Seeing that he still had some time left before going into the jungle, Soren decided to continue with the method.

Aside from using the second vial of blood, he also took out Garlon’s corpse and gathered all the blood from his body; though, he was very messy. Of course, he could not use all that blood as it needed to go through a process to turn into a small amount of concentrated blood essence; that was what was in the two vials of blood that Garlon had.

So, without wasting any time, Soren got to work after using his Mana to clean his and Argus’s body. Obviously, Argus was not involved in the process of taking out blood from Garlon and had just become a victim by standing on Soren’s side; a side effect of Soren being extremely messy.

The whole process did take some time, but it was fairly simple. Given his level of ‘Mana Manipulation’, Soren didn’t have any problem in purifying all that blood and turning it into concentrated blood essence; his ability to control the temperature with Mana also played a huge role in this. And finally, after obtaining another vial of Initiator’s blood essence, Soren continued with the process of transferring its life energy to the egg.

With the same awful stench of burnt hair pervading the entire room, the whole procedure concluded without a hitch. Now that the egg had received the vital energy from two more vials of concentrated blood essence, the flickering signs of life that it was showing before had become much more stable. So much so that even without using his <Elemental Sense>, Soren could now feel weak radiation of pure life energy coming out of the egg. Naturally, this didn’t mean that it was close to hatching; in fact, it was far from it.

Its life force had only been stabilized right now. To bring it to the level of hatching, Soren was going to need a huge amount of vital life energy.

…….

Realizing that it was time to head out, Soren changed his clothes and got ready to meet the others. Same as always, he picked Argus up and walked out of his room in the white down jacket that he was wearing over his black survival outfit. As for the spell formation that he had etched on the floor of his room, he had completely destroyed it before moving out.

With his boots making a sharp clacking sound against the floor, he walked down the stairs. But just as he was about to take the last step down, his communicator suddenly rang a few times. Given the current circumstances, Soren guessed that it was probably Lyris or Ashby checking in on him again; after all, they needed to stick together to stand against Captain Hans. Just to confirm it, though, Soren took out his communicator and opened the message as he walked out of the hotel.

However, his steps came to an abrupt halt as Soren realized that the message was not from Lyris or Ashby. In fact, it was not from anyone he had met recently.

“Hello, Zero. Are you still alive?”

The message had actually come in through the Wandering Wolves’ messenger; it was from Smiley. 

It took some time for Soren to adjust his mindset, but he finally formed his reply and sent it, “Yes, I am.”

The reply was as simple as it could get. He didn’t need to say anything else as he was sure that Smiley wasn’t just messaging him to say hello. So, after sending his message to Smiley, Soren walked to the side of the street and leaned on the wall there to get comfortable; waiting for Smiley’s reply.

But unlike how he had expected, Smiley didn’t send anything back for quite a while. Thinking that he had misunderstood, and Smiley was really just messaging to say hello, Soren decided to continue moving towards the southern gate of the town; that was where the Rogue Initiators had decided to meet.

A few steps in, though, his communicator rang again.

“Zero, there’s a person here who wants to apologize to you, face to face. Can you tell me where you are currently?”

A deep frown appeared on Soren’s face when he read Smiley’s message. It had no context for him at all; the whole thing appeared very random to him. But even so, Soren didn’t deny Smiley outright and sent a reply with his own question.

“I am in Bellfalls right now. Where are you, and who is this person that wants to apologize to me?”

Same as before, Soren once again received no reply for quite a while. But this time, he decided to wait where he was standing.

Only after he had waited for about ten minutes did Smiley send a reply again, “We are in Bulona right now. It’s quite far from Bellfalls so we can’t meet right away. Also, you should move away from Bellfalls as fast as you can, it’s not safe there.”

“Yes, I know. The Beast Tide has been going on for quite some time now,” Without thinking too much about what Smiley said, Soren sent back his reply.

This time, though, Smiley didn’t take too long to message back.

“No, I am talking about the ‘Pillar of Paradise’ that’s going to activate soon. The shockwaves released upon its activation will probably destroy all the nearby towns; even Rank 1 Initiators can’t survive that. I’ll send you all the information I have on it; take it as my apology. I hope it helps you.”

……….

The cold wind hit Soren’s face like sharp blades as he ran towards a certain hotel at his maximum speed. Although he had not focused on developing his physical aspect, he was still a Rank 1 Initiator. With his maximum speed, he was basically like a gust of wind for the bystanders in the area. As for the hotel that he was rushing towards right now, it was actually the hotel that Hamish and his group of merchants were staying in.

