Emily was looking at Maxine with fascination as she asked, "Is that what you really look like?"

"Not exactly," Maxine answered while scratching the back of her head, "I think it has something to do with my bloodline or at least I gathered as much from what mom just told me."

"You mean Hellen told you?" Emily asked to clarify.

"Yeah," Maxine answered before she switch to spiritual sense and allowed Emily to listen in as she sent the message to Hellen, "I think you owe me an explaination."

"Unfortunately I don't have one," Hellen replied, "All I know is that our bloodline has an ability that allows us to enter a bloodline form temporarily, and it has only appeared only a dozen times in the past. As for what benefits this transformed state provides, I haven't the slightest clue. I never looked into the family records since I didn't have that ability." 

"Would uncle Zephyr have access to those records?" Maxine asked.

"Yes he would," Hellen answered, "But if you ask, he will know that you have that ability and I don't want anyone to know the full extent of what you can do."

"I know that," Maxine said, "However he is still the only one that can get that information."

"You could always experiment with that form," Hellen offered, "You seem quite adept at figuring things out on your own."

"That may be the case, but I have a feeling that I will only scratch the surface of what that form can do without something to point me in the right direction," Maxine answered.

"Very well," Hellen said, "However I suggest you ask him about the abilities that appear in the Kavros clan. That way he will know you will have one of them, but not which one." 

"Sounds good to me," Maxine answered and looked up to Emily, "Do you mind if I talk to my uncle?"

"Sure, but shouldn't we finish cleaning your house first?" Emily asked.

"We can do that after I talk to him using this," Maxine said as she retrieved the communication disk from her dimensional pouch and pointed at the jewel in the center of it, "This thing will project a holographic image of the person you are talking to. Although I haven't used this yet, I fairly certain that I can figure it out."

"That sounds amazing," Emily said, "When are you going to contact him?"

"Right now," Maxine answered as she fed her essence and spiritual sense into the communication disk and attempted to contact Zephyr.

After a few moments, Zephyr's face appeared over the communication disk with a concerned look on his face as he asked, "Maxine, what's wrong? Did one of the others figure out who your are?!"

"No, nothing like that," Maxine said to soothe Zephyr, "I was just wondering about a few things about our bloodline."

Zephyr relaxed visibly and said, "That's a relief. What did you want to know?"

"Does our bloodline have any special abilities that I should be aware of?" Maxine asked, "Mom has some pieces to her memory missing."

"That's to be expected since she has been bound to that bracelet. As for your question, I know about most of our clan's abilities and I have some books on how to use them. I was given them in preparation to teach you in the event that you had any of them," Zephyr answered before he squinted his eyes slightly, "Is there someone there with you?"

"Yes, it's my beloved, Emily," Maxine answered happily, "She aware that I am not technically from earth."

"Why did you tell her?" Zephyr said angrily.

"I didn't. Her grandfather did," Maxine answered with a half-truth, "But don't worry he is not the kind of guy to go around telling people that I am an alien."

"Good," Zephyr said, "The fewer people that know about your origins the better."

"I know," Maxine responded, "Umm, weren't you going to tell me about the bloodline abilities?"

"Yes," Zephyr said as he hesitated for a few moments, "Can Emily leave the room?" Maxine looked to Emily and Emily nodded her head to Maxine before she walked to the kitchen. After it was clear that Emily had left the room, Zephyr began, "I will start with what we call them first starting with the most common to the most rare. They are the Shadow Constructs, Shadow Manifestation, Shadow Warp, Elemental Mimicry, and finally the rarest Shadow Lord Form. There are some other abilities. However they are either easily mastered even without a book or are nearly impossible to learn without a teacher." Holy shit, I think that I can use all of them. At least based off of the names anyways. 

"I have already confirmed that you can use Shadow Manifestestion and Shadow Constructs. Do you have any other abilities that you haven't displayed yet?" Zephyr asked, "If you don't know what they are called, just describe them. It's not unheard of to possess more than two abilities."

"I can travel really far using by creating portals out of my shadows," Maxine admitted to Zephyr, "However I can't travel to places that I haven't marked in some manner." However she wasn't going to admit to being able to use the others.

"Only those three?" Zephyr probed, but when Maxine remained calm, he continued, "That's fine. At least you can flee through your shadow if things go bad. Do you need any of the manuals for those abilities?"

"It would be nice, but could you send them all?" Maxine asked, "I don't want anyone to figure out which abilities I have so that they can plan around them."

