Liens tightly gripped his right hand, muscles tensed, feeling the sudden surge of power.
"Is this the power of an Extraordinary Knight? No wonder even a weakling like Adonis could overpower me."
"I wonder how much my agility and speed have improved?"
Liens thought to himself, but he didn't forget the great benefactor who helped him become a Knight.
Facing Lucrezia's congratulations, Liens quickly replied, "This is all thanks to Your Highness, the Princess. If not for the potion Your Highness bestowed, I wouldn't even know if I had any hope of advancing."
"No need for flattery, I don't care for it."
"Judging by the elemental reactions from your body, you should have completed most of the elemental purification process."
"That's very good. You must have accumulated a lot. Many Knights find it difficult to achieve even half the purification level when they advance."
Lucrezia sized Liens up and down, nodding with satisfaction.
"Your Highness, the Princess, is the purification process about having only one element exist in the body?"
Liens asked Lucrezia for guidance.
"Purification, as it's called, is the process of having only one element exist in the body, while allowing this element to slowly transform the body."
"Once you complete 'purification,' you will be qualified to pursue the realm of a Great Knight."
"A Great Knight is the realm after a Knight. The specific details require you to explore them yourself."
"I am not a Knight, so I am not very clear about the situation of a Great Knight."
"Things that are only half-understood, speaking too much might instead affect your advancement."
Lucrezia explained to Liens.
"By the way, the 'contract' on you should also be lifted."
"You no longer have to worry about the Glenbagen Family using this to affect you."
"Your Highness, since you discovered my identity, why did you still give me the potion?"
Liens looked at Lucrezia with a hint of surprise.
As for the 'contract' being lifted, he had already guessed it.
Earlier, when he drank the Elemental Baptism Potion and advanced to a Knight.
In his Killing Intent state, he sensed a very small cluster of elements in his brain.
But as a large amount of external elements surged into his body, that small cluster of elements was assimilated.
Finally, under his conscious urging, his brain region is now occupied by green elements.
It's impossible for other elements to exist there, so naturally, there would be no 'contract.'
This is probably why the Shop Assistant in the black market said—
That after becoming an Extraordinary One, the Glenbagen Family's 'contract' would no longer be able to bind them.
"Although the Glenbagen Family's 'contract' is secretive."
"I consider myself to have achieved something in magic, and with careful observation, I can still find the difference between you and ordinary people."
"This strange contract, akin to a curse, is unique enough and provides the Glenbagen Family with many conveniences."
"But it cannot hide its biggest flaw, which is its extremely weak structural integrity, making it unable to affect an Extraordinary One."
"At most, it can only bind ordinary people who haven't mastered elements."
"Conversely, the contract we signed is different. I hope you don't misunderstand."
Lucrezia replied to Liens with a hint of self-satisfaction.
Although she didn't directly answer Liens's question, her final warning was already an answer.
As long as a contract was signed, Liens would be under her control, so naturally, she wouldn't care about his previous identity.
Liens nodded seriously in response, then once again made a request to Lucrezia:
"I prefer to hide in the shadows. Being like a large lamp now, I'm too conspicuous in the eyes of an Extraordinary One, making it easy to expose my strength."
"Therefore, I wonder if Your Highness, the Princess, could bestow upon your subordinate a good method to conceal my elemental reactions?"
"That is a type of magic; you cannot use it."
"However, if you perform excellently from now on, I can give you an alchemical tool that hides your elemental reactions."
Lucrezia explained, while also dangling a carrot in front of Liens.
Upon hearing this, Liens was a little disappointed.
Then, after thinking for a moment and confirming that he had nothing else to ask Lucrezia, he left the instance. MyVirtualLibraryEmpire(*)hoststheoriginal.
Late at night, Military Fortress, dormitory.
Liens opened his tightly closed eyes and sat up from the bed.
He silently felt his body return to its somewhat weak state, as if his advancement in the instance was just a dream.
But he knew, it was different, everything was different.
The world had changed...
At this moment, he was like someone who had broken through a 'cognitive barrier,' and the colorful world opened up to him again.
Liens sensed the faint shimmering elemental light spots outside his body, "seeing" the evenly distributed various elements within the dormitory.
Although he was no longer an Extraordinary Knight, this "elemental vision" was brought out by him.
At the same time, Liens could feel the closeness of the green elements to him.
This closeness was not like the affinity expressed when most of his body was occupied by them in the instance.
Instead, it was a strange sense of intimacy, like the feeling he had when his mind merged with nature while practicing his sword.
Thinking of this, he immediately got up, picked up his longsword, and began to practice.
Wielding the longsword, Liens entered the state of "Killing Intent."
At this time, he could sense that as his swordsmanship unfolded, the green elements were slowly sinking into his body.
Moreover, the more his mind merged into his swordsmanship, into the wind, into nature.
Then, the green Wind Element would accelerate its frequency of entering his body.
"It turns out I had already embarked on the path of an Extraordinary One, it just needed time and accumulation, like swordsmanship, to show results."
And as his thoughts fluctuated, he also exited that state of his mind merging with nature.
He stopped swinging his sword, silently sensing the elements within his body.
He saw the cluster of green Wind Elements, like ribbons, moving irregularly throughout his body.
It was as if a gust of wind had appeared inside him.
Liens could feel a sense of freedom from it.
This was different from when he became a Knight in the instance; at that time, the elements in his body felt like emotionless things.
They were like building blocks, piled up inside his body, and the areas they occupied were the buildings constructed from those blocks.
Liens temporarily couldn't distinguish the superiority of these two types of elements, but he preferred the first one.
Just as he always pursued freedom.
After making his choice in his heart, Liens secretly thought:
"It seems there's no need to try and get the Elemental Baptism Potion from Lucrezia in reality."
"The path is underfoot, why seek external things!"