The Demon Queen's Royal Consort

When the entire tub shimmered with energy, a pulse began to emanate from the pearls, like an electromagnetic wave. The pulse invaded my body, and then I felt it.

'It feels like a river of lava is flowing through my body,' I thought, shocked. 'But this level of pain is far from the maximum I can endure.'

Although Glenn's thoughts raced at full speed, his exterior remained calm and serene.

Time passed, and the sound of glass breaking could be heard coming from Glenn's body. Inside, his energy pathways eagerly absorbed the pure, clean energy emitted by the catalysts. Every second, a part of the pathways was cleared, and Glenn's body grew stronger.

Even when encountering blockages that obstructed the flow, the energy took no more than a few seconds to destroy them. Time passed quietly, and at no point did Glenn let out a scream of pain.

'Impressive. Even among the most talented of the twelve families, such pain tolerance is rare,' Lesley praised in her thoughts.

As her mental praises ended, the process of clearing the energy pathways also came to an end. It was easily noticeable, as the once-transparent pearls now returned to their red color due to contact with the innate energy of Glenn's Core. This only happened when the energy pathways were fully cleared.

'Now the show begins: absorbing prana from the catalysts until the core is saturated. The longer a demon can absorb energy, the more talented they are.'

'Under these conditions, with so many catalysts vibrating, his core should saturate in five minutes, maybe six. Anything beyond that, and we can consider the birth of a new genius,' Lesley thought, without much hope.

Glenn felt that the energy from the pearls had changed, transforming into something far more aggressive, impatient, rebellious, and domineering. Behind his heart, a tiny grain of sand had formed.

'That's my innate core.'

Then, as if following a natural flow, that grain of sand began to absorb energy uncontrollably, as if starving.

Prana coursed through his energy pathways like sulfuric acid being injected into his body. It was violent and needed to be tamed, and that's what Glenn was focusing on at the moment.

'Calm down, you damn thing. We've got all the time in the world. No need to tear me apart from the inside,' he complained to the energy as if it were a living entity.

"What will his pathways be like? A mage's or a warrior's?" Lesley wondered.

At the same time:

'What the hell are these pathways?!' Glenn screamed internally.

Glenn was in a deep meditative state, as if he were one of the cells permeating the paths of his energy pathways. This was a unique sensation every cultivator experienced during Awakening. It was at this moment that he would assess his energy pathways. And Glenn's pathways—how to describe them?

'What the hell is this? They're thick, resilient, and robust like a fire truck hose. But what the hell is this?'

Contrary to Lesley's description, where energy pathways would assume a single form—either robust or thin—Glenn's were robust, imposing, and rigid, yet composed of a series of pores that facilitated the ejection of energy outside the body.

'It's like my energy pathways are the best of both worlds. Bingo. Finally, things are going right for me,' he thought in ecstasy, aware that he had just awakened extremely rare energy pathways.

"Seven minutes," Lesley exclaimed, surprised. Seven minutes under these conditions already put him on par with the best geniuses of the current demonic kingdom.

"Phew… Her Majesty truly saw something no one else did," Lesley muttered.

But it didn't stop there.

"Eight minutes."

"Nine minutes."

"Ten minutes. This is insane. If this continues, he's going to explode."

"Eleven minutes."

"Twelve minutes. His body can't handle the force of his own core. It makes sense—he was a slave until recently."

Blood began to trickle from Glenn's nose. Soon, his ears, eyes, and mouth followed suit. His body was cracking under the potential it was demonstrating.

"Twelve minutes. This can't go on," Lesley said, fully alert.

She quickly approached, but before she could interrupt the process, she noticed the pearls were turning transparent again, indicating the process had ended.

"Thank goodness. Twelve minutes, that's craz…" She couldn't finish her sentence.

**

Just as a chain reaction had formed, it also collapsed. Glenn, though in that space within his own consciousness, felt his body in tatters. An unbearable pain began to hammer his head and radiate through the rest of his body, as if thousands of needles were being embedded into his skin simultaneously.

It was then that he finally realized the small, greedy grain of sand that was his core had finally been satisfied.

'Ugh… About time, you glutton.'

It had grown from a grain of sand to the size of a marble. Feeling the process end, Glenn finally relaxed, his consciousness loosening, expecting the sweet pleasure of transformation.

