"Crash, you can talk?!?"

"Crash?!? (°ロ°)!"

Crash exclaimed in surprised confusion as well. Lucas communicated with it for a few moments and realized something strange. Apart from being more expressive, Crash could only say one word… kinda.

"Can't you say something else?"

"Crash?"

"You know, like actual words, Crash."

"Crash, crash?? (•_•)"

"I know you're saying actual words. I can understand what you mean but… I can also tell you're just saying crash over and over. It's pretty weird now that I think about…"

"Crash…"

"Yeah… well, we'll figure this out as we go. I will ask Wiki later but I get the feeling I already know it's response... Welp, we still have to examine the corpses and weapons."

With an affirmative crash, Crash fell silent once more. Lucas spread his senses out to make sure nothing was closing in on his location. He was pleasantly surprised by how far his range had become. Even though he couldn't tell the exact radius, he felt he covered almost a kilometer with his perception.

"Holy—oww!"

He hastily shut off his [Spirit Sense] as he felt a stabbing pain directly in his mind. His tendrils spasmed for a few seconds as his senses sank into jet blackness. His head exploded with pain as it felt like a railgun round had drilled through his skull… again.

Even after several seconds passed with Lucas holding his head and shivering, the migraine persisted. Only after several minutes passed did he finally have the ability to think complex thoughts.

"Phew… it seems my Mind is too fragile to process that much information all at once. That felt almost as bad as getting shot in the head."

Lucas said with a muted voice as he shakily got to his feet. Though it was disappointing that he couldn't use such an overpowered detection range immediately, he was already satisfied. All he had to do now was experiment with his Spirit energy and skills to properly test out the limits of his Spirit.

After running tests for about half an hour, Lucas figured out that the most suitable range for his current [Spirit Sense] was about fifty meters. This was more than enough in his opinion. With a faint smile on his face, Lucas spoke to himself optimistically.

"With this scouting will be a breeze. A high Spirit attribute is already paying dividends. Now, let's check out the gear."

Gingerly walking over to one of the corpses, he knelt beside it and began his examination. This was the corpse of Jaxsyn. Even though Lucas didn't know who or even what he was, his final valiant effort and his strange ability to repel him was still very fresh in his mind.

Each time the Runes on Jaxsyn's armor glow with that strange shadowless light, Lucas felt like his momentum was robbed and even used against him. Looking at the fractured armor with the broken corpse within it, Lucas felt a little hollow.

After fidgeting with the armor for a few minutes, he figured out how to open it. All that was left within was an extremely decomposed corpse and black dust. Lucas took his time digging two pits, his tendrils carving through the rocky ground with mechanical precision.

The corpses, brittle and crumbling, barely held together as he placed them inside. A fine layer of black dust coated parts of his tendrils and arms, a reminder of what remained. He couldn't help but say to himself.

"I really wished it hadn't come to this… I'm sorry."

Mouthing those words, Lucas' face twisted in disgust. He knew he genuinely felt sorry for what happened but at the same time he didn't actually feel sorry for killing them. It felt more like a minor inconvenience rather than murder and in this quiet cave he couldn't run away from that fact.

"Crash."

"I know I had no choice… it's just… I didn't think this is how I would feel after killing a person."

"Crash?"

"How do I know they're people?… That's a good point actually… Maybe they are an alien race like the tree men?… I really hope so."

"Crash."

With a deep exhale, Lucas pushed his thoughts aside as he nodded at Crash's words. Whether they were people or not, he couldn't change what happened. What he could do was learn from his experiences.

"Yeah, let's get to the gear. I should be able to use their weapons. And the markings on the gear look special. If my assumptions are correct, they are what give the gear special properties."

After shoveling his complex feelings to the back of his mind, Lucas took hold of Jaxsyn's short sword with his hands. He carefully traced and observed all the grooves and engravings on the blade for a few moments before standing up and swinging it casually.

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With a sharp whoosh, it sliced through the air smoothly. Lucas retracted his arm with a frown. His attack, though casual, didn't produce any special effects as it had in Jaxsyn's grasp . Thinking for a bit, it finally hit him. His burning pupils flickered as a sheepish smile appeared on his grim face.

"I'm such a moron. If I don't use Spirit energy, how can anything magical happen?"

With renewed focus, Lucas channeled his Spirit energy into the blade, hoping he was right.

Crack! HUM!

Lucas immediately heard a piercing crack as the sword began vibrating in his hand producing a bone rattling low hum. Lucas felt a chill crawl up his spine the moment he heard that sound. He could feel the Spirit energy within the blade had spiked abruptly and was struggling against the blade from within.

"Crash! (ﾉﾟДﾟ)ﾉ!"

With zero hesitation, Lucas heeded to Crash's words and tossed the sword out of the cave with frightening strength. The blade sailed far out outside the cave before detonating with a muffled bang in a devastating implosion.

"…"

"Crash."

"Yeah… I'll be more careful with the other stuff."

Lucas didn't even know how to react to what just happened. He could tell he may have overloaded the blade or something? But that didn't feel right since he didn't use a lot of Spirit energy. Unable to come to an acceptable conclusion, he walked towards the next piece of gear he wanted to experiment on.

