"I failed again..." A young elven youth with silver hair muttered as he exhaled. The glow of his eyes slowly faded from emerald green to blue as he got up from where he sat.

"Just how did Bahamut do it?" Sel asked as he made his way out of the room he was in. It had been three days since Bahamut’s ascension, and it had come with a lot of pressure for all the new disciples, especially the strong eleven. Bahamut was still unconscious, and through Henut’s diagnosis, they discovered that he ascended with 100% elemental affinity. That was the reason why he was still incapacitated.

His body was still changing, his system was transforming, and once he woke up, he would be as good as new. He’d taken the first step out of mortality. Now he had an additional 50 years outside of his actual life expectancy... Not that it even mattered, considering the person was Bahamut.

Anyway, there was pressure on Sel the most out of all the strong eleven. Even the girls who were part of Bahamut’s "harem" weren’t facing that kind of pressure. Sel was known to be Bahamut’s closest companion in the sect, and also the second-ranked out of the strong eleven, so he had a strong dose of expectations on him. It wasn’t as if he cared. Sel wasn’t someone who couldn’t withstand pressure. He was born into a family of competition. Pressure was a daily snack for him.

But this was different. Ascending with 100% elemental affinity wasn’t new, but it wasn’t common either. The common highest known was 75%. Even 80% was difficult to achieve, and not everyone knew how to achieve it. But Bahamut had surpassed those marks and crossed to the very top, 100%. If that wasn’t enough pressure, nothing else would be.

Sel knew his elements. There were three. He was a tri-elementalist... if he ascended to Tier 2. His elements were Earth, Plant, and a very Space element. Cultivating the first two was fairly easy, and he could tell that he was almost at the very peak, maybe 90% or 100%, but space? How does he cultivate that? Go to outer space or what? And what made him very worried was that the space element held his special trait in relation to his bloodline, away from his concept.

He had to find a way to cultivate the space elemental affinity to its highest, or he would suffer the consequences sooner than later.

"I should go see Master. Maybe she would have a solution..."

With that, Sel headed up the stairs to Elder Silvia’s hall.

...

The chamber was sealed to prevent light and sound, except for the slow and thick bubbling of something dangerous. At the center of the room lay a carved stone basin, with ancient symbols etched into its edges, glowing faintly with a sickly green hue. The inscriptions pulsed at intervals, stabilizing what lay within, containing it... barely. The liquid wasn’t normal. It wasn’t water, or even fully liquid. It was poison, condensed, and refined.

It bubbled sluggishly, releasing faint wisps of toxic vapor that hissed as they touched the air, corroding even the space around them before being dragged back into the pool by the formation inscribed beneath.

Gabi sat inside it.

His body was submerged up to his chest. He was shirtless and unmoving, yet trembling. His short green hair clung to his pale face, damp and messy, strands sticking to his forehead as sweat mixed with the poison around him. His skin, unnaturally pale, almost translucent, made the dark green scales along his cheeks, collarbone, and arms stand out even more. They glowed faintly, dimmed, and glowed again.

His horns arched backward from his temples, veins faintly visible along their base, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat. His tail, long and scaled, rested behind him in the pool, twitching occasionally, betraying the pain he refused to voice.

The poison seeped into him through acceptance. His pores opened, and his skin drank it in, but his body fought back. A very natural reaction.

"Hnn..." A low sound escaped him despite his effort to remain silent. His fingers curled against his thighs, nails digging into his own flesh as the liquid around him reacted violently, bubbling faster and more aggressively as if responding to his resistance.

The first phase was always the same. Rejection.

His body recognized the poison as a threat. A lethal one, so his blood surged, as his system tried to purge it out, expel it before it could spread.

But Gabi didn’t let it. His eyes snapped open, slitted and glowing, a deep, eerie purplish-green.

"Stay... still..."

He wasn’t speaking to the poison. He was speaking to himself. The liquid surged again, rising slightly as if trying to swallow him whole. His muscles tensed, then relaxed. That was the key.

Poison could not be dominated like fire, or controlled like water, or resisted like earth. Poison had to be accepted, understood, and integrated.

His breathing slowed, forced, measured, even as his body screamed.

Inside, his consciousness drifted, dark, viscous, and endless. A sea of green. It stretched infinitely, shifting slowly, like a living organism observing him in return.

"So this is you..." His voice echoed faintly.

It was different from what he knew about elemental affinities. Elemental affinities were the cores of the element. Only by ascending would they expand and become something bigger, but they still remained as cores. But his was different. It encompassed his entire consciousness, and it wasn’t a core. It was a living entity.

’Is this because I awakened my ancestral bloodline? But what is it?’

The poison responded curiously. It moved toward him, tendrils forming from the vast sea, reaching, testing, probing his presence. Gabit didn’t moved, attack, or retreat. He allowed it. The tendrils touched him, and he felt pain.

Corrosive pain.

It ate at him slowly. His consciousness trembled. His form destabilized slightly as the poison began breaking him down, analyzing him, deciding whether he was worthy... or simply another thing to dissolve.

Outside, his body convulsed.

A violent shudder ran through him as dark veins spread across his skin, branching outward from his chest, crawling up his neck, down his arms, across his torso like living cracks.

Blood slipped from the corner of his lips, dark and thick, but he didn’t move.

"I won’t... be consumed..."

Inside, the poison surged again, stronger. This time he move forward. He stepped into it. The tendrils wrapped around him instantly, tightening, crushing, dissolving, and he embraced it.

"Then I’ll become you..."

The sea trembled.

Outside, the pool reacted violently. The bubbling intensified, rising higher, spilling over the edges slightly before the inscriptions flared, forcing it back down. The green glow deepened, darkened, shifting toward something more dangerous.

Gabi’s body arched slightly, his head tilting back as a strained breath escaped him. The scales on his body spread; more appeared along his shoulders, down his arms, and across his ribs.

His tail lashed hard and stilled.

Inside, the poison no longer attacked blindly. It flowed into him, through him, and with him. The tendrils lost their aggression, dissolving into currents that circled his form, weaving around his limbs, slipping into his very being.

The pain didn’t stop. It deepened, but it changed from destruction... to transformation.

Time passed; unclear how long. Minutes, hours? The chamber remained silent save for the occasional violent bubble from the pool.

Then stillness. The liquid calmed. Gabi’s body stopped trembling. Slowly, he opened his eyes. They were brighter and sharper.

He exhaled long and heavy.

"That... was horrible..." But his lips curved slightly, because he was still there, and the poison was no longer rejecting him.