Crackling sounds resonated through the tired mind of the individual.

  He felt that he finally had the proper sleep he deserved, but he wanted to sleep a little more.

  Pain coursed through his body, but he didn’t mind. Pain had been his companion for years.

  He was used to it. He welcomed it.

  A world without pain now seemed dull. It felt as if he had lost an essential sense, as if he couldn’t see or hear anything.

  This time, the pain was excruciating.

  However, together with it, a certain sensation of pleasure was pulsing at the base of his spine. Intense heat had been speeding through his body all this time until it finally found its destination.

  Along with the sounds of something cracking, it felt like an egg was about to hatch inside Illyan’s body.

  Or rather, eggs, to be exact.

  The louder the sound, the stronger the sensation of something wriggling under his stomach became.

  But it wasn’t uncomfortable. It felt natural, as if a long-lost ability had returned.

  Illyan finally opened his eyes with a loud gasp as he felt sweat covering his body.

  Extreme weakness enveloped him as he y sprawled on the cold ground.

  While looking towards the ceiling, he noticed he was inside the skull of the troll, with broken jaws biting down on the ground around him.

  He also noticed that thin frost covered the skull’s inner yer as the temperature around him was far below freezing.

  But he felt warm. It wasn’t thanks to his cold resistance. That felt different.

  He actually felt warmth at this very moment.

  Illyan browsed through his memories and immediately realized the crux of the problem.

  With that thought, he looked towards his chest.

  It was bare, as all his tattered clothes had burned away during the fight.

  That allowed him to see the condition his body was in.

  It was catastrophic, as half of his chest was still missing, with his organs visibly wriggling underneath.

  ‘Thank goodness that bastard couldn’t properly cast spells or use other undeads in his condition…’ Illyan sighed in relief when thinking about Aziro’s crazy behavior. He would have had problems fighting him otherwise.

  With a horde of undeads at his call, along with other mysterious spells, Illyan could have easily fallen in that battle.

  Thankfully, Illyan realized the man probably had trouble casting spells as a wraith. There were no signs of mana in his spiritual body, and his mind power had been used as fuel for his fire.

  In the end, he probably didn’t even have the composure to do any spellcasting except [Undead Conjuration].

  Illyan wasn’t sure since he was still a beginner in magic, but conjuration magic was very close to spirituality, so it wouldn’t be strange for Aziro to cast this kind of spell.

  In the end, Illyan felt luck was on his side this time.

  Unfortunately, his problems didn’t end there, as he became worried after looking at his mutited body.

  The burning fire he thought would still be there, because of the hot sensation inside his entrails, had disappeared without a trace.

  ‘Is that feeling at the base?’ Illyan thought as he tried to use his mind power to feel that area.

  Unfortunately, realization soon hit him as he discovered his mind power was completely drained, with his mental state weakened to the point of colpse.

  ‘Damn it…’

  Illyan cursed as he thought of different solutions since his limbs wouldn’t respond to his commands.

  In the end, he thought to use spiritual perception.

  However, he quickly abandoned the idea as he realized he could only perceive spiritual energy in the air.

  After all, his abysmal affinity made him completely spiritless.

  ‘No, don’t stop trying that. Did you forget your reason to fight?’

  Suddenly, a soft and gentle voice soothed Illyan’s mind.

  ‘Zephyr… I think I wanted… Revenge?’ Even though Illyan was in pain during most of the fight, Aziro suffered a lot too. It would be a lie if Illyan said he wasn’t satisfied with his expression full of pain and regret.

  ‘Yeah, but that was only the secondary reason, wasn’t it?’ A ticklish feeling caressed his thoughts as he felt a sudden surge of mental crity.

  It wasn’t because of Zephyr’s voice. Instead, the warm feeling at the base of his spine surged waves of warmth through his inner cord right to his skull.

  It was then that Illyan realized.

  ‘My spiritual potential… Is it finally awakening?!’

  Illyan’s thoughts swirled in his head in excitement at the thought.

  It had been so many years since he started his training in spiritualism.

  In fact, while Illyan thought there could be some opportunity to release his tent potential someday, he didn’t give it much hope.

  Rather than that, he focused on something he could reach for.

  But now…

  Crack

  Illyan decided to try, for the first time, to use spiritual perception inside his body.

  The moment Illyan tried, he didn’t even need to focus as he felt two rge round objects at the bottom of his spine swirling around it while being cooked by greenish fmes.

  There was great pain accompanying it, but Illyan ignored such triviality as he focused on these things.

  He didn’t know what they were; however, slowly but surely, they cracked as they began radiating as both of contradictory energies.

  If one was light, the other was darkness. If one was cold, the other was hot. They felt like opposites of each other.

  Crack

  ‘It feels… Like eggs? Is that possible? But how did they get inside of me… Unless…’ Illyan wondered as he used his perception to feel the round things…

  He was right. They were not material objects but just spiritual ones.

  However, the weight and pressure they gave off were not intangible at all.

  Illyan felt his nose get wet as the pressure gave him a nosebleed while extreme nausea set in.

  Considering these ‘eggs’ seemed to tremble from the heating process of the fmes, they caused messy havoc inside Illyan’s body.

  Crack

  More time passed as parts of the eggs’ shell slowly fell apart.

  However, these shell fragments didn’t just stay inside his body. Instead, the moment they separated, they started to melt away as the greenish fmes devoured them, growing stronger with each fragment.

