Chapter 52 — The Second Sun
Elder Huan had teleported himself and Kai's body into the medical wing of the first years.
But Kai didn't wake up even after three days.
On the fourth day, Elder Huan grew worried and entered the room to personally check up on him.
He saw the doctors rushing around Kai's limp body. Though his brain was clearly awake, it was as if he were in a coma. Nothing they did could reach Kai. Even when they tried to infuse mana into Kai's body, it instantly left through his pores.
But after the doctors gave up on trying to give Kai mana, a sudden explosion of force rocked the entire area.
A strong, powerful sucking force emerged as runes appeared on Kai's skin, snaking across his body and glowing with power.
All of those runes were designed to absorb mana.
Elder Huan stepped back and created a barrier around himself and the doctors.
But that was useless.
The second the runes activated, all the mana in the room was sucked into them. Even the barrier Elder Huan had created was slowly devoured.
Not instantly, either.
It took ten long minutes before Elder Huan finally stopped trying to fight against the authority of the mana.
Finally, it all stopped.
But then the runes changed.
Endurance.
Speed.
Strength.
They kept shifting, changing so rapidly that Elder Huan had no idea what was going on.
The doctors had already run away. They wanted nothing to do with Kai.
After they left, Elder Huan sat down and stared at Kai's body, which was completely covered in runes.
Suddenly—
They exploded.
All of the runes detonated at once in a brutal shower of mana that shot Elder Huan into a wall and utterly destroyed the entire room around Kai.
After Elder Huan stabilized himself, he looked toward Kai.
Kai was completely unharmed.
His skin was now glowing with power.
Mana rushed into his body, empowering both him and the runes covering his skin.
Elder Huan realized this skill was the same Overcharge Kai had used at the end of their fight.
Overwhelming panic rushed through Elder Huan as he noticed far too much mana rushing into Kai.
Nearly three hundred times the amount that had rushed into Elder Huan.
Elder Huan immediately put up another barrier before summoning a portal and beginning to evacuate the underground medical facility.
Meanwhile, inside Kai's mind space, he had noticed the new runes.
He could barely control them.
He realized the runes were somehow feeding mana from the outside directly into his mind space.
Kai decided to detonate the connection.
The second he gave the mental command to detonate the connection, the entire medical facility shook.
The rooms near Kai were reduced to nothing but rubble.
His body was barely floating above all of it as his body's natural mana absorption kicked into overdrive and began devouring the mana around him.
Back inside Kai's mind space, he barely had time to register the pain disappearing.
It felt surreal.
The pain had simply vanished.
But then he noticed something else.
His mind space had been utterly destroyed.
Everything was gone except for the central island.
Kai looked around.
Then he noticed something in the sky.
There was another sun.
This one was a deep, shining blue.
Kai stared at it in confusion.
"What's that?"
[The physical manifestation of your divine-ranked bloodline's core in your mind space.]
Kai jumped back instantly.
"WELL, WHY THE HELL IS IT A SUN?!"
[Unknown. Currently, your real body has faced intense damage, and most of your passive skills are barely able to keep up while you are unable to control your body.]
Kai didn't answer because his mind was suddenly assaulted by tons of data.
Locations.
The locations of any and every shadow.
Any and every living being.
Any and all entities within 50 kilometers of his body.
Kai nearly blanked.
"Filter everything!"
He took a shaky breath.
"Filter it all to living people, living people's shadows, and the shadows of things thrown or held by living people."
Kai sighed as the majority of the data disappeared.
He was stunned.
He opened the system menu.
Well...
He tried.
He tried again.
Nothing happened.
No words.
Nothing.
Kai said, "System."
Nothing.
There was no answer.
Kai remembered a tiny detail.
The system had been able to update when he reached Level 15.
And suddenly, he spotted it.
In the sky, the second blue sun was shining with radiance, pulsing with power.
Then it began to spin.
At the exact same speed as the sun within his body.
The one inside his body was larger.
Even his body was larger now.
Six and a half feet tall.
Kai was giddy when he realized his own height before clearing his mind as he felt it.
The call of reality.
He had gained instinctive knowledge in bits.
First of all, he knew that most of his skills had changed.
But he didn't know how or how to see them, due to the system being unresponsive.
Kai was, however, able to do one thing.
He could now move between his mind space and his body with ease.
Kai merely gave a mental command.
No words.
Nothing but pure intent.
A second later, he found himself in his body, floating limply in the center of a massive 2.5-kilometer spherical hole in the earth.
He looked around.
Far away, he could see a small, basically destroyed hallway.
Elder Huan was standing there.
Kai suddenly fell from the sky before manipulating mana around himself and floating.
Kai stared around him.
Confused.
And completely baffled.