Supreme Magus

"I'm just worried about you because you never experienced a breakthrough of this scale. Even if you survive, expelling so many impurities might inflict you a mental trauma if not even drive you insane."

"Why don't you just help me if you're so worried about me?" Kelia asked.

"Because just like you're not my meat puppet, I'm not your toy. When we disagree, the final decision is yours, but unless we find a compromise don't expect me to always come to your rescue.

"Just like I found you, I can always find a new host." Dusk replied.

“All the more reason to not waste more time, then." Keila replied in outrage while using Accumulation. "We both want to see what my dormant bloodline is like, but we'll have to wait until I reach the blue core just to get a glimpse of it.

"Since I'm just a consumable tool for you, we might as well speed up things instead of preparing for years!"

Soon the world energy overflowed her bright yellow core, making several green streaks appear all over it. As its power grew by the second, so did her mana flow that pushed away the impurities accumulated near her core.

Dusk knew that having a breakthrough so early was reckless and stupid, yet he said nothing.

‘If this is how you want to play, be my guest. We'll see if you are still cocky while you writhe in agony.‘ He thought.

‘We'll see who's fight, old fossil.’ Kelia thought. ‘I've checked your memories of the breakthroughs of your past hosts and until the cyan core, all you have to do is to endure throwing up a bit of that black shit.

‘So far, my breakthroughs were nothing compared to the pain I experienced from hunger and food intoxication when I picked bad stuff from the trash. I've lived with pain my whole life and I'm going to show you what I'm made of.‘

At first, everything went as she was used to. The burst of mana from her core caused an increase in the flow that pushed the impurities stuck in her body away and toward her skin.

Kelia fell to her knees as the familiar burning sensation spread throughout her body and she started excreting the impurities from all of her orifices. Her skin seemed to be on fire, but she had survived high fever several times so she ignored it.

The impurities flowing over her tongue tasted like rotten meat, but she had eaten plenty of that and spitting was much easier than swallowing those horrors. Then, she felt something new that made her fear that Dusk might have been right.

Invigoration had revealed to her some big clumps of impurities that now refused to budge. The mana flow had already removed the smaller ones and its strength had further increased.

It was now relentlessly attacking the clumps, yet the impurities resisted her attempts to break them ClOWl'l. The conflict between the clumps and the mana flow grew in intensity as more and more impurities were removed, until only the clumps remained.

Kelia saw her left hand, where one of the biggest clumps was stuck In the metacarpus, bloat like a balloon. Each of her fingers became the size of a sausage and her palm looked like a meat bun from the swelling.

A meat bun that was being cooked.

Kelia felt as if her flesh had been put against hot metal before her hand exploded and the stump spurted blood everywhere. The pain and the agony overwhelmed her, making her cry, yet her screams were muffled by the blood gurgling in her throat.

Then, her right cheek, left thigh, abdomen, and right leg swelled as well.

‘Please, help me! l don't want to die.‘ She was in too much pain to talk so she opened the first mind link since she and Dusk had bonded.

The Horsman gloated at her desperation. Kelia had refused to listen to him and now she was paying the price. The Red Sun had no reason to help her and no will to. At least until due to her inexperience with mind links, Kelia shared with him more than a plea for help.

He could now feel her rage and distrust born from a lifetime of abandonment. First her parents and then the Gorgon Empire. After running away from the orphanage, Kelia had learned the hard way that trusting someone meant asking to get hurt.

During her short life, she had come to believe that kindness was but a myth. Even Dusk had only manipulated her for his ends and had just reminded her how she was nothing but a temporary vessel.

‘Damn me and my big mouth.’ The Red Sun cursed. '1 keep treating her as an adult, but she's just a dumb kid. I know her memories, but due to our minds being always apart, I failed to grasp how deep—rooted her trauma is.‘

Kelia‘s foot was on the verge of exploding and so was the rest of her body. The agony was so intense that the plea had turned into begging.

Her mind, just like her body, was about to crack.

Dusk was at a crossroads. If he chose to keep his word and do nothing, Kelia would be his to mold. The lesson would teach her humility, respect, and the memory of the pain would become a leash that would turn him into her master and Kelia into his obedient disciple.

Or Dusk could step in and prove to her that she mattered more to him than being right. He would end up fixing her mess, but Kelia would also understand that he wasn't just trying to order her around,

he was only looking after her.

Being Kelia an immature child, it might have also backfired. She might not learn her lesson and just think that she could take any dumb risk because Dusk would take care of it for her.

Dusk had to choose whether to turn her into a broken puppet or give her the opportunity to take the first step to become human.

The Red Sun inwardly snarled as he used lnvigoration to pinpoint the lumps of impurities and released pulses of darkness magic to fragment them. By joining his weakened core to Kelia's, the mana flow managed to get rid of the clumps and her body returned to normal.

"'l'hank... you—" Whatever she wanted to say was cut short when she fainted from pain and exhaustion.

Her little body was covered in a pool of blood and impurities that drenched the floor. The fragments of her left hand were scattered throughout the room and the stump was still bleeding.

Dusk cleaned everything with darkness magic and used his crystal to seal the wound before putting Kelia in her bed. To an outside observer, her body would seem to float as the bedsheets tucked her in on their own.

But if they looked at the mirror in front of the bed, they would have seen the figure of a man holding the unconscious girl to his chest,

lulling her like a baby.

When Kelia woke up, she instinctively looked at the stump, finding her left hand intact like nothing had happened. She also found a hearty meal and a hot bath waiting for her.