For the first time since I've met Nova, I finally had a free day. Unfortunately, I wasn't going to use it to relax. Today, I was going to finally train with twilight.

Since the training grounds were still closed, I decided to do it on the same spot I did my demonstration to Nova yesterday. I was wearing my war set 'although I call it war set, it is more like my combat gear' and was seated crossed legged on the ground.

First of all, I was debating the pros and cons of the energy: The main reason for why I wanted to use this energy is because it looks cool. The second reason is because of its immense versatility, power, toughness and lasting existence. The third reason, it will simplify my combat style and I won't have to deal with element disadvantage, of course, that also means I would no longer have element advantage 'but that is okay with me'. The fourth reason, which is no less important than the rest, is that perhaps I will not glow as much as my normal combat style 'hopefully'.

The biggest con I could think of at the moment is that I will no longer use any other element.

I made three [Nodes] of twilight and started at the basic of the basics, the body. I spread the energy only in my hand, then I started merging it while paying close attention to the sensation of my hand. I kept merging until I hit a limit, not my limit though, it was the energy merging limit.

I observed my hand closely but it did not seem to be any different, if not a bit bright. I flexed it and noticed a slight difference, weight or perhaps mass. Twilight energy seemed to have mass which added to my overall weight, which is great from the perspective of power, not so great from the viewpoint of speed. Since the twilight energy was only focused on my hand, I was able to use my inventory and take out a dagger from it 'another con'.

It took a moment to prepare my heart 'self-inflicting injury is not okay for me' before I lightly stabbed my finger with the dagger which showed promising results as I could feel the blade but I did not feel any pain and no blood was drawn. Proving that this energy does make my body tougher and that this endeavor was not a waste of time. I continue to apply more strength until:

"Ouch." I finally drew blood. The injury wasn't that big, it was akin to paper cut 'By thinking like that, it brings even more pain'. I put my finger inside my mouth and sucked it for a moment. I looked at the blade of my dagger and noticed it became a bit blunter 'I should probably go to a blacksmith'.

I put the dagger back in the inventory. I spread the twilight energy throughout my entire body and checked how I felt 'nothing feels weird'. I got up and started to move my body. Quick punches followed by a hurricane kick. My verdict, it was okay. The increased weight made my attacks deadlier but as I feared, the speed at which I did it was decreased.

'What about my soul and life energy?' I tried to move them, but I was unable to move them that much. Which was bad news and good news at the same time. Because I already expected it, I already thought of a solution 'although it is more of a settlement'.

There is one buff spell created for the sake of buff the entire body by only feeding a single organ, the heart. The life energy will seep into the blood making it more powerful which will indirectly increase the body's performance. The spell kind of came to mind one day when I was thinking of my problem, however, although I remember the spell itself, its name completely escaped me, so I'll just call it [Blood empowerment]. The only problem with this spell is that its effectiveness is subpar to the usual buffs 'was it 20% or 30%?', but I'm not complaining because beggars can't be choosers.

I created a pathway to my heart 'and this is probably my limit' for the life energy and I felt my heartbeat getting stronger with a *Boom* which scared me a bit but I felt no danger from it thus I kept increasing the flow until I felt my limit.

This is how game masters use their spells, we play with limits. Any more and we would self-destruct.

I repeated the moves I did before and was pleasantly surprised by the increase of my body's performance. 'Oh wait. Because I am twilight buffed, my limits should have stretched thus the spell is more effective.'

Next on the list is a basic ball type of spell. I ordered the energy filling my body to make a ball in front of me and an odd thing happened. My body got dragged forward which caused me to immediately stop.

An idea crossed my mind: 'the twilight became one with my body'. Thus, I tried to make the energy in my body go up and the result was levitation. Happy with the unexpected result, I slowly started controlling my movement and because of how easy it was to do it, it did not take much time until I started flying everywhere. I went left, then right. Close to the ground then up before letting my control over it go, making me free fall to the ground, however, just before I hit it, I regained control over it and stopped just a couple centimeters before the ground.

'That was fun~. Much more enjoyable than flying with that bodysuit.'

I regained my focus over my objective for today, although I still kept floating mid-air. The speed from the levitation was not that good, however, its range of flight was incredible so it was something to keep in mind. Although that put me in a weird position of my body becoming heavier and be able to float at the same time… Not complaining, though.

I decided to stop thinking this energy is like the others, since all it showed up until the present told me a different story.

If the energy combined with my body could not be used, then I would have to find another way. But first, I needed to prove that that was the case.