Like he had mentioned, Smiley had indeed sent all the information related to this ‘Pillar of Paradise’ almost immediately after his last message. Although the amount of data was huge and Soren was unable to go through all of that right now, just reading and processing some major points was enough to make him abandon all his current plans and run away. And that was exactly what he was trying to do right now; he had already made up his mind. Of course, he could just get away from this town and move ahead on his own. But that would just put him back to square one; he would have no time to work on his Defense Spell and his cultivation technique again. So, he needed someone who knew his way to Bycrest and could take him there; Hamish and his group were obviously the first option that came to his mind. Moreover, if the situation ever called for it, he could also use them as his meat shields. So, given all that, he needed to bring these people with him.

As for whether Smiley was telling the truth, Soren wasn’t willing to test that with his and Argus’s lives on the line.

BAM!

Soren saw no need to knock as he destroyed the door with his kick and barged in.

“Gather everyone, we are leaving the town.” Without giving the people inside the room any chance to react, Soren ordered them to leave with him.

Alrule who had originally been with this group of merchants for a very long time had already signed the contract with Captain Hans and had moved on for the chance to be employed by the royal family. With him gone, these merchants had suddenly lost their pillar of support; they had no one that they could rely upon now. So, when Soren barged in and ordered them to leave with him, they all agreed immediately. As for the reason why Soren wanted to leave so abruptly or how they were going to pass through the Beast Tide, they had no right to know such things.

…..

With his arms folded in front of his chest, Soren stood silently; pondering in front of the largest window in the room. This room that he was in right now was the exact room that he had barged in earlier; it was on the eleventh floor so the view of the town from the window was quite clear.

After Soren was done giving out his instructions to the merchants and their people, he had sent all of them out to prepare for their departure; after all, they needed to get the horses and the carriages if they wanted to leave with so many people. Now left alone in the room, Soren had some quiet time to clearly think about this.

If the situation was really as what Smiley had said, then this town was going to be destroyed in about three weeks’ time.

Pillar of Paradise…

According to all the information that Soren had received from Smiley, this silver-colored pillar was actually not unique to this one area; the area around Bellfalls. In fact, it was a well-known topic among the high-ranking Initiators; those who were Rank 2 and above. That was because this same pillar had been spotted by the high-ranking Initiators in multiple places throughout the planet; Astara. At first, it was seen as a very powerful item and had caused many Initiators to fight over it. But, in the end, none of them were able to own it, and thus, were forced to give up on such thoughts. Then, after the initial commotion had died down, these Initiators had started to study the pillars in detail.

However, even after centuries of research, none of those Initiators were able to figure out what these pillars were exactly. What was it made of, how was it made, who made it, what was its use, why were there so many of these; no matter how much the Initiators studied the pillars, questions like these still remained unanswered.

The only thing that these Initiators were able to figure out after so long was that once these pillars entered the phase of activation, they would become like a time bomb. During the initial phase, the pillar would seem very docile and would just release weak Mana Waves. But over time, these weak Mana Waves would slowly intensify and would start becoming a threat; because of how it affected the Beasts around it. Then after reaching a certain level of intensity, the pillar would abruptly release a silver-colored column of light towards the sky; also releasing a huge shockwave in the process. As it had been noted before in the past, the intensity of this shockwave would be so high that it would completely disintegrate any Initiator at and below Rank 1 in its vicinity.

And, finally, with this shockwave, the pillar would complete its activation process and would once again become completely harmless. According to the result of their studies, the Initiators had determined that the silver column of light that would appear after the activation of the pillar was also harmless; they had confirmed this after years of experiments done on it.

Apart from that, the Initiators researching these pillars had also made some speculations about the whole phenomena. Based on what they knew about these pillars, they had made some conjectures that once all the pillars in Astara had been activated, they would form a spell formation together that would cover the whole planet. And although they weren’t able to figure out the pattern of this spell formation, they at least knew that it was about to finish. According to them, most of the pillars had probably been activated already; at most, it needed five or six more for the spell formation to take effect.

As for what this spell formation would do, they had no idea. Some guessed that a powerful ‘Transcendent’ realm Initiator had a grudge with someone on this planet, and so, was trying to seal the planet as revenge. Of course, this was only a guess and nothing more; it had no basis. In fact, this baseless theory actually contradicted the meaning of the Enfari word that was etched on every pillar; this was the word that gave the pillar its name, ‘Pillar of Paradise’.

…..

Being unable to figure out the pattern of the spell formation, it was nigh impossible for the Initiators to tell where the rest of the inactivated pillars were. The only reason Smiley knew about this pillar near Bellfalls was because he, with some other members of the ‘Wandering Wolves’, had passed through this area after leaving Eastwood. This pillar had only entered the initial phase of activation at that time, so it had given them ample time to leave the area and get away from the pillar.

Given all this information, Soren had also made up his mind to leave the town immediately and get as far away as he could from this place.

As for the questions like ‘how did Smiley know about this ‘Pillar of Paradise’ when he was only a Rank 1 Initiator’, or ‘why did he apologize to him’, or ‘who was the other person that wanted to apologize to him’; Soren had decided to ignore them for now. Once he met Smiley and that other person, he would get all the answers anyway.

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