Chapter 143- Cindy and the Purple Lightning.

Chapter 143: Chapter 143- Cindy and the Purple Lightning.

Leo reached the tunnel within a few minutes.

The same familiar feeling settled over him the moment he stepped inside — crackling charges of lightning threading through the air, a bare stone pathway swallowed in near-total darkness. He walked forward, step by step, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom.

The path hadn’t changed at all since the last time. He followed it straight to the chamber doors.

The instant he pushed them open, the thundering roar of lightning hit him first, followed almost immediately by a blinding flash that stole his vision for several seconds.

When it finally cleared—

The air inside the chamber felt thick, saturated with charged particles that made the hair on his arms rise on instinct. The pressure pressing down on him felt heavier than he remembered, likely thanks to the mass of purple lightning churning endlessly against the ceiling.

Cindy was there, deep in training. She looked rough — genuinely rough. Her clothes hung off her in tatters. Nearby, the Lightning Guardian stood beside the mana well, watching her with an unreadable, expressionless face, arms folded across her chest. The whole chamber pulsed and flickered with that same purple lightning, suspended and churning in the open air at its center.

Tattered as she looked, Cindy stood right in the heart of the lightning storm, wreathed in it from head to toe.

Thunder Child. The name surfaced in Leo’s mind and, as it turned out, it was the very class she’d received. The name suited her completely. He could see exactly how she’d managed to hold her ground inside that storm: shoulders loose despite the chaos around her, chin lowered, eyes sharp and locked in place....and two tear marks in her cheeks.

"Was she crying..??" Leo muttered to himself.

Cindy braced herself, gaze fixed upward on the roiling purple mass above.

A single strand of lightning tore itself free and shot straight down toward her. She’d clearly seen it coming and set herself for the impact, driving a fist forward to meet it head-on.

Cindy flinched hard. Her sharp gaze were nowhere to seen. "Wahh!" she cried out.

Tears streamed freely down her face.

Oh that explains the tear stains... Leo thought.

Some of the lightning’s energy dissipated harmlessly on contact, but the rest crawled up through her arm, climbing past her ribs and into her shoulder.

"Wait — wait, wait! Let me circulate it, I’m doing it, I’m doing it—"

Watching her cry while simultaneously begging the lightning to wait was a genuinely strange sight.

But as the lightning traveled deeper into her, her outline blurred for a split second, flickering together with the light surrounding her — and then the lightning seemed to vanish entirely inside her body, with no visible discharge left behind at all.

Leo felt a strange jolt of recognition. It looked almost identical to what he’d seen while forging the thunder sword — the same berserk lightning searching desperately for an outlet. Except this time, the process was happening inside a living person instead of inside a weapon.

Cold sweat broke out across his forehead just imagining what it would take to withstand strikes like that.

Through his forge sight, Leo could track exactly what was happening inside Cindy’s body in real time.

The lightning was meant to flow through her, circulating freely, but Cindy kept instinctively trying to grab hold of it and force it under control instead. It wasn’t working well at all — every muscle in her body had locked up tight, fighting the current rather than letting it pass through.

Eventually the lightning energy dissipated on its own, and Cindy dropped to her knees, breathing hard, gasping for air like she’d just run for miles.

The sharp smell of ozone filled the chamber, a byproduct of the lightning scorching the oxygen in the air around them.

Leo stood quietly for a while, watching.

Cindy pushed herself back up with arms that visibly trembled under her own weight. She tried wiping the sweat from her face with the back of her hand, but a few loose strands of hair had already plastered themselves across her cheeks.

Leo could feel her frustration radiating off her from where he stood. But she hadn’t given up — not even close.

She drew in a steady breath, recalling the Guardian’s instruction from earlier. Circulate it. Don’t grab it.

She repeated the words under her breath, like a chant with teary eyes . "Circulate it — circulate it — wahh, huhu — circulate it—"

Then she waited, bracing herself again for the next strike.

The purple lightning above shuddered and released another bolt, which shot down toward her a second time.

Leo, still watching closely, caught something different this time — a thin thread of lightning actually traveling through Cindy’s body, moving along some internal path. It was almost like the lightning wanted to stay inside her, except there was nothing yet built to hold it there, so it eventually burst free again, striking her collarbone this time around.

"Owww!" She glared up at the mass of purple lightning overhead and cursed at it directly. "Damn you — you did that on purpose!"

Cindy clutched at the spot where she’d been struck, muttering another curse under her breath.

Her cheeks were puffed up with frustration, old tear streaks still drying on her skin, and her nose had started running on top of everything else.

Even covered in tears, cursing under her breath, dressed in tattered clothes — she somehow still managed to look adorable through all of it. Leo couldn’t help but laugh at the sight.

Cindy’s head snapped toward him instantly, eyes narrowing. "Brother Leo."

Leo straightened up fast. "I didn’t laugh."

"You did."

"I didn’t."

