Chapter 566: First For Everything

Julius felt embarrassed. He had believed that his control over his aura and emotions was fine. Perhaps, sparring right after rescuing Edwin hadn’t been a good idea. He had hoped that he could alleviate some of his stress, but it ended up hurting Erik, April, and Landon.

“Are they going to be okay?” He asked worriedly.

Cain waved off his concern. “They will be fine. I caught it before it got bad. But honestly, that crown of yours is quite insidious. I almost didn’t catch what it was doing.”

“What was it doing?” Julius asked with confusion. He knew that the crown had been releasing some ruinous aura, but he had no idea how it was able to hide it from Julius, not to mention Cain.

“It was passively leaking your aura, consuming the aura of the other three. It was literally feeding off their souls,” Cain explained.

“Shit.”

He glanced up at the crown and removed it from his head, looking at it with a disappointed glare.

“I thought we had an agreement,” he said toward the soul-bound item. For the past few weeks, the crown had been quite easy to handle. It listened to Julius, and he hoped they had reached a mutual accord. It would seem he was mistaken.

As he scowled at the crown, the item let out a pulse of blue flames from its surface. Julius wasn’t an expert at translating dangerous soul-bound items, but he could have sworn he detected slight signs of shame from the crown.

“Fine, but don’t do it again. Especially not when I am already having a shitty day, alright?”

The crown pulsed a little more brightly in response.

“Are you sure that thing is safe to keep on wearing? I know it’s soul-bound, but I can destroy it if you think it will eventually become too dangerous,” Cain offered with a skeptical look at the crown.

Julius was about to say something in response, but the crown beat him to it. The item flared with anger, and a spark of blue flame shot toward Cain. The man didn’t even bother to dodge; he took the spark to the face.

Apparently, the crown didn’t like that idea and was displeased at Cain for even bringing it up.

“Is that thing actually alive? I thought you were joking before,” Cain murmured.

Julius shrugged. “Sure seems like it,” he said before giving the crown a couple of pokes. “It responds well to my desires. Though it’s been a while since it acted up like this. I wonder why that is.”

The crown flared up briefly, and Julius felt something tug on his fire mana as well as his aura.

Seriously? Is that what it is?

“You gotta be kidding me,” Julius said, crinkling his nose in disbelief. Was the crown trying to tell Julius that it was hungry and that was the reason it had sucked everyone’s aura?

He brought the crown up to his eyes. “Just ask next time. There is no need to go off draining people’s aura without their consent.”

The crown pulsed hesitantly and wobbled in place. Julius could have sworn he felt the crown send him a burst of weird feelings that were hard to decipher.

“What? Are you trying to say that you didn’t want to bother me because I was already upset?”

The crown flared brightly.

“Oh. That is considerate of you. But still, just ask me next time.”

It flared once more, this time with more warmth.

“Can you communicate with that thing?” Cain asked from the side, looking at Julius with an odd expression.

Julius paused. Could he? Was that what he was doing? He honestly had no idea. He was going solely off instinct.

“I’m not sure. But it is a gluttonous little thing, so the odds are high that it was merely hungry.”

“Oh,” Cain said plainly.

Julius shrugged and proceeded to let some of his aura release. Unlike the phenomenon from before, this time around it wasn’t subtle. A very obvious and very viscous wave of ruinous aura surrounded Julius. He took control of his fire mana and shoved it into the crown without much fanfare.

He didn’t hold back, and neither did the crown. Like the greedy little thing it was, all of Julius’s aura and mana were sucked in. The crown’s dull gray surface slowly shone with bright blue light as it consumed the energy like a starving beast.

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author’s consent. Report any sightings.

Julius could practically feel the crown’s excitement and happiness as it consumed a large amount of his aura and mana. This process continued for a couple of minutes. The entire room was being flooded by mana, but there was no concern about it being wasted. Everything got dragged in by the crown.

Only when it was satisfied did it slowly return to its normal form. The destructive energy blooming from the item had also retreated, tucking away into the crown like nothing had happened. He could have sworn he saw the crown burp when it was finished, but that could have been his imagination.

Julius wiped the sweat from his head from having to sustain that much aura and mana for so long. He wasn’t out of mana, but releasing it in continuous waves like that took a mental toll. He then placed the crown back on his head and could feel the crown’s satisfaction pulsing downward into his skull.