I tried once more to lightly order the energy in my body to move, but the result was the same. Then, I tried to disconnect a part of it, which worked, however, it left a hole in my [Twilight body] 'I decided to call it that' that took too much time for my taste to recover. After that, I ignored [Twilight body] and just made the energy come from my [Nodes] and was able to finally obtain a [Twilight ball] without any losses.

I shot the [Twilight ball] and it flew at the same speed as my levitation which was not a good for a projectile. I recalled it back and thought about it for a moment. I decided to do a very careful explosion to give on its end. I made an outer layer that would explode and inner layer of hard twilight and then *bang* 'although the noise was more akin to an energy type of gun from sci-fi'. The [Twilight ball] flew at a speed that left no room for complaining 'maybe for being too fast' and was no longer in my sight.

'Wait. Isn't twilight long-lasting? Doesn't that mean that the [Twilight ball] will continue to fly in that direction until either its momentum dies or it just disappears…'

I left that to the workings of fate and kept doing my experiments. But before keeping the twilight experiments, I was reminded of an important detail and that was the inscriptions of my equipment.

I connected with a little difficulty a pathway of soul energy to one of the half inscriptions of my chest piece. There was no real effect to it, this was only a test to see if I could connect to the inscriptions.

'I need to remember later that I need to change these inscriptions to something else.'

Next, I tried to make a movement spell. I got on the ground, then I carefully, really carefully, as cautious as I could be, made a layer of twilight at my feet and before activating it, I prepared my heart. 3 minutes later, I commanded the energy to explode, I heard the sci-fi noise then I went from 0 to 100 in a moment 'or at least that is what it felt like', I lost my equilibrium and went head first into the earth.

Good news, it did not hurt my body, much. Bad news, my mind just got a really strong psychological hit.

I unburied myself and just laid on my back and watched the clouds as I thought of meaningless things such as 'Ah, the good old days of spell testing. How I've missed you…'.

My mind recovered enough that I could keep going with the testing. I got up an noticed the dirt falling of my body 'I will definitely take a bath after this'. For now, I just swatted away as much dirt as I could with my hands.

After that, I tried once more, but this time, I knew what to do and I wasn't going to panic. As soon as the spell activated, I actively used the levitating effect of the [Twilight body] to keep my body steady and to control my speed. Once I stopped, I released a sigh of relief. The movement spell [Twilight step] was good to go.

But before moving on, I trained a bit with it. Not long after, one step became two, then three and finally I was able to use the consecutively without any worries. Furthermore, by levitation, I was able to change my trajectory within limitations. With that, I could move on to something else.

Next on the list was the domain spell. I spread twilight all over the area and checked the results which were much less than [Soul domain] I normally use thus allowing me to increase the radius of the spell. The spell itself was mostly transparent since the twilight was spread thin, but sometimes there would be a spark of light where the twilight became denser, before scattering again.

'What was next on the list? I got pulses. I got movement. I got defense. Maybe I should change the inscriptions of my equipment into a simple [Soul shield]. I got buffs. I should be careful with [Blood empowering] when I don't have [Twilight body] on since the limit won't be the same. Ranged attack with [Twilight ball] but I increase my armory later. Now, I should find close-quarters attacks and a basic combat style should be done.'

I knew that at its maximum density, the twilight would not change shape. That meant that I had to either find a form that would suit all my needs or find a way to change its shape in middle combat without getting in my way, something I had no faith on. Thus, I just decided to cover my arms in twilight in its maximum density, then I decreased the density around the parts such as the knuckles, wrists, elbows and shoulders to allow movement. After 10 or so minutes, I reached a satisfying ratio of movement and stiffness. I did some stretches with my arms just in case and checked that there were no obstructions.

The first time is always difficult, but after knowing what to do, it becomes second nature to repeat the same process 'like the spell gets registered in my brain or something'. Thus, I did not have to worry about forgetting something 'That is if I use the spell frequently. I don't remember the ones that I used just once or twice'.

I put a layer of twilight in front of my fist, then I punched and ordered it to explode. The explosion satisfied my destructive tendencies. Not that strong but it should suffice. 'Maybe I can also use the levitation effect to mitigate the explosion strength'.

With this, the foundation of my combat style was done. Now, I needed to think things to add to it and the way to do it is by knowing what twilight energy is. I sat crossed legged in the air and made a [Twilight ball] which I observed attentively as I twisted it and changed its shape constantly.

