“What in the Rulers’ Names were you thinking!?” Daniel shouted.
The mixture of worry and anger in his voice got to me, but it didn’t change my mind. I still believed I’d done the best thing I could have done considering the circumstances.
I’d been the weakest of the group, the weakest link that forced them to slow down. If I hadn’t gotten stronger, they would have been forced to keep an eye on me to ensure no Awakened beast attacked me. That was not difficult–it was impossible. There was no way the others could concentrate on their foes when they had to babysit me all the time.
I didn’t want that either. I didn’t want to be a liability, a burden.
And, at the end of the day, my actions had been quite simple, hadn’t they?
“If I had used a Body Tempering technique, I would have never made it this far in two weeks,” I shrugged.
If anything, I would have been lucky to finish two Gates given how time-consuming the tempering process was. Since my Gates were leaky, refilling them using time-consuming, mentally draining techniques was not merely problematic; it was not even an option. It would have worked for the time being, but what would happen once all Ether Gates were filled and refined with one of those top-notch techniques? My Gates would still be leaky, and I’d be forced to spend most of the day refilling them, making sure I wouldn’t die.
Leaving my Ether Gates unattuned was the best–if not the only feasible–option, even if I’d lose out on a bit of power in exchange. It was a worthwhile exchange, especially once I learned to apply my Soulfusion with Aureus properly. Minor mastery was all I needed to refill my Ether Gates through mere meals.
It was possible. At least, it should be. So that was what I told the others.
Daniel was unconvinced and glared daggers at me.
“Absorbing so much ether was still dangerous,” Sophie murmured. She shook her head and forced a smile. “But you are fine. You managed to avoid the higher levels of ether toxicity, that’s good.”
Sophie murmured something else, but I didn’t quite catch it. All I heard was, “don’t scare me like that,” which made my heart skip a beat.
“I think you did well,” Scott stepped forward. “Your current strength should be more than enough to accept the mission from the Giant Forest I’ve been eyeing. The rewards are great, and we’ll be able to harvest a lot of etherous plants for Daniel to concoct into serums as well.”
He stepped closer and coiled his arm around my shoulder. “You impress me, Adam. If a bunch of 1-Star Gates and a 2-Star Gate are enough to push you this far, I’m curious how strong you will be once you’re done tempering your remaining 2-Star Gates. You’ll definitely be a Limit Breaker at that point.”
Scott laughed happily and slapped my back, and I knew at that moment that I’d done the right thing. Sure, I’d tortured myself for the last two weeks with low-level ether toxicity to grow stronger, to impress the instructor, and to catch up with the others, but that wasn’t all. In fact, impressing Scott was a lot more important to me than impressing Instructor Kalifer. He always knew everything, which made catching him off guard all the more rewarding.
Seeing him like that was worth the torture, although neither Aureus nor Nox seemed to agree.
No more torture!
Aureus wanted to grow stronger–so did Nox–but they knew that if I continued to walk down that path, I would either get addicted to it or my body would shut down at some point. Neither was pleasant, so I’d have to restrain myself to a dozen ether stones a month until I was a little stronger.
Two dozen ether stones a month should be fine too. That’s not even one stone every day. That should be more than acceptable. I nodded, but my bonds flared up, assaulting me with a mixture of fury, killing intent, and threats–a lot of threats.
Okay, okay… I will keep my ether stone consumption under control.
“Thanks, Scott,” I smiled back, temporarily restraining the bond with Aureus and Nox. “The Giant Forest. What’s this mission about?”
***
Plucking a few flowers. That was all we had to do in the Giant Forest. It sounded so simple, I almost believed the B-grade mission would earn us a good coin. Almost.
Unfortunately, it didn’t look like anything about the Giant Forest was ‘simple’ or ‘easy’. We barely made it past a bunch of colossal trees when trouble awaited us in masses.
“I didn’t sign up for this shit!” Daniel growled as a chitinous beast with a gaping hole in its head collapsed to the ground, joining its dead brethren.
Coco and Filps charged past him, lightning crackling across their bodies. Purple arcs whipped left and right as the predators leaped at the bulls, burning the weakest beasts effortlessly. The strongest would have caught the bulls if Sophie and a familiar Aceraspis hadn’t been there to kill the beasts in time.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
The Aceraspis had grown to the size of a twelve-year-old, and it was nowhere near its full height. Acer was already lethal, though, his claws tearing through the chitinous exoskeleton covering the Awakened canine’s body. The canine–we were still unsure what exactly those creatures were–yelped out loud and clawed at Acer, twisting its body to degrees that shouldn’t be possible.
“Where in the Rulers’ Names are they coming from?” I yelled out loud, driving my blade into the wide-open maw of a canine pouncing on me. An earthen spike shot out of the ground and tore through the same beast a moment later, ending its suffering.
“We must have entered their lair,” Scott shouted back, his spear whirling around him.
The chitinous canines attacked us no more than thirty minutes after we entered the Giant Forest. We barely managed to collect a few ether plants before Scott’s warning resounded. If not for him, we would have rushed into their ambush without any preparations.
Not that we had much time to prepare anyway, I commented inwardly, my eyes flicking to Nox and Aureus.
