"Oh, how I wish..."
Ash'Kral laughed in amused delight as he watched the Nocturnal contract burn into two clouds of ash.
"For now, enjoy the show...This will be the first time you see a tiny bit of my peak and most likely your last if you don't work hard."
Before Levi could react, he found himself kicked from the dream world, slowly regaining his consciousness in the real world.
When he expected to see utter darkness and everyone's spiritual auras like always, he was stunned to see Shia's, Jamal's, and Sergio's faces crowding him.
"He is up! He is actually up! It's a miracle!" Jamal laughed excitedly.
"What the...His stomach hole has been sealed without leaving even a scar..." Sergio exclaimed in disbelief as he gazed at Levi's smooth, dirtied abs.
His reaction was understandable when Levi ended up recovering faster than Arthur, who was still lying on the floor, salivating over the dirty ground.
Levi ignored them and immediately reached out with his hand towards Shia, caressing her face in astonishment.
"It's real...I can see..." Levi murmured to himself.
"Huh?"
Shia was caught off guard by his action, but she didn't pull away from his hand. She knew he couldn't see what he was doing and might still be in shock.
But, before she could think too much of it, her face suddenly went as pale as a sheet of paper, pure mortification taking over her. Then, her eyes rolled to the back of her head, passing out on top of Levi's chest.
Thud! Thud!
Jamal and Sergio followed along, one landing on top of Arthur's back and the other to the side of Levi...Even their contracted nightcrawlers went down.
"Am I really that ugly?"
Ash'Kral's saddened voice resounded from behind Levi, forcing him to turn around with a dazed expression.
He expected many things, but he didn't think that Ash'Kral would make an appearence in his flesh in the real world!
Yet, what shocked him the most was the sight of him standing inside the Solar Dome without a single scratch!
He could see that the Solar dome was trying its best to burn him, but his leathery, ashen skin remained untouched.
"How?"
"Save your questions for later, we don't have much time before our souls get linked and bodies inked."
Ash'Kral turned around and faced Nel'Vess, who was standing tens of meters away from them. He was just in the process of uprooting another tree, having no idea what was going on.
"Little f*ckers wasting my time and energy."
Nel'Vess cursed under his breath while cleaning his sweaty forehead with his sleeve. Then, he pulled the entire tree with its roots in a single motion, hugging it with both arms.
The moment he placed it next to him, his vision was finally cleared, landing on Ash'Kral and Levi.
"Here's anoth..."
Nel'Vess went quiet, blinking twice to double-check if his eyes weren't deceiving him.
Just a few moments ago, he was staring at Shia, Jamal, and Sergio, trying to revive their friend. In an instant, they were the ones on the ground while Levi was standing next to one of the meanest-looking nightcrawlers he had ever seen.
He ought to feel baffled.
"Who are you, and how dare you interfere in Queen Dra'Webra's feast?!"
Nel'Vess entered a defensive stance instantly, even bringing out the name of his master. He wasn't able to sense Ash'Kral's aura in the slightest, which creeped the hell out of him.
"Dra'Webra? Oh, so that was her name." Ash'Kral murmured to himself.
Then, he pointed his long-clawed finger at Nel'Vess and ordered expressionlessly, "You have touched what's mine. Kill yourselves as an apology."
Before Levi could react to such a ludicrous command, his mouth widened to the limit in stupefaction at the sight of the spiders' army running into each other's fangs or smashing their abdomen against the trees, doing whatever it took to kill themselves!
While this could be excused for Ash'Kral's authority being on the higher Tiers, nothing could explain what Nel'Vess was doing.
Levi watched him hold his head with both hands and without an ounce of hesitation or complaint, snapped it off!
'Huh?'
Even Nel'Vess failed to understand what had just happened. His eyes reflected utter confusion and daze as he fell sideways, his hands still affixed to his shattered neck.
Thud!
The giant uprooted oak tree fell upon him after losing its support, seemingly avenging itself and its perished sisters...
Silence engulfed the forest at last as no spider was left alive, both near and far. It was like Ash'Kral's order resounded across the entire forest even though he spoke in a normal octave.
Stunlocked, Levi stared at Ash'Kral with lips moving, but no words coming out, only hushed out breaths. But soon, his perfect vision started fading, breaking him out of his daze.
"No, no, no, just a little more!"
Levi ignored everything and lay next to his brother, turning his head to face him. As his vision was going dark, Levi stared at his brother's face with a faint smile.
"You sure have grown into a good man." He murmured gently, "Though the ponytail has to go."
Before Levi knew it, he found himself back in pitch-black darkness.
He had dreamed of having his vision restored every single day of his life, and now that it happened, he didn't even appreciate it fully before it was robbed from him.
He didn't even look at himself in the mirror. Yet, Levi neither complained nor whined about it. He painted the same serene smile on his face to mask the pain within and turned to look at Ash'Kral, wanting to ask him how he did it.
But, the moment his spiritual vision landed on him, Levi's heartbeats started accelerating rapidly, akin to a child seeing the boogeyman.
Horror, confusion, shock, disbelief; a soup of emotions ran rampant across his entire system at the sight of a crimson potent spiritual aura covering his whole field of vision!!
It was like his space of darkness transformed into a scarlet world!
Levi was almost always composed and rarely stuttered in his speech, but as he gazed at this frightening scarlet aura emitting from Ash'Kral, words failed to find him.
With great difficulty, he mustered a single question. "Jus...t...Just..What are you?"
He didn't even use the proper interrogative pronoun...Or did he? As this abomination before him couldn't be defined with just 'Who'.
"Me?"
Ash'Kral turned around to face Levi, his magnificent spiritual aura dying out rapidly akin to a flame being extinguished.
When his entire aura disappeared and was replaced with a fable twinkle, a spiritual aura known to belong to Tier 1 nightcrawlers, Ash'Kral grinned and answered with:
"I am your partner."