Chapter 322 Volume V - Chapter 40: Laergas
I felt like I was at the bottom of an ocean, literally at the bottom, where the pressure was a thousand times greater. That's what I felt when the wall between me and all that mana in the hall was lifted.
It was surrounding me so intensely that I didn't feel like I could move my body. It was seeping in through every part of my body, even trying to force its way into my own mana flow. Not only that, it was reaching even further inside. It was making its way into my organs, into my blood vessels, and more.
It was like... it was trying to tear my body apart from the inside.
It was so painful that my thoughts were muddled. My senses were confused, disconnected from the world. Even if I wanted to use my ascension skill, like I did in the corridor back then... I was under such intense pain and my thoughts were so intertwined that I couldn't.
I looked down at my arm, my vision blurred with pain, unable to perceive anything but myself because of the intense mana around me.
My arm... it was practically glowing. There was a strange glow around it, inside it, even through the extremely dense mana that had seeped into the blood vessels and another system deeper inside. My veins, normally visible in a faint color, were now easy to see because they were filled with a much more intense version of the same glow.
There were seconds. Only seconds until I was dead... maybe I didn't even have that much time.
Try to endure? Bullshit... there's not a single person in the world who could stand it!
Ah, no... the man in front of me is not only enduring it, he's controlling it. At the same time... Aiden endured it too. The moment he picked up that sword, his body was overwhelmed by an even more intense amount of mana. His body started to crack, he was literally burned.
But... he endured it.
I gritted my teeth. I tried to lift myself up with my arms in the mana that surrounded me, but before I could even try, I knew I would fail.
Difficulty Lover was working at its limits, Friend of Mana was trying to help me as much as possible, but neither was enough. I needed something different, something very different... I needed to channel the mana in my body. And there was... actually a way to do that.
I didn't even think about it. I just focused on the inside of my body, ignoring my bones and veins and focusing on something else I had at the same time.
Inside my heart, there was another organ that beat non-stop, just like it. It connected to other vessels other than my blood vessels, it was a system in itself that enveloped my whole body. It was pumping something completely different from my heart.
The difference between an elf and a human was that elves were born in the true sense of mana. Mana only circulated randomly in the human body. Sometimes it would have its own flow, thanks to the flow of blood in the blood vessels. But in general, it was randomly distributed.
That's why it was necessary to bring order to this randomness in order to reach B-grade and beyond. No matter how strong a human was, he could not reach B- grade without doing this. While it is mana itself that strengthens the body, that enables it to exceed its limits, it was simply impossible to step further without learning to use it systematically.
So, with the guidance of the system, when humans tried to reach B- grade, they would build a system into their own bodies that was found in the elves' bodies. Thanks to this mana circulation system they imitated, the mana in their bodies would be freed from randomness and would have a regular flow, just like blood itself. So they could go on exceeding their limits again.
I... as a half-elf, had this circulatory system since the day I was born. Elven hybrids usually couldn't get much stronger and were weak because this extra system in their bodies was broken, irregular, and complicated. But... I was different, I had a smooth mana circulation system.
The only problem was... this system had been deactivated since I was young to hide the fact that I was an elf. When I activated the feature of my necklace, not only did my appearance match that of a normal human, but this extra system I had became useless.
That's why I came to this age without being able to focus on it. Now, even if I unsealed and had access to this system again... I didn't know how to use it. But I had no choice either.
I focused on the second heart that I had since the day I was born, which was hidden inside my original heart. I tried to feel all the veins of mana that radiated from this heart into my body. And the moment I tried to do that... I realized that the same mana that had enveloped my body had seeped into this system.
It wasn't something I didn't expect. So I didn't think too much about it. I focused on this system and the foreign mana that was coursing through it, when I was only seconds away from being cut off from the world. I forced my second heart to work deliberately, consciously. I forced it to beat faster than it ever had before, with my own hands.
I failed.
But I didn't give up, I tried again, and again and again. I tried and tried, with my vision going black and my senses shutting down.
Finally, I think on my fourth attempt... I felt a surge in my body. The steady beating of my second heart suddenly accelerated. That's why I felt that surge in my body.
I pushed it even harder. Not only that, I also reached out to my mana veins that were spread throughout my body through it. I specifically collected the foreign mana that was trying to tear me apart from within through this system itself.
When this mana entered my second heart, my whole body trembled violently. The metallic taste reached my mouth again, my heart felt like it was squeezing, but I didn't give up.
