With the nuisance of poison gone, the gene resumed its diligent reconstruction of Soren's entire physique undistracted.
It was like a gardener forcing a wild, thorny vine to grow along a specific trellis.
It pushed the golden fire into every nine phases of Soren's physique, from his bones, all the way into his very cells.
It didn't take long for Soren's skin to begin to change.
Under the crushing weight of the brine, his pores absorbed the heavy minerals—calcium, magnesium, and salts—and fused them with the golden energy.
His skin didn't just get tough; it became dense. It took on a pale, metallic sheen, like a mixed color of jade and bone, that had been polished a thousand times.
At this stage, Soren had completed the Bloodskin, but his genes continued on, evolving and tempering itself and its habitat even further.
Suddenly, a massive surge of energy erupted from the Golden Elixir. This was the "heart" of the medicine, the final concentrated dose of power, the Golden Body activation energy.
Soren's body arched in the water. His muscles seized with such force that the water around him was pushed away in a small shockwave.
He felt his bones groan. They weren't just breaking; they were being reinforced. The golden energy was coating them, turning his skeleton into something more like tempered steel than bone.
The Tranquil Poison felt this heat surge and panicked again. This time however, it threw its own essence into the mix, acting as a cooling agent to keep Soren's organs from turning to ash.
It was a strange, toxic partnership. The poison provided the "cool" darkness, the elixir provided the "hot" light, and Soren genes provided the path to ensuring he survived both.
Inside his soul, the Spherical Void continued its silent work. It now felt more like a black sun, than its previous lack of presence.
It kept absorbing the "overflow" of energy that would have otherwise tuned Soren to ash, and slowly, the violent bubbling of the water began to slow down.
The turquoise pool, which had been boiling with his heat, then began to settle.
Soren lay at the bottom of the pit, but he was no longer screaming.
The Tranquil Poison's essence was now moving through his blood like a silent shark.
It began to feed on the high-level life-force provided by the Golden Body Elixir, weaving itself into his very DNA.
Unbeknownst to its instincts, it was now becoming a passive guardian for Soren, as any creature that bit or touched his blood would find themselves instantly injected with a refined, high-grade version of the thirty venoms.
But the real horror of the tempering process was happening to Soren's right arm.
Whilst Soren's body had been refined into a healthy, polished version, his left arm, his chest, and his legs now looked like the body of a young athlete—tough, dense, and glowing with vitality.
His right arm, however, had been turned into a storage space or depot for the venomous husk of the Tranquil Poison.
The gene had tried to use golden elixir to destroy the venomous husk, but the efficacy of the elixir had that point had dwindled so much that the arm refused to heal and was as such transformed.
Now Soren's right arm had become a vessel of necrotic power, and while the rest of his body looked like a healthy boy, his right arm looked like it belonged to a corpse that refused to stay buried.
It was the same size as his healthy left arm, but the skin was a pale, sickly gray, stretched tight over muscles that felt like bundles of iron cable.
The veins in the arm weren't blue or black; they were a glowing, toxic violet that pulsed with a life of its own.
His fingers had lengthened slightly, ending in fingernails that had turned into jagged, obsidian-colored claws.
The external pressure of the brine acted as a forge, hammering these two opposing forces—the golden life and the violet death—into a single, functional body.
Soren's eyes snapped open. His "vision" was no longer just violet, but now dual-layered into reality.
Within one part of his 3d Energy View, he saw the flow of life (gold), and in the other, the path of decay (violet).
He could now feel the mineral content of the water against his skin like a physical garment.
He looked at his hands underwater. They didn't look like the hands of a seven-year-old. They were slightly larger, the fingers longer, and the skin possessed a strange, translucent quality that hid a terrifying density beneath.
He kicked off the bottom of the pit, and shot through the high-density brine like a spear, breaking the surface of the water in an explosion of spray.
His movement were so effortless. But his explosive strength, so powerful that it left a receding vacuum in the brine despite having emerged.
He landed on the white mineral crust of the shore with the heavy, solid thud of a falling boulder.
He stood tall for his age, reaching exactly 4 feet in height. His breath, deep, slow, and even in its cycles.
The air, which had felt freezing and sharp before no longer stung his lungs. Now it felt like nothing more than a light breeze.
He looked down at himself.
His left hand was tan, strong, and covered in the dense bony-jade-like skin of his own first stage of Body Tempering.
His right arm however... was a nightmare.
He could feel the thirty venoms coiled within the marrow of that arm, waiting for a target.
Every scratch from those dark, obsidian claws; every palm strike from that gray hand; would carry the full weight of the Matron's malice, refined by the Golden Elixir.