  Illyan didn’t know if it was because of the eggs or something else, but the greenish fme burning intensely inside him started to change a little as more time passed.

  First, it became darker before the green color started to fade little by little.

  A new color took its pce instead.

  The fire slowly took a shade of crimson red. Not the same red as other fmes but darker, as if blood had been spilled. The fme started to act even more violently with this change, giving off a bloodthirsty aura.

  Illyan’s nerves tingled as he felt bursts of energy from within him.

  It started to be so difficult to withstand that Illyan decided, in the end, to use his flow to protect his innards from the impacts.

  His flow moved slowly but steadily through his broken body and began to circute around the base of his spine, trying to isote the pce from the rest of the body.

  Immediately after, the searing pain coursing through his body and mind alleviated greatly, and Illyan sighed in relief.

  However, as the power emanating from the fmes and eggs became more violent, the flow circuting around was slowly assimited into the whirlpool of energies.

  It recovered, but not as fast as before since Illyan’s body was almost dried up and cked the energy to recover properly.

  Crack

  Boom

  At st, as time passed in silence, these two stones were circuting so fast that they were difficult to spot and suddenly exploded in radiating light.

  A hard-to-expin sensation ran through Illyan’s spine as two strands of energy climbed through his spine. One was bck, and the other was white with a crimson aura radiating out of them. They grew longer as they spiraled up his spine.

  Illyan even felt as if these two strands were alive and had two eyes at their tips, like slithering snakes trying to climb a tree branch.

  The strands of energy passed inside of his body as he felt things he never could before. He felt certain points on his spine that were simir to acupoints but didn’t have time to ponder this as two contradicting energies passed by and continued to rise.

  The fmes that had been boiling the eggs disappeared as they were devoured by unknown energies.

  The flow disappeared too, with only a little bit remaining, not daring to get near the spine.

  Illyan felt his organs react to the passing energy strands, especially his heart, which started to beat irregurly. It was as if these energies didn’t flow smoothly, causing problems in his body.

  But fortunately, at st, the energy passed through his neck up to the base of his head where the spine ended.

  Illyan hoped this would be the end but became worried, thinking that if these energies passed through his brain, he would definitely die or at the very least become crippled.

  Unfortunately, the energies didn’t listen to his inner pleas as they entered through his spine into his brain.

  The pain disappeared, but the feeling of nausea grew stronger as Illyan felt his mind tremble.

  However, the energies still rose up. At st, they reached the top of his skull, where they got stuck for a second.

  Pressure built up inside Illyan’s skull as pain so unimaginable to a normal person exploded in his head.

  It felt as if the energy should pass through his skull but couldn’t for whatever reason.

  “Arrgh!” It was so strong that Illyan writhed around despite having no energy to move as the pain grew stronger and stronger.

  His muscles tore as the tendons couldn't hold them anymore, but Illyan still forced himself to move as his survival instincts yelled at him to do something.

  Rationality went aside as he began scraping at the scalp of his head with his nails in a violent way.

  “Aaargh!” It was the kind of pain he wasn’t accustomed to, and so it was obviously harder to withstand.

  The pressure felt as if his head was expanding despite remaining the same size. It was just an illusion in Illyan’s mind as the pain coursed through his spirit and body.

  Even Zephyr couldn’t help as Illyan’s mind was thoroughly disturbed, and even her voice couldn’t reach him.

  “The energy! It needs to be released… What is the problem…!” Illyan roared as he barely mustered some thoughts.

  Then he remembered…

  Spiritual energy was difficult to absorb for the untalented. However, the opposite was also true. Once someone awakened their inner spiritual energy, it took a while before they could release it outside their body.

  Considering Illyan’s talent…

  “Why is it trying to release itself already?! It doesn’t make sense!” Illyan gritted his teeth as he thought of a solution.

  Still inside the troll’s bone maw, Illyan jumped against the inner wall of the skull headfirst.

  A dull sound resounded, and Illyan’s eyes almost rolled inside his head as his consciousness darkened, but he gathered his grit and leaned his head back to smash it against the skull once again!

  Crash-

  Sounds of something breaking echoed through the tunnel, but Illyan didn’t stop as he smashed his head against the skull.

  At st, a rge volume of blood flowed down Illyan’s face.

  A rge vertical crack appeared on his head.

  The pressure alleviated for a second but accumuted back instantly as the energy was too enormous to pass through such a crack.

  Illyan’s eyes almost fell out of their sockets as his face grew bloodied.

  Then, once again, he pced his nails on his head and slid them inside the crack.

  “Gghugh!” Illyan was already at his wits’ end, so he decided to finish what he had wanted to do from the beginning.

  His arm muscles flexed as he began to pull his hands in opposite directions and...

  Crack

  At st, he managed to crack his head open as pressured blood spurted out along with bits of brain matter and skull fragments.

  A second ter, a rge explosion erupted from the top of his head with great momentum as a crimson pilr rose to the ceiling, breaking apart the troll’s skull that stood in the way while fully enveloping Illyan’s body.

  The pilr seemed to be made of fmes, but these fmes had a certain vitality and destructiveness that anyone with insight would never mistake for ordinary fire.

  As two serpent-like energies rose up to the top of the fme pilr with hissing sounds with the st bit of energy, they finally dissipated peacefully, and together with them, the driving power that had surged through the crimson pilr vanished.

  As the fme pilr calmed down, the remaining crimson hue coated Illyan’s body, creating a crimson red aura around him, making him look as if a bloodthirsty demon had descended upon the world…