'I gave it the name twilight because it suits it well. Twilight is an event that happens before dawn and dusk. When day and night, light and dark are balanced. In the case of twilight energy, it is when soul and life are even. Then, what is twilight energy…? Something that exists in the border between soul and life…? That sounds cool, but soul and life energies do not have real rules to them because they are so mysterious, so that does not help me… Although, now I understand where its explosives tendencies came from. Simply put, by destabilizing twilight energy, the energy will return to its origins, meaning life and soul energies, and because it is concentrated energy, the explosion occurs.

Between life and soul… Does that mean that I can create summons…? That would be nice.'

With the [Twilight ball] as its core, I formed an upper body 'No use bothering with a lower body, since it can just float'. My creation ended up looking like a ghost armor with all the wisps of twilight flowing through the cracks. Not that it is a minus of me, on the contrary, it is a huge plus.

"Can you understand me?" I tried to communicate with it. All I received in return was a blank stare 'or I assume it is one. It doesn't have any eyes to stare'.

"Hmm… Can you nod?" no answer "Nod is when you shake your head up and down. Like this." I did a demonstration "Up and down means yes. Left and right means no. Ok?" no answer

I sighed "I'm going to repeat the same question. Can you understand me?" no answer "Yes or no." it nodded… not.

'Perhaps it only listens to simple commands such as' "Attack?" I ordered it uncertainly which brought no result "I mean, technically it is just energy shaped as a knight. If doing that could create a minion, we would have all kinds of elemental minions around." I grumbled "Let's move on, then."

Although I said that, I did all that I could think of for the moment. If I was in the training grounds, at this point I would start attacking the targets and rectify my combat style step by step but since they're closed, thus I was in a dilemma. That was until I glanced at the knight.

"Oh! It seems that there will be a use for you after all."

Yet, I believed that just one wasn't enough. Therefore, I started creating [Twilight balls] to use as cores for more knights and while doing it, I noticed something. The creation of one [Twilight ball] had, on average, the duration of 3 to 4 seconds which was a bit of a problem for me. It wasn't a dealbreaker, however it would mean that I wouldn't be able to use too many ranged attacks. This wouldn't be a problem if I had a team to make up for my weaknesses, but since I did not, I needed to cover all my bases to not leave a single opening that could be exploited by foes.

I understood this principle pretty early on: Hominum were not born to fight, that is the reason for why parties come to existence. So that they can compensate for each other weaknesses and achieve the best results with the lowest losses or none at all.

There were few attempts at bringing people to my side, to create a party with individuals that I could trust, and all of them ended without fail in disappointment. It was understandable though, taking my side would mean to be against the rest of the world. Who would be crazy enough to take such position? I could not even rely on fellow Devs since we oversaw different continents and could not easily just leave them for another. Therefore, in the end it was me, alone, against the world.

Although it was all fun and games, being at the end of the everyone's hostility was and still is tough. What kept me from crumbling under the weight of my title was mostly pride and spite. I was not willing to just present my neck at my foes. Instead, I wanted to show a glorious middle finger at the company and any other person with similar intentions while standing on top of the corpses of my challengers.

Unfortunately, I ended up playing to Creo's plans and the players got a long-term boss to defeat… I still got my middle finger moment though. Although I was filmed which was made into a meme and teased for it for a year. In conclusion, everyone got what they wanted… Maybe…?

Of course, I would not receive answers to my questions and pondering on them now would be just a waste of time. Therefore, I just stopped and decided to focus on the topic at hand which was my training. But I knew that these questions could not be postponed forever which would probably result in a permanent change of me and I could only hope that it would be for the better.

"Anyways." I noted that while I was in deep contemplation, I had created a huge amount of target knights, so it was time to begin. First of all, I made them spread out. Afterwards, I created a [Twilight ball] which was aimed at one knight 'Oops, I almost did a mistake'.

I was about to shoot the [Twilight ball], but I noticed that the knights are floating. Therefore, if I were to strike the knights, they would be knocked back with the force. Thus, I made the knights closer to the ground manifest stakes that would anchor them to the earth. I left the ones in the air alone as I would also try air combat. 'Could I use these knights during battle? Sure, I would have to control every movement but- No, that would just be a repeat of my old Hydra combat style, therefore, it would have the same problems'

With things finally ready, I shot the [Twilight ball] right into the target's chest. The force of the hit, even though I believed it was secure enough to the ground, made the knight tilt a few dozen degrees. I was pretty satisfied with it until I saw the [Twilight ball] still embedded in the chest which caused me to frown.

