Ander was led to a closed-off room filled with various diagrams and tools he'd never seen. Some of which had no apparent use. Among the instruments he saw, the one Cecil grabbed was a glass ball that held a single blue speck.

"What can you do with lightning?" Cecil asked.

"I can blast things, sometimes cook them. Why?"

"Do you know what plasma is?"

"The stuff in blood?"

"No. The fourth state of matter."

"What's a state of matter?" Ander asked seriously.

After an hour-long explanation involving the water cycle and other things, Ander stopped him while holding his head. "What does that have to do with me?"

"Fine. Lightning is plasma. Through various methods, we can artificially increase your power with the use of implants and runic tattoos."

"I want to get stronger with my own power. Can you help with that?"

"I know I can if you put in the practice to master your craft. Hit that wall right there with everything you've got."

Ander drew his spear and spun it, building up a charge before thrusting it forward. The stream of lighting that came out spread throughout the room and left a small burn mark where it landed.

"Were you holding back?" Cecil asked as he seemed unimpressed.

"The longer I spin the more I can build up but that's what I can normally produce in a fight."

"Is that your secret weapon? Because given what I've heard the prince of destruction can do with a set of amplification gear. This is nothing in comparison."

"What gives you the right to lecture me about lightning?" Ander seemed irritated.

"Lightning is one of the things that Krion can't immediately heal from. Getting hit by it slows his regeneration and addles his brain. The strike that ended your fight last time should have beaten him. Quite easily in fact, so I must assume you aren't doing something right. You tend to enjoy handicapping yourself so I assumed that this was purposeful. The thing about pushing limits is that one learns from the experience and grows, if you hold back even subconsciously people die. You could find yourself outmatched and as you are a side character, there won't be an epic transformation sequence."

"You lost me at the end there."

"Don't worry about it. Suffice it to say I want to bring out your true power. And then we will amplify it with science. Now try to manipulate the speck in this orb."

"Max? Get out of there!" Kyrion tried to force the door open, but it didn't budge. The defensive enchantments were too strong for him.

"Ohhhhhh…. I don't know what this is, but I like it." As he started the vehicle, Max's eyes seemed to glow blue with mana.

The sound of something roaring bellowed from the truck's magical engine. Lightning shot out from the car, sending Kyrion away from the truck, his body twitching uncontrollably.

"Sorry Kyrion!" Max said as he curiously examined the various buttons and levers.

"It's ok. Just get out of the metal monster so that I can destroy it."

Max clearly wasn't listening as he looked at a big blue button. "What does Nitro mean?"

Max pressed the button, and a sound began to emanate from the vehicle's speaker system.

"Please shift gears into drive to invoke turbos." A younger Bella said.

"Nitros!" Cecil yelled from the background.

"Does it matter? Nevermind. You must be in drive to invoke the nitro function." Bella corrected.

Kyrion got up. "Bella? Are you in there? Can you tell Max to get out of the truck?"

The red-haired young man started banging on the door again, only to receive a much stronger jolt to his system. Leaving him in a catatonic state.

"Threat neutralized." Bella said from the speakers.

"Uh Bella? How do I turn this off?" Max asked as he looked at the smoldering body near him.

No response.

Max turned the key in the opposite direction out of curiosity, and the truck seemed to quiet down.

"Huh. I'll need to get me one of these to deal with Mina…." Max opened the door leaving the key in the ignition as he exited the vehicle.

"Is everything all right?" Cecil yelled from the back room.

A stray bolt of lightning exited the room and hit a light. All the lights in the room flickered before turning off.

"Do you have anything I can read to learn how this truck thing is supposed to work?" Max asked.

"Yeah, there's a manual on the desk adjacent to it."

"We're all good. Kyrion just decided to take a nap on the floor."

Max picked up the thick booklet and got to reading.

A few hours passed before Kyrion got to his feet with a scowl. "Do you enjoy me being in pain?"

"A little too much. Given that you forced me into your group this is the least I can do."

"I thought you hated Amadeus."

"I can't hate Amadeus, Kyrion. Why would… Oh right." Max rolled his eyes.

"There is something you're not telling me. Does it have something to do with you being a girl? As you know I don't judge."

"It has something to do with why you seem to think I may be a girl. I just have one of those bodies that can't gain fat or muscle to any degree and resemble my mother far more than my father."

"I understand the pain. I hoped to have a long majestic beard like the one my father had when I was younger."

