Chapter 682: Soul Space And Pheonix Blessings [Bonus - ]
Rika floated in a silent boundless expanse that she recognized with an ache deep inside her marrow.
This was her internal soul realm, the spiritual domain where her divine beast contracts had once anchored themselves like towering pillars of celestial iron, where legendary broods of primordial predators had once roared beneath the banners of the Fanged Courts.
Now, the horizon stretched onward in hollow lifeless gray.
There were no roars and there were no beating wings either... The vast expanse was an empty graveyard of barren cracked stone.
A hollow suffocating sorrow wrapped around her ribs, so heavy it pressed the breath from her lungs.
’I’m sorry...’ she thought, curling her knees to her chest as she drifted in the dead void. ’I’m so sorry... all of you...’
The phantom weight of her lost broods cut into her like broken glass.
If it hadn’t been for that arrogant, ruthless Ice Goddess who had descended upon her place with those forever ice spells, none of this ruin would have ever come to pass.
Her beasts wouldn’t have been butchered, their vital essences stripped away to feed foreign domains, leaving their warden shattered and discarded.
Yet, as she drifted, a quiet almost paradoxical clarity settled over her scattered thoughts.
She had been a deity in that ancient era, yes, but even at her apex, her potential had been hopelessly bottlenecked.
She had cobbled her foundation together from whatever wild drakes and apex earth-beasts she could bind through sheer attrition, clawing her way into the lower echelons of the divine hierarchy.
Deep down, she had always known the bitter truth... no matter how hard she bled, no matter how many centuries she spent refining her beast bloodlines, she would never have stood as an equal beside true battle deities like Thor or the cosmic sovereigns of the celestial pantheons.
...She had reached her ceiling, and the ceiling was fragile.
Then, the void began to shift.
From the bottom of her soul domain, a faint radiant warmth began to bleed upward.
It was not the dull white glow of common mana, but a pure unblemished incandescent shade of gold.
VUUUUUUUUUUUUUM!
The golden light surged like an ocean tide, washing over the cracked barren plains of her soul space.
The moment the light touched her core, several dormant authorities that had been ripped from her pathways slammed back into her soul with the concussive force of a physical battering ram.
𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦
Her wild midnight-black hair whipped violently around her shoulders as the divine backlash rippled through her meridians.
’This... this is unbelievable!’ Rika gasped internally, her porcelain-pale skin shivering as warmth flooded every long-dead pathway.
These weren’t even her primary master-level authorities, only her minor passive skills, yet the power coursing through them now was vastly superior to anything she had commanded when she had sat upon her throne at supposedly "full" power!
The purity of the mana, the structural density of the spiritual law... it eclipsed everything she had ever known.
’Your starting beast...’ the realization struck her like lightning, leaving her breathless. ’Your very first bond truly makes all the difference in the world!’
A mortal foundation bound to a lizard yielded a stronger lizard but a soul forged alongside an immortal apex entity of absolute rebirth?... It fundamentally rewrote the structural laws of the vessel.
The golden sea beneath her feet deepened, warming from brilliant yellow into a vibrant molten gradient of burning crimson and rich roaring orange.
The ambient temperature of her soul realm soared, but it didn’t burn her. It felt like stepping into a warm spring after an eternity of freezing in the dark.
From the heart of the orange horizon, a magnificent silhouette glided upward.
The Primordial Phoenix beat its wings, trailing ribbons of liquid solar fire and starlit embers through the void.
It rose with effortless divine elegance, circling her drifting form once, twice, before slowing its descent and gliding directly toward her outstretched arms.
Rika’s emerald eyes dissolved into brilliant molten gold.
"Thank you..." she whispered, her voice cracking with a reverent overwhelming awe as the radiant creature nestled its head against the curve of her neck. "Thank you for choosing someone as broken and small as me... I swear to you, I will never let you starve. I will never let you fall. I will carve an empire worthy of your wings..."
