I was already running on fumes. My body felt like a sack of broken bones barely being held together by muscle and willpower. Every strike Hinesia landed on me rattled my skeleton. Every counter I managed was nothing more than instinct and the stubborn refusal to fall.
I knew who the woman was. She's the Goddess of Nature herself, the one who created the Elemental Flux.
"Your wish has been granted."
What did she mean? Did she bless me? Did she mark me? Or was this her way of laughing at me?
I didn't have the luxury to answer myself because right then, I felt it.
My instincts screamed louder than thought. My body moved before my mind caught up. I raised my forearm just in time. Hinesia's palm struck against it, sending a shockwave that blasted the air out of the arena like a bomb detonating.
My feet skidded against the cracked stone floor but I didn't fall. I twisted into a counter-kick aimed straight for her ribs. Thay kind of strike should have landed clean except she slipped back with a speed that defied reason.
Her eyes sharpened, narrowing into slits as she tilted her head. And then she said the words that froze me more than her killing intent ever could.
"Did you just block my attack?"
My arm ached, swelling where her strike had landed.
I blocked her. How?
I was about to stammer something, maybe laugh it off, when I saw Xana trailing along my arms, my chest and even down to my fingertips.
It wasn't the same smoky, inky black Xana I'd lived with since the beginning.
A gleam of silver swirled through it, turning the once-dark haze into something luminous and otherworldly.
"What the hell..."
Hinesia stepped back out of fear
"How are you able to use… that Xana?"
That? What did she mean that?
Before I could even open my mouth, the air itself split open. A rift bled into reality, swirling into a portal of blinding white and out stepped the one person who should not be here.
Seirath.
He took one look at me, one look at the silver burning across my body, and his face hardened. His voice carried no hesitation.
"How can you use that Xana?"
I staggered back, still trying to keep my lungs from collapsing. I wanted to answer. I wanted to scream that I didn't even know but the words that came out were pitiful.
"I… I just did it. I didn't think. I just moved and this happened."
Seirath exhaled heavily. His gaze cut into me, and I swore I saw something like pity flash behind his eyes.
"Tell me, did you meet one of the Goddesses?"
My heart lurched. Images of that encounter surged in my head but I couldn't admit it because she told me not to. So I shook my head.
"No."
"Phaser, when Xana changes color, it means one of two things. Either your body is undergoing Flux Corrosion or…you have been touched by the Goddesses themselves."
The floor seemed to tilt beneath me.
My blood went cold and yet the silver Xana pulsed hotter, wrapping around me like it had a will of its own.
Touched by the Goddesses?
"You are no longer an ordinary being, Phaser. You are a God-touched Fluxer."
I never thought I'd hear those words used for me. Even saying it in my head feels wrong.
God-touched Fluxers aren't just strong. In all of Altera Earth, you could count them on your fingers and still have fingers left over. The five Fluxers chosen by the Goddess during the Fluxwave Phenomenon weren't just heroes. It wasn't technique or strategy that made them gods among men. They were God-touched Fluxers, marked by the hands of the Deities.
This is basic information of Flux types that was revealed during the University Arc. 99% of Fluxers, no matter how skilled, are bound by one Flux type. If they're lucky or cursed, they might inherit two like Radellei, who carries both Alteration and Elemental. But even she's limited. Her Elemental Flux is her active hand. Her Alteration is her passive one. She can use one at a time, not both and never with the same freedom. Her second Flux is a shadow of her first.
But that's not how it works for God-touched.
When a Goddess lays her hand on you, something changes. Flux stops being a tool you wield and becomes part of your existence. The God-touched can wield multiple Fluxes as naturally as they breathe.
Verdamona is living proof of that.
She's the protagonist of Masquerade of Dreams: Shattered for a reason. She is the only being alive saved and touched by the Goddess of Death. Even in the University Arc, she seems almost ordinary. She fumbles, she bleeds and scrapes by with only her Combat Flux.
But that was only a mask.
The moment that Arc ends, when her second Flux awakens—her Alteration Flux—everything changes. She becomes the kind of force that bends entire storylines around her. The world doesn't just acknowledge her. It reacts to her.
And now I realized I stepped onto that same road. When I replayed that encounter with the Goddess of Nature, her words burned clearer.
"Your wish has been granted."
At the time, I thought it was cryptic or a riddle I wasn't meant to solve.
Now I understood. She touched me. It grafted an Elemental Flux onto my core as if it had always been mine. I didn't just have Concept Flux anymore. I had the Elemental Flux too.
The silver hue of my Xana wasn't corrosion. It was her gift or curse.
Seirath didn't soften as he explained it.
"Judging from your condition, you've been anchored to the Elemental Flux. However, your resonance is fixed on one main element and that is Void."
Void. This is the most primal, most merciless of Elemental branches.
"Either way, you're stronger now. You've leapt into a class where few survive. Don't squander it. You're a Dual Fluxer... well, Dual Human."
It was only then I realized why my training had accelerated so fast. W
This is why Roborare, a technique that should have taken me months to internalize, settled into my bones like it had always been there. It wasn't just my effort. It was the Kyris Zone answering me.
Seirath didn't give me long to bask or panic. He glanced at Hinesia, then back to me.
"Training with my daughters is over. From now on, you'll be participating with my daughters."
A shiver ran down my spine.
Hinesia had already been a nightmare to face without her Flux. The thought of being thrown into the den with the rest of them felt like volunteering for execution. And yet beneath the dread, I was... relieved?
Now I can use a Flux type without depending on my Concept Flux. Jackpot!