I smirked at him.
"Just used my powers. Try one more time."
Despite having recently increased my attributes, my willpower (WIL) wasn’t high. It required a different type of monster crystal to increase it, or I just had to use my powers and learn how to control them.
That’s why I was in the academy in the first place. Now that I knew I could actually store his attack and keep it inside my pocket dimension, I wanted to see how many attacks I could store.
It was important to know these things for when I was actually fighting someone for real.
Tom did what I said, sending one more wind blade toward me. I controlled my dimensional cube with my mind, placing it in front of me, and using the suction force one more time to stop his attack.
The attack got sucked into my pocket dimension, vanishing instantly. I instantly felt the difference of having two attacks inside instead of just one. A light headache hit me. I put my right hand to my head. Tom noticed.
"Are you alright?" he asked, walking over to me. "Don’t overuse your powers. I bet something as powerful as this costs a lot of brain power."
It fucking did. But I had to know how many attacks I could store.
"One more time," I said. "I think I can block one more."
"Are you sure? I don’t think that’s a good idea."
Tom didn’t like the idea of attacking me again. He was afraid of hurting me. If that happened, even though we were inside a training room, it could cost him points in the academy. They didn’t want students getting badly hurt like that.
Also, we’d just met, so I couldn’t say we had an actual friendship, but the guy was cool.
"I need to know the limits of my powers. This is important," I said. "It’s better to figure it out here with you than in a life and death battle."
"You’ve got a point, but if you realize you can’t block my attack, just move to the side, please."
"Sure."
I was confident I could absorb one more attack, but it was just a guess. In the end, the only way to be sure was by getting hit and finding out.
So I waited for Tom’s attack. One more wind blade came flying toward me. I was already getting used to its speed and trajectory, so it was easy enough to place my cube in front of it and absorb the attack. It vanished, like the other two.
However, with three attacks inside my pocket dimension, the toll on my mind was really high. The headache was painful, making it hard for me to even think.
I frowned, placing both hands on my head.
"My head hurts like hell. I think three attacks is the limit."
The number wasn’t that high yet. I wished it was more than just three. But Tom was quite impressed by it. Shocked, even.
"You can block three attacks without taking any damage, that’s insane. If you dodge a few and add this on top, you’re quite the tank, man."
Tom hadn’t even seen the best part of absorbing his attacks yet. I smirked, pointing at the training room’s wall. "Hit that button to get a training dummy for us."
He had no idea why I wanted that, I was sure of it. But Tom did what I asked. The training room was advanced, with technology that wasn’t found anywhere else.
With a control panel, we could change everything inside, even the scenario around us. I didn’t try any of those buttons. The only one Tom pressed was the one for the training dummies.
When he pressed it, a few training dummies appeared on the other side of the room, standing still.
"What are you up to now? Don’t overdo it, bro," Tom said.
Tom thought the headache I had was from absorbing his attacks. That wasn’t the reason. The real reason was that I still had those attacks stored inside my pocket dimension.
If I wanted the headache to go away, all I had to do was use the attacks myself, and that’s what I did.
"Watch carefully," I said.
This was my first time trying that, but it was easier than I thought. I just thought about releasing the attacks, and it happened.
One wind blade came out of my cube with the exact power it had when Tom used it against me. It flew toward the training dummy, hitting it and cutting the poor thing in half.
When I looked over, I saw Tom with his mouth wide open.
"No fucking way! You can block AND use the power? Isn’t that too strong?"
He was right, it was strong. Right now I could only store three attacks, and having them inside gave me a constant headache, but what about the future? How many attacks could I keep inside my pocket dimension, ready to use against my opponents?
Anyway, I released the other two wind blades, cutting down two more dummies. Tom was still in complete awe watching me.
"Incredible. This is really powerful. Are you the support type?" he asked.
Hunters were usually sorted into categories based on their type of ability. One could say my ability was a support type, sure, but I didn’t agree with that. It was much more than that.
"Maybe. Yes."
"We should form a team once we start doing missions for the academy."
I liked the idea.
Tom practiced for a while with the training dummies. I just watched, since absorbing three attacks had left me pretty tired.
We left the training rooms by nighttime and headed straight to the canteen. Lots of students were there. It always served fresh food, so anyone could go in and eat any time of day. Students with free time were always there.
I even spotted that blonde guy who’d been rude to me. Still had no clue what his name was. After eating, we headed back to our dorm. I needed to rest up for classes tomorrow.
The academy had texted me my room number. It was on the third floor, room 384. When I opened the door, I spotted a guy on his way out.
"Vince?" he said, extending his hand. "I’m your roommate."
I already knew I had a roommate, everyone did. The rooms were doubles. And I already knew his name too, since they’d texted it to me, just like they did with him.
"Ethan?"
"Yep, that’s me. We can talk later, I’m heading to the canteen to grab a bite. Wanna come?"
"Just came from there."
"Oh, I see. See ya."
Ethan left. I had no idea what to expect from him, but at least he didn’t sound rude during our first encounter.
I used the bathroom before sitting down on my bed. Then something happened inside my pocket dimension.
It was my slime. I went into the pocket dimension to check on him, since taking him out wasn’t a good idea.
The slime was... different. Its color had changed to red, and its mouth was massive, teeth and all. It looked like a fucking shark or something.
I knew what it wanted. It wanted to eat.
Where the hell was I supposed to get monster crystals while stuck in the academy? New students didn’t get missions...