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"Good luck with that. At least people don't get confused in your case."

"They used to. My height was a drastic shift not a natural one. Though that's just how it goes."

"Fair enough. If I could have half that tone." Max examined the statuelike person in front of him.

"Enough with the self pity, do you know what it's like having to duck to go into most buildings?"

"I said tone not height."

"It was two and one for me, then again I've been doing strength training all my life in a way. Growing up as a farmer and helping out on a daily basis was my life. It was never easy but nothing was impossible. Few things are in this world." Kyrion stated.

"You never told me that you were a farmer. So I suspected you were a commoner? But even so..."

"No, no no. I was part noble in a way. My mother was one, she just didn't inherit her father's title for reasons and Limguard doesn't exist anymore so…."

"Oh. Oh… so you are, you don't carry yourself like a noble."

"I was too sick to care. Believe it or not I was dying before I became a spirit master. My mana was killing me on the inside."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because if I open up maybe you'll open up. You've hid stuff from me for a while. And we're supposed to be good friends."

"Fine. As you may or may not know, I have a sister. She is a prodigy in everything she does, the perfect successor to inherit our family's name and carry it on. The only problem with her gaining our fathers position was the fact that she is a girl. Etrovonia doesn't allow women to run their families, they must abdicate to a younger male in the family or marry someone worthy of succeeding the patriarch. Despite how hard I train I can't build muscle, I can't use weapons, all I can do is bring out the strength in creatures I've tamed. Something not worthy of earning the title of Golden Patriarch."

"Golden…Wait…” A stream of blood flowed from Kyrion's nose, and he held his head with both hands, using healing mana to repair the injury.

"Don't strain yourself too much. I've decided, I will do my best and If I lose I lose if we win we win. I won't give up even if we do seem outmatched." Max stood with a resolute expression.

"Ok. Well now I get why I was confused. Your sister looks a lot like you doesn't she?"

"Yes. She's ten minutes older. Identical twins."

"Max? Are you a boy or a girl?" Kyrion stared at Max's face for a long time.

"I'm a boy!" Max yelled, exasperated.

"Then it's fraternal. You can't have Identical twins of different genders. Technically you shouldn't look that much alike though given that she's pretending to be you, I assume some effort was put into the act."

"I bit more than some. In my opinion."

"Yeah yeah. Sisters are just the worst sometimes. But they are always in your corner. One way or another." Kyrion recalled his childhood in a new light. He was a bit of a brat, but they were mean. Although the favoritism Samantha showed Illanda made a lot more sense now.

"Do you have a sister?"

Kyrion did some math. "It's complicated."

"So you can't answer it?"

"The answer is yes but the line between sister, cousin and niece have been forever blurred. Somewhere between three and five. Maybe six?"

"Oh in the literal sense."

"Yup. What's taking Ander so long?

Ander was now at the final stage of the test. He demonstrated his control over input and output, firing speed, and conductivity. Now it was finally time to test his spirit.

“Touch the glass ball and follow the signal.” Cecil said for the fourth time.

Ander’s hand touched the ball, and a line of electricity passed through his fingers. Quickly arriving at his wrist and right shoulder before passing through his spine and into the boy’s brain, where it seemed to waste time as it then traveled back down his other shoulder, wrist, and fingers into his spear, where the power seemed to build.

“Ander focus your mana into the spear tip, imagine the blade opening up to let the lightning pass through.” Cecil added for the first time.

Ander concentrated as the mana seemed to build up in the tip, the blade seeming to split in half the longer he held it there.

The process lasted another five minutes and ended with a beam of lighting as thick as a person shooting from a wooden stick. The blades of the spear were pushed off the stick and floated, guiding the power upwards. When the lightning made it two hundred feet away, it gathered into a giant ball of energy and exploded in a stunning light show.

Ander collapsed on the floor, completely drained of mana.

“Well then, that explains a lot.”

“What do you mean?”

“It always seemed like you were doing something wrong. You aren’t the most mana rich person but you are above average, given your mastery over wind I knew you at least put in alot of effort. The tips of your spear are magnetic. When closed the electricity is supposed to build when released the spears blade becomes lightning and allows for better control of the element. Closed for wind, open for lightning.”

“Closed for wind, open for lightning.” Ander practiced splitting and connecting the spear blade and sighed.

“With a weapon like that do you still think you need my help in whatever tournament you’re competing in?”

“If this is what you can do in a day, I’m excited to see what you can do with more time.”