"Hmph." She gritted her teeth and turned her glare back up toward the lightning.

Even through all the cursing and crying, she never once actually stopped trying.

Leo could only watch, a little dazed, as this girl — still just a child, really — kept throwing herself back into the storm over and over, absorbing strike after strike without ever quitting.

Cindy was slowly growing more accustomed to the lightning, even though, a part of her quietly wondered whether any of this was actually going anywhere.

But strike after strike, attempt after attempt, something started to shift. She began to actually feel the lightning — the sensation of it moving through her, rather than crashing against her.

And just then, a new notification appeared.

[Ding!]

[Epic-Rank Lightning Circulation Method Fully Integrated.]

Cindy stared at the notification, stunned in stillness. She’d been studying the epic-rank circulation method for a while now, trying and failing to follow it correctly, and here it was — finally confirming she’d managed to integrate it properly.

Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks as she bit down on her lip. "Wahh... finally, it actually paid off. Huhu..."

Just as she let herself feel that relief, another bolt of lightning struck her — but this time, instead of scattering uselessly, it circulated cleanly through her body and settled beside her mana core, almost like a second core forming right alongside it.

[Ding!]

[Lightning mana core has been formed.]

[Lightning tempering will be carried out so that all mana circulation paths become lightning-attuned.]

"Huh?" Cindy read the message over, clearly confused by what it meant.

Then both the purple lightning overhead and the mana vein beneath her released chains of lightning at the exact same time, all of it converging straight toward her.

"Wahh — no! No, wait, wait!" Cindy bolted, trying desperately to outrun the lightning, tears and everything else flying off her face as she ran. She sobbed the whole way, even though it was obviously a lost cause from the start.

The lightning caught up to her within seconds.

"WAHHHHH—" was all she managed to get out before it swallowed her whole.

The entire chamber erupted in a blinding wash of purple light.

Cindy felt like her whole body was being torn apart at the seams.

And in the most literal sense possible, it actually was — her body was being disintegrated and reconstructed simultaneously, rebuilt from the cellular level up. Her mana pathways widened and thickened, lightning threading itself through every inch of her, while her internal organs were slowly tempered to conduct and withstand that same raw energy without failing.

Watching her suffer through it, Leo moved to step in and help, sword already drawn — but the Lightning Guardian appeared directly in front of him, blocking his path. "Don’t interfere. She’ll be fine. Her body is being attuned. There’s a real chance she could succeed the General as his heir."

Leo froze, caught off guard. He hadn’t realized the Guardian had been considering Cindy for that position at all — she’d only ever mentioned that Cindy carried a legendary-grade affinity. Apparently, somewhere along the way, the Guardian had come to see far more potential in her than that.

Meanwhile, the lightning kept raining down on Cindy, strike after relentless strike, her entire physical makeup being converted piece by piece beneath it.

The Guardian spoke again, quieter this time. "I hope her talent awakens properly, on top of everything else. What she has is extraordinary. It isn’t the highest rank there is, but it’s the kind that could carry her all the way to the peak of the universe, given enough time."

Leo could only stare, stunned by praise that high coming from someone usually so guarded with her words.

While the two of them stood there, lost in their own thoughts, the mass of purple lightning above the chamber suddenly churned violently and collapsed downward all at once, crashing with a deafening roar of thunder.

It happened too fast for either of them to react.

The purple lightning swallowed Cindy whole.

"No—!" The Guardian lunged forward, trying to push into the lightning barrage and pull Cindy free, but the lightning refused to let her through.

"What’s wrong?" Leo demanded, urgency cutting through his voice.

"I don’t know. The purple lightning shouldn’t be behaving like this at all. It looks like... it’s trying to assimilate itself with Cindy. Like it’s acknowledging her as its master."

Leo’s confusion only deepened. "Isn’t that a good thing, then?"

The Guardian shook her head grimly. "It would be, if her body and level were strong enough to handle it. As she is right now, I don’t know if she can survive carrying that kind of power."

Hearing the Guardian say it so plainly sent Leo’s worry spiking. "Okay — let’s get her out of there, now."

Both of them attacked together, trying to break through the shell of lightning that had formed around Cindy.

Leo threw everything he had into it, but nothing made a dent. Every attack he landed simply dissolved against the barrier, neutralized on contact.

The Guardian wasn’t faring any better. This lightning belonged to her master, and she held no real authority to command or override it.

Both of them were pushed back, again and again.

Just as Leo readied himself for another attempt, the lightning surrounding Cindy suddenly began to sink inward. It shrank, smaller and smaller, until it vanished completely, as though something inside had pulled every last trace of it in and swallowed it whole.

Cindy stood alone at the center of where it had all happened. She was completely naked now, her body marked with scorched black scarring across her skin.

The Guardian clapped a hand over her mouth, certain for one horrifying second that Cindy had been burned alive.

But then the scorched, still body shuddered — and her eyes opened.

Purple lightning flickered faintly behind them.

....