As Shang put his hand on the table, he summoned the power inside him.
He felt the power steering, but then…
He stopped.
Just before his power activated, Shang had felt a feeling of doom.
His instincts told him that he shouldn't do that.
They told him that something horrible would happen if he used it.
It was like Shang was in front of a sleeping Commander Stage beast, and using his power was akin to poking it.
In short, Shang felt like he would be killed if he used it.
The Dean looked at Shang and noticed the subtle changes on his face.
After some seconds, Shang pulled his left arm back.
"The same as the weak Abominations?" the Dean asked.
The Dean had made a solid guess, and Shang confirmed it by nodding.
"So, in short, you are still too weak to make use of your actual Affinity," the Dean said.
Shang nodded. "I wanted to test it, but before I could, I felt a feeling of death approach. It told me that I would forever regret using it."
The Dean nodded. "The weaker Abominations are the same. Nearly all of them died in battle, but a couple of times, the teams that came to kill them arrived too late."
"Too late?" Shang asked.
The Dean nodded. "We can't be everywhere at once, and sometimes, the teams arrive too late. In the case that they are too late, they find a big crater…"
"And no Abomination."
"No Abomination?" Shang asked, and he quickly realized what this meant. "You said that the weaker Abominations get weaker with every use of their power. Do you mean to say that when they get weaker, they stay weaker? There is no way to replenish their energy?"
The Dean nodded. "The weaker Abominations destroy everything around them until they themselves don't exist anymore. They are essentially a star. Their fire destroys many things, but with every second they burn, they use up their fuel."
"On top of that, the stars in our old world also lose a considerable portion of mass as they burn. Their mass doesn't completely transform from hydrogen into helium. In the process of nuclear fusion, something below 1% of the mass is transformed into pure energy. Not sure if you knew, but matter is also a form of energy."
Shang looked at the Dean with surprise.
"How do you know such stuff?" he asked. This didn't sound like something a normal fighter or normal person from Earth knew.
At that moment, Shang also realized how crazy it actually was that the Dean could come up with something like the procedure and even transform it from theory into practice.
And then, Shang noticed that he actually didn't know anything about the Dean's old life on Earth.
At that point, Shang's mind went to the God.
The God's purpose for choosing the Dean was so that he could create something that made warriors more powerful in general.
Who was the perfect person for such a purpose?
"I had a Ph.D. in biology," the Dean answered. "Physics wasn't my field, but you learn a lot about physics if nearly your entire social circle is filled with different kinds of scientists."
"Of course, I had to throw away a lot of my knowledge after realizing that this world is very different."
"Anyway, back to the topic," the Dean said. "The weaker Abominations essentially burn up their own life to destroy everything around them. In a way, you could even say that they convert their mass into energy, which is basically the strongest form of Energy generation possible. You should, at least, have heard of antimatter."
That surprised Shang. "Wait, how do you know about antimatter? You should have been here for decades already."
"I asked my predecessor the same thing," the Dean said. "Based on context clues, we came to the conclusion that barely a couple of days had passed since he and I had arrived in this world."
This threw Shang for a loop. "Just a couple of days?"
The Dean nodded. "So, in turn, between my arrival and your arrival, not much time should have passed. I guess the God finds the current period on Earth very suitable for creating the kinds of people he wants to send to this world, which is why the time is probably moving much slower on Earth."
It was difficult for Shang to wrap his mind around these things, but he had already seen the God's power.
Inside his palace, he had basically done whatever he wanted.
The rules of physics were unimportant to him.
But making the time move thousands if not millions of times slower was still a scary thought to Shang.
"But as I've said, back to the topic," the Dean said. "I suspect you can probably do the same thing. You can turn matter into Neutral Mana, but you need to use your own power for that."
"So, in exchange for destroying the thing you want to destroy, you destroy a part of yourself."
"And I don't think this will just be an injury that you can easily heal from."
Shang looked at his left arm.
With the Dean's explanations and hypotheses in mind, Shang could visualize his Affinity way better.
In a way, Shang could transform his own matter into antimatter, except that it wasn't as destructive as antimatter and that it didn't make a huge explosion.
"So, I can't use it yet," Shang said.
"You can, but you will probably have to pay a hefty price," the Dean said.
Shang frowned. "How powerful do I have to become?" he asked.
"Not sure," the Dean said. "The General Stage Abominations still use their own power to destroy everything around them. I've only heard that the Commander Stage Abominations can destroy everything around them passively, but I haven't seen it myself. It's also possible that the degree of their passive destruction doesn't come close to their actual combat power."
Shang continued looking at his left arm. "So, I basically have to advance two Stages to even consider using my Affinity."
"One Stage," the Dean said.
"One Stage?" Shang asked.
"You've already reached the Initial General Stage."
