Norlan frowned when he saw the commotion caused by Titus's evolution. The commotion was too conspicuous and would definitely attract a lot of unwanted attention.
He sized up Titus with his passive observation technique at maximum power, pairing it up with his second technique of the divine skill Energy contradiction, filter. An ecstatic expression took over his face, directly inquiring his deduction.
"You're about to evolve?"
Titus mearly nodded,his full attention on the changes that were taking place inside his body. To him,these changes were priceless. Especially since experiencing it himself gave him better understanding what was currently happening.Trying his best to grasp something that he could implement and upgrade his nascent domain expression to a genuine domain expression.
Should he succeed,he would directly break through to the awakened master realm without any bottleneck and become a genuine powerhouse that could trample on all and sundry in this stasis world.
Ahhhh!
He let out a pained shriek again. Norlan continued to observe. From his experience, everytime a major change occurs,the pain would be greatly stimulated. He cursed himself for not doing this when he was undergoing his own evolution and encouraged himself to keep observing.
Cellular rearrangement was taking place with the help of an infinite amount of changes that were taking place in Titus's body. Unknown runes danced and evolved from each bloodcell while siphoning power that made the cell shrivel and wither.
But then,just when the cell was about to die,a mysterious energy pulsed from the cell,fueling qualitative change on that cell. This was the same energy that Titus had received from Norlan.
Norlan kept note of this observation. Concluding that for the last four times that he had applied the Resonance evolution on him,his cells were just absorbing the energy without using it. Accumulating it up until the fifth session where qualitative change happens.
Suddenly,a wave of fatigue hit and he felt like a farm bull that had been ploughing the fields all day long. This had never happened during the last few times he applied the Resonance evolution divine skill.
Fortunately,at this exact moment,the siphoning pull of the evolution energy seized. It seems that Titus's body had absorbed just enough energy needed to complete evolution into a high human.
Thud!
Norlan collapsed after the resonance evolution divine skill came to a halt. He was too exhausted. Exhausted in all aspects of spirit, soul and body.
***
Deep, deep inside a third-order dungeon,in a labyrinth of twisted stone veins and pulsing, organic walls,a scholar clutching an enormous ruler coughed up a spray of blood and collapsed to his knees.
The ruler, once smooth and gleaming with sacred inscriptions,was now spiderwebbed with fresh cracks. His breath came in ragged gasps. He was utterly stunned by the caliber of resistance he had encountered during his divination.
Gritting his teeth, he grabbed the edge of his oversized white robe and crawled, inch by inch, toward a set of stairs that extended upward like frozen lightning bolts.
At the top, bathed in a soft, ethereal glow, sat a magnificent throne,carved not from stone or metal, but from the solidified essence of deep earth and ancient root.
Seated there was a little girl, no older than seven in appearance, with hair the color of green,like that of moss after rain and eyes that held the weight of buried continents.
She looked at the scholar with a faint hint of admonishment in her gaze.
"I can't believe it," the scholar wheezed, holding up the cracked sacred divination ruler for her to see. "Even this artifact is full of fractures! Just… what kind of background does that kid have?" He paused to catch his breath, wiping blood from his lips with the back of his trembling hand.
The little girl puffed out her cheeks and pouted. "Did you really think that what I cannot see through, you could?" Her poofy face then shifted, her expression morphing into that of a stern lecturer, her eyebrows raised and lips pressed thin. Though she looked like a child, her voice carried a contrasting authority that made this situation quite comical.
"Do you know the circumstances involved in the early awakening of a Land spirit?" she asked, tilting her head. "Let me educate you. Answer me this: a planet cannot give birth to a Land spirit by itself. Why is this?"
The scholar, now somewhat steadier, stared at her incredulously. Isn't that common knowledge? He sighed deeply, recognizing the girl's stubborn nature. She would not answer him unless he followed her script. So he played along.
"An early awakening," he recited, "can only be triggered by the accumulated destiny of a civilization that has made contact with Albera,or when the planet births a being with overwhelming, heaven-defying destiny."
As the words left his mouth, his eyes popped wide with sudden, jarring realization. His breath hitched. He looked at the little girl, searching her face for confirmation, his voice dropping to a trembling whisper.
"H-he… he is a favored one?"
Excitement flooded his face,his cheeks flushing, his wrinkles smoothing, eyes blazing with manic hope. The crushing backlash from probing Norlan, after sensing that resonance evolution energy, faded entirely from his mind. All that remained was this electric revelation.
The little girl nodded. And even she,ancient yet young, wise yet naive,felt the contagious excitement pervade her entire being. It fizzed through her body, through the karmic threads that bound her to the surface. Especially because she was the Land spirit born from Earth.
Born not from a civilization's accumulated destiny, but from the accumulated destiny of a single individual.
"Heaven has eyes!"
The scholar's voice cracked as he shouted.
"Heaven has eyes!"
He threw his head back, arms spreading wide.
"Fate does not allow my human race to perish from Albera! Resurgence is possible! Our rise is probable! Eternal glory is achievable! Ha! Ha! Ha!"
He laughed like a maniac,a raw, guttural sound that bounced off the dungeon's dripping walls and echoed through its deepest corridors.
His rumblings spread like seismic tremors through the third-order dungeon as he spun around to face the girl,his eyes wild.
That made Earth's Land spirit take a cautious step back. She looked at him with narrow, suspicious eyes. Naive as she was,having spent most of her short existence observing humans from unseen corners,she could only attribute such frantic, gleeful intensity to one thing: the behavior of child predators.
Yes, the time she had spent watching humans on Earth had definitely left its mark on her personality. After all, she was as old as Norlan—barely a teenager in spiritual terms. And she shared a karmic bond with him, a tether of fate that connected their very souls.
It was precisely because of that bond that she had gone out of her way to ask this scholar for help. In her mind, the stronger Norlan became, the better for both of them.
"Fate has not forsaken humans!" the scholar continued, pacing now, his torn robe dragging across the stone floor. "And to think that such a person is in the same stasis world as my dungeon! It seems the Crown Prince has rendered another merit. It was right to act conservatively all this time."
He stopped mid-step, a new thought striking him like a thunderbolt. "Maybe,maybe,with a favored one, the Spirit Lord of Black and Yellow would finally take notice."
He spun back toward the little girl, clasping his hands together as if in prayer,or desperate pleading.
"Come, come! Tell me everything about Norlan. What kind of person is he? Does he have the disposition of a ruler? Who is his backer? That skill,that skill is from an expressed dominion! Truly a favored one. Even at our peak, wce couldn't get our hands on such a thing. Yet here it is! "
He took a step closer, eyes shining.
"Come, come,tell me everything!"