Much more cautious now, Lucas gingerly picked up Dahn's pulse rifle. Its condition was probably one of the best out of all the gear so he held it like a treasure. As he analyzed the rifle, he realized a very pressing issue. It had no trigger.

"How do I even fire this thing?"

"Crash."

"What if it blows up? Let's try everything else apart from that for now."

Lucas spent minutes tinkering with the rifle. He noticed the rifle was composed of a very light alloy and a material that felt like plastic.

He also sensed that there were some strange mechanisms and markings within the rifle but even with his enhanced senses, he could not understand what they were for.

He could probably take apart the rifle to investigate but that was idiotic in his opinion. With a deep sigh, he got to his feet and aimed the rifle at the cave's exit.

"Alright, let's get this over with."

Lucas tensed up as he channeled his Spirit energy into the rifle, his senses on high alert for anything out of place. His eyes glowed as he did his utmost to restrain his power. With a soft hum, the Runes on the rifle lit up with a blue light. Excited, Lucas willed his energy to fire. A bolt of plasma shot out in an instant, disappearing into the darkness of the cavern.

"It actually worked! Guess I was worried… for nothing?"

Half way through his sentence, he noticed something was wrong with the gun. The grip he was holding felt… wooden? He brought his focus to the weapon and realized IT was transforming into wood.

"HUH???"

"…"

All Lucas could do was watch it slowly transform into wood. Even Crash was stumped. Lucas tried to think through what the issue was but nothing came to mind. This was too bizarre. With no other options, he had to come up with a new plan or else he would lose all the gear he had looted.

"What is going on? Is my Spirit energy having some kind of weird reaction to their gear? Or did they get more damaged in the battle than I thought?"

Lucas racked his brain thinking about this problem. He took a seat on the rough, cold floor as he thought. He tried asking Wiki for help but it simply said.

{You currently don't have access to such knowledge.}

Before sinking back to silence. With that option shot down, he turns to his old, reliable buddy, Crash. After a few minutes of conversation with Crash, an idea struck him.

"I don't need the gear themselves. If I can just figure out how those markings work, I should be able to use their special properties right?"

"Crash."

"Yeah, let's do that."

With a new plan in mind, Lucas walked over to each piece of armor. He then altered his tendrils to cover much more surface area while being thinner as well. With these new feelers, he caressed the surfaces of the shield and body armor like they were long lost lovers.

Thanks to his [Spirit Sense], sharp natural senses, and his Physique and Spirit standing at 5, he could form almost a perfect visualization of the inscriptions in his mind. Though the process was quite strenuous due to his low Mind Attribute.

'This might actually go better than I thought."

With the blueprints formed and that optimistic thought in mind, Lucas walked to the back of the cave and began tracing the inscriptions from the shield on the wall. The complex geometric structures were drawn with almost perfect precision by all four of his tendrils. In less than a minute, it was complete but it was very obviously missing some parts to it.

"It's probably not going to work properly if I add my Spirit energy like this. Should I try to fix it?"

Lucas' crimson pupils flickered and danced as he tried to recall how the symbols looked in the first place but he could barely remember most of the fight, much less such a precise detail. After racking his brain for a while he said.

"Fuck it, let's do this. Are you ready, Crash."

"Crash! (ง'̀-'́)ง"

"Here goes nothing."

Lucas gingerly placed his right palm on what he had drawn on the wall. The complex lines and circles looked like something a machine would draw rather than a… well, mimic. Anyways, he began channeling his Spirit energy from his core. As usual it made its complex, seemingly random patterns throughout his body by flooding to his arm.

His crimson wisp-like pupil took on the indescribable shade of his Spirit energy as he fed the inscriptions with a minuscule chunk of his Spirit energy.

"Let's drip feed it till—"

Boom!!

A deafening blast erupted from the wall, caving in the nook and sending Lucas flying out of the cave at breakneck speed. He rolled and tumbled for a few seconds before catching himself with his tendrils.

His mind spun rapidly as he tried to figure out what just happened. Feeling a sharp pain in his right arm snapped him out of his thoughts. With a tense jerk of his head, he looked down at it to see what was wrong.

"The hell?"

His eyes widened, his arm was gone. From his hand right up to his elbow, all he could see was his black metallic skeleton. White smoke rose out of his form as well, indicating more damage had been done than he thought. Before he could process the events any further, he heard the neutral voice of Wiki.

{Conditions met. A new [Quest] has been issued, Forge a working Rune. Reward: Information packet on Runes.}

Though he had some questions, Lucas chose to keep them to himself for now. He was out in the open now and injured, not a great combination in cavern. So he hastily circulated his Spirit energy and what little life energy he had to heal himself while moving away from the collapsed cave.

"Damn, I lost all the equipment. My luck seems to be as shitty as ever"

"Crash?"

"Maybe? They were already badly damaged before. With tons of rock now hammering down on them, it's good to keep my hopes low."

Crash fell silent at that. Lucas looked back at the cave with a steely gaze, his pupils danced with a smoldering intensity before he retracted it. And with that, he rushed off. He had tests to run and a quest to complete.

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