Chapter 168: Turmoil of the Prince
She looked at him neutrally, then pondered on what to say and what not to. Well, she promised in their contract that no one would know about it, but Lucien already knew about it, so it wouldn’t be a problem to talk about it with him. But of course, she would not tell him everything. Only the necessary parts.
After all, she had gone to Axel after discussing with Lucien that if she should get a weapon made by him or not. She naturally did not reveal the truth to the prince about what actually happened on that day when Axel was engraving in front of everybody.
That the world was actually not favoring Axel, but simply urging him not to hold back. But even if the prince did not know that, he revealed to Sophia that it was very likely that Axel was not revealing his full capability and that it would indeed be a good idea to get a personalized runic weapon made by him.
But Sophia did not know that Lucien had other intentions when actually suggesting that; Lucien knew that Axel always deliberately avoided Sophia as much as possible. But he thought that Axel had likely already fallen for her, but he was unable to cope with it, or get over it, as such, he was keeping his distance from her, so as not to fall in love with her even more than what he already was. Maybe that was why he had rejected his lovely sister.
His objective was to simply make Axel like a dog wagging its tail for Sophia nonstop, and Axel would end up doing everything for her, and Lucien would also pretend to help him get close to Sophia. It was the perfect way to get the unfriendly and arrogant bastard on his side. Well, considering what happened with the Taser incident, everyone already believed that Axel was on his side, but that was obviously untrue. While he did see that Axel had an excellent friendship with Lumina, it wasn’t progressing any further.
So, he had to use Sophia now. Lucien listened to what transpired between them, even though Lumina hid a lot of things, he could easily see how she acted very differently from her usual self. He frowned internally again. This seems to have almost backfired.
It was Axel who was supposed to lose his mind in her beauty, but why did it seem like she was the one losing control over her emotions instead? Sophia revealed to Lucien that how he rejected her request saying that he wasn’t good enough yet to make her a worthy weapon and that was obviously true, so she had to make him agree to it by revealing the real identity of the one named Green Dagger, the contestant who stole the kill of the orc from Salazar at the last moment.
While Lucien was indeed surprised from the identity of the one named Green Dagger, who was Taser Vex but he didn’t care much about it honestly, his thoughts were on another lane, he was worried about something else, he was simply very disturbed by why the cold glacial like Sophia was suddenly acting different from her usual self.
Axel was finally done defeating his last and 24th rune phantom, knowledge flowed in him like an unstoppable tide, he was by now somewhat used to the procedure of it, as his mind is now able to endure the sudden flood of new information, all the lacking points and deeper understanding of that last and 24th concept took root in his mind properly.
But then a greater change started to happen, mana from the apartment of his started to flow inside Axel’s body, then that mana traveled deeper and deeper until it reached the gigantic soul sanctum of his. The doors of the sanctum opened wide as a tide of liquid condensed energy flowed into Axel’s primary aspect chamber. He himself appeared back in the chamber from the arena, and he saw as the liquid mana formed a small tornado and started to forcefully seep into the nexus core of his primary aspect chamber.
The liquid mana within the core started to condense more and more into something rigid and solid. As chunks of energy condensed and became solid, they also broke apart continuously and formed tiny crystal-like structures. In a way, the three sublevels within every phase are similar to the world of trial; the difference was that there was no 3rd sublevel in it, which is the crystal sub-phase, so he was the one who created it, but in this world there it already was.
Because of the crystal-like structure of the mana, the late stage of the phases can also be called as crystal stage, but it is not a commonly used term. Well, he could only think that in the later phases of power, things become a bit more complicated or different, maybe, so he wasn’t sure.
As all the liquid mana of his Nexus core converted into the crystal-like chunks of energy, he felt himself changing as a whole again; he felt all his stats receive a greater boost than before. The mana circuit in his body became more efficient and slightly complex. But it did not change fully; it only changed to accommodate the flow of a heavier, more potent source of energy.
His runic eyes also changed to accommodate the new type of energy, he felt stronger physically and mentally, his perception of the world and energy reserved improved all in all, as a smile formed on his lips, the satisfaction of growing stronger beyond the inherent limits of humanity was just too fascinating, the control over his surrounding mana increased by a lot.
He could instinctively feel how he had become at least 3 times as strong from just this minor stage of advancement. Now, only accumulation was left; he needed to absorb energy from the mana crystals or simply from the air. He looked at the Nexus core of his, and it was half filled by the crystal fragments of energy.
He also felt his demon bloodline be strengthened ever so slightly as a byproduct of his primary aspects improvement, but it wasn’t something notable. He sighed and exited the aspect chamber. He uttered, “Nexus Panel.”
As his eyes glazed over the improved stats, he smiled. The increase in power was indeed greater than before. Satisfied, he closed off the nexus panel and stood up. He was at the moment in his personal engraving facility built into his own apartment. He glanced towards one corner, where there was a small table on which there were the weapons made for Heinz, Lumina, Vyra, and Lucien. It was time to give them their prizes.