“Not much. I just saw that you were doing something off and helped you out.” Cecil held out his hand.

Ander took the hand and shook it. When he let go, they were both shocked. Both boys had hair standing up on their heads. Both looked quite ridiculous.

“Ander, good luck tomorrow also try not to kill anyone. Voltage is dangerous, keep it on the stun setting when at all possible.”

“Of course.” Ander left the room, meeting up with a bored Kyrion and a preoccupied Max,

“How’d it go?” Kyrion asked, hoping to his feet without using his arms.

“Oh. I’m alot stronger now.” Ander said.

“Can’t be. You were there for a few hours!” Max stated.

“You were doing something wrong weren’t you?” Kyrion smirked like a cat who swallowed a canary.

“You knew?” Ander stared at the red-haired boy with amazement.

“I suspected, but I couldn’t figure out what the problem was. I don’t know how all the science behind stuff works like Cecil does.”

“You could have told me sooner.”

“Ander, you’re proud, strong and competent most of the time. Had I told you that you were doing something wrong then you’d ask me what and I couldn’t explain in a way that could help you. Hence why I asked Cecil to look into it a while back. Honestly thought he forgot about it.”

“He didn’t, Cece’s too mad to leave his lab when there are questions to be asked. Smells good in here. Did someone cook bacon?” A young woman standing a solid six-two with pink hair entered a predatory gaze.

“Oh hey Bella.” Kyrion waved.

“Hey, Tiffany said you’d need a fourth for tomorrow, some sort of contest... You’re much shorter.”

“Yeah, we’re deciding on who’s going to be the team leader for a tournament.”

“Ah the smell is coming from you. Does your scent have anything to do with the truck being flipped upside down?”

“Kyrion’s mad that it kept shocking him and I didn’t want him to break it. This was a compromise.” Max sighed.

Kyrion stood proud of his accomplishment.

“Help me flip this over. That’s a million gold invention right there.”

“Oh.” Kyrion’s eyes became dots as he hurried to help flip the vehicle back over.

“Great now, will you accept me as your fourth member of your team?”

“What about Cecil?”

“Cece would be happy if I helped him do some field testing for him. It would also be a good chance to test out our vehicle.”

“Cece is right here and can answer for himself. Thank you very much.” Cecil interjected.

“What does Cece think?”

“Thanks to some new responsibilities and things to test out I will be too preoccupied to go and fight. Gonna build me a Mech that screams dense harem protagonist all while teaching a kid how to use magic.”

“Can I drive?” Max asked, his eyes glowing.

“Huh. I mean we’ll need to teach you, but aside from that I don’t see a problem with it. But, of course, Cecil would loave to have someone willing to test out his death machine.” Kyrion stated.

“Please don’t let him drive that into….”

“I’ll give him some lessons.” Bella stated.

“Wooo!” Max jumped up and punched the air.

“And if he wrecks it?” Cecil shook his head.

“Then you aren’t prepared to mass produce and sell them.” Bella crossed her arms.

“You want me to get in that? But it hates me!” Kyrion pointed at the truck.

“It can’t like or dislike you. It’s not sentient. Anyhow, should we do some drill tonight or just hop into things tomorrow?” Cecil seemed to have a headache the way he was holding his head.

“See ya I’m going to get some special training done before the battle tomorrow.” Ander ran off towards the nearby woods.

Max grabbed Bella’s hand and began dragging her towards the truck. Leaving Kyrion alone with the blonde engineer.

“So… Cecil… How’s my project coming along.”

“What project?”

“The one that does the thing.”

“What thing? Kyrion it’s late.”

“Don’t make me say her name… It’s embarrassing.” Kyrion squirmed.

“...Anastesia.”

“Shhh… It’s a secret.”

“It’s literally just a….” Kyrion covered Cecil’s mouth with his hand.

Cecil glared, and Kyrion removed his hand. “Fine. I’ll have Eden bring her to you.”

“Good.”

“That electricity didn’t fry your brain did it?”

“Go get some sleep pal, you sound crazy.” Kyrion said to a pole ten feet away, swaying from foot to foot.

“Are you doing alright?”

Kyrion fell back with a thud. His body spasmed as trapped lighting left his system.

“Very few are immune to electricity. You are no exception, although you did well not to have passed out sooner. Way to be inconvenient. I will not move you.” Cecil left the lab and shut off all the lights.

Kyrion lay helpless on the floor, twitching in his sleep while he was forced into sleep.