"It's not a problem. I was going to send them to you in a day or two anyways," Zephyr said in an amused tone, "You will have descendants of your own eventually and they will need that knowledge." 

"If you say so," Maxine said half-heartedly and remembered Zephyr's concern earlier, "By the way, why were you worried that I was discovered?"

"Some of the others sent by the Alliance noticed how much you look like Hellen. They have a theory that you are either his daughter, Hellen's reincarnation or an innocent bystander," Zephyr said calmly, "Regardless they won't do anything violent like kidnap you until they can confirm which one you are. Hence the most they will do is to persuade you to leave this planet with them." 

"That won't happen. This is my home and I won't leave it it," Maxine stated, "Just out of curiosity, what would it take to make them believe that I am an innocent bystander?"

"Not much, unless you have a twin running around," Zephyr answered. 

Maxine just smiled internally as she said, "I think I can arrange that."

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"What?" Zephyr said while looking confused.

"Trust me. It's better if you don't know. That way your reaction will be natural," Maxine said.

"Alright," Zephyr said with an unsure tone, "Regardless, I can't talk anymore. Talk to you when I can."

"Bye. OH! Wait," Maxine started to say, but was cut off as the communication disk died down. She had wanted to ask him how he was going to deliver the manuals to her.

Maxine felt something was off when she looked at the time. Shouldn't the arachne twins be showing up around this time to teach Silky? Maybe they got held up by something.

Maxine stood went to find Emily and found her cleaning the bathrooms. "Sorry for taking so long," Maxine said, "Uncle Zephyr didn't want anyone to know about things involving my bloodline."

"That's fine," Emily said, "Did you learn anything about your abilities from him?"

"No, I didn't, but Zephyr will send some books on them," Maxine said, "I just don't know when or how he will do that."

"Well, no point in thinking about it now," Emily said, "Let's just get this house clean in the meantime."

Maxine smiled as she replied, "Alright." 

Maxine walked back to the living room and after recreating her shadow tendrils went back to cleaning. As with the kitchen, cleaning the living room with her shadow tendrils went quite quickly and smoothly. The more she used her essence and spiritual sense in this fashion the sharper and more precise both became. Hmm, performing cleaning using essence would be a good exercise for my students. 

After cleaning the living room, Maxine moved to her own room, but before she could start, the doorbell rang. Oh! that must be the arachne twins. She quickly went to the front door and confirmed that it was Kena and Mikari.

"You two are alittle late," Maxine said.

"We were held up by someone that insisted we deliver something to you," Mikari said as she patted the dimensional pouch at her hip, "May we come inside?"

"Yes, certainly," Maxine said and as they came in, she turned her head towards Silky, "Silky, Kena and Mikari are here."

"Alright, mama," Silky said as she put away her book.  

After Maxine closed the door, Mikary touched her dimensional pouch and retrieved five strange crystals. "I was asked to deliver these to you," Mikari said as she put them in Maxine's hands.

"Uhh, how do I use these?" Maxine asked while looking at the crystals curiously..

"Just inject your spiritual sense into them to access the knowledge within," Mikari said and she walked towards the couch where Silky and Kena were waiting.

Maxine walked to the kitchen table and fiddled with the crystals for a few moments before she injected her spiritual sense into one of them. Her vision blacked out for an instant before a huge book appeared in her mind. The title on that book read 'Shadow Constructs.' This is new. I wonder what they call these crystals. I will ask the twins later.

Maxine quickly opened up the book within her mind and started to read it. The first page was an outline describing the necessary skillsets to form a proper construct. Biology of essence beasts and humoid beings was a required reading to create constructs that mimicked life such as clones. This is awesome. It has diagrams of the calcium matrixes and muscle fiber configurations of different essence beasts. I might be able to make a chimera-type construct soon. However when she got the the part about creating constructs, it made no mention of using an essence core to create one. This method required that Maxine form the core within her constructs. A process which could take a few minutes to days, but their strength was fixed once they were created. It wasn't until she was almost done with it that it mentioned the pinnacle of Shadow Constructs. Constructs that could grow more powerful over time. It listed a whole bunch of material and lengthy ritual that had to be performed in order to create one. This manual started off great, but why do they have to go through all that trouble just to make a construct? I didn't even have to try that hard to make my Shadow Wolves and their strength grows. Maybe I am genius at making Shadow Constructs. Let's try a different one.

