"I don't agree..."
Silver Luan’s voice dropped like a stone into a well, shame flushing her face like cold dawn, and a thread of helplessness bled through.
Unlike Spring Tide, who had accepted the storm, Silver Luan’s stubbornness carried sparks of anger, yet helpless weight pressed her chest like a mountain.
If we can’t change the sky, then we can’t add more names to the ledger.
"I don’t want you to disappear..."
"I don’t want you gone either."
Cerqin and Silver Luan locked wills like crossing blades, while Spring Tide turned to Aileaf, gaze steady as still water.
"Aileaf, what do you think?"
"There’s a legend in my family."
Aileaf’s voice grew soft like moss, shy as she traced memory’s thread.
"God-granted abilities are special. Those who awaken them had an ancestor who reached demi-god, so people call them bloodline powers. But God-powers are different. Aside from a few, the conditions are unknown, like fog over a lake."
Spring Tide frowned, a ripple across calm water. As the Holy Maiden of the Sanctuary, even she had never heard this. Silver Luan’s face turned thoughtful, like someone reading old bark.
"In Littlefolk lore, every God-power awakener carries great fortune, like a wind at their back. I want to gamble on that wind."
"..."
Spring Tide looked deeply at Aileaf, a lantern-light held steady. Even if it was a Littlefolk tale, this wasn’t common gossip carried by street dust.
"Uh..."
Aileaf shrank a little like a hedgehog, and after a breath, Spring Tide made her choice, as clean as a drawn blade.
"I agree."
"Spring Tide, you—"
Silver Luan stared, bit down like a wolf facing cold, then glanced at Cerqin and Aileaf. She exhaled, brittle as winter reeds.
"Fine. If you want to die, I can’t stop the river... but is there really no other way?"
She wasn’t one to tangle in vines. Once decided, her focus shifted like a falcon turning midair.
Sharing the curse’s pressure and bleeding off fear’s flood wasn’t hard. Keep close, skin to skin, and exchange mana. The will embedded in their tempering would carry the emotional weight into another body like a current.
It sounded simple, but the shoal lay in the exchange. Everyone’s mana differs by a shade, like water from different springs. Even if all bathed in the same natural mana to widen their vessel.
Once stored, mana slowly turns into what best suits that body, like tea steeping to the leaf.
Take in another’s mana too fast, and the body rejects it like thorns.
A small trickle is fine, or slow the flow. But time was a cliff, and they had to leap.
And luck set a bridge in place.
The rejection could be solved.
Cerqin was the key. Spring Tide, Silver Luan, and Aileaf had all been blessed by the Love God. Their bodies could bear Cerqin’s mana like rain on leaves.
Bodily fluids carry mana too; because of certain… acts, they’d built some resistance to Cerqin’s tempering, like skin toughened by sea-spray.
So they’d use Cerqin as the relay, and even Aileaf could shoulder the load.
It meant fast exchange needed intimate contact. The three had to team up and bully Cerqin a little like kittens pouncing a pillow.
"I’m ready!"
Cerqin’s voice bubbled with excitement like a spring, which made Silver Luan’s face go dark as a cloud, then flush like sunset.
"Alright, Cerqin, don’t get too excited. The goal is mana exchange. Don’t focus on the… enjoyment."
"Mm-hmm..."
"Then let’s begin."
Spring Tide unfastened her buttons, her motions smooth as peeling silk. Aileaf followed, cheeks aflame, the white-haired Half Dragonkin wanting to speak, then swallowing it like a pebble.
Cerqin drank in the sight, and helplessness and resentment blew away like mist before a warm wind.
"Hm? Cerqin, why are you still standing there?"
As a Half Dragonkin, Silver Luan’s clothes were simple. Silver scales covered key places, so she wore only a long robe.
In three motions she stripped, the forbidden places veiled like moonlit cloud. She shot Cerqin a look, trying to drag her own gaze away like a fish tugging off a hook.
Seeing Cerqin still idle, she blinked, then realized.
"Don’t tell me you’re waiting for us to undress you..."
"Yup~"
Cerqin admitted it like a cat purring.
Spring Tide and Aileaf also finished. Aileaf’s bed was too narrow, so after a quick sweep like a broom over leaves, Spring Tide pulled a huge mat from her spatial gear.
"Why do you have that…"
"Bought it on the way out."
Silver Luan froze, disbelief sparking like flint. Spring Tide’s face stayed calm, though her eyes burned like banked coals.
Then the battle began.
The mana exchange went smoothly, a river joining a river. Cerqin, however, had underestimated what a flood would do. That strange sensation, braided with rising heat, climbed to a crest.
Her tide magic began firing like waves in a storm.
Her own mana, thanks to her nature and their bodies already knowing its flavor, flooded in without backlash. Her body just burned hotter, like iron in a forge.
The other three, clearer-headed, felt their bodies strengthen in real time, like bows being drawn and not breaking.
Their vessels widened, faster than any array that drew in natural energy, like a sail catching a gale.
Aileaf of the Fifth Rank even showed signs of breaking through to the Sixth Rank, a bud about to burst.
The same change coiled in Cerqin, but in her swing between clarity and haze, she missed it, like a bird flying through fog.
An hour of fierce “battle” passed like thunder rolling away.
The dread condensed on Spring Tide and Silver Luan had thinned by nearly half, just as planned, shifted onto Cerqin and Aileaf like passing a torch.
Aileaf now worked a map with calm hands, calculating the core from the plotted nodes, like tracing a river to its source. In nature, mana nodes don’t gather into one core.
But a formation always forges a heart. Find the core, and you can reverse the lattice like unwinding silk.
Then break the formation eyes that divert the current. Even a few broken teeth can blunt the gears.
Cerqin blinked, puzzled like a child finding a new tooth. Why had she suddenly broken through to the Fourth Rank?
So mana exchange could do that…
Spring Tide and Silver Luan were just as surprised. They’d only known that exchanging mana across bodies caused rejection, and too much output could scar the body like frostbite.
This overturned common sense like a table kicked over.
If rejection’s bite was solved, and others could repeat this, a new way to train might be born like dawn over the sea.
"Found it! The core’s found, and it’s close!"
Aileaf held an Eastwind City map covered in arrows like migrating birds. Her small face shone with excitement.
"Little Cerqin, you—"
"I’m going too! I’m already a mid-tier practitioner. Even if trouble comes, I can back you up!"
Before this, unless her ability ran wild, Third Rank Cerqin’s effect was fierce, but the wattage lagged behind Spring Tide and Silver Luan’s battles, especially those instant surges when they opened their powers.
At true Fourth Rank, her output finally, barely, could support two at the Sixth Rank, like a lantern added to a bonfire.
"Alright."
Spring Tide hesitated a heartbeat, then agreed like a nod to rain. The others had no objections. In that four-way melee, they’d tasted faster recovery like fresh wind in lungs.
And now all four carried the curse’s mark. If death loomed, moving toward it beat sitting still like a drum.
They set out together toward the target, feet quick as birds.
Eastwind City had fallen into chaos, fear rising like smoke. The threat of sudden explosions fanned panic like bellows.
Worse, those who fled past a certain line turned blank-eyed and shuffled back, doing their daily tasks like puppets. Everyone knew then they were trapped inside a giant cage.
"Even if we dismantle the blast formation, it won’t end, will it…"
"We knew that already."
Spring Tide looked at the sky, calm as a lake before rain. They stopped before a nondescript little building, humble as a stone by the road.
"Let’s see if a miracle shows its face…"
"I think it will!"
Cerqin felt a strange bright thrill, like sunlight under her skin. Even her ability stirred on its own, like a tide tugged by a hungry moon.
