Born in Blood

'Oops. I didn't mean to say that outloud.'

North Star and Yar'wei's eyes widened with anger, while Kuan was expressionless.

The pressure in the room slightly increased, causing Liam's grimace to deepen.

"I'll remind you to keep your auras in check," Usan said with a dark voice at the three.

The vast hall darkened with shrieking shadows.

"A duel to the death was an exception to the rule," Usan reminded.

Slowly, the pressure faded, and Liam's head felt relief. 

"Leave now. You have what you wanted," Usan told Kuan with a deadpan tone.

The Elders were prepared for a fight to break out. 

Their hands twitched with restraint.

Kuan lingered for a few seconds, his cryptic gaze still fixated on Liam.

Silence again.

Liam knew he couldn't lie.

Even if there were circumstances beyond his control, Liam told the truth.

Kuan wasn't stupid. He could tell straight away if Liam blamed her death on Reyan.

So, even though it was blurted out by mistake, Liam stood by it. 

After a few seconds of fragile silence, Kuan turned around and left wordlessly, followed by North Star and Yar'wei.

The room's tense atmosphere melted away, but the silence remained.

"What happened while I was gone?" Liam asked as they left. 

Usan's gaze turned serious. 

"A lot of things. The world is in… well, a fragile state," he said. "For now, rest. You can't do much with a cracked mind."

"Someone will fill you in once you're back to decent health."

Liam wanted to protest… but everyone quickly left using their shadows!

It was a little too quick to be normal. 

Even Jargon left as quickly, which he would almost never do without Liam's permission.

It seemed they'd been instructed to do so before Liam had a chance to say anything.

Nevertheless, the room was emptied once more, and Liam was by himself.

Silence.

It was just him and his thoughts.

'It's a shame I didn't get the full inheritance,' Liam mused. 'There must have been something incredible for the final Trial.'

Liam felt a bitter taste in his mouth.

In his sea of consciousness, Liam used his mental energy to slowly fill in the cracks on his mind.

And there were many.

This would take a month at least to repair.

Liam replayed the memories of the inheritance.

'I should have trusted my gut feeling, damn it.'

'Greed cost me time and energy.'

A full two weeks passed before Liam managed to regain most of his mental faculties.

As soon as he had the strength to think without flinching, Liam slowly stripped away his bandages to take a closer look at his condition.

The outside of his body was relatively normal, besides being slimmer due to losing so much blood.

Most external wounds had healed, and even Liam's stomach was patched up.

'...But the infection remains.'

What Half-head gave Liam was not actually a virus.

It didn't spread, and it didn't make him sick.

'It's getting worse and worse the more time passes.'

It just made him feel pain, and it was getting worse.

On Liam's command, darkness spread to his hand and blazed.

'Thankfully, my core still works.'

Liam used chaos next, but as it spread through his hand, he realized something.

The blackish substance was actually pulled into the chaos as it flowed past!

Then, when the chaos dissipated, the infective matter was what remained.

Liam did the same thing again, and the plague-like substance was sucked in again.

'I can expel it,' Liam realized with a smile.

For the next few minutes, Liam tried to pull away the black substance from his left hand.

It was like using a magnet to manipulate ferrofluid through a glass container.

It was a painful process, since wherever the black substance passed, Liam felt the 'degeneration' that came with it.

But it was the same volume throughout. 

All of the murky substance soon gathered in Liam's left arm and hand.

From his entire body, that is.

Since his left arm took the burden of the 'degeneration', it basically went numb with pain.

One last time, Liam used chaos to pull away the infectious substance.

Contrary to Liam's expectation, the substance refused to leave Liam's hand!

Liam cursed.

A few more hours passed as Liam tried the same thing.

It still wasn't expelled. 

Not even a bit.

'Got ahead of myself,' Liam thought with furrowed brows. 

'Maybe I can gather all of it in one arm, then use Expel?'

Before doing that, Liam made the tip of his finger explode. 

BOOM!

Liam grimaced slightly as a shockwave spread throughout the hall.

Usan suddenly appeared.

"It hasn't been two weeks and you're already back to explosives?" he asked with a reprimanding voice. 

"Nothing else to do," Liam said, examining his fingertip. 

His eyes widened a moment later.

Even though his finger tip wasn't there, there was an ethereal black form there instead.

A finger.

Made from the plague-like substance.

Liam curled his finger.

And it actually moved.

"What… is this?" Liam muttered under his breath.

Even Usan looked taken aback. "No clue," he shook his head. "What did you get hit by?" 

"I couldn't tell. I was too busy exploding," Liam countered, idly curling his ethereal finger.

Slowly, Liam used his blood to speed up the healing process.

Exploding an arm versus exploding a fingertip was massively different in their healing times.

Since the wound was little, even though Liam used Expel, he didn't have to wait exorbitant amounts of time.

'Speeding up the healing process uses a large volume of blood. Even a finger tip requires at least 3 to 4 liters of it.'

And by the end of it, the black substance was still there.

'Unless I do something, this'll just get worse until I won't be able to use my arm entirely.'

…There was one thing he could do. 

But it came with a risk.

"I don't take it you or anyone you know can help, right?" Liam asked quietly.

Usan shrugged bitterly. "Whatever it is, it's a Rank 6 attack. Not even Kuan could help, and he wouldn't want to."

Liam shook his head at that.

A few seconds of silence passed.

Then, with a resolute look in his multi-colored eyes, Liam manipulated his Chaos Pearl to exit through the cage of goblin flesh.