75 A mangy Supreme Ca (1/2)
In the present
Nelia entered the room with Snowflake's tail held in her hand. The cat was still hurling at the queen, but his back paws were loose on the floor. His complete incapability of rebelling against Nelia's strength left him helpless. Behind them walked a Goblin and a silvery-haired girl.
Frankenstein's face was almost disfigured by an uncanny expression of fanatical enthusiasm. He seemed out of himself; he was holding a book and couldn't help leafing maniacally through its pages, creasing them noisily. A honking sound followed every sentence he read. ”Ha! Got it! Mh! Noep!”. He seemed to have lost some marbles, and the violent Aura he gave off only confirmed the impression. Whoever had a fine sensory perception took notice of the ripples that Frankenstein's Aura was leaving behind. Everything suggested that he was a madman.
Beside him stood Lumia. Or rather someone like Lumia, but deceptively so. The childish expression always hang on Lumia's face had indeed left space to a seraphic calm. It looked as though her gaze concealed an insurmountable mountain behind it. She conveyed the impression that whoever looked at her was actually admiring a stone monument time has left its trace on. Everything suggested that she was majestic.
Every now and then Nelia glanced at Frankenstein and Lumia. On their way to the hall where the test would take place, she could scarcely recognize them. They had undergone a radical change, as though some traumatic experience had conditioned their existence. Lumia's gaze was what Nelia was most upset about; she didn't look like a girl anymore, she now looked like a woman. Her gaze betrayed the resoluteness of she who has explored hell's far ends and then reemerged.
After some seconds, other two figures arrived.
A young human and a Goblin girl. Lulu was sitting on Helial's shoulders as he repeated: ”So have you grasped the principle behind that reasoning?”
Lulu furrowed her eyebrows heavily and answered: ”Yeah, but if I…”
”No, it wouldn't work. Try to lead your Mana towards this spot instead,” said Helial as he touched her arm.
”What if I made it resonate with this?” said Lulu as she touched Helial's shoulder.
They were talking about Mana.
Lulu seemed different too. Her eyes were still fearful, but her sparkling irises revealed an unhesitating gleam. By looking at her now, one could never have guessed that she once was a shaky servant in the clutches of a bunch of Goblins.
However, what people got most shocked about was Helial. His tunic was drenched in blood. The cloth was scattered by stains of dried blood, while fresh blood was still dripping. He had a slightly open wound that was leaving a trail of tiny crimson blood stains behind him.
That wound was the last one of the long and painful training undergone by Lulu. It had ended just a minute before, which was why Helial had had no time to change clothes. The training had made the both of them, teacher and learner, suffer. But they had both benefitedgreatly from it. Helial had inflicted a terrible wound to himself, but Lulu had managed to heal it and had also found an unfathomed tenacity inside her heart. Thanks to this new experience, the girl had molded a totally new, resilient disposition that led her to build a strong self-confidence. If compared to Lumia and Frankenstein, however, Lulu had started off at a disadvantage; her mindset was still influenced by the Goblin hierarchy, so she was clearly weaker than them. On the contrary, Helial had spent that week meditating on Life and Destruction and had ignored any other training style.
Actually, the guy wasn't there to take part in the test. He had come to witness his friends' performances. Suddenly, he realized that everybody's gazes were set on him. He looked down at his feet and noticed the blood stains dripping down from his tunic. He scratched his cheek and sighed. He had no way to get changed. And, honestly speaking, it wasn't like that made a priority to him.
He thought back to the folly he had done and felt satisfied with himself. Without Body of the Qilin, Helial wouldn't have probably survived the blood loss and, after a few hours of agony, his life would have come to a very ugly end. And yet, the Ancestral Creature's Skill had let him resist to a physical strain that could have proved lethal to anyone else.