The fledgling phoenix let out a series of high-pitched melodic trills that sounded like silver chimes echoing across an ancient cathedral.
It nuzzled its cheek against her jaw, completely unbothered by her vows as though it was simply content to share its primordial warmth.
As it trilled, intricate glowing glyphs began to etch themselves directly into the fabric of her soul.
They were ancient celestial runes, script from the boundless celestial sea of the higher realms that mortals were never meant to read.
They pulsed along her spiritual collarbones and down her arms, locking her soul to the bird’s eternal cycle.
’What are these...?’ Rika wondered in dazed fascination, watching the golden characters burn softly into her marrow. ’They aren’t beast-mastery seals... they’re...’
POP!
The boundary of the soul realm shattered with the soft elastic snap of displacing mana.
The smell of cedar wood and mountain breeze rushed back into her nose.
"Haa—"
Rika gasped, her eyelids fluttering open as reality slammed back into place.
She was sitting on the floorboards of her private quarters in the Keep of Blessed Land with her knees pressed against the rug.
Her smaller pale hands weren’t clutching empty air... they were warmly enveloped inside a pair of broad calloused palms.
Silas knelt directly before her with his dark hair falling across his forehead and his gold-ringed blue eyes looking down into hers with quiet patient focus.
"You back with me, Rika?" Silas asked gently, his thumbs tracing reassuring circles over the backs of her wrists. "Is everything alright?"
A furious incandescent blush detonated across Rika’s pale cheeks.
’He’s... he’s holding my hands so gently...’
Her heart did a frantic chaotic flip inside her ribs.
Gazing up into his steady unblinking blue eyes, ringed with gold, was almost intoxicating.
It was no cold calculating stare of an auditor and nothing like the leering, hungry gaze of a barbarian evaluating a prize.
It was the look of a devoted lover staring back at his partner attentively.
...It was addictive... Terrifyingly addictive...
’Why...?’ she thought, her breath hitching as her chest grew tight.
This man had taken her into his domain even after discovering her humiliating powerless past.
He had listened to her failures, shrugged them off like dust, and told her that none of it mattered and now... now he had personally placed an SSS-Rank Divine Beast, a Primordial Phoenix egg, into her hands, an impossible treasure that an entire empire of sovereigns would have gone to war to possess, just so she wouldn’t feel useless.
It defied all logic. It went against every single harsh transactional rule of the divine courts.
Thump...!
’Why is my Lord such a dummy...?’
Thump...! Thump...!
’Why didn’t he just cast me aside like everyone else did? Doesn’t he realize that the Goddess of Beasts is a pathetic laughingstock among the pantheons? A disgraced deity who couldn’t even protect her own broods, who was ridiculed by Thor and spat upon by the frost courts?’
Thump...! Thump...! Thump...!
Yet, even knowing every single scrap of her disgrace, he had stood right here.
He had held her trembling hands, wiped her tears away, and promised to build her an apex foundation from the ground up.
’I will never fail you,’ the vow carved itself into her soul in lines of molten iron. ’Never... Not in this life, not in the next...’
Rika didn’t pull her hands back.
Instead, she surged forward on her knees.
Her frame crossed the small distance between them in an instant as she closed her eyes, threw her arms around Silas’s neck, and pressed her soft trembling lips firmly against his mouth.
Behind them, near the closed oak door, Eluned’s emerald eyes went wide as dinner plates.
"R-Rika?!" Eluned gasped, her hands flying to her cheeks in pure shock.
Rika didn’t care... she didn’t want to let go.
FWOOSH!
From her back, a magnificent pair of ethereal golden-red phoenix wings unfolded, wrapping completely around Silas’s shoulders and her own small frame like a protective flaming cocoon.
The incandescent light cast long, dancing shadows across the cedar walls, sealing them together in a private world of celestial warmth.
’I’ll share everything...’ Rika thought with desperate fierce devotion as she deepened the kiss with her smaller tongue hesitantly tracing his lips, offering every scrap of her existence to the man who had redeemed her. ’Every single blessing, every spark of authority, every drop of primordial vitality this beast brings to my soul... I will give it all to my Lord!’