The Earthheart pulled several five-meter-tall walls from the ground, slowing the incoming enemies. He left behind a few openings between the walls, which were occupied by the rest of the team and their Soulkins. A few canines leaped across the walls, but they never made it far. Scott reached them the moment they landed on the other side, his spear piercing through their heads.
Sophie, Scott, and Daniel had it relatively easy. They were an entire Rank stronger than the chitinous canines and tore through them without much effort. The only issue was their numerical disadvantage, forcing them to summon their Soulkins to battle. Even Scott relied on Destiny, his eyes shimmering like stars.
“You’re doing great!” I shouted, only to backtrack when I caught Nox leaping into the masses of enemies. “No, Nox! This is not a suicide mission!!”
Controlling Aureus was easy–or rather, it was not necessary. The Earthheart was smart and knew better than to charge into a group of a dozen Awakened predators. Even if Aureus had done that, I was sure he would have survived. His control of both Paralyze and the Earthen Aspect had increased by leaps and bounds since he consumed Gaia Suras. Not even Evolved beasts with an Elemental Aspect could control theirs as precisely as Aureus–or so I told myself.
At least Aureus’ control was more refined than Coco’s. Then again, the Thunderhorn Bull was a physical beast at heart. Coco’s elemental Aspect was no more than an additional boon.
Nox, on the other hand, was a problem. His battle spirit was intense, for the lack of a better word, and he leaped into the masses without a second thought. He didn’t even seem to care that most of the chitinous canines were Mid or Late-ranked Awakened beasts.
He can kill.
Aureus commented, and the Earthheart wasn’t wrong.
Nox was a killer, and he had already dispatched two canines with blades that were far too sharp for a young Awakened beast. It didn’t make sense for Nox’s scythes to slice so easily through the exoskeleton of a Late Awakened beast, but that was exactly what the young Feronox Mantis did. And he did it easily.
Still, Nox was not an impenetrable fortress. He was slower than the canines surrounding him, and he suffered two claw strikes to his thorax before Aureus and I were ready to act. The Earthheart unleashed Paralyze on the beast closest to the Feronox Mantis. Nox didn’t bother retreating and cleaved down on the Paralyzed beast, killing it instead. Forced to intervene, Aureus added a compressed earthen wall, which blocked six beasts momentarily.
He was a little drained from the constant use of his traits, but Aureus had great control over his expenditures. I arrived beside Nox, fighting between the earthen walls, and locked onto battle. Predator was at the ready, unleashing its full power as I turned to the first beast. An earthen pillar struck its stomach, sending the beast stumbling right before a scythe cut through its throat. The beast’s head dropped to the ground, and Nox screeched loudly, pulling the other beasts toward him.
I didn’t know how, but I was prepared for that. I rammed the refined silvernit sword into the chitinous beast. A moment later, a sinkhole opened up before us and three canines fell inside. The sinkhole wasn’t deep, but I created it mostly to separate the beasts and to surprise them. Taking advantage of the situation, I used Paralyze on one of the canines leaping at us. It froze mid-air and fell straight into Nox’s scythes.
The beast collapsed on the Feronox Mantis, pinning Nox to the ground, forcing me to leap across the carcass to intercept the other canines. One was dangerously close to my leg, its maw snapping shut and barely missing the target. I was too focused on evading the attack and failed to notice the claw streaking across my chest. It tore through my breastplate but failed to penetrate skin and flesh.
My heart skipped a beat as death flashed through my mind. Yet instead of panicking, I felt angry. Uncontrollable anger and the thirst to tear through the beast that almost killed me overwhelmed me. I charged ahead. A tinge of red shrouded my vision as I tore through the beasts, beheading one before several spikes formed around me in the air. A burst of ether was all it took to release them, and that I did.
The spikes whistled through the air faster than Fabienne’s crossbow bolts. They tore through the beasts’ vitals, killing two and crippling the others. Nox emerged beside me a moment later, his killing intent merging with mine.
I had felt something similar before, but this time it was far more intense. It was more than mere overlapping emotions of Blessed and Soulkin. It… was almost like Nox’s emotions were mine. It felt good–great even–yet something was off. At first glance, everything seemed like it was supposed to be that way. Nox and I tore through our enemies with deadly precision, using the Predator trait to know exactly where we had to strike the beasts to inflict the most damage.
The beasts died at our hands with shocking ease. Paralyze and the Earthen Aspect, combined with the same traits used by Aureus–who had joined us in melee–worked wonders. However, something felt more and more wrong.
Is that really who I am? I wondered, wiping the green mucus from my face.
The killing intent faded momentarily, and I watched Aureus attack the beasts with the same intensity as Nox, his emotions more aggressive than ever.
“No!” I growled, conjuring an earthen wall to block both Aureus and Nox as they were about to leap into the forest to continue the killing spree.
They crashed into the wall and nearly broke it down. I rushed up to them, my empty hand shooting toward Nox. He spun around to face me, his dark pupils emitting a blood-red hue. Killing intent seeped into my mind, but I resisted it this time. Instead, I cast Paralyze on Nox, my fingers coiling around his thorax.
“Stop that, Nox! NOW!”