There were a lot of benefits in meditating early in the morning. Not only for reducing stress, but could also be used to practice mindfulness that could improve attention and concentration in present moments. This mindfulness helped in gatekeeping your emotion and grew a sense of inner peace.
And why did I suddenly brought up this topic?
It's because Xain kept me amazed with how tolerant he was about teachings of meditation and how he applied it to everyday life until he undergone a noticeable emotional change. Three weeks had passed since we first started, and now he didn't raise his voice to the staff and even offered them help sometimes.
The proof of that was currently happening right in front of my eyes.
Xain was holding a staff member in his arms as he caught her when she stumbled on the stairs. They gazed at each other, creating a nonexistent romantic tension while Xain asked, "Are you okay?"
It's almost the perfect enactment of a shoujo manga if only the staff didn't turn pale when she saw Xain's face and ran like her life depended on it.
Nevertheless, this kind of occurrence was a good sign of Xain's emotional growth. It moved my heart by how Xain was slowly changing for the better – like how a parent watched their kid slowly mature.
Everyone who did a good deed had to be given a praise worthy of their sacrifice, so I patted Xain in the head as a content smile formed on my mouth, "Well done, you did the right thing."
Xain's eyes sparkled when he heard my compliment, a bright smile appeared on his face as excitement flushed his cheeks red. He reminded me of my sister when she was young, her eyes would also sparkle when I praised her and it looked exactly like Xain.
The three of us settled down inside Team Zero's meeting room while waiting for Shelly to brief us about the upcoming gate raid. Ilyas was studying, so he couldn't attend, but we kept him updated about our raiding schedule.
"Harold sent me the gate's frequency graph, he said this S-Rank gate has a weird fluctuating energy. It might be an evolution gate, be careful."
Evolution gate was a term used by the gate inspection team to label a gate that could change its rank to either higher or lower than their predetermined rank. It would be great if this gate's rank lowered to A but if the opposite happened we needed to be prepared.
We each read the documents containing the details from Shelly, before we finally teleport to the gate's entrance. Fortunately, the surrounding environment was an abandoned house in the city's corner and there's no one in the vicinity when the gate formed so civilians wouldn't be an issue.
"Let's go." I signaled my teammates to enter the gate.
Once I stepped inside the gate, I was immediately greeted by the boss. My gaze locked to its core as a sudden suffocating feeling clutched my chest. The boss was a crystal cube layered on top of each other with a crown floating on top of it. Its core was emanating a purple glow, which seemed to draw my mind into it.
That glow made me a beat too late to realize a laser beam was aiming directly at my face.
CLANG!
An ice lance blocked the attack for me.
"Pay attention will you?"
Cedric scolded me in anger, his gaze directed to the enemy. I immediately blocked his view with my hand.
"It seems able to hypnotize people, don't gaze at it for too long."
"A troublesome one, should I attack it from the side?"
I nodded at Cedric's suggestion. We had to gauge what kind of ability it had first. Moreover, there's something more concerning right now.
"Xain, let's take care of the small ones first."
"Roger."
Humanoid mummies were the mobs in this gate. Both me and Xain dashed toward the swarm of mummies.
With a kick, I sent a mummy flying. I ducked when one of them tried to reach me and I returned the favor by striking it with my elbow while keeping my momentum to spin my body to knock the other one with a kick. From a distance, I could see Cedric launching his ice lances at the cube, but was blocked by a holographic barrier.
That holographic shield then turned into a ball of light flickering in the air before shooting a beam toward us, exploding as soon as it touched a surface – not even the mummies could hinder it. Even without my cue, my teammates already moved back to create distance and counterattack using their skills.
The ball of light quickly turned into a shield in mere seconds, which made me realize its weakness.
"Cedric, stop attacking the boss for a minute. We need to create a distraction using the mummies, so Xain, you're up. I'll deal with the boss."
"Leave it to me!"
Xain charged head in to the swarm of mummies, while I stealthily concealed my presence and got as close to the boss as possible.
This boss only had one attack and defense mechanism, the holographic shield.
It couldn't attack while defending, and couldn't move from its spot, like a tower in a tower defense game. Its job was just to stand there being protected and it would attack when given the opportunity. As I expected, once it spotted Xain as its immediate threat, it launched its beam toward him – leaving a window where it was defenseless.
That was my signal to attack.
I leaped to close our distance while slashing my arm to draw blood. When a beam was released, I created small strings of blood that I released low on the ground like a root. It twisted and turned to dodge the mummies until it finally reached the boss.
I flicked my hand and the root took a sharp turn upward, hitting the boss' core and cracking it. This made the holographic shield around it hummed unstably and the mummies it controlled flopped down on the ground like a puppet cut off from its string.
"Cedric!"
Cedric followed up my attack by bombarding hundreds of ice lances to the boss. Though dust flew up, it didn't hinder our vision.
The unstable shield cracked under Cedric's ice lances, hitting the cube's body directly. With its body created from crystal, most it would get was scratches, so I signaled Xain in the back to attack it with blunt force while I opened a way for him to punch right at the core.
That's what I was planning.
Until I made the mistake of locking my gaze right into its core.
[Dear brother, why are you doing this to me?]
A face I hadn't seen since I transmigrated here showed up, the face of a person I hate yet love in my family. I knew she wouldn't call me 'dear brother', I knew this was just an illusion created by the cube but I couldn't tear my gaze away, halting me in my steps.
SPLAT!
Blood splattered in front of my eyes, the illusion had vanished like air, all that's left was a cracked cube with a ball of light hovering in front of it.
I could hear shouts of my teammates, it sounded muffled in my ear so I didn't know what they were saying.
DRIP-
"Cough…"
But I soon understood what they were shouting about. A searing pain was felt in my abdomen. With it, a mouthful of blood came out of my mouth. Seeing the blood flowing down from my stomach, I could only laugh at my own carelessness.
'Ah, I've been hit.'