Inside him, the mana overflowed.
The sensation gradually intensified as he maintained his motionless posture, legs crossed on the mat. The spiritual liquid continued its journey through his system, spreading from his stomach to every corner of his body. The tingling grew stronger—what had started as a faint prickling sensation transformed into an almost electric buzzing, every nerve ending vibrating in unison with the energy flooding into him.
Sweat beaded on his forehead.
Raven briefly cracked his eyes open. Li Feng was still sitting cross-legged a few feet away, perfectly still, but his face betrayed the effort. Drops of sweat covered his broad forehead. His eyebrows were slightly furrowed. His hands, resting on his knees, trembled imperceptibly.
Raven closed his eyes again.
He tried to perceive more finely what was happening inside him. His own internal mana—that tiny amount of energy that even the Unchosen possessed in a latent state—acted like a magnet, attracting the foreign mana, taming it, gradually integrating it into his body.
---
Two hours passed without him being fully aware of it.
The pain softened first. The intensity of the tingling gradually decreased, like a tide receding. Then something else came—a new, clean vigor animating his limbs. His entire body hummed with fresh energy, as if he had just emerged from a long, restorative sleep rather than an assimilation session.
He stood up. The movement was fluid, almost too fast.
Instinctively, he relaxed his right arm and punched the air in front of him. A simple blow, no technique. But the sensation was different. Something about the impact, the way his muscles had responded, confirmed what he suspected.
He had become stronger.
Beside him, Li Feng let out a laugh.
"I suppose you've improved quite a bit," he said.
Raven didn't answer right away. He was still looking at his clenched fist. It was the first time he had ever taken spiritual liquid—the old Raven had never had the means. A single low-quality bottle cost ten thousand Cash. Three months' rent for his family. Li Feng had given him one without batting an eye.
He felt the weight of that gesture more heavily than he wanted to.
But something troubled him. The improvement seemed disproportionate, even considering the liquid's quality. His body had reacted as if the effects had been multiplied.
A perk of transmigration, he supposed. The very process of this transfer had likely exposed him to energies beyond ordinary understanding. Something within him was more receptive to Terra Nova's mana than any ordinary dome dweller would have been.
A perplexed look crossed his face.
Li Feng saw it.
"Wondering where you stand?" he asked simply.
"Yes."
"Come on."
---
Li Feng led him to the back of the room, where a machine was mounted against the wall. A metal base supported a rectangular screen displaying a glowing zero. Beneath it, nestled in a polished metal receptacle, rested a perfectly transparent crystal sphere.
The principle was simple: place your hand on the crystal. The device measured the reaction of internal mana and deduced a compatibility percentage.
Raven approached.
His heart beat slightly faster. In a few seconds, he would know.
He reached his hand toward the sphere.
Upon placing his hand on the sphere, Raven felt a force seep into him.
The contact of his palm against the smooth surface of the crystal triggered an immediate reaction. A foreign energy, different from ambient mana, traveled up through his skin and progressed through his system like a hand feeling its way along walls in the dark. Then, after a moment, it withdrew.
The numbers appeared on the screen.
Forty-six percent.
Raven didn't react.
Li Feng, however, opened his mouth.
"Forty-six? You went from thirty-six point five to forty-six in a single session?"
He pointed at the screen, as if the mere act of indicating it made the thing more real. Raven slowly turned his head toward him.
"That's almost ten points, Raven. Ten points."
"I can count."
"No, you don't understand. Even for a genius, a first assimilation yields four percent, absolute maximum. You just took almost triple that."
Raven said nothing. But this time, something had settled in his gaze—a more sustained, more serious attention. Li Feng was right. What he had suspected about his body since the transmigration was now confirmed. He was more receptive to mana than any ordinary inhabitant of the dome. The exposure to energies that surpassed ordinary understanding had left a mark on him.
Li Feng let out a slow breath.
"Still a shame, though."
Raven shared that sentiment.
There was only one day left. And the rule was strict for pre-Awakened: one bottle of spiritual liquid every two days minimum. The interval allowed the body to fully digest the absorbed mana. Forcing a second one too soon meant risking damage to the mana channels—damage that could permanently compromise the ability to form a circle.
He would present himself at the Awakening with forty-six percent.
"Well," Li Feng said. "Shall we go eat?"
---
The mess hall was nearly empty at that late hour. They grabbed a tray, chose simple dishes from the heated displays, and sat near a window overlooking the inner courtyard. The conversation was light—they talked about everything except the Awakening, as if the subject was too heavy to voice aloud the night before.
After lunch, they went to kill time on online games. Seated side by side, the hours slipped by without them really noticing. The matches ran into one another.
---
At seven in the evening, Raven found himself alone on the subway.
He sat, his gaze lost in the landscape flashing past the window. The train retraced the morning's route in reverse. The fine neighborhoods of the north gradually gave way to the intermediate zones, then to the dilapidated outskirts of the southern slums. The dome's artificial light faded, mimicking a twilight the sky had never truly known.
He got off at his station and took the usual path. One kilometer. Potholed streets, cracked buildings, trash littering the sidewalks. Nothing new.
Three hundred meters from his home, he turned down a narrow alley.
A shortcut he sometimes used. Blank walls on either side, a single streetlamp whose glow flickered intermittently, the ground uneven and dotted with dubious puddles. Raven instinctively slowed his pace. The southern slums were not a safe place after nightfall. Biggy had told him that enough times.
Then he heard something.
"Help..."
A murmur, barely audible.
His first instinct was to leave. A trap, perhaps. Someone pretending to lure a naive passerby. It happened.
But something held him back.
He moved forward cautiously, hugging the left wall, all his senses on alert. Beneath the flickering light of the streetlamp, a shape became visible against the far wall. A slumped man, motionless. No other sounds in the alley. No movement in the shadows.
Raven took another step, then another.