Ren let out a slow, measured sigh.
"It genuinely isn't as catastrophic as it looks," he said softly.
And he wasn't just offering empty comfort to pacify their terror.
While he had been evaluating the room, he had already turned his ethereal perception inward, running a diagnostic on his own system. He was meticulously reading exactly what the crystallization plague had successfully conquered and what it had miraculously left untouched.
And the internal data confirmed that his desperate gamble to forcefully shunt the volatile mana exclusively into his smaller outer veins had paid off.
The bone and marrow remained absolutely pristine. The massive, primary mana channels, the crucial arterial pathways that actually dictated his output, were also almost completely untouched. The crystalline mana had only managed to consume the superficial muscle tissue, the dermal layers, and the microscopic, secondary ethereal conduits.
