Alex takes the plain black ring off from his finger and places it in his hand. Alex starts spreading his spiritual perception once again to probe the ring. But, before he even starts to probe the ring, just when his spirit leaves his body, Alex is left dumbstruck. The world around him that he is sensing now feels somewhat different than what he usually sensed before.
Alex tries to understand the difference. He increases his concentration to the maximum and spreads his spiritual perception farther. Soon enough, Alex realizes the difference between now and before. He can actually sense the energy around him in a different way compared to before. He can say that this time it's more vivid compared to before. He could somewhat differentiate the different types of energy around him before, but right now he can do it far more easily. Alex can also sense their movement more clearly now.
He tries to bind the energy around him with his spirit. Unfortunately, he still fails like before. He feels that if he can control the natural energy around him then he will have an advantage in a fight. For starters, he can absorb them to replenish his mana. Ever since he discovered spiritual perception, Alex found out that his mana was actually replenished by absorbing the natural energy around him. His body did it naturally without him knowing. If he can actually control the natural energy and absorb them as he wishes, then he will possess a virtually inexhaustible mana pool.
Having infinite mana is a big enticement to him. Due to him being able to clearly sense the natural energy and their movement, Alex feels that he should be able to control the natural energy using his spirit. He keeps trying to bind them using his spirit and control the energy around him, but he keeps failing. After a few more failures, Alex decides to leave it for now and try it another time.
Alex still feels there's something more to this improved spiritual perception of his. He extends it farther, trying to reach its limit. To his surprise, the distance he can reach with his spiritual perception has been significantly extended. He can reach 15 meters around him before he feels a headache due to straining his spirit. It's almost twice the distance that he could reach before.
His spiritual perception is able to cover the entire apartment and even extends to the outside and the neighboring units. He can "see" his sleeping mother, little sister, and the couple next door who are his neighbor. The couple is holding each other in bed, obviously just finished doing some coupley thing. Alex, the inexperienced teenager immediately blushes when he sees this and quickly retracts his spiritual perception for fear of being called a pervert. He then realizes that they have no way of knowing that he spied on them. But, he doesn't intend to extend his spirit to the neighboring unit again, because he swears to himself that he's not a pervert. Even though, as a teenage boy going through puberty, he really wants to do it.
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After calming his boiling blood, Alex extends his spiritual perception once again. This time, he limited it to inside his apartment. He now realizes that this new ability of his is not something to be used carelessly. He starts sensing the things around his apartment. He then focuses on his sleeping mother and sister, trying to burn their figures in his mind before he goes back to the Realm of Defenders once again. To his surprise, this time he can feel the movement of energy in their body. Obviously, he can't extend his spirit into their bodies. He was unable to do that before, and still unable to do that now. He could probe inside the corpses of creatures, just not a living creature.
His spiritual perception is only wrapping around his mother and sister, but he can really feel the movement of energy inside them. Of course, their energies are really feeble compared to the energy inside his body as they don't possess mana. It's just the energy their body produces to sustain their lives.
Alex is baffled by this discovery. He couldn't do this before. He was able to sense the tiniest movements of the creatures' muscles when he fought them, but he was never able to sense the movement of energy inside their body. Now, he can sense the movement of these tiny bit of energies from his mother and little sister. He wonders what will happen if he extends his spiritual perception to the creatures inside the Realm of Defenders. What will happen if he does it to other Defenders! Alex wants to try to probe other people, but he remembers what happened earlier and curbs his intention for now.
After probing further and not finding anything, Alex retracts his spiritual perception and looks at the black ring in his hand.
"What a strange ring. It shrunk my spirit, but my spirit actually improves in new ways after I entered that strange space," Alex mumbles to himself while feeling confused and excited at the same time.
"It's a shame that I can't use [Observe] outside the Realm of Defenders. I'd like to know if my spirit stats actually changes or not. It will probably also be useful to identify this ring. This ring is clearly an object dad brought from inside the Realm of Defenders," Alex continues mumbling while thinking.
"Ah, well, I'll just do it the next time I enter the Realm of Defenders."
After he finishes his train of thoughts, Alex looks at the ring in his finger once again. He wants to try and probe the ring once again with his spirit. Maybe this time it will improve his spirit once more.
Alex starts extending his spirit and controls it to go inside the ring. He finds the rune-words carving once again. Alex controls his spirit to fill the carving. But, to his disappointment, this time nothing happens. He tries to do it a few more times and still gets the same result. Alex decides to stop trying and goes to sleep.