Chapter 673 - 673: Not How It Works

"I never expected there would be a time when I would be the more patient one of the bunch." 

Standing in the back, Lucifer watched his father and his mother shop for each other, finding everything slightly amusing. 

He was known as the impatient one and the person who often got angry fast, but here, he found himself to be the more sane one when his father and mother started a fight over hitting each other accidentally. 

"Then again, it makes me feel good that I'm not the only impatient one of the family." He smiled. 

"Hmm?" He glanced out of the shop, feeling as if someone was looking at him. However, as soon as he looked there, he found no one. 

Thinking that it must be his misconception, he stopped looking in the direction and focused back on his family. 

After his family finished the shopping, they paid for the clothes, dressed in newer clothes. 

"Thank you for gifting the clothes. And once again, sorry for what happened," Zale told Clarisse, rubbing the back of his neck in embarrassment. 

"Do you want me to say sorry again as well? Stop talking about it and better forget that it even happened," Clarisse answered. "I was equally wrong. Anyway, you said you were new in the city?"

"Yeah. I came with my friend there to train with him. He said that training in this place was better than training in the Frozen Lands like I was doing at the start," Zale replied. "Are you a citizen of this city? Do you know someone named Julien Long?" 

"I'm sorry, I don't know anyone by that name. I'm not a citizen of this city either. I came here, ah, I forgot! I had to meet them! Oh god, I'm going to be late!"

"Have a safe day! I'll be going now!" She started running towards the door, but she stopped beside Lucifer. 

"Thank you for stopping our battles and sorry for attacking you for no reason! Bye!" She stepped out of the shop and flew away. 

"Don't thank me for stopping the battles. I had my own benefit in that. How could I let my father and my mother kill each other like that," Lucifer muttered, watching his mother fly away. 

He caught up with Zale and left the shop. This time, Zale was more careful while stepping out of the shop to not clash with someone else. 

"Now time to get to the destination," Lucifer glanced towards the tallest building in the distance. "Hopefully, there won't be any obstruction now."

He walked towards the tower with Zale. 

...

In another place, a dark figure was following Clarisse. 

While chasing after Clarisse, who was unaware, the dark figure kept talking with himself. "It's good that she left them. I thought she was going to stick with them. It would've been a messy situation."

...

Xaen was brought to Lucifer's body in the current timeline. 

Lucifer was lying unmoving on the bed. His body was still pale, and his temperature was still very high. 

After observing the condition of Lucifer, he let out a deep sigh. "His condition really doesn't look good. It's like he's dead, but his body is trying to keep itself alive... It's really odd."

"Can you help him, Master Xaen?" Eve asked Xaen. "It doesn't matter how you do it. Just bring him back!"

"It's not that easy. If I did something prematurely, instead of bringing him back, we might even hurt him more," Xaen answered. 

"At the moment, his body has found its equilibrium. His condition isn't improving, but it's not deteriorating either. He can stay in this condition for a really long time without any change," he further explained. "But..."

"But what?" Milena asked. 

"But if we mess with the equilibrium without knowing what we're doing, we might destroy the equilibrium. From that point, his condition will start deteriorating. We won't have time to help him then," Xaen answered. 

"We already know his powers are conflicted. And Cassius talked about the Core Theory. Can't you just remove the core to remove that conflict?" Arthur asked. "From that point, his healing should be able to bring him back."

"That's the problem. His body has many ability cores. In fact, even I'm surprised how many he actually has," Xaen commented, unaware that this much was nothing. 

His body was filled with hundreds of cores not long ago. To evolve his body, he had absorbed most of them, leaving only the most essential abilities. Since then, he had only absorbed around a dozen more abilities from the Warlock Heads here. 

He didn't even have twenty cores at the moment. 

"So? How does that matter?" Arthur asked. "Just remove the conflicting one."

"You think I wouldn't if it was that easy?" Xaen asked, frowning. "You don't understand the true problem. It's not about taking out his core; it's about taking out the right core."

"Just get the core that's clashing with the other cores," Salazar said. "Is it that hard?"

"You don't know the Core Theory entirely. I don't blame you, but it's impossible to actually find which core belongs to which power. Only the real owner of the body can see the true form of his cores in his body," Xaen explained. 

"Even if the others are talented and have ways to look inside the other person's body, they can only see cores shrouded in a hazy dark light," he further explained. "To us, all the cores would look like the same cores."

"So we can't recognize what's the latest core that he absorbed," Cassius muttered. 

"So he can't do anything either?" Jiani asked. "Remind me again why we called him all the way here for no reason?"

"Calm down. We can't see the cores, but we can still see what cores are conflicting with other cores because the two cores must be extremely close to each other for conflict. That way, we can detect the two cores that clashed," Cassius explained. "It should still be possible."

"You mean that he should take out both the cores? Won't that mean Lucifer will lose two abilities? One which he absorbed and another original?"

"It shouldn't work like that. We can try taking out one of the two. If that doesn't work, we can take out the second," Cassius explained.

"You mean you want to do trial and error on him. But what if the first ability you take out is the wrong one? Can we put it back?" Salazar asked. 

"That's not how it works. As soon as the core comes out of the person, it's destroyed. If it weren't that way, I would've been able to steal many cores and send them in my body," Xaen responded.. "Sadly, it doesn't work like that."