“You finally decided to show yourself. What took you so long?”
Kino asked in an inquisitive tone when she saw Eren back on the Hexers’ testing grounds. The latter smiled before responding.
“I was held up by a few personal affairs. I also had to prepare for the challenges I’d have to face during the later phases of the test. So I took my time getting things right before coming here.”
Kino raised her eyebrows before feeling Eren’s presence. She immediately notices a drastic change in Eren’s ranking status. She was about to ask him about it. But she stopped midway and shook her head. She reminded herself that she shouldn’t get involved to this extent with a contestant.
“Alright. Since you are here, let’s get on..”
“Wait.”
Eren was about to be sent to the second phase of the testing grounds by Kino. But she was stopped by Eren’s interruption. The latter took a long breath before speaking up.
“I wanted to ask you something about my Hex gear and the way it influences me.”
Kino was puzzled by Eren’s question at first. She didn’t understand what he was talking about. So she asked him to elaborate.
Eren started explaining his experiences using the Hex gears. He told her the most recent fight he had against the Spiders in detail and asked her how he could get his control back.
Eren didn’t want to use Hex gears at the cost of losing control over himself. And he didn’t think other Hexers were prone to this much emotional imbalance that he had to face. He hoped that Kino could fix the problem for him.
“Hmm. Even though some Hexers feel their emotions take over their actions in battle, it shouldn’t be to this degree. And it also started weirdly affecting your spells. That shouldn’t have happened at all.
It seems there’s some external factor involved in you using the Hex spells that I couldn’t see before. Would you like me to conduct a thorough check on you so that I know what is going on?”
Kino asked while flying around Eren who stood still. The latter gave her a go right away, expecting her to fix the problem for him forever. He really liked the boost in power the Hex spells provided. If possible, he didn’t want to give up on them.
Kino raised her hand and arranged a line on the ground. He closed his eyes and let her examine him.
The array Kino had summoned was a soul inspection array. It was way too complicated for Eren to understand at his level even when he had started studying the arrays for his artifact crafting. It was about 10 meters in radius and he was positioned in the center.
The runes inside the array lit up as Kino activated the array and allowed a mirrored version of Eren’s soul to exist outside his body. The projection appeared behind his back and was levitating in the air.
The projection was a shapeless and formless thing at first before it started looking like Eren. It was naked from the waist up and had its eyes closed just like Eren’s. From the waist down, the projection remained hazy and shapeless. It also did not have any arms.
Kino paid close attention to the changes happening inside the array and found out that there was some interference in his mirrored soul projection. Thus, she raised both her hands and activated the soul inspection array in full swing. The runes inside the array lit up more brightly than before as a result.
Eren’s appearance began changing once Kino activated the array in full swing. He started displaying the appearance of his past life. The appearance of mirrored soul started looking like Viktor Vladimir, which was so much different from what Eren looked like at this point.
“What in the world…”
Kino was shocked by Eren’s mirrored soul. She didn’t know what to make of it at first. But she decided to dig further and continued to work on the array.
Slowly, the soul’s appearance stayed the same for a while before reverting to Eren’s current bodily appearance. The projection shifted between these two appearances for quite some time. But Kino could feel that there was something else to his soul that wasn’t getting detected by the soul inspection array just yet.
“Eren, can you hear me?”
Kino’s voice sounded distant to Eren as he was subjected to the array’s inspection. He felt like he had been half-sleeping in his room and somebody was calling him from another room.
Eren nodded slightly at Kino’s question, letting her know that he was still in control of his faculties, albeit barely. During the inspection, Kino was satisfied that Eren could hear her. This fact alone told her that he had a strong soul and willpower. That he was perfectly compatible with being a Hexer.
“Good. Summon your Bear armor and manifest your elements around you.”
Kino instructed Eren to use his Hex gear. She didn’t ask him to cast the Hex spell because manifesting the elements around him while the Hex gear was on was enough for the inspection.
Eren did what was asked of him. He summoned the Hex gear set and manifested flames and lightning around his body. His consciousness soon began to drift away from reality.
Kino operated on the array once again and tried to get to the bottom of the interference she was getting the readings of. She had concluded that there was some type of soul mark attached to Eren’s soul that was hiding deep within it.
In the next moment, the array started shaking and the ground cracked. Mana in the surrounding area turned haywire. Small elemental storms started forming all around Eren as his mirrored soul projection changed once again.
This time, the projection depicted a black-haired man with emerald green eyes. Kino could see the eyes this time because Eren had also kept his eyes half-opened before his consciousness drifted into slumber for the second time.
The projection had sharp facial features that were not really like Eren or Viktor. But they bore resemblance to Eren all the same.
The projection had a seemingly ordinary face. But somehow he had the charms he needed that set him apart from the rest.
‘What is going on here? What am I seeing?’
Kino contemplated her thoughts as she watched the mana storms spawned by the green-eyed man’s mere manifestation. It was as if the man who possessed the soul mark had the elemental attainments of all the elements. Additionally, they manifested themselves in the environment without the soul mark doing a thing.
Kino first thought that the soul mark belonged to a high-ranking entity that was beyond the level the world of Gilaahan could handle. But she started receiving more readings from the array and her expressions changed into something grim.
‘How can this be a soul mark? Something has been integrated into a person’s soul to this extent and yet it has managed to retain its identity. What kind of entity could do something like this?’
Kino ignored the mana storms forming in the surroundings and maintained her control over the array. She was very intimidated by the manifestation of the soul mark Eren had on his soul. She slowly started to realize many things at once as she analyzed the readings coming from the inspection array.
Zin!
But when Kino tried to use the inspection array on the projected soul mark, a threatening mana pulse was released in the surrounding area. The elemental mana storms became more volatile and started clashing with each other.
Kino felt like she would turn deaf from the sharp sound she was hearing deep in her consciousness that had no physical source around her. It was as if she had been given a mortal body, and that body was having a serious fever. She felt helpless and weak in the man’s presence.
And when the black-haired man opened his eyes completely, Kino couldn’t help feeling paralyzed. For the first time in a long while, she felt fear. She looked into the man’s green eyes and a shiver ran down her spine. Her mind froze and she stopped flying all of a sudden.
Kino crashed on the ground with a distinct thud as her wings suddenly stopped flapping themselves. The caretaker of the testing ground was brought to her knees as she tried to look away from staring into the man’s eyes.
‘Who… who is he? And what is happening to me?’
Kino couldn’t look away from the man’s face. All of a sudden, she started developing the urge to kill him and love him at the same time. Her emotions were so bipolar and confusing to her that she started feeling like she was going insane.
Kino felt like she shouldn’t have tried to inspect this soul mark in the first place. Because the testing ground was bound to get destroyed with the way things were going. She just had a random thought before getting scared by its possibility.
‘Is he… is he what they call a god?’
