Chapter 24: Return

In the middle of the night, Leila woke from her slumber and the first thing she felt was excruciating pain.

"You're undergoing self-awakening but there's a lack of resources and you'll feel a lot of pain but try your best to bear it." Old Miller said as golden waves of energy busted out from his hands and seeped inside Leila's body through her skin and pores.

Awakening can only be defined as an extremely painful evolution process since energy vessels are forcefully craved inside the body of a person experiencing an awakening, be it self-awakening or otherwise, both are extremely painful.

The creation of ability cells is painful in itself, but the pain increases fourfold due to the creation of energy vessels. The energy vessels created during this process are called energy channels. Energy channels have many uses but they are mainly used to increase the maximum capacity of magic power.

It's said that a human being's body can contain a maximum of ten energy channels, and a single channel can store up to a hundred units of magic power. However, as they say, not everyone is born equal, some people might acquire only a single energy channel after awakening and others more than three. The number of energy channels created during awakening depends on various factors but the strength of the ability is the main one.

As Leila was awakening two powerful abilities at the same time, it was self-evident that more than five energy channels will be craved in her body, and even the creation of these channels required energy, and her life force was currently being used to not multiple ability cells but also create these channels, but that wasn't the only sad part to her story, as for most people the awakening process will last for only a few minutes, but for her, it has been more four hours!

It's because she needed a massive source of energy and her life force was sadly not enough.

Although Old Miller has been trying his best to keep her alive by using his healing ability that has a special effect to substantially increase a person's life force and also acts as a pain killer, Leila still felt an excruciating pain overwhelming her senses.

"Brother… am I going to die? Please… save me. I don't want to die." Leila said as she felt a thousand needles stabbing her.

After being tortured by self-awakening, her appearance changed drastically overnight. Her black hair became completely white, her smooth white skin paled and wrinkled. She looked like a mixture between young and old, and it's because since her life force was depleting at a rapid speed she aged just as quickly.

"Nothing will happen to you, I promise." Peter said, "So please don't give up and keep holding on to your life."

"It's… hard," Leila replied as her eyes slowly closed.

It would be instant death if she just gives up. Then, she'll no longer feel the pain torturing her from head to toe nor will she experience how it feels to lose all the life force and warmth inside her body.

"Vincent is out there, in the wilderness, fighting god knows what type of horrifying beast, for your sake. While I am doing my best to keep you alive. Even Peter… well, he has been accompanying you. Anyway, what I want to say is that you're not fighting this battle alone, we all are accompanying you, if not for yourself, at least do your best to not give in to your pain, no matter how painful it becomes, for us." Old Miller said, "Please wait for Vincent to return. I believe he'll bring a treasure that will help you evolve and alleviate your pain."

"I… will do my best."

"Good girl!"

After finding out that Vincent was bracing danger for her sake, Leila gritted her teeth and tried to endure the pain stabbing throughout her body. Whereas, Peter suffered a few blows to his self-esteem and cursed himself as a useless bastard.

Meanwhile, Vincent was walking through the snow-covered track at incredible speed. He was sprinting fast already as he was four and a half times faster than humans but he also utilized every bit of battle energy contained in his body to increase his speed. He was running so fast that it felt like a ghost blurring in and out of existence, covering dozens of meters with each step as if he using mini teleportation.

Unknowingly he was instinctively utilizing an advanced version of the blinking step which resembles the step of the ghosts.

A few minutes later, Vincent barged through the entrance to the orphanage and quickly zoomed to Leila's room. The members of the orphanage could only a gust of wind hitting them as he walked past them.

"Uncle I've returned with a hundred years old magic ginseng!" Vincent shouted as he came to a halt just a step behind Old Miller.

"A ghost!" Peter shouted as Vincent didn't exactly get a chance to clean himself and he was covered in blood. His clothes, well they have tears here and there, and as he suddenly appeared it was bound to startle them.

"Where?" Vincent asked.