Maxine cut off her spiritual sense from the Shadow Constructs crystal and grabbed another one as she injected her spiritual sense into it. This crystal contained information on Elemental Mimicry. She had only read the first chapter before her face blanched. Submerging myself in water for a week to understand how water behaves! ARE YOU KIDDING ME!? And this method only has 25% as much essence efficiency as someone with the water attribute! Mine is easily double that! She continued to read. Although the methods described were horribly inefficient essence wise, it did give her some inspiriation on how to minimize the wastage of her essence when mimicking elemental attributes.

Maxine quickly checked the other crystals for information and was annoyed each time by how complex that they made everything. Each of the training methods required weeks to months of practice to even start producing results. Maxine could get near instant results with almost no difficulty at all. She didn't understand it at all. However she did get a useful technique out of the Shadow Warp manual called Shadow Step. It was essentially a short-range teleport. It's only limitations were the range of her spiritual sense and that the shadow she teleports to and from had accomodate her frame within them. Anything not in the shadow when she teleported would be, quite literately, severed from her body.

When Maxine injected her spiritual sense into the crystal with the manual for the Shadow Lord Form, she discovered that it wasn't a manual, but a letter. "If you are reading this, that means that you possess the Shadow Lord Form. The manual that the others see is nothing more than a ruse. The use of this form should come to you as naturally as breathing. Your Shadow Lord Form's strengths are derived from the shape of jewels that form on your forehead as they signify which bloodline is most dominant in your body. Now as for the gifts that the jewels bring, each one is different. For instance, Marquise-shaped jewels have a amplifying effect on your intellect and doubles the range of your spiritual sense. With that greater intellect, those that have this jewel type find that most of the other manuals are next to useless as they can effortlessly create simplified versions of those bloodline skills that no one else can use. This intelligence typically manifests even in their normal state. However the range of their spiritual sense is only doubled when in the Shadow Lord Form. Square jewels grant you greater multi-tasking ability and allow you to control far more constructs than normal. Most of the clans construct users possess this bloodline and have armies of constructs to do battle for them while they remain hidden. Thus far the upper limit of the constructs that they can control at one time is roughly five to six hundred. However their enhanced multi-tasking ability is restricted to half strength outside of the Shadow Lord Form. Finally, the triangular jewels grant greater muscle control and raw physical ability. For reference on how much physical ability they gain in Shadow Lord form, their bodies are comparable to that of a high grade essence beast. If you have a jewel type that I hasn't been mentioned, you have a unique mutation of your bloodline and I don't know what it does. If you are lucky, it could be a combination of two or even all three bloodlines. Regardless of anything else heed this warning: do not trust the Shadow Lords that are watching you. I simply can't believe those arrogant bastards are just searching for their ruler. It just doesn't fit with personality of those that I have encountered." I don't trust them either. One of those pricks raped my ancestor. In any case, my bloodline is a mutated one and I am not surprised that they don't have it listed. From the looks of it so far, it's a combination of two bloodlines, but I should still test my physical abilities tonight just to be certain.

Maxine brought her awareness way from the crystals and noticed Emily was sitting infront of her with her chin resting on her hands.

"What?" Maxine asked curiously, "Is there something on my face?"

"No, I was just wondering how long you would be absorbed looking at those crystals," Emily asked, "What are they anyways?"

"These crystals somehow contain the books that Zephyr was going to send," Maxine replied, "The knowledge can be accessed using spiritual sense. Although I don't think that any of the information inside of them will be of any help to you."

"Oh, cool. Can I take a peek inside them anyways?" Emily asked as she reached over to grab one of them without waiting for Maxine to answer and yelped in pain when she tried to read them with her spiritual sense.

"Are you okay?" Maxine asked with concern.

"I think so," Emily answered, "I think they are rigged to only let you read them."

"That would make sense," Maxine said, "They wouldn't want anyone besides clan members to get access to clan manuals."

"Now that you mention it, what is the name of your clan?" Emily asked.

"Kavros and it's not my clan," Maxine said angrily, "They kicked Hellen out of it when she eloped with Guan. Second, they haven't done a thing to raise or help me before uncle Zephyr showed up. He is the only one of them that has shown that he gives a damn. I refuse to think of the rest of them as my family."

Emily frowned at hearing Maxine's rant and said, "I see."

"I don't want to talk about them anymore. Can we get back to cleaning?" Maxine said in a more relaxed tone, "As long as we don't slack off too much more, we should be able to finish it alittle while after lunch." 

"Alright," Emily nodded as she went to fetch a mop. After we are done with the house, I can go find some more Twilight Iron and hopefully make that war scythe for my decoy. Later on tonight, I will see what I can do in this 'Shadow Lord Form' in the shadow world.