It seemed that long-lasting energy was double edged in a sense which would mean that creating weapons out of twilight was a no go, because, although they're time limited, once they leave my hands the enemies could put theirs on. 'Furthermore-'

I created another [Twilight ball] and shot it precisely at the same spot as the last one and as expected, although it hit the target, the previous [Twilight ball] deflected it while absorbing some of its force which caused the first one to bury itself even more into the chest. 'Figured.'

I did not know how tough dense twilight is compared to normal armor, but if [Twilight balls] have a tendency to get stuck on my opponents, then they could inadvertently increase their defense. Although the chances of that happening are low, I prefer reducing them to zero. Therefore, there are two things I could do: Either change the shape of the projectile for more penetration or just get rid of it once its job is done.

I chose to execute the latter first, thus I commanded the twilight ball that was still embedded in the knight to explode and I witnessed a show that wouldn't definitely be pretty if the body was made of flesh and bones. However, just before the spectacle, I counted how much time it would take before the explosion actually occurred after I destabilized the twilight energy and it was right about half a second.

Following this discovery, I needed to immediately check how long it would take to complete a proper [Explosive twilight punch] because before, I was just creating the spell and was taking my time with it therefore I did not pay too much attention to casting speed. Thus, I went through the process of the technique and received quite unpleasant results. The gathering of the necessary energy in front of my knuckles while maintaining its structure was about three quarters of a second. Adding the time for detonation puts the duration of the casting at around one and a quarter of a second which was too much for being my basic attack.

A basic attack is, other words, the most used attack which is one of the pieces for the foundation of a combat style. For example, people who want to use a rapier or another type, they would be using thrusting attacks most of the time, therefore they would most likely choose a type of energy that would provide them with more penetration in their attacks. On the opposite side, for hammers or other blunt type of weapons would use one that increases the strength of their blows.

My weapon is my body. It is not unprecedented for somebody to use no weapons at all, but those people have at least basic knowledge of martials arts or created their own. However, me, I'm dumb. All that I know about martial arts is the part where my fists need to connect with my opponent 'I still practice sometimes to integrate some moves onto my subconscious. Well, I did '. The body for me is but a catalyst for my near inexhaustible energy and if my basic attack takes too long to execute, that would mean that during its cooldown, I wouldn't be able to do anything leaving an opening which could be exploited.

In other words: "This energy is a bust, huh." I sighed wearily

I am not trying to insinuate that twilight is not great. On the contrary, it is a powerful energy that could outshine other energies in the hands of a competent person who can understand the battle flow and be two steps ahead of their opponent and I am not that person 'Hell, I can barely think one step ahead'.

In all honesty, I should've already stopped once I noticed the casting time for [Twilight ball] but I believed that I could've salvaged it but, in the end, it is just not for me. I would very much prefer that my basic attack stays at point five seconds of casting time or lower.

Still disappointing though because if it worked it would be an upgrade of my strength. My current fighting style has one giant flaw which its signature, the ability to change elements at a moment's notice, and the reason for that is attunement.

A person can raise the attunement of all elements up to a point. After that they need to specialize to increase the attunement of an element even higher. Then there is Infusion which unlocks higher level of attunement and by increasing attunement one will be able to have better control, efficiency and power over said element.

Although it sounds boring when stated like that, it is actually very important. For example, with air becoming easier to control, sound becomes manipulatable. With water, the speed of freezing and liquefying is less than second making quick everchanging ice constructs possible. Fiery explosions or flames that cling to the opponents with the fire element. Earth moves more according to the wielders will converting the dream of creating small mountains or gaping holes in the ground into reality. There are other benefits that come with higher attunement. 'The other elements also have their benefits as the attunement level goes up but I don't remember them as I am more focused on the four basic ones.'

To put it briefly, the switching elements ability prevents me from using more complicated spells, thus, my combat style remains predictable, allowing my enemies to remember my moves and put together optimal strategies against me. This is but one weakness among many, therefore, I wished to change it to something better.

I dissipated all my constructs of twilight energy, meaning the target knights and the armor covering my arms. The actual is still there in the air but it will also disappear later so I did not bother with it. Afterwards, I destroyed the pathway and cancelled all the spells giving me a euphoria as the stress was released.

"This was a bit of a waste of time. Now what I should do?" I grumbled but I had already made up my mind "Take a bath, wash my clothes and laze around for the rest of the day? That sounds like a good plan as any."

Tomorrow, I needed to meet Yukiria for the robot. 'Let's hope that she has better news.'