[Luz Leywin POV]

It had been 3 years since my arrival in the Kingdom of Elenoir, I had managed to learn a lot during that time about this world's mana and how it worked. It did indeed resemble the mana of my homeworld, but the difference between them was the same as the difference between ordinary ice and dry ice.

I trained more with the elves Aya and Alea than with my real mentor, Virion, which has made him grumpy with me since last year, but still in a friendly way. That didn't take away the fact that he helped me in the process of Assimilating my Beast's Will... Or as I nicknamed the Soul of Corruption's version of this world, Corrupt's Will.

Arthur would still take a few weeks to complete his, according to Virion, but today, was the day for me to complete mine. Also according to Virion, I was supposed to have completed mine last year, but because of my training with the royal guards, it limited me to taking another year. At least that way I would finish close to Arthur, instead of finishing long before him, it would really be sad to leave my brother behind.

On the other hand, even if Arthur and I were at the same mana stage when we came here, Dark Red and Solid Red respectively, I would have already awakened a very basic form of a Wind's deviant, the Sound. So far I could only create sound barriers and get a sound transferred somewhere else near me, but nothing as amazing as Aya's illusions. I also learned to cast fire spells more efficiently, it was using up about half of what I normally would in mana.

Finally, I got out of bed, looking forward to today, getting dressed in my usual elven clothes, never forgetting my beret, which still fit me perfectly, I stared at myself in the mirror with a mischievous smile, thinking.

"Hm ... should I try to date someone in this world? Well... I only know one woman so far who is an age to match mine, but I see that Tess only has eyes for my brother, and I will faithfully approve when they get married... Hm... I hope that when we get back to Sapin I will have several options." I took a good look at my body, which I now had, was that of an 8-year-old boy, but showing signs of a fit body with some muscle, assimilation really worked miracles on any Augmenter who wanted to show off, even if in return it didn't increase its mana core color.

With these things on my mind, I walked out of my room, seeing Tessia heading towards my brother's room to wake him up. My goodness she's really gotten more violent than anything over the years, or should I say... since last year.

Yes, it was at that time that she awakened her mana core, I still remember the scene well, an explosion that caused her to fall from her room straight into the kitchen below. Tessia trained with me, because Virion, Aya, and Alea also taught her. So I knew all too well about her schemes of using Art as a punching bag.

I wished and still wish you all the luck to put up with it, brother...

I arrived at the breakfast table, seeing Merial, Alduin and Virion there, I waved at them and went to join them to eat, in the middle of our meal, we could hear my brother's screams of horror as Tess woke him up. So as not to be annoying, I activated a sound barrier for us, causing Merial and Virion to laugh a little.

My brother and I had grown quite close to the royal family, and because of Tessia and Arthur's relationship, they already considered us family. Even though they hadn't even started dating because of the age, it was obvious to everyone there that they would end up together.

"So Brat! Ready to finish your Assimilation? I really don't understand yet why you disobeyed me by making it take so long." Virion said finishing his meal.

"Father, leave the boy, you know how he is, even if he has the opportunity, he doesn't like to leave his little brother behind." Alduin answered for me, and I just agreed... really, it was hard to imagine that this scene would happen if we were to see our relationship 3 years ago.

"Okay, let's take advantage of Art staying with Tess today so we have the garden to ourselves." I said, also finishing my meal, wiping my mouth with a tissue and getting up, politely removing myself from the table.

"Luz, you sometimes act classlessly and drastically act the opposite way afterwards, why that?" The queen asked before I left with Virion, she always asked that question.

"It is what it is." I replied the same thing as always, making her giggle and allowing us to leave.

On our way to the gardens, we saw Arthur walking towards us to also have his breakfast. Virion looked at him with a smirk, saying "Finally awake now, eh Art? How did your wife wake you up today? Haha!" I smirked as well after his words.

"Urg... wife? Where? I didn't know you could marry demons. You two are turning her into a monster."Art replied, but luckily it looks like Tessia took a while to follow him and join us in the hallway.

"She's going to grow up into a fine woman, Art. Better sweep her off her feet before it's too late." Grandpa chuckled with me, and we went back to the gardens while Art and Tess were going to have their breakfast.

It wasn't much of a ceremony when we get there. All it consisted of Grandpa Virion exerting a large amout of mana into my core. This would trigger a large surge of mana that I would to direct and spread into my body.

"Do you remember the basic phases of a beast tamers, Luz?" he quizzed.

"Yes, all beast tamers have a different number of forms that they can will their bodies into. The number of forms depends on the strenght of the Beast's will that is left in the mana core. There are two phases that all beast tamers have, first is the Acquire phase, that the Tamer can utilize a small portion of the inherent ability that their beast has, and second is the Integrate Stage, where the Tamer's body wholly infuses with the Beast's will, allowing a much better control over their beast's inherent abilities."