His new skin was raw and pale, but it felt different. It was denser. When the air hit it, it didn't feel cold; it felt like it was absorbing the atmosphere itself.
He looked down at his chest. The black, spider-webbing veins were still there, but they were no longer jagged and angry.
Now, they felt more... integrated; flowing in perfect harmony with the dull, jade-like glow that sat just beneath his skin.
Inside his soul, the "Black Sun" rotated slowly. It had trapped within its gravity the flecks of golden energy—the remnants of the elixir that the poison couldn't use.
It had stored the energy; caching it in his soul, giving it a Saturn-like image while acting as a relief buffer for any life-threatening condition that may appear within Soren.
A pleased smile tugged at the corner of Soren's lips. He had done it!
He had survived the impossible; a Fifth-Grade tempering without the foundation of even the First.
He didn't just achieve Bloodskin; he had bypassed the normal limits of the stage.
His body felt "heavy," but it was a weight that gave him power, not fatigue.
Soren walked over to where he had left his things. He picked up the heavy skinning tool with his left hand.
Before, it had felt like a burden; now, it felt as light as a feather.
Then, he switched it to his right hand. The moment his necrotic fingers touched the blade, the dark iron began to hiss.
But the most important change happened next. The violet veins in his arm pulsed, and a thin, toxic vapor rose and latched itself onto the blade.
Soren gripped the handle, and with a small flex of his new muscles, he felt power vibrate through his arm.
The vibration passed through the blade, lifting off the violet-black vapor latched onto the blade in a deadly poison-scythe attack.
The venom scythe traveled about ten yards before exploding into a thin colourless, odourless and tasteless cloud of poison that hung in the air, carving out its own space even in the presence of the Brine-Pit's atmosphere.
Soren, though amazed, observed the attack and realized that while the scythe came out colored and almost solid, it had little to no penetrating power. But his enemies won't know that.
Also, the poison itself was still effective, even though less toxic because it no longer had a vessel to be transmuted through.
Nonetheless, the fact that it returned to its original colorless state due to the absence of his blood more than made up for its lack of active damage power.
He could almost envision his enemies sneering at his attack which vanished due to the lack of power behind it. Only to not realize that they were already within an atmosphere saturated with colorless poison.
While they may not wither like when they come in direct contact with his blood, there would be numerous lingering effects the diluted poison cloud will have on them.
Then, it was up to him to capitalize the moment when these symptoms show up and achieve victory in his battles.
"They wanted a filter," Soren said, his voice now deeper, carrying a resonance that made the nearby salt crystals vibrate. "But they created a weapon."
"They wanted to harvest me like a crop." He looked at his right hand—the "Dead Hand." It was his "fang," his "claw," and his "debt collector."
"Let them come to harvest. I want to see their faces when they realize the crop now has teeth."
He looked toward the south, toward the invisible border of the House of Ignis. His violet-and-gold eyes narrowing.
The Tranquil Poison's essence, hiding in his heart thrummed, as if whispering a single word into the back of his mind: Hunger.
It no longer wanted to feed on him; it wants to feed with him.
It would take Soren's higher-level life force to grow, and in return, it would turn his very blood into a lethal trap for enemies with even stronger life-force.
Soren didn't put the Shadow-Cat hide on for warmth anymore. He simply draped it over his left side, leaving his right, necrotic arm exposed to the harsh wind of the Wastelands.
If He wanted the world to see what the House of Ignis had built, then he needed to give them a spectacle.
But to do that, Soren wanted to know where the limits of his new-found strength lay, and he just happened to be within one of the "Forbidden" parts of the Wastelands.
He took the empty jade vial and crushed it in his bare hand, the high-grade jade turning into fine powder between his fingers that drifted away with the wind.
He began to walk back toward the Red-Rock Spires; each step leaving a shallow crack in the mineral crust.
He wasn't running anymore, and neither is he hiding. But he also knew that this was just the beginning. The "Black Sun" in his soul was still hungry. The Tranquil Poison was still hungry.
Even his genes seemed to be unsatisfied with the work it had done so far; and now that they all knew what gold tasted like, they would never settle for mud.
As the sun hit its peak, the boy who had been "erased" from the world disappeared back into the forest. But he wasn't a "Nameless Guest" anymore. He was now a seven-year-old boy with the body of a tempered warrior and the arm of a vengeful ghost.
He was now something the Wastelands had forged, and the Tribe would soon learn that some debts can only be paid in blood.
The "banished" phase was now over. The hunt was about to begin.