CHAPTER 354: CHAPTER 354: TROUBLE

The ascent of the Arkship had left a deep trench in the ground where it had been lodged before.

The trench itself was far smaller than the whole Arkship and made one wonder how it had even been put in there.

With how big the arkship was, it was a miracle that the whole continent had not split in half just from its movement.

Out of the deep shallow trench, Origin Essence gushed out in full force, soaking the entire region in its mysterious power.

For now, there were no visible changes, but change was happening nonetheless.

It wasn’t just from the trench, every part of the planet seemed to have been holding its breath for a long time and was finally able to breathe properly.

The creatures felt it clearly, the gaps in their power shrinking gradually.

It was happening.

Quality was rising.

While the world was slowly undergoing this transformation, something else was happening with the Arkship.

The machine didn’t stop rising into the sky.

Above the vessel, on the metal hull that faced the sun, Kael lay on the metal surface with Katari kneeling beside him.

His face was slowly healing up. The tears on his lips and cheeks were closing and his broken nose began to straighten.

His breathing was stable and he was fully conscious, just a bit tired from having to fight off three tier 5 tigers at the same time.

He had really outdone himself this time, this was a feat that would leave most listeners in awe.

Constantyne’s bashing had hurt very badly, it was the first time he was receiving such treatment from an opponent.

Naturally, Kael was expecting to experience much worse than this in the future, it couldn’t be helped.

The path he was threading on required that he would have to hurt a lot of people, and a lot of people would equally hurt him in ways he couldn’t imagine.

As Kael lay down on the metal surface, his eyes drifted to Katari’s kneeling form. She was expressionless, her mind cold and shielded.

The feeling of weakness was not present in her at this moment, she knew she wasn’t weak. But perhaps, she still wasn’t strong enough.

The scene of Kael and the three tigers streaking through the sky, bouncing off the body of the rising Arkship, and weaving through the fountains of lava, was stuck in her head.

She wanted that power for herself, she wanted to get to tier 5 as soon as possible.

Kael was not angry or wrathful that he had been beaten up like this, they had achieved all they wanted.

They got the Arkship and they released the Origin Essence, just as they had wanted.

Kael had successfully held the three tigers at bay, allowing Chloe to get into the arkship, while Katari fought off the tier 4 tigers, keeping them distracted and away from Kael.

In the end, none of them died, and they still got what they wanted, it was a win.

The power of fortune really came in handy even when there were no visible applications.

Not to mention the added bonus Kael had gotten mid-flight.

The vertical slit on his forehead opened again, revealing a third eye.

Katari’s eyes shifted to the third eye on Kael’s head and subconsciously looked away. It was as if she instinctively couldn’t maintain long eye contact with it.

The eye was a mix of different shades of grey, with its pupils being a very dark grey color.

As the third eye was opened, Kael’s vision changed.

He could see himself...from a third-person perspective. It was really weird for him as he could still see normally through his two main eyes, but he could also see through his third eye.

Another thing that changed was that he could see Katari’s soul. Previously, the innate powers of a Spirit Lion only allowed him to sense the existence of a soul, not see it.

Now, he could see Katari’s soul through her body, a colorless, shapeless blob of grey. The soul constantly shifted its length from her head to her chest.

Kael had no other soul to compare to but he could gain some information just by looking at Katari right now.

He could literally see her killing intent being surprised, he could see the twisted sense of love, he could also see her emptiness.

After some thought, Kael concluded that these three aspects might represent Katari’s personality at the foundational level. And it was somewhat true.

Killer, extreme lover, and a significant lack of other emotion, could be very well used to plainly describe Katari.

Kael focused on his own soul to check.

Dominance, tyranny, orderliness, emotionally displaced, strong-willed, and many more could be seen in Kael’s soul. All these things were attached to his consciousness to make him Kael.

Kael’s soul was much more complex than Katari’s, it seems.

It was like the third eye could read certain auras and interpret them into an understandable concept for Kael.

Kael was intrigued by that ’emotionally displaced’ reading he got but didn’t think too much about it.

He was more focused on the Spirit Eye, as he would call it.

His overall spirit-based abilities seemed to get an upgrade, though he didn’t get to test them out.

His spiritual sense especially was improved by leaps and bounds. It wasn’t just about feeling what his spirit sense touched now.

As long as his spirit sense touched it, his Spirit Eye could see it.

It was like having a satellite camera that could see almost everything at the same time.

The Spirit Eye closed, and Katari looked into Kael’s eyes. She wasn’t aware that she had subconsciously looked away from the eye, her mind was too occupied for her to notice.

Kael was drawing Conquering Essence from the Lion System reserves to fill up one of his Conquering Essence pools. He was careful not to draw out too much lest some features stop working.

This was another of his trump cards. Without the energy pools of other powers, drawing on the Conquering Essence reserves would only keep him alive for some time.

But even then, he couldn’t draw on it freely even though he was the owner.

The collapse of the Lion System if there was a lack of Conquering Essence to run it wasn’t something he hoped to see. It wasn’t as simple as shutting down some features.

The Lion System had already fused with his Heavenly Beacon, and the beacon had fused with him. Any collapse of the lion system would cause him a great deal of discomfort.

The lion system was his personal Conquering Essence funnel, if it collapsed just because he couldn’t resist the momentary temptation to siphon power from it, it could cripple him.

In a sense, he was the Lion System and the Lion System was him. Hurting the system would mean hurting himself.

He had decided that drawing on the reserves of the Lion System was not something he would do unless there was excess Conquering Essence.

The problem was that, even though there was excess, the number of lions being added to the Lion System was increasing at a frightening rate.

The Conquering Essence that was put into it was used up not long after.

For now, Kael drew on the remaining excess Conquering Essence to recover his strength. He knew that a time would come when he could have enough Conquering Essence to do whatever he wanted with.

Right now, there was almost no Conquering Essence where Kael was. The battle with the tigers and gaining the Arkship couldn’t exactly be called a Conquering Activity. If anything, it was more of a Destructive activity.

"Katari," Kael spoke telepathically.

Katari looked at him lovingly, seeing that he was mostly healed.

"Did you see where those spatial blades came from?" Kael asked as he sat up.

He looked to his side to see Belgrod’s split tiger body and the intestines that spilled out of his two halves.

"No," Katari shook her head, equally curious about those spatial blades.

Kael sighed before standing up, he felt the thinning oxygen around them as the arkship did not stop rising. Soon, it would break out of the planet’s atmosphere and into the final frontier.

Tier 4 creatures or equivalent did not have the adapted biology to survive in the vacuum of space, Kael was sure of that. If this Arkship kept on rising, Katari and Kael would have to jump off.

That itself was another problem.

’Was I mistaken?’ Kael asked himself as his body got tense.

He had guessed that the spatial blades came from the Arkship, and if it did, it meant Chloe was the one commanding it.

However, why was she taking so long to stop the Arkship from flying?

Or was Kael just being impatient?

Maybe both.

Suddenly, space twisted around Kael, Katari, and Belgrod’s bodies without any warning.

Before they knew it, they disappeared from the top of the colossal vessel.

When their vision cleared to see where they had been teleported to, they saw that they were now in a magnificent hall, if it could still be called a hall.

Beyond all the magnificence of this place, the two of them focused their eyes on the winged humanoid woman sitting cross-legged in front of them.

It was Chloe, and she sat on a high cushion, looking down at the two humanoids that had just appeared in front of her.

"You’re Majesty, we are in trouble..."