"Correct! The phases that the beast tamers are able to unlock simply shows how much they can utilize their beasts' will. The stronger the beast, the harder it is, but at the same time, if the tamer can't get insight, then it is also impossible to get past the first phase. One thing to note, however, is that, not always is the Integrate stage more powerful than the Acquire." He reminded, his face deathly serious.

"While I didn't tell you and your brother earlier, now that you are about to become a true beast tamer, you should know is the differences in how a beast tamer's will is acquired. If you defeat the beast and absorb its mana, you will have more knowledge about it, on the other hand its stages will not be as powerful and it will take a long time to advance. But people like you who got beasts' wills being delivered willingly, can access stages faster and be more efficient. The first are called forged tamers, and you are what we can call a legacy tamer, that are extremely rare."

"By comparison, I'm a forged tamer, and it took me over ten years for me to make a breaktrough into the second phase." Virion continued to explain while he activated his second phase.

I already saw he doing this before, his skin turned pitch black, even the white of his eyes became black while his irises turned sharp and glow yellow. His tied white hair became unbound and was also a shiny black color. His aura could make any normal person to take a step back, but not for me.

"Okay, now for a little demonstration." he said starting to run around me at high speed, stopping at some points and then running back.

I couldn't follow him with my eyes, but after long lives, I could at least predict where he might end up. He noticed this and started to hide his presence with one of the Shadow Panther's abilities, making me unable to predict him anymore. Even with all my knowledge, my weak, childish body didn't have the senses sharp enough for that, I was forced to use essence vision to see him now, but since this wasnt a thing that mages of this world have, I decided not use, because it would be "cheating".

He turned back to normal after this. "Whew! Using that form always takes a toll of me. After training with it for a couple decades, I'm able to keep the form on for a bit less than an hour. During my Acquire phase, I am simply channeling a small portion of my beast will and I'm able to borrow the speed and stealth of the shadow panther. However, my Integrate phase, not only did my speed and stealth rise, so did my senses to keep up." I nodded in agreement.

"Good! Now let's begin the ceremony." he replied, clasping his hands together.

We stood face to face, only an arm's length apart. I noticed that Arthur and Tessia finally finished their breakfast and now they were looking at us for a safety distance.

"Just let your mana come out freely. Don't try to control anything. I'll restrain you if necessary so it's crucial that you keep a relaxed state of mind and rouse the particles of mana you assimilated all these years." He instructed.

After a nod in response, he then began exerting mana into my core, flooding my core with his mana along with mine. Instantly, I began feeling a warm and cold sensation at the same time, as if hot and cold gust of air were flowing in and out of my pores. I could feel the mana particles, they seemed to have very intense colors and not only that, they seemed to start changing colors repeatedly in a frantic way, as if they were on the verge of a collapse. The ones that were going more crazier were the black and transparent ones.

As I felt my body reaching it's limit, a loud explosion startles me out my concentration, only for me to see Virion getting thrown back into a tree, while Tess and Arthur fell into the ground rolling back as well.

An unbearanle pain immediately surges from my body, as if my skeleton was trying to craw out of my skin and the mana was trying to enter my body as it was a huge mana collector. Without even the stranght to scream my vision darkens. I welcomed the darkness because I knew it would relieve me of my pain and make me go back to my mind world.

I now saw myself again in that magnificent great hall, with a heavenly landscape in the window to my right, a large and imposing carpet that led from my throne to the entrance of the place and beautiful women around me. However, the colors of everything were inverted, the women who last time were lying on the floor, unconscious, this time they were kneeling in front of me.

My eyes widened in shock, and I tried to get up from the throne to look for my first love, Maryliny, but soon I felt someone hugging me from behind preventing me from getting up.

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It was her, and unlike the rest, she wasn't reversed in color. She smiled at me, not saying anything, just giving me a kiss on the forehead and giving me a light pat.

I breathed a long sigh of relief, but that tranquility faded when I noticed someone walking towards me among the women. It was Sylvia...or at least, it was the remnants of her essence, since the last time we'd talked across this world in my mind.

She was identical to the last time, with her human form and black clothes. I saw her smiling gently, not seeming to speak, but I got a mental message from her.

"Take good care of little Grey and my little child. I know he will protect her, but that will make him not take care of himself. Please..."

I didn't understand that message in the beginning, what does she mean 'her little child'? And Grey? Grey was Arthur's old name...? Well, he told me that apparently Sylvia knew his old name, so possibly that was it.

I took a long breath again and answered, speaking directly. "Of course, Lady Sylvia. I will do my best to always help them."

