Neo followed what he had seen.
He commanded the mimicked Space Elementals to condense into a point. They resisted at first, but with his Intent directly bending their will, they had no choice.
The space twisted.
A tiny hole appeared in the air, and it began to exert a force of pull on everything around it.
Neo was left drenched in sweat.
He had done it.
He created a Black Hole after seeing it once.
“How is it…”
He turned around and noticed Elizabeth meditating on the bed. She was wearing clothes, her hair was combed, and the scent of fresh roses covered her.
Had she taken a bath and dressed after that?
‘I would’ve liked to see that.’
‘No, I meant to say, how much time has passed that she changed clothes and started meditating.’
‘It’s okay, Neo,’ He heard a chuckle within his mind. ‘I won’t judge you. There is no need to give excuses in your mind.’
‘Besides, I saw everything already.’
[Me too!]
[And, damn, it was hot!]
[I knew it was a good choice to help you open up to your true desires.]
Neo wanted to massage his brows.
It didn’t look like Obitus and Artemis had any intention of sparing him from the embarrassment.
“Neo?” Elizabeth opened her eyes.
Her gaze flickered towards the dissipating Black Hole before landing back on Neo.
“You learned it quite fast. It has only been eight hours.”
“Eight hours…”
Neo’s brows furrowed.
He started to formulate the rules of Mimicry within his mind.
‘I can copy anything I can see.’
‘The higher-rank techniques need more time to copy.’
He could not use Black Hole for battle yet.
Not only was it weak, the Space Elementals serving as its base were constantly fluctuating.
There was a limit to how much they could be forced.
He would need to train a lot more to use the Black Hole without Willpower Incantation Pathway, then train more to bring its mastery to a level usable in battle.
“Can you use Space Perception now?”
“I can. Though it has its downsides with Shadow Element.”
“…?”
“The Space Perception of Space Affinity users is activated passively. It’s like how my Death warning works.
“But with mimicked Space Elementals, I need to actively create mimicked Space Elementals and use them for Space Perception at all times.
“If my concentration breaks, I lose access to Space Perception,” he explained.
“I see,” Elizabeth nodded with a thoughtful expression.
Neo’s insights were quite helpful for her too.
“How long will it take before you can use the Space Perception without having to actively divide your focus for it and do it passively instead?”
“It shouldn’t take much time, honestly. I’m already used to dividing my focus between two tasks.
“The only problem is that I have a single body. If I’m creating mimicked Space Elementals, I can’t create other Elementals.”
Neo could use his Intent Clone for this, but it was impossible to bring a clone everywhere. It would create another set of nuisances.
‘What if I use Intent to create just the Core instead of a whole body? I can use the extra Core to generate mimicked Space Elementals.’
The idea, while good, was beyond his current limits.
For Neo, his Intent Clone’s body was a single construct. The bones, the flesh, the organs, the Core, the nervous system. Everything was ‘one’, not different objects.
This reason was why he could create a whole Clone with Intent and yet found it impossible to create only a hand from Intent.
‘I guess I need to train in Intent more.’
‘Or maybe I can use All-Shadow to create a Core made from Shadow Elementals and use it to create mimicked Space?’
In the Shadow World, everyone was made from Shadow Elementals.
Neo wondered if he could do the same.
Basic Shadow Elemental Manipulation allowed one to mimic elements. Anything else belonged to a higher realm of mastery, namely Concepts.
‘My Concept of Shadow is All-Shadow. It’s a movement ability Concept.’
‘But if I can change the Implementation, can I use Shadows to create other objects?’
All-Shadows meant all Shadows were one.
Technically, Neo should be able to use it to do anything a Shadow could do. After all, if all Shadows were one, and a Shadow can be used to create a human, why couldn’t his Shadow do the same?
‘Changing Implementation is anything but easy though.’
‘Percival took days to change his Implementation of Overwhelming Might to Overwhelming Speed, and this was when he knew his Concept of Overwhelming inside out.’
‘I haven’t learned everything about my movement-based Implementation, so applying a new Implementation would be hard.’
Just then, a thought struck Neo.
“Elizabeth, Gravity is your Concept, right?”
“Yes. Is there anything wrong with it?”
“Aren’t you surprised I copied your Element’s Concept so easily? Can other Shadow users do the same?”
“I was surprised.
“After all, I haven’t fought many Shadow users, so I can’t say it with certainty, but my master taught me that Shadow users can copy only Elements. Copying masteries was only possible in theory, and no one had done it yet.”
Neo nodded.
It must’ve been the Shadow Supreme’s Treasure that allowed him to copy her Concept.
‘This confirms my goal.’
‘I need to keep trying to use Intent to create a Core and try to see if I can do it with All-Shadow too.’
‘Even if I can’t do it with both of them, I need to find a Shadow User who has a Concept like that.’
‘Then I can copy him and learn his Concept.’
Having multiple Cores would give him an unreasonable advantage over others.
He would be able to create different Elementals without any delay or lowering the production.
To explain, if a Core had a fixed value of 100, it could create 100 units of Death Elemental at once or create 50 units of Death and 50 units of Darkness together, or create 100 units of Death for one second and create 100 units of death the next second.
Neo could overcome this limitation if he could create multiple Cores.
He would even be able to use Spells together with his Elemental Manipulation attacks. Something he was not yet able to do, and had forced him to lower the usage of his Spells.