BOOM!
The sparks that Fay cast all over the place suddenly activated, upsetting the aura all over the place. And as she opened her mouth, no sound came from it.
For in the very next moment, when the time finally picked up its usual pace, Fay spoke through a thunder.
"..." With her jaws pried open, Fay continued to infuse the air with her will, turning into a sea of dancing sparks and points of concentrated electric potential... That soon broke free from whatever held it back and covered the entire area in a storm of lightning.
Normally, a human could only hear the very instant of the thunder snapping and unleashing its might down to the ground.
And right here and now, with her mouth still opened up and her body leaned forward, Fay continued to hold up the electric storm, suffusing the air with enough static to make my hair start to stand up...
And to be fair, I wasn't the one who had it the worst.
Either because I stood too close to the girl or maybe simply because of our bond and how she would never do something that could hurt me, the constantly revolving, moving chains of lighting only caressed my skin, like a peaceful, calming breeze in the morning.
And just a few steps ahead...
The charge of the cavalry that I somehow missed was now gone, and the unit of fancily dressed soldiers was now in disarray.
Whenever one of them would stand up in an attempt to charge, one of the thousands of lighting bolts that orbited the girl at a both great and short distance would deviate from its path and snap at the target, instantly frying whatever body part he dared to raise first.
And the noise...
The noise was so great that I felt like my eyes were actually going to bleed. It was so loud, that I could still hear this damned noise even when I contracted temporary deafness, a desperate measure of my body to stop the degradation of my hearing.
Instead of the instant noise of the thunder snapping, this sound now continued, coming from all over the place.
Fay gathered herself up before uttering one last muted scream. And as soon as she pulled her mouth back together, the storm of endless lightning annihilating anything and everything that came in its path finally came to an end.
But the girl didn't return to her normal, human form. She didn't even revert to her ascended form either.
Fay's hair continued to float freely in the air, far longer, fluffier... with a lot more volume to it. And now that Fay leaned forward so much she nearly got on all fours, it projected a massive and strangely sturdy-looking body of a fully mature, celestial fox all over her true flesh.
I knew this was just an illusion. It had to be. No living being should be able to have two forms... simultaneously!
Regardless of what was possible or not, though, I could tell Fay was bristling, her body trembling in anticipation as her instincts went into overdrive.
And yet, rather than rushing forth to massacre anyone who managed to escape the storm she invoked, Fay suddenly started to pull herself back up.
'Wait, this has to be another evolution, just like when she turned ascended,' I thought, shaking my head to use a physical impulse to shake my mind awake before turning my attention to my system, eager to find and contemplate Fay's new stats.
Yet, the moment I finally paid attention to my system, I had no other choice but to acknowledge the insane mess it had become.
'What's with all those warnings,' I thought, pushing away all those that didn't seem to be critically important. And soon, those that were appeared before my eyes, no longer cluttered with all the smaller, less meaningful messages.
[Influx of energy hijacked]
[Foreign core seed discovered]
[Main Aura Stream Hijack procedure Blocked]
[Seed Awakening: 0%]
[Hijack procedure blocked]
And Fay did nothing but continued to make out with me, in a much wilder, desperate manner than ever before.
And bit by bit, the darkness that I've grown so used to I could no longer notice... finally started to disperse. The world grew detailed once more...
[Using up free points to assimilate and recode the foreign core seed]
The brightness of the affection burning in Fay's soul dispelled the darkness from my world. And as all sorts of different energies surged through my flesh in a complicated dance I had no business even trying to understand...
The darkness made its full retreat. Yet, it didn't vanish. It simply hid in the layer of my vision I couldn't see before.
It was still there, all over the place, hiding out in plain sight yet outside of the scope of what a normal person could ever see.
[Foreign Core Seed successfully assimilated]
[Free points: 0] > [Free points: 37] > [Free points: 0]
[Level: 48] > [Level: 87]
All the changes to my stats could be summed up with just those three lines. Yet, right as Fay's hands started to sneak under my clothes to the shock of all the celestials, divines, and humans around, I saw just one more line emerge before my eyes.
[Assimilated: Darkness Core]
[You can now channel aura through elemental darkness]
Fay's hand grabbed at my flesh... only to freeze when she felt me tensing up.
The girl pushed her chin up as she pulled her face just a little bit with a fiesty... yet weirdly restrained smile.
"What?" she asked, blush appearing all over her face.
Back a few tens of meters, the enemy finally managed to rally enough of the forces to mount a new charge.
"Nothing at all, sweetie," I whispered back to the girl while reaching out to caress her face. "You surprised me, that's all."
Sensing no repulsion or rejection in my soul nor hearing any hint of it in my voice, Fay visibly calmed down. And with the look of reluctance gone, her face gave off an animalistic, primal-like vibe.
And I could feel it. Whether it was because of her transformation, because of our bond, or because of some other reasons I couldn't figure out on the spot, I didn't know.
But right now, well within the range of my hands, Fay was bristling for some blood, her hunter's instincts awoken and now in full swing.
Her body was literally itching for a fight and with a single glance at her stats... I couldn't help but feel pity for all those poor humans.
But they were all supposed to die. That was my deal with Claudy, after all. And so...
"I know you want to hunt," I spoke only to reach out and pull Fay back into my embrace while raising my eyes and giving the charging humans a pitying look.
"Together, then," I whispered, lowering my eyelids as I immersed myself in the feeling that came along with my last system's notification. "Let's hunt them all down," I suggested, right as my consciousness fully invoked the hidden layer of darkness.
"Un!" Fay happily made a strange noise only to swing around in my arms, turning to face the charging enemies.
They were just a few meters away by now, relentlessly cutting the distance as they did their absolute best to reach the two of us.
Sparks reappeared in Fay's eyes... shining with a strangely addicting to look at, golden hue within the realm of darkness that layered itself atop my normal vision. And it was under the guidance of those sparks that I figured out what was this one last missing piece that kept me from fully comprehending this new ability of mine.
And so, as Fay's power surged forth, coursing through the space and igniting all the aura in its path, turning it into discharges of electricity... I channeled my own aura through the darkness I could see all over the place, reinforcing Fay's sparks with whatever this elemental darkness was supposed to be.