I made my second heart work even faster, giving direction to the foreign mana that had infiltrated it. This direction was... outside my body.
When the mana, so dense that it felt like a solid object, moved from my second heart back into the mana vessels, I felt as if someone was carving a dagger through my body. Yet when some of this foreign mana was expelled from my body, then... a strange relief came.
I beat my heart even faster. I spread more and more of this foreign mana into my mana veins, and then I pushed it out. More and more mana was entering my body, but I was pushing more and more out.
I had already crossed the timeline where I thought I would die under normal circumstances, but... I was alive. Still, that didn't mean I had to stop. One more mistake could still lead me to my death.
So I didn't stop. I kept doing what I was doing with total focus, and the more I kept doing it... the more I began to understand the second circulatory system I had forgotten to use.
It was like an extra limb that I had forgotten existed. But as I kept using it, pushing it, I slowly remembered it.
When I was near death, trying to hold on to life with all my focus... I had even forgotten how time flowed.
However, it was at this moment that something unexpected happened. All the mana that had invaded my body slowly began to leave me. Even the layer that surrounded me, that made me feel like I was at the bottom of the ocean, slowly retreated. It was as if... the wall between me and it had been rebuilt.
When the pressure I had been feeling all the time finally receded, I felt more... alive than I had ever felt before. I was truly relieved, but that didn't mean that the pain and ache that had spread throughout my body had disappeared.
I involuntarily closed my eyes, face down on the floor. Fainting may not have been the best option in the face of the person who had caused this incident in the first place... But I was in no condition to move a muscle.
However, before all my senses were plunged into darkness again... a light slowly overtook this darkness.
At first, I didn't understand what was happening. I thought I had fainted, that I was dreaming, but that wasn't the case. I could still feel the pain and the ache. The only strange thing was... it felt like both were slowly starting to subside.
My eyelids slowly opened and my eyes began to regain their focus. I couldn't figure out what was happening, even though all my senses were getting almost even better than before.
"That should be enough, Claire."
With those words echoing in my ears... for a moment, I couldn't understand anything again. But then I looked at the metallic surface of one of the seats in front of me and saw a young girl standing behind me. She was holding her hand over me, a golden glow enveloping her palms. The same light... was leaving her hands and enveloping my whole body.
But as soon as I saw her, she nodded her head approvingly and withdrew her hand. The golden glow left both her and my body. And then... I realized that I was well enough to stand up without any problems.
Reflexively, I supported myself with my arms, then got up on my knees and slowly stood up. For a moment, I lost my balance and almost fell, but I quickly recovered myself.
My eyes shifted first to the girl behind me, whom I could see through the metal part of the seat. She was standing not far from me.
She was one of the children I had seen before I came here. She would have been... seventeen at the most. Like the man sitting on the couch, she had auburn-colored, wavy hair. She wore it simply braided. Her eyes were different from that man's. They were not ocean blue, but simply... golden yellow. Her expression didn't say much, she seemed calm and a bit cold.
The next second, I paused for a moment as something came into my mind, and then I quickly turned around.
The man with the ocean-blue eyes... was still sitting on the couch. There was a slight smirk on his stern expression. Shortly after our eyes met, he spoke again.
"I thought I still had a few years to go, but apparently, you are much closer to us than I thought, Adrian Caleo. One of the paintings on the wall behind me has a very nice-looking picture, do you see it?"
I reflexively looked where he was pointing and quickly recognized the painting he was talking about.
There was another hall in the painting that looked just like this hall. Maybe it was even this hall itself. But that was not what was strange, it was the other details in the painting.
Someone was standing at the entrance of the hall. Behind him was a blurred, glittering corridor. It was like... the corridor I had entered before I came here, overflowing with intense mana. But that was not what caused my eyes to widen.
What really caught my attention was the person standing in front of this corridor. He had shoulder-length silver hair and emerald-green eyes. There was a golden glow around him, strange patterns running across his skin.
It was... me.
"Ah, I just remembered that you won the bet between us. Before I tell you where you are, as promised, let me introduce myself, Adrian."
My eyes shifted back to the man on the couch. Then... I saw his lips curve even higher.
"My name is Chris, Chris Laergas. This is my house, like I said. All the people you see are my family."
Wait... did he say Laergas...?
"Welcome to my home, Adrian Caleo. But... there's something I'm curious about."
Laergas... That last name...
"I wonder why you have my great-grandfather's imprint on your soul? I'm not on good terms with him, you know."
This content is taken from free web nov𝒆l.com