There was no territorial law that forbade sharing divine resonance.
If she was his Hero, then her blessings belonged to him.
The stronger she grew, the more potent the divine flow would become, but why wait?
Why hoard a single drop of this miracle for herself when she could pour it directly into the foundation of the man she adored?
The kiss lingered becoming deep and breathless, until Silas gently rested his hands on her waist, guiding her back so they could draw breath.
A thin glistening strand of saliva bridged the gap between their lips for a fleeting second before snapping.
"Mmh~ So good~"
Silas blinked with his posture stiffening as an intense unnatural vibration rippled through his dantian.
His Gold Core began to beat with ferocious speed... for some reason, the golden sphere began expanding and contracting like a miniature star.
A cascade of crystalline golden system prompts materialized directly in his field of vision.
[Notice: The Blessings of the Primordial Phoenix have been shared with you through divine soul-resonance!]
[You have acquired: Phoenix’s Blessing of Rebirth!]
Effect: Even should your physical vessel suffer absolute destruction, the eternal spark within your soul will cycle death into life, allowing you to resurrect from absolute demise once.
[You have acquired: Phoenix’s Blessing of Flames of Tribulation!]
Effect: Your elemental fire mana has been permanently infused with the conceptual authority of Tribulation!
Silas’s eyes widened slightly.
’Flames of Tribulation...?’ Silas thought, his brow furrowing as he read the title. ’What the hell is that?’
Almost instantly, an expanded explanatory window snapped open beneath the notification.
[Flames of Tribulation (Flames of Misfortune):]
A conceptual sub-element born from the wrath of celestial beings. If you choose to activate it, you may weave the element of Tribulation into your flames... Any target struck by these flames will suffer from catastrophic karmic misfortune, drawing accidents, and disastrous twists of fate upon themselves. The severity and duration of the misfortune scale directly with the depth of your personal hatred and contempt toward the target.
Silas’s breath hitched in his throat.
’Are Phoenixes not supposed to be holy celestial birds of pure grace and healing...?’ Silas mused with a bead of cold sweat forming at his temple as he processed the description. ’Why in the world does an immortal firebird possess an active curse of weaponized bad luck that scales with how much I hate someone?! That’s completely crazy!’
Still, beneath the shock... an appreciative smirk slowly tugged at the corners of his mouth.
He certainly wasn’t going to complain.
Having an extra life in his back pocket via the Blessing of Rebirth was an absurdly broken defensive trump card, and the ability to curse his enemies with literal misfortune just by setting them on fire was a terrifyingly practical utility.
It was a monstrous addition to his combat repertoire.
In front of him, Rika sat back on her heels with her chest heaving, looking up at him with wide anxious green eyes that still carried flecks of gold.
"Is... is it good, my Lord?" she stammered, her voice tiny and trembling. "Are you... are you happy with me?"
Silas chuckled warmly, shaking his head at her nervous vulnerability.
He reached out and placed his palm squarely on top of her head, giving her soft midnight-black hair an affectionate thorough ruffle.
"These blessings are incredible, Rika," Silas said honestly, his smile bright and reassuring. "More than good... You did amazing..."
"Ah... ahh..."
Rika’s expression completely melted.
Her eyes fluttered half-closed with a soft dazed sigh slipping past her lips as a tiny undignified trail of drool escaped the corner of her mouth.
’His hand...’ she thought, her entire brain turning into sweet warm mush under his palm. ’His headpats feel so impossibly good... It feels like... like his warmth is sinking straight down into my belly... like he’s putting babies inside me just by touching my hair...’
She snapped back to reality with a violent shudder, hurriedly wiping her chin with the sleeve of her tunic with her face burning hotter than her new flames.
"I-I apologize!" she squeaked, bowing her head frantically. "I lost my composure! Forgive me!"
Silas simply laughed, retracting his hand.