When Alex finishes up his research, he looks at the clock in his room and realizes that he has spent more than 2 hours in front of his computer. It is now only around 1 hours until his mother or little sister come home.

Alex decides to do some training while he waits for them. He starts by repeatedly entering and coming out of the normal mana enhanced state, trying to improve his spiritual control as well as his mana control. His mana control hasn't improved much since he managed to learn the focused mana-enhanced state. He's still only able to control his mana in units of fives.

Next, Alex starts training his focused mana-enhanced state by circulating his mana to different parts of his body. Since he has evolved multiple times now after he first learned this new state, Alex can now use more mana in each part of his body. The focused mana-enhanced state still can only multiply his attack power by 3-4 times. But, with the massive increase of his stats, 3-4 times now is a world of difference than 3-4 times before his multiple evolutions. Alex has been trying to improve these skills while he was in the Realm of Defenders, but he hasn't succeeded.

After finishing with the focused mana-enhanced state training, Alex glances at the clock sees that he still has to wait for around 20 minutes until his mother or little sister come home. Alex continues his training. He starts training the Spirit Perception ability he gained while fighting the giant frogs. Alex starts spreading his spirit into his surrounding, covering everything inside his room.

The first thing he notices is the density of energy in his room. The natural energy inside the Realm of Defenders is much denser than the natural energy inside his room. As he has no way to control these energies, Alex leaves them be and starts focusing on everything else inside his room. He is training to increase his perception of the tiniest details around him.

When his focus is raised to the maximum, Alex can feel his spirit rippling from somewhere inside his room. Alex tries to find the source only to be surprised. The source is inside his drawer. Inside it, there is a crude wooden box. Inside the wooden box is a plain black ring. It is the ring his father gave him before his father's disappearance.

Alex tries to separate the ring and the wooden box to see whether it is really the ring that causes the ripple in his spirit. After testing it out, Alex is now sure that it is the ring that causes the ripple.

He used to wear this ring on his finger all the time as this is a reminder of his father. But, he never wore this ring when he entered the Realm of Defenders because he's afraid of losing it when he's fighting. It's been sitting inside his drawer in the wooden box whenever he entered the Realm of Defenders.

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Alex takes a closer look at this ring but he doesn't find anything. It's just a plain black ring without any decoration on it. He can't use [Observe] while he's outside the Realm of Defenders, so that option can only be used when he enters the realm again.

Being out of option, Alex decides to use his Spirit Perception to probe this ring. Alex spreads his spirit to the outside once again. He doesn't spread it to cover everything inside his room this time, but just enough to cover the ring. When he focuses once again, he can feel his spirit rippling around the ring. But, other than the ripple around the ring, he finds nothing.

After thinking for a while, Alex uses his Spirit Perception once again to cover the ring. This time, he controls his spirit to try and penetrate to the inside of this ring. His spirit can penetrate through solids and see the inside of things, just like how he sensed the inside of his locked drawer earlier. The only thing that has been hard for him to penetrate with his spirit was the ground inside the Realm of Defenders. Of course, seeing inside the body of living creatures has been really difficult for him too.

It takes some effort, but his spirit finally manages to go into the ring. Inside the ring, he finds some carving of rune-words like characters. But, these characters are different than the usual rune-words he found in skill books and other things inside the Realm of Defenders. His [Magic Chip] can't translate these characters. Usually, the [Magic Chip] automatically translated these types of characters when he encountered them.

Alex's spirit slowly fills the inside of this carving. When his spirit has filled every nook and cranny of this carving, he suddenly feels like his spirit is being sucked out of his body into a strange space. Alex tries to resist but he is powerless to resist.

When he comes to his senses, Alex can feel that he's floating inside a strange warm place. He feels weird as he can't sense his physical body anywhere. But, it's also strangely comfortable being in this space. His spirit starts moving on its own in a strange pattern. As it is moving, Alex feels more and more comfortable. It's like his soul is returning to a place where it belongs.

After his spirit does a couple rotation, it starts to leave this strange space. Alex feels reluctant to leave this comfortable place, but he's still unable to control his spirit, so he can just let it do its own thing. When he comes to his senses again, Alex can see that he's now back to his room. He is inside his body again, and the ring is still in his hand.

Alex tries probing his spiritual see and sees that his spirit seems to have shrunk, but it shines with more luster compared to before. Alex wants to further understand what happened, but before he can do anything else, he hears a rustling sound from the front door and the sound of his little sister.

"I'm home."

Alex decides to postpone his probing and greets the little sister that he has not seen in almost a month.