He should have either used his Master-given talismans or his mana and aura. After all, no opportunity was worth his life or Sangrelia’s life, especially with her condition degrading rapidly by the second, hairline cracks spreading further across the blade.

Sadly, Mikael wasn’t in the right state of mind. All of his focus was focused entirely on the fight and nothing else, he was only thinking of the next attack he would inflict or the next damage he would receive, every ounce of his attention was focused on this, so escaping?

He didn’t think about it for even a second, all of his attention was on the fight. His hazy state of mind, caused by the poison, blood loss, dizziness, and numerous injuries, didn’t allow him to think calmly.

Because of that, Mikael continued to battle even when the wisest choice would have been to escape. He had entirely lost track of everything except this feral battle. In truth, he didn’t even remember that his talismans—or his mana and aura—existed.

There was no strategy, no thought of retreat, no use of his full power, no use of life-saving talismans. He wasn’t fighting to win—only to endure.

He endured blow after blow, rising again from another when he should already have been dead ten times over. In his almost feral eyes, there was a boundless determination to fight, and, more importantly, to survive.

The closer Mikael came to death’s door and the worse his condition became, the more his fighting style shifted from ordered and calculated to something else, something different, something less like a man and more like a feral beast.

Somewhere deep within him, something snapped—not his bone, not his blade, not even his body that should have already been broken. No, what broke was the part of him that held back, the human part of him.

From that fracture, something else began to take shape. Something feral.

It began as a white flash, just as Mikael carved a bloody gash into a Mid-stage Zephyr Wolf using a powerful and well-timed Eclipsing Crescent Cut.

Instinctively, a bloodthirsty grin appeared on Mikael’s face, deformed from the injuries he had sustained and soaked in blood, though whether it was his own or that of the nearby demonic beasts was up for debate.

Splurt.

A ray of blood burst from the wound and landed squarely on his face, and he didn’t know how or why, but this seemingly banal act—one that had happened multiple times already—made him freeze.

Or more accurately, it made everything freeze—whether it was himself or the world around him. He could see a wind-based attack suspended mid-air, still headed toward him. The massive limb of the Titanhide Rhino was also frozen, caught in the middle of its swing.

This shocking scenario pierced through the haze clouding Mikael’s mind, bringing with it a brief moment of clarity. ‘This… what?’ At first, he didn’t understand—the weight of his injuries, the poison, and the fog of blood loss dulling his thoughts—but then, all at once, comprehension bloomed within him.

‘Partial Enlightenment.’

It wasn’t the lofty kind whispered about in cultivation scrolls, nor the mythical Dao Enlightenment where one connected with the infinite truths of the Great Dao and drew upon its boundless wisdom. No, this was something different, more focused in scope—yet no less real.

Partial Enlightenment was a moment where the fragmented pieces of a cultivator’s understanding—about themselves, their path, or a concept they had only glimpsed—suddenly aligned into a single, undeniable truth. It was neither a revelation from the heavens nor a communion with the universe’s laws, but a realization born inward, forged in the crucible of one’s own experience.

Though outward factors often served as catalysts—pressure, danger, pain, or even something as simple as a glance or a sensation—it was always the internal foundation that mattered. Without that hidden groundwork, no external spark could ignite anything. But if the pieces were already there, even the subtlest trigger could lead to an awakening.

And while it lacked the grandeur of Dao Enlightenment, Partial Enlightenment was anything but insignificant. For cultivators like Mikael, whose realm was far too low to even brush the edges of the Dao’s infinite wisdom, it was a rare and precious moment of clarity, one that many geniuses might pursue their whole lives without ever attaining.

Because of that, the words Partial Enlightenment thundered through Mikael’s consciousness, cutting through the fog with brutal precision. And in that instant, something shifted. His mind, once dull and sluggish, roared back to life, not because the world had slowed, but because his thoughts had begun moving faster, clearer, sharper than ever before.

At that instant, Mikael felt like he understood everything, and the mysteries of the universe were at arm’s reach. Of course, he knew it was only an illusion brought on by the immense surge in comprehension and understanding.

At that moment, both his comprehension and awareness had reached unprecedented levels, allowing him to gain a clarity previously unimaginable. And because of that, he finally realized how muddled his mind had been.

Instinctively, his thoughts drifted to Sangrelia’s condition, and the moment he saw her cracked form and understood that she was burning herself to support him, something stirred, something sharp, heavy, a mix of heartache and warmth that struck deeper than it should have.

Until now, he’d treated her like a weapon he favored, something valuable but still a tool. That made sense; she hadn’t always been sentient. But since arriving in the Akashic Records Universe, she had changed, and so had he, slowly adjusting to her growing will, treating her more like a battle partner than an object.

But this—this readiness to burn herself just to keep him alive—went beyond that. It shifted something inside him, deep and wordless, into a feeling that wasn’t simple, and definitely not shallow, and what that feeling would become, and where it would lead, he didn’t know—but that was for later.

