzle was almost certainly a human's.

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But it felt too close, too personal. Drawing things out like that just seemed to put him in jeopardy for no good reason. He decided to think of it as a last resort thing that would hopefully never come into play—John wasn't counting on his magic always being available to him. If there arose a situation where he encountered, say, a monster with a magic dampening effect, he hoped the Skills he'd been granted wouldn't be affected.

The remaining specialist skills at Level 1 turned out to be a mixed bag.

Suppress Soul was interesting. It imparted on him a zen-like meditative ability, letting him centre himself and slip into a quasi-trance state that left him feeling mildly distant from his own body. Soul Vision revealed that this state significantly muted the vibrancy of his soul. Presumably, this meant anything else out there that possessed an ability akin to his Soul Vision would have a harder time detecting him. Useful in theory, but it was difficult to actually maintain in any kind of high stakes scenario, since it involved pushing away his emotions and detaching himself.

Limit Break and Second Wind proved difficult to actually test out. He gained little knowledge of what they actually did in practice, but knew instinctively that they'd activate when he was attempting to push beyond his physical capabilities. That sounded dangerous, and he didn't want to waste a Level on healing any damage he did to himself. He was sure they'd come in clutch later.

Insight, on the other hand, was just fine. Not great, not terrible. After activating it, his mind went into overdrive, rapidly cataloguing the details of whatever he'd happened to be looking at at that precise moment. At higher levels, he reckoned it would feed him information he couldn't hope to have guessed by himself, but right now it pretty much just allowed him a dilated instant to perform analysis, drawing on his own knowledge, logic, and intelligence.

For example:

This monster is four-legged, and the back legs are muscular while the rest of the body is lithe. That implies it can run fast. Previous experience with something similar to this suggests it may utilise leaping attacks. Bloody claws on the front legs support this supposition. Eyeless head suggests it relies more heavily on other senses, but it's not reacting to sound, and since I'm downwind it's probably not smell either. Something like echolocation seems most likely; monsters with blue souls haven't displayed significant magical abilities so far, beyond their impossible appearances.

So it wasn't incredibly impressive, but there was something to be said for that analysis passing by in the literal blink of an eye. He'd use it, but it wouldn't be a game-changer.

Throughout all this experimentation, he tested out more hostile shit-talking. Aside from his first encounter with one of the giant rat fiends, his banter with the monsters had mostly been quips that seemed right in the situation, channelling some kind of action movie hero vibe. Now, he tried to inject some arrogance into it, looking down on his enemies.

"Worthless trash. You truly think you're worthy of facing me?"

"How dare you look in my direction?!"

"I shouldn't even be wasting my effort on lowly scum like you. Take your own life and spare me the effort."

And so on.

It felt absurd, but it got a decent enough return. He didn't think it was substantially different to the 'uncaring quips' strategy, though. They were about equal. He suspected the system judged that remaining calm enough to insult and demean the monsters in the first place was the cool part of all this, not the contents of the words themselves. That was probably a good thing. He knew he wasn't very good at the whole banter thing, anyway. Most of the shit he'd been saying had been incredibly lame.

His patrol went on for hours, and eventually he was more invested in testing out the Aura system than he was his newly purchased powers. It was difficult to gain deep insights. The system was frustratingly mercurial. He could perform the exact same kill on two different monsters, and receive wildly different Aura rewards for it.

There were some useful discoveries, though.

For example, he proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that his appearance added a modifier to his Aura gain. Taking off the leather jacket—the piece of clothing that was both the coolest part of his outfit and by far in the best condition after the Underworld fiasco—and stowing it nearby while he killed a monster halved the rewards he received. The same was true for his sunglasses, but only when bantering; their presence didn't affect the Aura he accumulated for kills.

He also became convinced he was hitting diminishing returns for killing low-level monsters. It was extremely rare that a blue kill yielded more than 400 Aura, no matter how flashily he did it or what witty remark he managed to cook up.

Greens, on the few occasions he risked it, were a lot better, but obviously they were far more difficult to kill, even if they looked exactly the same as a weaker specimen. A green rat monster that only looked to stand a head taller than its blue counterpart turned out to be far faster, stronger, and smarter. It moved like it trained in some kind of rat martial art, and he could've sworn it its eyes glowed every few seconds, implying it was utilising a Spell in some capacity.

He managed to overpower it with his repertoire of Spells and Skills, but not before taking a few bruises, both to his body and ego. 800 Aura for killing it without any banter bonuses was undeniable, though.

Confirming definitively that the system would neither reward nor punish anything that happened within the cover of the darkness of his Shadow Stream was perhaps the most significant. He could rant and rave, talk in a 'soy' voice, pick his nose, and just about any other lame thing he could think of with no repercussions, while repeating cool one-liners he remembered from movies with the deepest voice he could muster yielded no bounty. He didn't know how he'd exploit that, yet, but he reckoned he could use it somehow.

In the end, he finished up with more Aura than when he'd started, 5200, and with several more Spells and Skills in his locker. However, he couldn't help wondering if he could've gotten a lot more out of the early morning's work if the others had been there to see.

To his eternal horror, he accepted the fact he was going to have to put that to the test, too.

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