I saw some tears of happiness falling from Sylvia's eyes, while also feeling tears falling down my face, turning around, I saw that they were from Mary, she seemed happy that I was still the person she knew, or maybe that's what my mind wanted to make me think... after all, that castle was the work of my mind together with the essences of the people I met during countless worlds.

Satisfied already with that visit I was making, I gave a light caress to Maryliny's face, while I closed my eyes for a long time. When I opened them, I was back in my bed in the Eralith's castle.

I sat up feeling surprisingly refreshed. Sitting to my saide, laying her head down to my legs was Tess. Looking at me and sleeping like this, it reminded me of how I treated her as if she was my sister.

Grandpa Virion walked in soon after and he sat down on the other side of the bed, not bothering to wake up his slumbering granddaughter.

"How do you feel brat?" His lips curl up into a half grin.

"I should be asking you that. I saw you getting your back hit by a tree while my brother and Tessia were knocked back."

"I have to admit I wasn't expecting that great of a force, even Aya and Alea showed up to see it there was a problem."

I was slightly embarrassed by that, but then I remembered a detail. "My brother, where is he?"

"Art still needs some training, next week I think he'll be able to do the Assimilation ceremony too." Virion responded by placing a hand on my left shoulder.

"And...well...then better get ready, I feel that the force of his explosion will be greater than mine... Wait a minute! How long did I sleep??? You said earlier it would take longer than a week for Arthur!"

"Well, Luz... it's just that you slept for about half a month." I was surprised by Virion's words...half a month? two whole weeks? Oh my gosh this was way bigger than I expected.

"Well... and I know you well enough to know that you want to test your new skills, Alea is in the castle in her spare time, while Aya is on a mission... But first of all... I wanted to know, what kind of Beast gave you this will?" With this question, Virion made me think a lot in what I could tell him.

Obviously, it would be intense to tell about my curse and past lives, but maybe I could speak a half truth. Yes, a half-truth was better, so I started talking.

"Arthur already told you about me not being his blood brother, and being adopted, didn't he?" Virion just nodded and let me continue. "Well, his parents adopted me, after seeing my family dead in the middle of the road... and I was the only survivor of an ambush that happened near Art's town." Virion's gaze was quite startled, well, now it was part of telling the half truth.

"They died... because they couldn't use magic to protect themselves, my mother wasn't a mage, my father was, it's just that his family had been cursed generations ago, making his magic not work the way he wanted, ending up most of the time doing the opposite of what he needed..." I said this with a heavy sigh to make the story more convincing. "And kind of, this curse must have been passed on to me... And with your help, I discovered that this curse, fuctions like a Beast's will that somehow can be passed on from generation to generation..."

"Wait! You mean you were born with a thing that I thought was a Beast's will?!? Never heard of it in my entire life!" Virion said not wanting to believe it, but I could see a conflict of thoughts he had.

"If you want you can ask Arthur, I myself saw him receiving his beast's will, but he never saw me receive anything, because I received it before his parents found me, before I was 5 years old, when I was born... And it seems that it only started to affect me after I awakened my mana core."

With my last words on the subject being these, he sighed, the least he could do was believe, as I had brought up the subject of dead family. But still, he tried to change the subject.

"But can you tell me what kind of beast's will Arthur has?" I watched him, I knew his curiosity was already high on us, but with the things I said, he sounded like a professor who found he was just touching the tip of the iceberg.

"That's just up to him." I answered him, he gave me a light pat on the shoulder, now walking out of my room.

I glanced at my little sister, Tessia, for a few seconds and tried to wake her up with light nudges on the cheeks. She opened her eyes and hugged me tightly, and I returned the hug. "Don't scare us like that... Art and I were worried about you..." She spoke in a muffled voice as her face was on my shoulder.

"Alright... relax... I'd like to see what my new abilities are now, sis, so... could you let me out?" I spoke to her in a caring voice, but she simply did an "MHM!" in response and hugged me tighter.

I insisted a little more and after 10 minutes she finally released me and said she would check on Art's training. I wanted to see him too, but I was more interested in how this "first phase" would affect on me.

I walked through the corridors of the gardens, eventually finding Alea who was enjoying the scenery while having tea. I caught her attention and she responded in the same way as Tessia, she hugged my body tightly, almost trapping me.

"A-alea, please... I can't breathe." I said the universal keyword, making her let me go.

"You don't know how worried we were when we felt that burst of mana. Seriously, Aya even cried for you to have an idea!"

"Wait, did that sadistic cry?" I said with a raised eyebrow, taking a light punch to my shoulder. "Okay okay, I understand... Sorry, neither I nor Virion imagined how intense that would be"

"Okay. What did you come looking for me for? Or did you just want to see your Big Sister Alea?" she said with a playful tone at the end.

"I wanted to test my first phase, and I wanted you to create vine dolls for me to attack." When I said now, she was the one with a raised eyebrow.

