As Armad entered the door, he felt a strong gravitational pull forced him inside. He was knocked out immediately.

After an unspecified period, he opened his eyes and found himself in a forest with no one but himself.

He looked to the left and the right but there was nothing but trees. He had no idea where she had sent him to.

Sigh.

He remembered everything that had happened. It seemed to be so fast that until now he had not been able to sit and think about it.

He recalled the death of his djinn and the months of torment he'd suffered at the hands of those two djinns. He remembered how he swore to take revenge on them and how in a few seconds Nostalgia finished them off. He recalled talking to Nostalgia and all the many things she told him about a jinzidal King attempting to destroy the jinzidal. It somehow made sense to him considering the message he heard from the board. He didn't know why Bihanzin wanted to destroy the very organization that gave him power but he would find out about it soon enough.

He looked at the ring on his hand. It shone like a diamond and had a unique scent to it. A noble possession. Why would she give him something like that? Was it meant to track him down?

He thought about throwing it away but he decided against it. He would have someone check it out for him as soon as he reached a town.

And what did she mean by they would never meet again? There were just so many things happening at the same time.

He didn't see Nusi ever since he lost consciousness in the middle of their fight against Uznu Ururu. His heart ached. Nusi had come to help him during the competition. To protect him against Uznu Ururu. Did Uznu kill her? Was she still in Seerish? What happened to her?

Armad stood up, having realized that he didn't have time to sit back.

The first thing he did was to check his core to see his awakening benefits. He might have awakened but he lost his djinn which meant he couldn't use lightning anymore. All his Bends were lightning-based. Without it, he would probably have to start from scratch. Uznu had made a number on him. He would pay him back in due time.

There were three things in the core: the longevity, a small board, which wasn't new, and then a statue resembling him, only smaller and with brownish-gray eyes.

Armad sat cross-legged and calmed his breathing to awaken the new perks. Every awakening came with its benefits. That was why everyone sought it out.

Having already memorized all the incantations required to complete the process, he recited the specific incantations and then called upon his new pol. For a moment, he wanted to stop the process. There was fear and anxiety of not getting what he wished to get. The fifty-one years he'd been using were included in his initiation ritual and could always be manipulated or changed. But this pol would be permanent. He wouldn't be able to change it or manipulate it. What would be of his future if he were to get a low pol? Say he got one hundred, what would he do then? Even two hundred years wouldn't be enough to stand against the jinzidal Kings. Hidaya never told him how much pol she got but he guessed it was in thousands. Just what would he get?

Armad closed his eyes. He would be praying right now if he'd a religion.

The pol entered his body and dissolved in his blood. Although the amount of pol mattered a lot, the quality mattered as well. In other words, you would find that someone had fewer years than you but would also be stronger than you.

The years entered his body and merged with his soul. They became him and he became them. His skin started to get hot, his heart started beating hard as if it was going to burst out of his chest, and his eyes reddened. A hot foam began to come out of his skin as if a disease was being washed away from his body. His clothes were soaked with dirt, foam, and sweat. It continued like this for about an hour before it settled down.

His essence board glowed with the information.

Armad suddenly felt so powerful that he wondered if the ground could take him. The thousand years of pol entered his body and energized every cell in him.

He stood up and looked at his body. His skin gave a faint glow of pol which wasn't there before. The foam was as a result of his former fifty-one years that had been cast and thrown out of his body because they couldn't stand with the new pol. He had never expected any human to have such strength.

He looked at the small statue in his core and summoned it. The statue came to him and merged with his body. Armad's eyes turned brownish-gray like that of the statue.

A sudden smile came to his face as he felt his lightning returned to his body even though there was no djinn in his core. He created a simple lightning bolt to make sure he could. Seeing the new blasting energy revolving around his fingers, Armad just smiled and then walked away toward a river to wash his body and head for the third world. As expected, Ji-Daime was lying to him. It told him he'd no spirit form just so he would set it free. Damn djinns.

On his way, he summoned his sword, and instead of the previous five stars, there were now seven. The gravity that was passively exuding out of his body was unbelievable.

Another unexpected benefit was the extra space he'd gotten in his core due to the death of his djinn. The djinn and the essence board shared the core. Space would obviously increase if the djinn was no more, minimizing the effects of core-collapse on him. For longevity below one hundred years, the maximum collapse of core compatible with life was based on the pol. But the value remained at sixty percent for any longevity above one hundred years. So for Armad with one thousand years, using 1+c/n-1, the maximum pol available for Bending should be 598.4 years. But that was considering his core-collapse at a maximum of 60%. Now it was more than that since he'd lost his djinn.

After a few trials, he found his new maximum core-collapse compatible with life to be around 82%, which would make his pol available for Bending to be around 818.18 years. By killing his djinn, Uznu ended up making him exponentially more powerful by over two hundred years.

Of course, he could now use Bends like the Dance of Uncertainty so many times in a row like a child's play. He would hardly be restricted by pol despite losing his miyura, and the only thing he'd got to look out for was the core collapse.

He suddenly realized that Babara wasn't a big deal anymore. He would return to him and forced him to treat his mother whether he liked it or not.