“What do you think would happen if someone blunted every human choice, every human thought?” asked Helial as his gaze got lost in the distance.

Helial’s words carried some unusual sacred power. Their meaning was so heavy it weighted on the soul itself.

A black raging flame suddenly appeared next to Helial. Pseudonym materialized out of nowhere. The knight stayed silent as he stared at Helial. Meanwhile, the young Goblin looked slightly uncomfortable. Despite being unconscious, his face was twisted by pain. The finely gentle control of Helial wasn’t enough to moderate the power of the flame. It was risky.

“Personally, I think that pain and injustice would fade,” Pseudonym said scornfully.

Inside Helial’s Soul, Iblis began to pay attention. The exchange aroused some interest in him. It was the first time Helial’s words actually portrayed the essence of his Dao of Mana. Apparently, his pupil was making progress. The conversation involved the Devil to such an extent that he took off his embroidered chef hat with bats to hold it in his two hands. Then he sat in midair. He was curious. With a swift twist of a hand, he straightened the bangs covering his eyes.

Suddenly, a strange phenomenon occurred. A strange milky gleam engulfed Helial.

Flame of the Qilin was flowing through the kid’s Meridians. The internal injuries were already recovering. The flame let out a faint seething sound.

Fshhhhh

The gashes opened up on his face and the swellings all over his body became paler and dissolved by the second.

“If good and evil faded, they would both lose their meaning. If someone guided our every footsteps, they surely would spare us a path drenched in blood, but then what’d be left of our freedom?” said Helial as his Aura began to spread across the area enveloping every building in the surroundings.

A whitish trail of smoke hit Pseudonym’s nostrils as well as the smell of burning flesh. He saw the injuries literally disappear from the kid’s body.

“HAAAAA! THIS HURTS! IT HURTS!” he cried. Tears were stinging his eyes.

Helial paid no mind to his cries and went on to say: “If you’re not allowed to do evil, then you aren’t alive either. If the choice isn’t up to you, you are nothing. Without the chance to make the dreariest choice, and take the responsibility that comes with it, you’re but a grain of sand in the universe…”

All around rouse up an eerie gust of wind generated by Helial’s Aura, which seemed about to pierce the sky itself.

Pseudonym glanced up at the unusual phenomenon yet didn’t look much surprised. He probably knew what was disturbing the order of things; it simply suggested that Helial had just made an outstanding leap forward on his Dao of Mana.

Unlike Levels and Skills, Daos were hardly tangible and couldn’t be divided into precise levels. Daos were quite a few, and often times people would happen to step on the same one. Even though there wasn’t one specific Dao of Mana for each, everyone had one at least. And it was a hard laborious exhausting path.

Only common Daos had a straightforward precise technique to follow to reach its height.

Some depended on the pureness of the users’ heart, some required the user to slaughter their way to a darkened Soul. To step forward on some others, practitioners needed to be overly altruistic.

The peak of a Dao, however, was barely reachable. Even the most traveled by were the result of the effort of countless experts who had struggled to define and fulfill the requirements to satisfy.

The energetic particles began to vibrate around Helial as if resonating with his Soul. It was ready to erupt. Air thickened so much the pressure seemed that exerted by water.

The load of energy was like the raging waters of a river contained by a cracking seawall. It slowly turned towards Helial to rush into his Soul.

Helial felt a violent rush of Mana force its way through his Meridians. He immediately stopped healing the boy, who was now awake and gazed at him in terror.

The intangible Mana was food for Helial’s Soul, which promptly began to reinvigorate and undergo utter changes. The rough diamond of his Soul got refined by the energy. Now, it was shining like a tiny sun.

He sensed his Meridians swell up and brim with energy, as if it were too much for a single person to take. The amount of energy became painful. It wouldn’t seem to diminish. If he hadn’t refined the energy and led it through the proper Meridians - those he had trained through his Breathing Technique-, he would have risked undermining any future progress. Meridians prevention was a serious matter every practitioner on their way to Immortality paid the fullest focus to. If severely damaged, Meridians could prevent people from becoming Immortals.

Helial gritted his teeth as he activated his Breathing Technique. The violent rush of energy needed to be purified now.

Skill Activated:

Death of the Desolate Universe

Alert:

The energy you absorb is exceeding the amount your body can bear. If you don’t refine it, your body will decompose.

You lost 1982 HP!

Helial tasted something sweet-like on his tongue, then spat out a mouthful of blood before closing his eyes to focus on that bloodcurdling amount of energy.

Meanwhile, the Goblin kid was shocked by the scene. The people living in the neighborhood stepped outside their households and began to crowd around.

They were now staring at Helial with a strange light in their eyes. They were ready to attack him with the torches in their hands.

“What is happening?” a man asked to his neighbor.

“That guy must be stirring up trouble,” another mumbled. He was clearly frightened.

A woman interposed to point her finger towards the black armor: “Isn’t that Pseudonym?”

“Pseudonym?” echoed everyone.

If Pseudonym was there, they had nothing to worry about; he would surely tackle whatever it was it was happening. The men and women of Suburra trusted the black knight with their lives. Pseudonym often roamed across the neighborhood to help people face dangers they would have died by otherwise.

Many of the elderly waved their hand at Pseudonym to ask him what was happening. He twisted his hand back at them to assure them there was nothing to worry about.

Apparently, Helial had an Epiphany on his Dao of Mana.

Whereas Pseudonym’s tyrannical Dao of Mana laid its foundations on his unshakable beliefs system, Helial seemed to follow a Dao whose focus was on freedom and total adaptability. Pseudonym was a mountain under ceaseless storms; he was firm and indestructible. On the contrary, Helial was a like a grain of sand; tiny and versatile as it lightly blew in an inextinguishable wind.

Helial struggled to balance out his Mana. It wasn’t the best time to slip into a deep meditative state. He inhaled deeply as he cut off the energy his body was imbued with through the terrifying power of his Breathing Technique.

Apparently, the scene he had witnessed just perturbed his Dao of Mana. By absorbing the generated benefits right away, he would step much farther than by meditating on them later on. But he would sacrifice that progress, for today. Unfortunately, one has to be ready to sacrifice a lot sometimes.

Helial breathed in a mouthful of stale air filled with the impurities he had just rinsed off of his energy. His Mana Control was more fluid now, and he sensed way more open Meridians than before.

The Meridians of a living being, from the broadest to those as small as a needle, were hundreds of thousands, let alone their combinations. Even an Immortal couldn’t count them all.

With many more unblocked Meridians and a reinvigorated Soul, Helial felt much stronger, and his control on Skills would grow even more refined.

He raised a hand to the sky. A pearl-white flame with black sparks flared up on his palm. He compressed the Mana inside his hand’s Meridians as he tried to evoke more Mana on the other.

Suddenly, a circular array of Runes appeared over his palm. The face of the boy turned pale.

Skill Activated:

Death Flame Pistol

Skill Activated:

Runic Control Upgrade

BOOM!

A shockwave raised a shroud of dust that blasted away risking hitting all the present. Pseudonym promptly blocked the shockwave through his Aura. Helial seemed to cannot wait to try out what he had just gained.

A flaming bullet blazed through the sky like a shooting star.

Pseudonym snorted, looked at the Skill cast by Helial and sensed something vaguely recognizable. Shockingly, the Aura emitted by the flame felt somewhat familiar.