Chapter 161: Proposal

Julius was feeling really worried at this point. The two of them both made it sound like he had some sort of terminal illness. They were even ignoring him like he was already dead.

He initially didn’t think it was that bad. Sure, his soul was sore, but hadn’t thought it was anything on the level of what they were talking about. He had believed that a little bit of R&R would do him a lot of good.

It made him regret not going to the others or Declan for help earlier. Once again it was his goddamn pride that got in his way. That and maybe his focus skill. In hindsight, his focus skill allowed him to put aside pain and concentrate on his goals maybe a bit too well.

He would have to do better to handle that particular aspect of the skill in the future.

Regardless, he still couldn’t help but be skeptical of their analysis of his soul. With that being said, he was very aware that this skepticism mainly came from the fact that he didn’t want to believe them.

Because what if they were right? What if he did have something wrong with his soul? Something that would severely hamper his ability to continue improving?

That was what truly scared him. It was the thought of stagnating because of his own bullheadedness. He had rushed through these past several months without any care for his health. He had forgone sleep and single-mindedly pushed forward.

It wasn’t like he had torn apart his body, this was his soul that he was talking about. It wasn’t something that he could just regenerate like he could with one of his limbs. Even with Drasil’s help, the rejuvenation of his soul had been slow over these past few days.

[Pseudo-Phoenix Renewal] wasn’t able to heal his soul, at least not at its current stage. It was definitely possible for it to gain that ability once he ranked it up to epic. However, that led to another problem.

If what Alice said was correct and the rapid acquisition and growth of skills were causing some of the damage, what would it mean if he gained another epic skill?

He turned to look at Alice right into her radiant eyes. “Is there anything I can do to fix it?” He tried to hide the nervousness out of his voice, but he only semi-succeeded.

She looked at him with pity, like he was some poor animal that she found on the side of the road. “The important thing is that you are alive. That means you have a chance to recover from this. However, in order to heal your soul, it’s going to take some time.”

“How much time?” Julius asked.

“Depends. Your familiar might be able to help out with the process. But soul healing is always a weird thing to predict. You have already gone through your soul evolution so that means it will be a little more difficult to heal your soul. Luckily, you haven’t actually advanced to Tier 3, that would have made it close to impossible to fix, so be grateful for that,” she told him.

“What do you mean by that?” Julius frowned and chewed his lip anxiously.

“Well, once a person advances to Tier 3 their soul, core, and body all meld together. That also means that healing the soul becomes a much more complicated endeavor,” she explained.

“So how long?” Julius asked again.

“I’m telling you I don’t know. It could be a few months or it could be several decades. I don’t know enough about you and your abilities to gauge it properly.” Before Julius could respond she cut him off. “I know you have some type of life-based healing skill, but it won’t be able to heal your soul.”

“How did you know I have a healing skill?”

“It’s obvious to anyone with a domain. You’re constantly pumping a little bit of mana into it at every moment. I could sense it the moment I got near to you,” she told him like it was obvious.

He paused at that. He quickly checked it out and almost immediately noticed what she was talking about. It had been such a natural thing that he didn’t realize he was even doing it. “Are there any healing skills that you know of that heal the soul?” He asked curiously.

“Of course there are, but they are also some of the hardest healing skills to get, just the base requirement is epic rank,” she explained.

That’s not good news.

“Are there any people in Heston who could heal my soul for me? Or any other ways to get better quickly?”

Even if the shortest amount of time that it would take to heal his soul was a few months, that was still too long. He couldn’t stagnate for that long. However, if he could find someone who had a soul-healing skill, perhaps he could hire them to heal him.

Alice laughed loudly. “I’m starting to understand how you got yourself into this position.” She shook her head. “Most soul-healing skills are limited to healing surface-level soul damage, nothing that would be able to heal a soul with your extensive damage. The only people who would be able to heal your soul are the best Tier 5 healers who specialize in soul damage. Good luck trying to afford one of them to heal you.”

“How much are they?” Julius asked, a little afraid of hearing the price.

“Way more than you could afford. At that point, you are better off just waiting for it to heal naturally,” she said casually with a chuckle.

Julius frowned and didn’t say anything for a moment.

“What if I can’t wait?” He finally asked softly.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Alice stopped chuckling and looked at him with an odd look. “You do know that your impatience is what caused this whole incident right?”

Julius calmly nodded his head. He knew better than anyone that this situation only happened because of his own actions. He could have taken it slower. He could have chosen not to try to get a Fire Concept after he got the Will Concept. There were a lot of things he could have done.

His mind was trying to process this bad news as quickly as he could and thankfully [Sage of Savagery] was helping him control the influx of emotions. But he also knew that there wasn’t any taking back those decisions at this point.

Alice saw his solemn expression and realized that he might actually understand his situation. He saw her reevaluate her opinion of him slightly.

“Why do you believe you can’t wait?” She asked him.

Julius shrugged his shoulders at her. “I need to get stronger,” he said simply. He didn’t want to fully explain his reasons to her.

“Everyone wants to get stronger. But not everyone trains so hard that they cripple their souls,” she retorted with a scoff.

“I have my reasons,” he assured her.

Alice shook her head in exasperation. “It doesn’t matter. Either way, It is absolutely important that you don’t train during this time.”

“No training at all?” Julius asked with wide eyes. That would be a problem for him. He had been planning to stop all Concept training and put a halt to evolving any more skills to epic, but no training at all would be an issue. That he couldn’t accept so easily.