“Yes, I think so. It’s just my eyes…”
He takes a deep breath. “You were lucky. So lucky…” He shakes his head. “Even one second can be fatal. You need to have a healer look at your body at the Department.”
“But I’m fine…”
“You can’t know. It is indeed a marvel that you’re still standing, but still, damage to this level can never be taken lightly.” He purses his lips as he assesses me further. “Perhaps it’s because of your low level? “ He muses to himself. “Our documentation shows that past individuals who’ve seen a true form have been depleted from energy and as a result they perished. Perhaps because you havenoenergy that you’re still standing? No matter, you must get checked up.”
With that, he ends the discussion.
All of us gather together to teleport back at the Department with the bound male, after which Elysand immediately fires instructions right and left: some are to place the individual in a prison until further action while others have to write up a point-by-point account of what happened.
And me? Well, I’m quickly led to the Healing Department.
Since a lot of higher-level warriors are able to regenerate, the healer department is only for those who lack that ability and for those who are injured by other means far above their regenerative capabilities, such as poisoning or wounds caused by certain artifacts.
Once I’m in the room with the healer on duty, she takes a quick look at me and immediately notices the bloodstains, so her first course of action is to check my vision.
“The chief told me that you saw a true form for a few seconds. That’s correct?”
“Yes,” I answer.
“And your vision is intact?”
“Yes. I see as well as I did before.”
She clicks her tongue as she takes a step back and stares at me. “That is odd. I’ve never met someone who withstood a true form and didn’t have anything wrong with them. It’s honestly a wonder that your eyes still work and are unaffected. What about the rest of your body?”
“I feel fine. I already told Elysand. I feel completely fine. I don’t think this checkup is necessary.”
“You might feel fine, but we’re dealing with energy from mystical sources. Even we don’t know the true degree of damage that could have had against you. Let me do a quick checkup and see if all of your bodily functions are in order. You’re level zero, correct?”
“Yes,” I say in a low voice, even now dreading admitting my lack of strength. I take a seat on a reclining bed and wait.
She nods, and without any judgment, she proceeds to hover her hands over my body from head to toe. Her brows are knit together, her eyes closed, and when she’s done, she’s silent for a few moments.
“There is something,” she mutters, mostly to herself.
“Something?” I echo.
“I’m not sure if it’s from seeing the true form, though. I detect scar tissue around it. This is much older than that.”
I frown. “What are you talking about?”
She doesn’t answer. She takes a step back, still thinking. “When Elysand told me that you were level zero, I was a bit astonished, to be perfectly honest. You don’t really find level zeros anywhere. And that’s mostly because by the time our kind reaches maturity, you would have already reached level one or two without doing anything. Just existing is the way our bodies function. But level zero—that’s highly unusual.”
“Is that so?” I ask. I don’t really have that much information about our kind except from what I’ve been able to glean in books, so what she’s saying is completely new to me.
“Yes. You see, our kind, because we are descended from the Seven, are not perfect beings. And by that I mean compared to the Aperites from Empyrean. Since they were made from the merged energy of seven beings of light and seven beings of nether, their cores are naturally more stable. They’re much more balanced beings than we are. And because of that, as we reach maturity, we need to balance that chaotic core within ourselves, and we need to do it on our own.”
“You mean consuming souls,” I say. That much I know.
“Yes. That is correct. Consuming souls, or consuming sources of similar energy. You’re probably aware that there aren’t enough souls in Tartareia for all of our kind to feed, and that is why only the ones at the top—the titled Sons of Tenebrae—have access to those souls. For us less important people, we must get the energy from different sources. Sometimes we’re lucky if we get a soul maybe once every one thousand or two thousand years. It’s not that simple.”
“Oh,” I murmur. I had not known that. “So how do regular people deal with it, then?”
“It’s simple. There are a myriad of artifacts left by the Primordials. These artifacts have an unlimited amount of energy, and they can be used to fashion certain supplements that allow our cores to gain some stability. Of course, this is nowhere near the level of what a Son of Tenebreis can do if they absorb souls, but we can at least live our lives. This is why the Central Administration was founded in the first place. Because there are so many people who try to get powerful through underhanded methods, including the consumption of souls that goes unregulated. We are the ones who watch over that. We have so many different races of people living in Tartareia that we must protect to a certain extent.”
“Oh, I see.”