"That's all? Okay, but be careful." She said and I agreed, we went to one of the training rooms of the elven royalty guards.

There were some guards there who looked at me, some just watched and others even greeted me, it seemed that my two great elf friends were talking about me to them. We stand next to each other, with a great distance between us and the wall of that training place, and from there Alea created several vine dolls at different distances.

"You can start." When she said that, I activated my Acquire Phase. Causing a light layer of dark purple and red to surround my body.

I started by creating a fire in one of my hands, but when I finished to create it, instead of an ordinary fire, I had make a fire of color between white and blue. We looked at this in surprise, with some guards who decided to watch us from afar making noises of amazement.

I launched the blue fireball towards the nearest vine dummy, and what happened was shocking, instead of burning the doll, the fire covered it and soon after froze the vines in a dense ice. Everyone there was silent watching that, while my eyes sparkled with emotion, with a wide smile on my face.

As the next attack, I used a wind blow, releasing wind mana in a blade format, I ended up hitting the frozen doll, creating several cracks, but without destroying it, while the dolls half away were hit and almost all were cut. That could only mean that that strange ice was a lot tougher than it should have been. In doing so I try to use the technique I developed with Aya, of uniting wind in my flames to make it more potent.

The fire I created now was neither red nor blue, it was a moss green. I continued with that wide smile as I heard footsteps, I wasn't even caring about the surroundings anymore, looking at that moss-colored fire gave me a feeling of power, and I didn't understand why, until I threw it at the vine dolls that were at the end of the training room.

At the beginning of the trajectory, nothing much happened, but soon all the guards gave a cry of surprise, including Alea. Around that flame, vines were forming, emerging from the floor, ceiling and walls, surrounding the flame and following with its trajectory, forming a kind of thick thorn of plants with a green light at the tip, this attack ended up hitting all the nearby dolls, and when It got to the farthest doll that was my real target, that tangle of vines exploded into thorns that hit all the other dolls at the bottom.

Those thorns resembled those of roses, only slightly larger, and on the ground there was the trail of the attack, several petals of different colors.

I turned around to see everyone gaping as Alea tried to say something but continued to stutter nonstop. It made me look at my hands for a few seconds and remember a super important factor that Virion taught me...

Plant Deviants could only exist in pure elves.

And I, a human with access to fire, an element no elf would dream of learning, just used a plant mana, thanks to my "first phase" of my Corrupt's Will.

I ended up falling on my butt on the floor, the shock of it really made me lose my balance for a moment and I deactivated this phase.

"We'd better... go to the castle... and speak about this with Virion... right? ha...haha..." I laughed extremely awkwardly at what happened, trying to snap them all out of their trance, at least Alea came out of the trance of that intense fright and took my hand.

"Guys, nothing happened here, understand?" Alea was still saying with a disbelieving expression on her face, and all the guards who saw us there agreed. So I was taken back to the castle.

Arriving there, we ended up finding Virion, he was talking to the King and Queen at the time. Alea caught his attention, which made them think something wrong happened, since it wasn't like her to interfere with the royal family's conversations.

"What's wrong Alea? Was there a problem with Luz?" Grandpa Virion looked at me, thinking I had done something very wrong, well I had in a way.

"Yes, did something happen?" Merial approached us, while Alduin stood a few steps behind watching the scene.

"L-luz... h-he-he did something... that breaks any logic..." She said, getting back in shock by remembering the scene.

"HA! Brat! What did you do? From the look on her face you did something extremely amazing for an 8 year old boy with a solid Red core." Virion said laughing, but then Alea looked at him steadily, which made him really weird about the situation.

"My first phase... somehow allowed me to... make my flames have an ice effect." When I said that, the eyes of the royal family present there widened in surprise. "And... Somehow... I manage to use plant magic."

"..." Everyone was silent staring at me with a blank stare, as if they were listening to the greatest blasphemy of mana's fundamentals, but that silence was broken with Virion laughing again.

"Hahahaha! Brat! Are you saying that you accessed a Water Deviant spell using fire, and on top of that you accessed a Deviant spell that only pure elves can do?! Really, did the first phase drive you crazy???" He said still laughing, but Alea and I kept looking at him seriously.

"Wait...this is a joke...right? It's not possible to use ice through fire and access plants by being a human...right?" He said now starting to take what we said seriously.

"Yeah... I used plants through a... green fire." With that said, Virion seemed to roll his eyes and fall, but Merial and Alduin managed to hold him back.

Some guards near there come running to see what was happening and if the elder was okay...

Really... I remembered what I thought well before, when I discovered the basics of mana through the books that Arthur gave me, I had said that only a crazy wizard to make this world move forward, but that same wizard would be beheaded in a public street if all the royalty saw him as a threat to common sense...

Apparently, now... I am that wizard.