Scott said nothing when I returned to the stands. He focused on the fights in the pit, but he was oddly tense. His kind smile had been replaced with a steely expression, and he ignored me—or at least it felt that way.
I wanted to say something, to ask Scott what was going on, but my lips snapped closed moments after they parted.
Did he expect me to be stronger? Is he disappointed I’m weaker than he expected?
One way or another, it wasn’t like I owed Scott anything. If I wasn’t good enough for him just because I couldn’t fight a Journeyman as a Novice, then so be it. I didn’t need friends like that.
My focus snapped back to the pit, and I redoubled my effort to study my other opponents. I started off with mental notes about the three Blessed I’d fight in the next few hours, but my attention lingered on everyone’s prowess, their traits, and the jarring contrast in everyone’s strength, speed, and how much ether they used.
I tried to calculate how much ether my future opponents were using, how much their traits strained them, and how much their Soulkins empowered them. It would have been easier with extensive testing, but I made do with everything at my disposal. That had to be enough.
It was almost noon when my studies were interrupted. A shift in my World disrupted my focus, and I hurriedly inspected it. The World rippled and…expanded. A strange pull swept through my body, jerking on my limbs and tearing through the network of ether channels within me.
Gates, faintly glistening in an inconspicuous light, appeared all over my body, accessible to me. They were small, hard to notice, and still being developed, yet I could sense and reach them. It was impossible to fill and refine them now, but it was only a matter of time before that would be possible.
The core in my World shattered without warning, yet the ether within didn’t flee. It didn’t escape the confines of the shattered core; instead, it fused with it. The core recovered as suddenly as it had broken apart. Tethers of ether pulled the shards together, forming a new, larger core as the World grew by more than one-fifth of its initial size.
My attention shifted to the cocoon shrouding Aureus. Tiny, seemingly insignificant lines riveted across the golden surface. At first, they seemed unimportant, but they spread rapidly until they encompassed the entire cocoon, widening to the breadth of a hair. Golden particles formed in the World, but they were not drawn into the cocoon. Instead, the soul energy seeped through the hairline cracks into Aureus. In response, Aureus emitted a faint hue, accompanied by a sense of longing.
I missed you too, buddy. I smiled, my heart twisting in ways I never imagined possible. I’d missed Aureus’ presence a lot – a lot more than I fathomed.
My eyes snapped open, the grin never leaving my face—until my mind and body were assaulted by raw power. A ripple of the bond struck me, and my muscles convulsed. Pain burst through every cell of my body, and I could barely gasp for air when a reassuring hand landed on my shoulder.
“Take a deep breath and take control of the empowering.” Scott’s voice was quiet yet commanding. It didn’t make sense, but his tone was almost as reassuring as my mother’s as it rang in my ears, reaching the depths of my consciousness. “Your second fight was postponed. You have exactly ninety-five minutes to get hold of yourself, or you’ll have to jump into the combat ring looking like this.”
I had no idea what he meant by the last part, but an extra hour and a half was exactly what I needed. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and tried to get a hold of the changes the bond was forcing upon me.
The empowering of the bond was coming through—I understood that part as well as Scott and the organizers of the retinue test seemed to—but I hadn’t expected the changes to be this existential. My mind had been constantly refined and improved by Aureus’ progress, so I’d assumed my Soulkin’s evolution wouldn’t affect me much. That was a grave mistake.
Aureus was advancing to the Awakened Rank, and that affected me as well. It naturally improved Aureus’ physique, though it hardly felt like the little glutton had become a physical Soulkin. If anything, his evolution had pushed the former Soilback further away from his brethren. My head felt like it was splitting apart—like someone was tearing my skull in half and spilling liters of searing-hot lava onto my brain. My mind was… I couldn’t even tell what it was. My brain was melting, my skull breaking, and my mind… my mind simply existed, in a disturbing kind of way.
I could hardly track time, but I knew I didn’t have the luxury of going through Aureus’ evolution and advancement at a normal pace. Aureus’ evolution was nearing completion, but it could still take hours—maybe even a day or two—before the final step of the Soilback’s evolution was complete. I didn’t have that kind of time to spare. So instead of accepting everything at once, I tried to talk to Aureus, to communicate with him, the bond, and my World.
It was a little crazy, but I tried to stop Aureus’ empowering—and actually succeeded in slowing the amount of power the bond shared at a time.
“Regulate it properly. You have forty-three minutes left before you have to get into the ring. Use forty minutes to complete the physical soulshare and get used to the changes. Modify the bond at your will. Take the reins of the soulshare. Now!”
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Scott’s voice was annoying, to say the least, but I was oddly happy he wasn’t ignoring me anymore. Not only that, but he was trying to help me—or at least, I thought he was helping me.
Trusting Scott—and with Destiny’s weirdly loud squealing ringing in my ears—I continued. I willed the soulshare to heed my word… and it did.
Energy flooded me, my pores opening to absorb the atmospheric ether, filling the ether core and the channels spread throughout my body at a blinding speed. That phenomenon was normal as far as I could tell; but I was happy anyway, as it confirmed my suspicion. Aureus advanced to the Awakened Rank.
