Chapter 464: Unexpected
“Umm…” Alanah rubbed her chin in thought. “I’m not sure,” she finally said, after thinking for a few moments. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Void Beast so… passive. They are usually either very angrily rushing toward whoever is closest, or very angrily running away because of their instincts telling them to flee.” The woman walked up to the beast, then, with her pointer finger, poked it on the back of its head, which was hanging toward the ground. Still, the beast made no attempt to move at all or any other reaction to Alanah. “That was… unexpected.”
“You’re telling me,” Derek replied with a frown. With the beast being one of the stronger ones, but still not quite there in the intelligence or sentience department, Derek thought of an idea—especially since it seemed the beast was completely checked out. “Do you mind if I keep this one?” he asked Alanah, since it was her idea to gather a few of the beasts. He had originally planned on waiting for when he and Avery went hunting to do what he was thinking, but since the beast was right there…
“Go ahead,” Alanah said, poking the beast once again, this time with more of a shove. The beast made to fall, but somehow righted itself before it did so. “So… it still has some reflexes and instincts…” Alanah muttered, then took her eyes off the beast and moved them back to Derek. With a shrug, she said, “You summoned it. You… well… you disabled it. So, it’s yours,” she explained.
Derek took a small step toward her and the beast that she was standing beside. He cracked his knuckles and prepared to use a skill.
“Wait one moment,” Alanah muttered, stopping Derek before he could go any further. “Can you do anything else with the beast? Can you control it?”
“I can’t,” Derek said with a shake of his head. “But not for the lack of trying. I thought, and still think, that at some point, I will be able to do something with them. I don’t know if it will be full control like you are able to do with your Deathsworn. I can feel… something in the back of my mind when I focus my aura on the beast, but I just can’t quite do anything with it… other than, apparently… disable the beast completely. But I’m not sure if that is part of the feeling or just because of how strong my aura has gotten. I also wonder if I’ll be able to do the same with even stronger ones, or if this beast is my current limit.”
“Well, with the way the beast reacted, I think there is a good chance that you will be able to do much more, and to much stronger beasts,” Alanah replied. “Even if it is only a reaction to your current aura, I think there is still quite the gap between most Void Beasts and the current you… Now, what exactly are you planning to do right now, anyway?”
“Oh, well… you see,” Derek began speaking, but also reached out and activated his Time Prison skill at the same time, ripping the space open, then opening the door leading to the lobby as he did. “As you know, it seems that no matter what I do, unless I cover something or someone in a sort of void casing, they are pretty much destroyed when going inside the tunnel I create to travel with—at least when it comes to organic things. The same is true for when I put things inside my Time Prison and try to travel with them. I have yet to think of a way to keep them preserved inside the prison while I travel on the outside… at least for the most part.”
“I see,” Alanah said as she listened to Derek. “So then…”