As Asher opened his eyes, he saw a new notification in front of him.
[Hidden Quest Completed]
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Objective: Change Helena Raven's Destiny
Rewards: 1500 Fate Points
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Seeing this notification, Asher could guess that he had averted a certain incident that happened in his previous life.
*******************
In the Greville Estate,
Sylvie was looking at Asher, whose eyes were dead, lost of life, as he stared at her.
"Asher, tell me what happened inside," Sylvie asked with a stern look on her face.
But Asher didn't reply.
He wasn't ignoring Sylvie, but his mind was not present at the current moment.
"Sylvie, stop for now. I will talk with him," Arthur finally decided to step up.
"Sigh," Sylvie sighed.
Although she wanted to believe Asher, the proof was in front of her, and seeing that Asher was not defending himself, she realized that the accusations were true.
"Mother is coming, so wait for now," She said as she turned and returned.
"Tell me, did you do it?" Arthur asked again.
But seeing the same dead look on Asher's face as he stared at him frustrated him.
"I asked something, damn it," Arthur shouted a bit, but Asher did not react.
"We will wait for your grandmother to arrive," Arthur spoke, seeing that he could not get his answers from him right now.
After two hours, Helena arrived at the estate, and the look on her face could tell the situation around them was not good.
"Where is he?" Helena asked Arthur before he could speak anything.
"There," Arthur guided Helena, who entered a room and looked at Asher.
'I thought this day would never come when I will check his memories again,' Helena thought. Asher had become normal as she saw him, so she never checked his memories again.
'Maybe I could have stopped it at that time,' She remembered the time she had lied to Sylvie, thinking Asher was only a bit different than others.
"Boy, I will check your memories, so don't struggle against it," Helena said as her eyes turned black.
Asher didn't move; more like he didn't want to.
Unlike what Arthur and Sylvie thought, Asher was not shocked due to the incident that happened.
They were wrong.
The time had finally come when his struggles with his inner madness had stopped.
His inner madness was finally freed as Asher chose to embrace it.
Helena touched Asher's head as she peeked into his memories, but she saw a single young man standing before her.
In a pitch-black place, a young man with black hair and crimson-red eyes stood, looking at something beyond the eternal darkness.
The space started to light up around the young man.
"What is this?" Helena looked around, as she had never seen something like that.
Suddenly, the young man turned to look at Helena, and it was Asher.
Strange chains appeared around Asher, but a grey-colored energy erupted from Asher's hand. The chains were instantly destroyed.
"What are you doing?" Helena asked Asher.
The young man turned to look at her as he opened his mouth to say something, but Helena could not hear it.
"What?" Helena asked as she was confused.
But before she could do anything, Helena fell to her knees. A huge pressure dawned over her as she looked at Asher, but he had disappeared.
The darkness around her was getting purged as a grey light took over.
Helena felt like her head was about to burst.
Suddenly, she felt the connection between her and Asher was cut off.
"Mom!!!" Sylvie shouted as Helena barely opened her eyes, which were full of blood.
She found that she was in Sylvie's arms as she looked at herself. She touched her face, which had a few wrinkles, and discovered that her eyes, nose, and ears were bleeding.
Sylvie shouted, but Helena looked at Asher, lying near a wall, as Arthur checked on him.
"What happened?" Helena asked weakly, but she could feel something was wrong with her.
A few minutes earlier,
Sylvie entered the room and saw her mother checking on Asher's memories.
"How much time has it been?" Sylvie asked.
"She just started," Arthur replied, as both of them were waiting for Helena to finish and tell them what happened inside.
They waited for a few seconds, but something strange started to happen.
"She is bleeding?!" Arthur said as his eyes went wide with shock.
Everything was normal when suddenly, blood started coming out of her nose. Both of them were confused, but suddenly Helena's mana started to go rampant as her eyes started bleeding.
"Stop!" Sylvie immediately dashed to remove Helena's hand from Asher's head.
Asher was not powerful enough to face Helena's mana, which could hurt him badly.
But before she reached it, Helena's mana pushed Asher into the wall. Her body was also pushed back, but Sylvie caught her, and Arthur dashed to save Asher, who had nearly crashed into the wall.
Sylvie shook Helena, who opened her eyes barely, but the blood kept coming out of her eyes.
"What happened?" She asked, but Sylvie herself didn't know anything.
Sylvie's eyes went wide as she looked at Helena.
"Mother, your mana-" Sylvie couldn't even speak.
"What?" Helena asked, but she felt even weaker.
She checked her mana, but she was having a hard time gathering mana.
"Your mana has dropped to S Rank," Sylvie could not believe it.
She could see how Helena's skin got paler and felt that her mana was dropping rapidly.
"Argh," Helena felt a sharp pain in her head as her consciousness slipped away.
****************
Asher remembered that when she had checked his memories last time, it resulted in Helena becoming ill to the point she went into a coma.
It was the start of a critical point in Asher's previous life, which turned him into the man he was today.
"It seems I have a second person who has surpassed me in the affinity with the Black Element," Helena said with a smile.
She had always believed that Asher was quite a talented person. However, she still doubted whether he was truly as powerful as Ivar Greville, the only person she had met that could surpass her affinity in the Black Element.
Only one person she thought could surpass her in the Black Element, but seeing that Asher also had a similar talent, she was elated.
Despite seeing that Asher had no emotions as a child, she found his talent very interesting. Moreover, he was the firstborn of her daughter, so Helena favored Asher from a young age, and she was very happy for him.
But it was her misunderstanding; it was due to his high intelligence that Helena could not check his memories.
Intelligence was a stat that increased the strength of his mental barriers, making him less prone to mental attacks. And Asher had enough Intelligence stats to make Helena's bloodline ability useless.
He still hadn't come to terms with increasing his intelligence in such a way, but seeing the effects now, he could deduce that the intelligence stat was not as simple as it sounded.
He could feel his thought process had become clearer, but the feeling was different than when he got stats from his bloodline ability.
"I was thinking of doing a normal lecture, but now I got this opportunity. Having a special class with the Rank 1 student doesn't sound bad, does it?" Helena said, looking at Arman.
"Uh?" Arman got confused.
"Yeah," Arman replied because he could not stop her from teaching anyone she wanted to.
"Don't worry, it will be an hour session only, and I had already asked for some time to spend with my grandchildren," Helena replied.
She had already asked for time to meet Asher and Amelia before returning.
"But let's start by seeing what you specialize in," Helena said, looking at the class.
Not all students could use all the abilities of the Black Element. Helena was sure that Asher had a similar specialty to her: Shadow Movement and Control.
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