Crack!
A loud, sharp noise echoed throughout the hall, like the shatter of ice.
And before anyone could understand where the sound came from, another faint sound entered their ears.
Gulp!
Everyone in the hall froze.
Before anyone could react, Lucien bit down on something and gulped it down without wasting any time.
His body jerked, and lights came out of his orifices.
And then…
BOOM!
A massive shockwave of spiritual pressure blasted outwards, nearly knocking the priests around.
The ceremonial baptismal pool rippled violently.
Gerald vanished from his seat and appeared right in front of Lucien, punching right into his guts, hoping that Lucien would throw out what he had just ingested.
But it was already too late.
Lucien didn't react.
'He is in the mind realm already? Just what kind of spirit core he consumed that acted this fast?' Gerald was confused, since he reacted almost instantly after he realized what was going on.
There were two types of awakening methods.
First, being safe and secure, the Baptistic Awakening with a fatality rate of under 10%.
And the other one was the forbidden and abolished, Ingestion Awakening, which had a fatality rate of over 90%.
It was the only method of awakening around 900 years ago, which resulted in a high amount of deaths, and only a few lucky ones survived.
This was also the reason why the percentage of Exalts per human was exponentially higher nowadays.
Emperor Cyrus St Clair III was the one who introduced the Baptismal Awakening and abolished the Ingestion method altogether.
But of course, a few people who still knew of this method tried it even today, and most of them died.
It was a high-risk, high-reward kind of awakening.
One would rarely ever succeed in this, but if they did, they would receive a massive boost in their talents.
The awakener would go through a trial based on the spirit's experiences inside their mind realms, and if they died there, they would be rendered brain-dead.
But, if they succeeded in the Ingestion Awakening, the experience of the spirits would be assimilated with the awakener, helping them break through many realms more easily than others.
The higher the level of the spirit core, the riskier it was, but it also helped break through more realms.
The only benefit of this over normal awakening was that he could break through faster, which was crucial for him.
He knew he didn't have the luxury of time anymore, as the maw approaches its final breakthrough, he had to be prepared.
And that's why he chose this.
The second one to appear beside Gerald was Maria, who glared at him for hitting her son and immediately snatched her son from him.
Gerald understood her anger and didn't resist.
Three more Paragons soon followed suit, and since they knew what had just happened, they immediately sealed the area, escorting other members with respect.
Maria's eyes moistened as an immense shockwave exploded from her, failing to wake her son up.
"Find out who forced my son to do this, and who told him about it. Find me everything." She shouted so loudly that if not for the other Gerald containing her, the others in the surrounding area would have fainted.
Her eyes were bloodshot, and veins popped on her forehead.
She held her son tightly and flew out of the hall immediately and reached the palace's medics to cure him.
Gerald ordered two Paragons to keep her in check, while he himself got busy ordering people around, ordering them to dig out this entire matter.
Since Selene wasn't a proper royalty yet, she didn't know what had happened, but she could tell it was severe.
The other Royal family members who had access to such data were also shocked, as it settled in.
It took them a lot longer to connect the dots, compared to Gerald and Paragons, but even they were shocked to realize how stupid this was.
Arthur, who was being escorted out, knew about this plan, but he was still surprised that Lucien actually did it.
But he knew that Lucien had an edge and a lot better odds at surviving than others.
After all, he had done this already.
'Good luck, Remiel.'
…
As soon as Lucien gulped down the spirit core, everything stopped.
The lights. The sounds. Even his own breath.
A sudden darkness started cloaking his entire world, erasing the image of the hall he had in front of him.
A few moments later, the world was completely dark.
Swoosh!
Suddenly, a blinding white light erased every inch of darkness around him and replaced it with mirrors.
Countless mirrors.
But something was off.
Each of the mirrors reflected a black-haired, stormy gray-blue-eyed individual.
Of course, Lucien knew him.
The person in the reflection was him. Specifically, the old him.
Remiel St. Clair.
He tried to move forward, but in an instant, he found himself falling endlessly.
Down. Down. Down.
But strangely, it didn't feel like he was falling.
It felt like the entire world around was going up.
Thum!
It all came to a sudden halt, and now, he found himself in a whole different atmosphere.
A floating island with nothing but lava surrounding as far as his eyes could see.
Needless to say, he was pretty much stuck here.
He knew this was the will of Arenox, trying to prevent him from absorbing all the energy of his core, essentially killing him for good.
His plans from the beginning were quite simple.
The spirits, as a race, were amorphous, and their spirit core was their everything.
Brain, heart, liver, energy core, etc.
So technically, a spirit could easily survive even without its body.
It would just need another body for its core.
And since Arenox was still a living spirit, he had asked Arthur to extract the core from the mirror, without actually killing it.
And Arthur delivered.
A chocolate ball in the chocolate box.
He had not only put on a contraption to mask all the energy from others' view, but he also had added a device that, when activated, would make it vanish from normal eyes.
Of course, if a powerful Exalt were to focus hard enough on it, they would discover it, but Lucien had already gotten it out.
He knew the second he left the chocolates alone, it would be inspected by the palace guards thoroughly, so he did everything early on.
And he hid the spirit core in his Baptismal clothes, and finally, when he went to change, he hid it in his mouth.
He could've done everything in secret back in the palace, but he had a goal to achieve.
Defy the King.