'Did she really just drink my blood?' Alex thought, completely baffled.
Ever since the Tear of Knowledge took effect, Amelia had been acting strangely, but this? This was by far the weirdest—maybe even the creepiest—thing she had done.
Judging by their expressions, Maya and Freya seemed to agree.
Amelia, however, didn't seem to notice their reactions. And if she did, she hid it well. The moment she swallowed his blood, she sat down cross-legged and closed her eyes, as if everything was normal.
'Now she's meditating...' Alex sighed, feeling exhausted just from watching her.
The original plan was simple: once the Tear of Knowledge started working, Amelia would first absorb all knowledge about the human body down to its smallest details to strengthen her Cell Master ability. Then, she would move on to medicine—understanding diseases, treatments, and healing methods. Only after mastering those two subjects would she explore other fields.
But the instant the Tear of Knowledge took effect, Amelia had thrown that carefully crafted plan out the window. She picked topics at random, ignoring any clear order. And now, to top it all off, she was meditating—squandering the limited and invaluable time granted by the Tear of Knowledge. Every second she spent in meditation was a second wasted, time she would never get back once the effects of the treasure wore off.
"Now what?" Maya asked. "Are we just going to wait for her to open her eyes and hope she explains why she's acting so weird?"
"Don't know," Alex shrugged. "But judging by how tightly her brows are furrowed, it looks like she'll be at it for a while," he added, crossing his arms.
"In that case, while we wait, why don't you go test how the 'books' in this library work?" Freya suggested, glancing at Alex.
He thought about it for a second before nodding. It was true that he was curious about what it felt like to have knowledge directly injected into his mind, so while he was were here, why not try.
Giving his sister one last glance, he strode toward the shelves.
'Wait,' Alex suddenly thought, stopping in his tracks. 'Maybe I can find the books Lilia handed me. If they're here, I won't have to waste my time reading them the conventional way,' he mused with a small smirk.
What he failed to realize, however, was that with how quickly he normally finished a book, this method might not actually save him any time.
After a few minutes of searching, he finally settled on a book. Without hesitation, he pressed the glowing orb to his forehead. Instantly, a flood of foreign knowledge surged into his mind. Like Amelia, his first instinct was to resist, to push back against the influx of information. But remembering Maya's words, he forced himself to relax, letting the knowledge seep in naturally.
Seconds later, the transfer was complete.
'That feels... weird,' Alex thought, rubbing his temple. He could tell that he had absorbed new knowledge, but it felt tangled and scattered in his mind, like a vast puzzle waiting to be pieced together. He could recall the information, but it wasn't fully his yet—it needed to be processed.
Closing his eyes, he focused on organizing everything he had just learned. It wasn't necessary, but he still concentrated fully on the task. Because of this, he failed to notice the conversation happening between Freya and Maya.
"I'll go read a book too. There's something I want to test," Freya said, casting a glance at her daughter.
"Is it about your new ability?" Maya asked, raising a brow.
"Uh-huh," Freya nodded. "I want to see if it actually works the way I think it does."
Without another word, the matriarch walked over to a shelf, picked up an orb, and pressed it against her forehead without even checking what knowledge it contained. The transfer began, and within seconds, it was complete. But unlike Alex and Amelia, Freya didn't close her eyes or pause to process the information. Instead, she immediately grabbed another orb and pressed it to her temple.
The process repeated itself, and as the second orb disappeared, Freya remained completely composed—showing no signs of needing to concentrate on the knowledge she had just acquired.
"So?" Maya asked, appearing beside her mother.
"It's just as I thought," Freya sighed in relief. "This ability is going to be extremely useful for managing all my work," she added, a confident smile forming on her lips.
Maya was about to reply when something caught her attention. Her gaze flicked toward Amelia, her expression shifting.
"Uh... old man," she called out. "You better come here. Something weird is happening with Amelia."
Alex's eyes snapped open, and he rushed to his sister's side. The moment he got close, he immediately noticed what Maya was talking about.
'There's an absurdly high concentration of mana around her...' he observed, brows furrowing. 'How is she gathering that much mana?'
Then, as realization dawned, his pupils shrank.
'Wait—she's not pulling in mana from her surroundings. It's her body that's releasing this massive amount of mana!'
His confusion deepened. He didn't understand why this was happening, but one thing was clear—if Amelia kept releasing mana at this rate, things could turn disastrous.
As time passed, the mana surrounding her only grew denser. The air around her shimmered, and soon, the mana reached a level where it became almost tangible.
'Hold on…' Alex, who had been about to shake her awake, froze midway. 'How does she even have that much mana?'
Amelia was a Level 4, just like him. But unlike him, who was at the peak of Level 4, she was only at the mid-stage. So how was she releasing more mana than even he had in his reserves?
Now, he was completely baffled. Something strange was definitely happening.
For a brief moment, he considered waking her up.
But after some thought, he shook his head and straightened.
'She probably knows what she is doing. If I interfere now, I might just make things worse,' he reasoned, suppressing the urge to act.
"What is going on with her? Will she be alright?" Maya inquired, her expression slightly tense. Her senses might not be as sharp as Alex's, but even she could feel that something was off.
"I don't know, but let's have faith that she knows what she is doing," he answered, though his eyes never left Amelia.
He may have said that, but at that moment, all his focus was locked onto his sister. He was ready to react the instant anything went wrong. Yet, even with all his vigilance, even he couldn't predict what happened next.
Before anyone could process the situation, the mana around Amelia surged once more, its intensity reaching an entirely new level. The sheer concentration distorted the air, and faint traces of gray flickered within the swirling energy.
But what truly shocked Alex, Maya, and Freya wasn't just the mana's density—it was what happened to Amelia herself.
Even the powerful guards in Freya's and Maya's shadows seemed shaken as they witnessed something utterly insane, something that had never been heard of, not just in Fiore or even in Imperion, but throughout all of Wadata.
Amelia, who just a second ago stood at middle-level 4, suddenly... dropped to low-level 4!
A stunned silence fell over the group.
Then, without warning—
The mana exploded.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Jagged fissures tore through the ground beneath Amelia, spreading like a vast spiderweb as the sheer density of the mana crushed everything beneath her. The earth itself trembled under the overwhelming force, as if struggling to withstand the pressure. But before anyone could even process the destruction, another shift occurred—one so drastic it made their pupils shrink to pinholes and their hearts hammer violently against their ribs.
BOOM!
Amelia… fell from level 4 to level 3!