It was the worst mistake he could have made during his Awakening. For he failed to notice a second grain of sand, hidden just below his navel.

In two seconds, all the pearls that were red turned transparent again. Lesley was a few meters away, ready to interrupt the process, when she noticed it had ended.

But then, suddenly, one pearl began to glow blue, and in an accelerated chain reaction, all the others began to shine blue. What followed was a colossal explosion inside the small room.

"BOOOOOOOOOOM!"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH…" Glenn's guttural voice echoed throughout the area.

Lesley was thrown toward the exit, her legs colliding with the white stone table, and in a spinning motion, she crashed into the wall of the room.

"Blerrg…" Blood spilled from her mouth due to the impact, and there was a terrible wound on her right arm.

"What is this?" she exclaimed, confused.

Glenn now floated above the pearl tub. All the pearls orbited his body like lunar satellites orbiting a planet.

Inside his body, a second grain, which had gone unnoticed, took shape. Below his navel, a second innate core, as fierce as the first, began to absorb mana from the catalysts.

The pain Glenn felt was a hundred times worse than before. His pathways had been cleared assuming the energy used would be prana. Thus, an entire biological signature had formed within his pathways, which were now being attacked by violent mana making its way toward the second innate core.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGRR!" His body began to bleed from every pore. But his eyes remained unshaken.

'I'M GOING TO SURVIVE, DAMN IT. WHETHER IT'S THIS OR ANYTHING THAT STANDS IN MY WAY.'

Soon, two energies clashed for control of the energy pathways. Prana violently pushed mana back, while mana retaliated, attacking everything around it.

'At this rate, I'm going to die. I have to do something.'

Realizing the chaos inside his body, Glenn was terrified. So much accumulated luck exploding into terrible misfortune.

Two innate cores: this had never been reported in this world, much less two innate cores with different energies.

Observing the internal chaos, a suicidal idea formed in his mind.

'It has to work.'

Glenn, instead of choosing one energy and helping in the tug-of-war, began forcing the two energies to collide at strange angles.

'1st attempt—Failure…'

'2nd attempt—Failure…'

Lesley watched the scene in astonishment. An orb of blue and red energy enveloped Glenn, and even using all her strength, she couldn't penetrate the sphere.

"What do I do? What do I do?" Despair gripped her heart. The memory of her queen emphasizing that this demon belonged to her hammered in her mind.

"There's nothing to do. He's on his own," she said, kneeling and praying to the goddess she believed in: "Susanoo, please, just this once."

**

298th Attempt—Failure…

'I'm going to die, I'm going to die. Come on, damn it, work!'

"Eighteen minutes," it's impossible for anyone to endure this.

Failure after failure, attempt after attempt, Glenn never gave up.

299th Attempt—Success! Yes, yes, yes, I did it!

Inside Glenn's consciousness, using all his energy, he achieved the impossible. The energies that had once clashed head-on for control of the energy pathways gradually began to collide at different angles within his body.

His idea was to find a point where both would collide in such a way that the resulting vector would make them run side by side within the energy pathways. It was difficult, and when he was on the brink of death, he succeeded.

Both energies, now confined by the walls of the energy pathways, began to reshape Glenn's body. The reshaping started with his pathways, which had to adapt to two antagonistic forces running side by side. They were forced to expand, resist, and adapt, as if a new bed were being carved for two turbulent rivers.

Next came the usual transformation every Awakened experiences:

Remodeling of blood vessels and removal of impurities.

However, in Glenn, this process was completely different from the norm. His blood vessels were reshaped under extreme conditions and now shimmered in a sparkling gold; his blood pulsed strongly within his body, fueled by two energies. Slowly, his vitality returned, but Glenn had long since fallen unconscious.

Lesley watched the entire scene in astonishment until the red and blue sphere finally began to dissipate, like a mist fading in the sun. The pearls turned transparent again and finally collapsed to the ground, along with Glenn's floating body.

But before he hit the edges of the tub, Lesley moved quickly and caught him in her arms.

"What happened here?"

Checking his vital signs, a sigh of relief escaped her lips.

"He's alive." Shock and disbelief appeared on her face as she sent a small pulse of energy to probe the inside of Glenn's body.

"What the hell is this?"