Chapter 207: Reunion

Chapter 207: Chapter 207: Reunion

Three days later.

Jeremy returned to the academy, his first stop being the classroom.

The corridor of the fourth-year building was still dark; the magic lamps along the walls were only half lit.

Water still pooled on the stone floor, suggesting the cleaners had just left.

The classroom door wasn’t tightly shut, merely left ajar.

It seemed someone had arrived a step ahead.

Jeremy glanced at the time.

6:23 AM.

The scheduled gathering time for the first day of the new semester was eight o’clock. Who would arrive this early?

Jeremy pushed the door open and entered, immediately seeing Lucius leaning back in a chair by the window. One hand propped up his chin, while the other toyed with a sparkling ruby.

The window was open, morning sunlight slanting across the desk, dust motes drifting lazily in the beam of light.

Hearing the sound, his hand movements paused slightly as he turned his head toward the door.

The moment their eyes met, Jeremy proactively offered a greeting.

"Long time no see."

He spoke while walking over to the seat next to Lucius and sitting down.

"Long time no see," Lucius replied.

The ruby was tucked away, so fast that Jeremy only managed to see it flash once before it vanished completely. He didn’t bother asking.

The classroom hadn’t changed at all after a year. Still the same twelve desks and chairs, still the black stone blackboard with a diagonal crack in the bottom corner, still the five seats by the window that had been left empty for four semesters, with no one daring to approach.

"When did you get back?"

"Last night."

"Have you slept?"

"No," Lucius replied very naturally, "Couldn’t sleep anyway."

A year had passed; aside from his cultivation realm, Lucius had also changed a bit.

The feeling he gave off was slightly more composed than before, and his facial features had fully matured. If at fifteen he possessed an androgynous beauty, now that he was grown, he possessed a stunningly handsome allure.

His shoulders were broader, his jawline more defined, and his silver hair was worn longer than before, tied back neatly with a black leather cord.

Beautiful, but not the least bit effeminate.

While Jeremy was observing him, he heard Lucius ask at an unhurried pace, "Separated for over three hundred days, did the captain miss me?"

Jeremy: ...I take back what I just said about him being more composed. It seems this guy hasn’t changed much at all.

He didn’t reply to that, but noticing the familiar dark circles under Lucius’s eyes had vanished, he asked, "Has your backlash gotten more severe recently?"

The Fallen God’s backlash on Lucius was a matter he had been quite worried about before leaving, but at that time, Lucius had proactively gone to the Lunaris clan, sparing him from being caught in a dilemma.

It had been so long; he wondered what the current state of the backlash was.

Lucius smiled radiantly, "It seems the captain has been very worried about me all this time?"

Jeremy shot him a glance: "Stop spouting nonsense."

"How heartless." Lucius feigned dissatisfaction and edged a bit closer to him, answering honestly: "After awakening Holy Covenant of Light 02, the backlash brought by the Fallen God has been completely neutralized."

Neutralized?

"Then can you cultivate all three Marks simultaneously now?"

Marks represented the awakening of different skills, and they themselves also needed to be cultivated.

"You could say that." When speaking of his own matters, Lucius’s tone was always flat: "But I don’t plan on unsealing the Fallen God’s Mark for now."

Jeremy: "May I ask why?"

Once the backlash vanished, cultivating them simultaneously would undoubtedly push his cultivation progress to a terrifying degree.

"..."

Lucius remained silent for a moment before saying: "...If I cultivate using the Fallen God’s Mark, desires and negative emotions will be multiplied manifold. If I happen to lose control, I will completely lose myself."

Jeremy hadn’t expected this answer.

"Then keeping things as they are is the right choice."

"The captain agrees that quickly?"

"Speed cannot be traded for your life." Jeremy tapped his finger on the desk once. "If you’re slow, the whole team is slow with you. I can bear that."

Lucius looked at him for a few seconds, then curled the corners of his lips slightly, saying nothing more.

"Your letter was three lines long," Jeremy continued. "Three hundred days, three lines."

"I thought the captain didn’t like reading long things."

"I don’t like having to guess."

"Then I’ll write longer next time," Lucius replied, "But the captain only wrote two lines."

Jeremy fell silent.

...He couldn’t refute this.

He dropped that topic and asked next: "So the consciousness entity that existed in your consciousness space back then, has it dissipated or been absorbed now?"

"Absorbed." Lucius’s gaze rested on Jeremy’s neck, his look seemingly gathering a layer of mist, impossible to see clearly.

He suddenly spoke up: "Can I taste the captain’s blood?"

Just as the words fell, Lucius was immediately punched by Jeremy.

"Do you want to die?"

Lucius’s fingers brushed over his cheek, which stung slightly from the hit, not angry at all but conversely extremely serious: "I don’t want to. Just a bit curious, that’s all."

Jeremy was too lazy to pay him any mind.

He stood up, walked a lap around the classroom, and consecutively pulled open all the remaining curtains.

Sunlight flooded in, illuminating a thin layer of dust on the desks in the back row.

"How are the other three?"

"Got back two days before me," Lucius answered. "Phoenix changed rooms to the upper floor. Evelyn went to meet with the Royal family. And Leon..."

He stopped there, not continuing.

Jeremy turned his head: "What about Leon?"

"The captain will know when you see him."

Right at this moment, noises came from outside the door.

Jeremy turned around to look, and saw Evelyn, Phoenix, and Leon walking in one after another.

Phoenix was still wearing his hood, concealing more than half of his face. His previously medium-short hair had grown much longer, reaching all the way to his waist. It was unknown whether it was due to awakening the Dark Angel bloodline, but the gloomy, chilling aura radiating from him was a notch heavier than before.

As he walked in, the temperature in the room noticeably dropped. A few drops of water still pooling on the windowsill instantly froze into a thin layer of ice.

Walking past Jeremy’s spot, he paused for exactly one beat, pulled his hood down lower, and then continued toward the innermost row of seats. He didn’t say anything, but that was his greeting.

Evelyn’s hair had grown much longer; if completely let down, it could reach her ankles. With her breathtaking beauty, the perfect combination of cool elegance and gentleness, she possessed a few more touches of the graceful demeanor of a noble compared to their first meeting.

She walked in after Phoenix, stopped at the door for exactly one second to look at all four people in the room, and then went in and sat down.

As for Leon... his state was so terrible that it hardly needed to be expressed to be clearly noticed.

His complexion was deathly pale, his magic power unstable, and a thick stench of blood emanated from his body.

He placed his hand on the back of a chair for support, his fingers gripping until the knuckles turned white, yet still trembling slightly.

His entire person displayed a precarious posture, as if he could faint at any moment.

Jeremy had read the news of him suffering heavy injuries and falling into a coma in the letter, but hadn’t expected his condition to be this terrible.

During the past period, what on earth had happened?