For now, he forced himself to calm down and focus. This was enlightenment—every moment mattered, he would have time to think about it afterward.

Right then, his mindset shifted, and he felt his thoughts gain an unprecedented calm and stillness. His mind was now like a calm lake where no matter what happened it wouldn’t be disturbed or stirred in the slightest.

Once he entered this state of serenity, Mikael’s eyes automatically closed as he began to see flashbacks pass before his eyes. He remembered this day when he was quietly comprehending his Cultivation Methods in the rocky alcove and caught the fight between the small wolf and the far larger, stronger tiger.

‘It was brave’

The scene of the small wolf bravely holding its ground against a tiger that, by all accounts, should’ve killed it with ease, yet even in that hopeless mismatch, he remembered with unfiltered clarity how the wolf had endured injury after injury without backing down, as if it were unfolding before his very eyes.

‘It was ferocious.’

The moment where the small wolf at the price of heavy injuries began to devour the visage of the tiger, each moment causing the wolf to accumulate more injuries but it didn’t let go in a display of unparalleled ferocity, flashed in his mind.

‘And finally, it was…relentless.’

The moment when, even as death’s door loomed, the wolf continued to fight. Not even a trace of hesitation passed through its bestial eyes. It kept going with everything it had, determined to bring the far stronger and larger predator down with it—and he succeeded.

The scene of the wolf stumbling a couple of steps after taking down the tiger, only to collapse as well, passed through his mind before slowly fading.

And in its passing, it left behind a Mikael whose understanding was beginning to transform. He didn’t understand what was changing or how, but he could feel it, a part of him unmistakably shifting.

Mikael didn’t have much longer to delve on this change before another image flashed before him. This time it wasn’t about another beasts or anything, it was about something—someone else—someone that he instantly identified to be himself.

He wasn’t watching another anymore. He was watching himself.

More precisely, it was himself from the moment he dropped from the sky to the moment he battled his way through the demonic beast tide. Surprisingly, each of those moments passed quickly and felt somewhat blurry, unlike when he watched the wolf face the tiger, where every instant burned with vivid clarity.

This time, it was more like living a dream—where every scene blurred into the next, and the moment he woke up, he would forget everything that had happened.

At least that was the case until his ‘vision’ reached the precise moment where he was encircled by the Titanhide Rhino and the pack of Zephyr Wolves, starting from here, it gained the same vivid clarity as when he saw the fight between the small wolf and the larger tiger.

Slash.

He saw himself get slashed by the wind blade of a Zephyr Wolf, but more than seeing it, he felt

it in his bones, the pain, the rage, the hopelessness against an overwhelming tide of enemies, the counterattacks he launched, and the slow loss of reason that followed.

At this moment, he wasn’t a spectator anymore, but was living every moment of what he saw. He felt everything as clearly as when it happened. No, it was even clearer. Earlier, his mind had already been hazy, which only worsened as he accumulated injuries, but now in his Partial Enlightenment state, his mental acuity was beyond imagination.

‘Ferocity…’ The word echoed in his mind as, with each passing moment, he relived the same fight—only now, with his enlightened state, he understood far more than before.

And as he felt it, the word that came to his mind was ferocity. Every one of his actions was ferocious, done not with the calculated mind of a human but with the ferocity of a cornered beast. Every one of his movements was becoming more primal by the second, less instinctive, more violent!

Mikael felt and saw everything that was happening, and at that moment, he even had the faint impression that the wolf and he weren’t really that different.

At this instant unknown to him, his state of Partial Enlightenment deepened.

He caught himself, ‘What am I thinking? The wolf and me aren’t the same at all. What am I thin…king? But maybe…’ His thoughts slowed as he immersed himself in the sensation that he was experiencing—the ferocity, the violence, and the unstoppable determination to continue to fight to the end.

He stayed in this position, immersing himself in the fight for an unknown span of time—it could have been a second, or it could have been months. All around him the world remained frozen, but within, everything was moving.

Mikael didn’t know, but at that moment, had someone looked beneath his closed eyelids, they would’ve seen an unparalleled ferocity brewing in the depths of his eyes.

‘I see… so this is it. The mindset to embody ferocity,’ he inwardly mumbled, just as he felt chains that had unknowingly held him back all his life begin to crack.

These weren’t chains made from guilt or hesitation. He never had problems with killing, never held back because he thought something was wrong—but they were chains all the same, formed without him realizing, born from growing up in a world like Earth, where certain acts didn’t even come to mind.

He fought brutally, used every trick he knew, never cared about honor, but even then there were limits—limits so deep they felt natural, like how he could crush someone’s throat but wouldn’t use his teeth to rip an eye out, or tear someone open with his bare hands even if it worked.

It wasn’t something he questioned or thought about, it was just there, not because of principle but because that kind of thing never even occurred to him.

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— End of Chapter —