The power granted by the evolution had yet to hit me; however, I was satisfied with the strength at my disposal. An earthy smell filled my nose as the Awakened power of Aureus surged through my body, and I commanded it to settle. Unfortunately, time was still not on my side, and I was forcefully wrenched away by a foreign wave of ether.
My eyes snapped open and I gasped for air. A groan escaped my lips as a faint but constant sensation of someone trying to split my head bore into me, though it was bearable. At least it was better than the earlier sensation.
“Sorry for the rude awakening, but I didn’t want to take any risks,” Scott said, retracting the hand pressed firmly against my back.
“Thanks,” I muttered, my eyes trailing over my body.
I… didn’t look any different. I wasn’t sure what I expected to happen, but it was certainly not that.
“He’s not a physical Soulkin,” I reminded myself as I got up. However, as I leaped to my feet, I felt a noticeable shift. My body felt lighter than before. I punched the air a few times, stretched a little bit, and realized my body was a little stiffer than before. The difference was not stark, but it was noticeable—so was the difference in strength. My fists struck much harder and faster than before.
I was fairly sure I could choke a mature Soilback to death with my bare hands. Memories of my time in the Oridon Mountains resurfaced, and I wondered how I’d fare against a beast like the Shadowing.
I’d win. My mind reassured me with a sense of confidence I didn’t quite anticipate.
“An advancement is always rough around the edges. Commander Spencer knows that as well. I guess that’s also why he decided to postpone your second fight earlier,” Scott said. “He is a man of few words, and looks strict, but he doesn’t want to harm the Blessed. Forcing you to fight when you are in the middle of an advancement wouldn’t help anyone, whether you join the Camp or not. It’s unnecessary and could cripple you and your Soulkin forever.”
I raised an eyebrow at Scott, who waved me off dismissively when he noticed the time. “I’m talking too much. The dangerous part of your advance is over, and your opponent is already waiting for you.”
The more Scott talked, the more it felt like he knew a lot—more than a regular retinue was supposed to know. In some way, he appeared as though he knew everything, but that was impossible.
Not now! I reminded myself before descending the pit with my dulled weapon in hand.
Power pumped through my veins, ether coursed through the channels, and my mind rattled while the aftermath of Aureus’ advancement to the Awakened Rank continued to empower me. I was not quite done with the advancement, but my opponent had waited long enough.
“I’m sorry for the delay,” I said apologetically, putting as much sincerity into my voice as possible. “I didn’t quite expect something like that to happen.”
My opponent, a young woman with bright green eyes and long blond hair bound back into a ponytail, nodded slowly. She regarded me with her small eyes as though I were an attraction and entered the combat ring.
“Did your Soulkin just advance to the Evolve Rank?” she asked, her voice a mixture of curiosity and coldness.
“Hmm? No, my Soulkin is evolving. The evolution will be complete soon, but he advanced to the Awakened Rank pre-emptively,” I explained, glad my opponent wasn’t mad at me. If anything, she looked intrigued, and I couldn’t hold that against her. Since the glutton’s evolution did not end with his advancement to the Awakened Rank, which was more often than not the case with evolving Wilds, Aureus was bound to grow even stronger in the next few hours.
It was a good thing Bert and the others had pushed me to refine my World relentlessly, as it looked like my World would, once again, be filled to the brim once the evolution concluded.
“That’s strange. Your body is reacting this strongly to your second Soulkin’s advancement to the Awakened Rank?” She slowed, looked me in the eyes, and even went as far as to lower her weapon for a moment.
“I only have one Soulkin, though.” I cocked my head to the side. “He eats like two, maybe even three, but I’m fairly sure he’s my only Soulkin.”
“Okay.” She eyed me like she didn’t quite believe what I said, yet there was a trace in her cold eyes that turned even colder as the referee started the battle.
The short conversation ended, and we charged at each other. I pushed ether into my lower body and dashed ahead, my mind rattling as I absorbed details of the surroundings I hadn’t noticed before. I caught a subtle shift around my opponent as the green in her eyes turned glacial blue, and I raised my sword just in time as an icicle whistled through the air.
The icicle impacted hard and slowed my momentum, but it struck my sword instead of me. It shattered and released a cloud of freezing-cold air in an explosive burst. My eyes darted around, trying to find my opponent, yet as my gaze landed on her, she merged with the cloud.
I barely blocked a second icicle that burst through the cloud all of a sudden, and I dove to the side when a third projectile flung through the air.
The blond Blessed promised to be a tough enemy. She was fast, and her projectiles were as swift as they were deadly. One wrong move, and I would be down.
The freezing-cold cloud dispersed within seconds, but those seconds were the most dangerous. Nonetheless, my opponent’s icicles didn’t quite catch me. They were fast, but my reaction was faster.
Three icicles would have been more than enough to defeat me if the empowering of Aureus’ advancement had never happened—but it did, and I was more than happy with Aureus’ timing.