For a couple of seconds, the light enveloped him completely—warm and pervasive, reaching into places that light shouldn’t logically be able to reach. When it faded, his body felt completely restored. Better than restored—genuinely refreshed in a way that made the exhaustion of the past several hours feel like a distant mory.
Every wound closed. Every burst vessel is repaired. The subtle accumulated strain on his bones and muscle fibers from the extended battle is gone.
Not that I wouldn’t have healed eventually anyway, he noted with private amusent, but still.
He checked himself carefully from top to bottom, looking for any other change beyond the physical restoration.
Sothing was subtly different. He could feel it—a barely perceptible shift in so quality he couldn’t quite na or locate precisely. But whatever it was, it wasn’t accompanied by any system notification or obvious stat change.
I’ll figure it out eventually.
When the white light fully dissipated, two items were left floating in the air before him.
The first was a heart.
Black, pulsating with a steady rhythm that shouldn’t have been possible for a detached organ, covered in thin silver patterns that traced paths across its surface like living circuitry. The patterns shifted slowly as he watched, never quite repeating the sa configuration. Floating around it were runic symbols he didn’t recognize from any written system he’d encountered—they drifted in loose orbit, catching light that didn’t seem to co from anywhere in particular.
Looking at it deeply, dangerously easy.
He found himself staring.
The silver patterns pulled at his attention in a way that made thought feel slow and unnecessary, like standing at the edge of sothing vast and being gently convinced that falling would be fine.
He lost five full minutes to it before sothing—instinct, maybe, or so deeply buried survival habit—caused him to physically look away.
That was nothing. He blinked several tis, deliberately refocusing on the far wall of the arena. Genuinely dangerous just to look at. I need to be careful.
The second item was smaller. A single sphere roughly the size of a closed fist, deep blue in base color with multicolored runic lines circling its surface in complex, shifting patterns. More visually elaborate than the heart, in the conventional sense—it looked like soone had compressed an entire night sky into a portable form.
And his elental affinities reacted to it imdiately.
All of them. Simultaneously.
Like a chorus of recognition, every elent he carried responded with an intensity that was almost physical—pulling toward the sphere with a sensation he’d never experienced from any other object or material.
It feels like... like it cos from the sa place I do. Or maybe the sa place all elents do.
He didn’t stare at it for five minutes this ti, choosing wisdom over curiosity.
Leon attempted to place both items into his spatial ring.
Neither would go in. The ring simply rejected them as if the items weren’t there.
He tried his soul-connected storage space next—the internal inventory that had been with him since his first day in this world.
Sa result. Complete rejection from both.
He stood there for a mont, considering the problem.
Outside the tower, I’m in my own dinsional realm. Complete privacy, complete safety. No one is going to take anything.
Practical solution: wind elent.
He extended fine threads of air around both items, lifting them gently into stable suspension beside him. They drifted along as he walked, the heart continuing its slow pulsation and the sphere continuing its endless multicolored orbital display.
Two portals had materialized at the far end of the arena while he’d been examining the rewards.
One was clearly labeled Exit in clean, simple text.
The other had no label at all. But the faint aura coming from it—just slightly different in quality from the exit portal—made the answer obvious.
Second floor.
Leon glanced at the unmarked portal for a mont as he walked.
Next ti. I want to be able to bring Seraphine. Hopefully, the second floor allows party formation.
He turned his attention back to the exit portal and stepped forward.
His foot connected with sothing solid and completely invisible. The impact wasn’t harsh—more like walking into a glass wall that had no intention of breaking—and he stopped, mildly surprised.
Then the system ssages began arriving again.
[The Primordial Void Heart cannot be removed from the tower]
[This item may only be utilized by a challenger who carries recognition from the Floor One Authority Fragnt]
[Without the tower’s stabilization during the rging process and the recognition of the Floor One Authority, utilizing this item carries an estimated 99% probability of death]
[This item is bound to the recognized challenger only]
Leon stared at the notifications for several seconds.
Then he said sothing out loud that would have made Seraphine lecture him extensively about language.
The sound echoed across the empty arena with considerable feeling.
He’d been genuinely, deeply excited about this particular reward—not primarily for himself, but for the solution it represented to a problem that had been sitting quietly in the back of his mind for so ti. The idea of Seraphine—or soone else close to him—carrying a constitution treasure of this caliber, the way it would change their capability and resilience in the increasingly dangerous situations he knew were coming...
And it’s bound here. Can’t leave. 99% death chance without the tower’s involvent.
He exhaled slowly and stared at the notification for another mont.
Alright. Fine. No choice.
He had the first-floor recognition. The tower would provide stabilization. Those were the two stated requirents, and he satisfied both.
His curiosity shifted from frustrated to genuinely interested as he considered the practical question.
I already have a heart. An extraordinary one that’s the source of most of my strongest abilities. So what exactly happens when you rge a second heart into soone who already has one?
Do they combine sohow into sothing unified? Do I end up with two functional hearts operating in parallel? Is there a dominant outco?
He didn’t know. The description offered nothing about pre-existing heart situations.
But one thing he felt absolute certainty about: whatever the outco, he would be significantly stronger after the rge than before it. The trajectory of everything he’d ever rged with or absorbed pointed in the sa direction—upward, always upward.
The anticipation of that was enough to settle the frustration about Seraphine.
She’ll get sothing else. I’ll find another solution for her.
Another ssage appeared from the tower, appearing below the previous notifications with that sa clean, unhurried pace.
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