One Last System

Everything stopped in its tracks.

The second my hands slammed into the ground, the fire ceased its movements, turning into a still aura of heat and energy.

And then, along with the air that I inhaled, all the fire swirled towards me, filling my lungs with its fiery power.

This fire-born mana wasn't fully purified.

Despite my constant attempts to wrestle full control over this energy, I managed to achieve only partial success. As such, even the tiniest sliver of this energy would wreak havoc in my inner state.

And right now, I consumed the single greatest amount of energy in my entire life...

All at once.

I tightened my teeth. My breath was deep, allowing the fires to reach all the way to my very core.

At this point, my body was a bloody mess, even though not a single drop of blood came out from my wounds.

'Fuck,' I could only silently think while the fires ravaged me from the inside out.

It felt as if something was boiling me from within.

And then, it all ended.

In but an instant, all the fires converged over Arthur's body, only to infuse themselves in it.

It took a moment for the dust and smoke to settle, allowing others to look at the scene.

The fires that attacked the entire wing of the building were nowhere to be seen.

Arthur absorbed them all. And now, he just sat on his knees, refusing to move even an inch.

Ackhart raised his hand to protect his respiratory organs from the dust.

'Did he just...' he thought, startled by the possible explanation of what he just saw with his own eyes.

'Poof.'

There was no sound to announce the change.

Arthur simply raised his eyelids, proving that he somehow managed to pull through the ordeal.

His eyes were slightly filled with the craze, indicating that he had yet to deal with the trauma of his recent experience.

'It hurts!' I internally cried out, holding back on my urge to raise my hand and squeeze my heart out.

Even though the fires disappeared, their energy was still exploding within my body.

Just when I thought the torture would end, said torture truly started.

With the fires gone, the force that kept my wounds from bleeding disappeared into thin air, instantly dropping a massive problem on my shoulders.

'At this rate, it will only be a moment before I will bleed out,' I thought, clenching my jaws.

There was hardly anything that I could do at this point.

The energy bustling in my system was just too overwhelmingly great for me to release it! And even if I could do so, freeing such a massive amount of energy would scorch my insides.

It was truly a situation with no way out.

"Are you okay?" Ackhart asked, approaching me from my blind spot to the back.

'Do I look fucking okay?' I screamed out in protest in my mind, using the last of my willpower to keep my mouth from prying open.

My only saving grace, right at this point, was my system.

It tirelessly worked to absorb the energy, bringing me closer and closer to the breakthrough.

The gap that just a month ago appeared to be insurmountable was now nothing but a walk in the park.

A walk in the park that put me through some hellish experience, though!

'He is going to bleed out,' Ackhart thought, rushing forward. He reached out with his hands, only to stop when Arthur's body suddenly started to glow.

'Could he be...' Ackhart's eyes opened wide as he backed out a step at the very last moment.

The shine around Arthur's body exploded, covering him in a golden light.

This event lasted for but a second, yet it didn't escape Ackhart's attention.

Because he was too familiar with such an event to let it slide unnoticed.

'This mad son of a bitch did it!' Ackhart thought, unable to utter a single sound through his shock. 'There is no doubt now, he has to be some sort of genius!'

'With that, I might just clutch it,' I thought, lowering my eyes down on my hands.

Thanks to my breakthrough, my lacerations quickly started to cover with a scab, only for it to wither and reveal new, pinkish skin.

It all happened at a slow rate, but also a rate quick enough for me to ward off the danger of straight out bleeding out.

All the energy suddenly left my body when my flesh itself rearranged the distribution of focus throughout all my wounds. For the price of losing my mobility, I now started to heal at a rate that appeared to bend the natural laws of the world.

'Is this what the ascendancy is all about?' I thought, trying to figure out the details of this strange situation. Only by learning more about the world around me I could hope to find things that I could exploit.

And this strange state in which I continued to feast off the fire-born magic could prove useful later on.

'I think I can figure out why people don't use this method to raise from the early levels,' I thought, allowing my body to relax a little.

In the corner of my view, I could see the numbers of my status constantly growing as my system continued to absorb all the energy that I gained.

"Are you... okay?" Ackhart asked, reaching his hand out once again, only to let it hang in the air, halfway towards Arthur's shoulder.

"I'm fine," I replied, refusing to turn my head around to look at the formation master. Right now, what I needed the most, was time to recuperate my wounds properly.

'And since they want me to cooperate with them,' I thought, recalling the content of Mia's letters that I spent several hours deciphering.

"I need you to arrange a safe room for me," I said, not even bothered to turn my head to look at those who I was addressing.

Or rather, that's how it likely looked like.. In reality, however, I simply had no strength left to move my head around.