While it was generally pretty hard to tell if someone evolved purely by appearance, disregarding cases where a physical aspect clearly changes, that didn’t make it impossible. Certainly, last time the elders only analysed his body by the limbs he discarded in that initial fight against Lostradus. But if they put enough effort in, they could easily peer into his body and slowly work out the differences.

It would be a waste of time and effort from their points of view, but not impossible.

And for that reason Akevorax minimised all time spent in the Dragonlands over the next couple days, in the meantime making it clear what was approaching and getting Mala’s help to create a suitable array. With the cornem tier metals he acquired, it was a breeze to create the array he needed.

This one designed to either cripple or kill a master tier at will. As a security measure, he also built up a huge store of mana which allowed it to activate thrice. Whilst setting up the array itself took a day at most, he spent a lot of time on optimisations. Just simple things like the metal purity in certain connections, or adding additional ones to either shorten or lengthen flows between junctions. All of these things had minor effects but could drastically speed up the activation speed of an array, not that he bothered with it in the past since simpler arrays overlooked such necessity.

But besides all this, he also found time to spend with Jaren once more. The pair stared at another quickly forming Mind and watched as it easily linked together with the intact Soul and regenerated Body. Even after watching this process upwards of 80 times, Akevorax still hadn’t figured out what exactly allowed the three components to couple together.

However, he ruled out a magical force long ago. It appeared that whatever kept the three parts of a living being intact came from a physical property. The obvious answer all this time was the brain, but even now he couldn’t precisely pick out how the brain and mental spaces worked.

The dragons already had that knowledge though, and so a quick library trip resolved that.

“Akevorax, how much longer will this take. I thought the odds of success were supposed to be a lot higher?” Jaren tried to speak apathetically, but hidden in his voice was a strain caused by a long building pain.

“That’s what I thought too, but it seems the process only decreases the chances for complete failure. We’ve only had 10 partial successes so far, for 83 tests it’s really not good.”

“Is it time we call it quits then? We can just wait… The method with Raccelline is guaranteed to work, right?”

“It will. But– Just a few more times then, let’s finish on a round number,” Akevorax gave a fair standpoint.

While he hardly wanted to end things like this, the insane number of failures made it clear that they were running headfirst into a brick wall over and over. It was no surprise when they encountered two more failures back to back… But then another partial success appeared. And here they had to actually test the created Mind to see if any hidden defects remained.

In a slight daze, Rebecca’s body sat up and rubbed its head. Her face looked around and clearly tried to recall her position, but soon came to touch her chest and feel her intact heart. Her eyes locked with Jaren and Akevorax’s and then looked down at her nude body, quickly cycling mana to hide herself. Although part of the stealth failed as her manipulation went awry. However, Akevorax felt good enough about the response to not kill her instantly, this was already on the better end of things.

“Did you all revive me? How did… Why isn’t Mala here?” To their surprise, she spoke out immediately, clearly with a great degree of cognizance as she realised that most of the group were missing.

Neither of the two responded to her, instead Jaren turning to Akevorax with a yearning gaze, “This is clearly a success. Right? Can we accept this?”

“We need more tests… It must be perfect,” Akevorax gave his ultimatum, ignoring Rebecca’s gulps from within the barrier. This was all purposeful, to see how she reacted in the face of death.

However, surprisingly, she took a deep breath and nodded in her invisible state. Since she slightly messed up the procedure, while neither of the two saw her body, the motion left a slight mark through the air. A very resourceful creation this time, she understood that an imperfect result could be catastrophic for their group… He already really liked the odds of this one. Akevorax gave a thought and the arrays which bound Rebecca fell apart. She took a few wobbly steps, her body’s condition still fine but the adjustment of this new Mind clearly took time.

This data also cleared up some more issues Akevorax had with his own research. Namely, figuring out why the golem bodies he created also struggled to integrate Minds. He’d been so obsessed that he never realised how even normal bodies took time to do this. In which case, that means it’s not a link but more of an acclimation process.

How that helped was up in the air though.

Jaren stepped forward to help the wobbling Rebecca, holding her as the two walked. She didn’t show any dislike towards being touched, and even tightly held onto him, more aspects which agreed with old behaviour.

The two whispered some words to each other as well, hidden to stop Akevorax from hearing as well. He expected this though, while the group had few secrets, it wasn’t as though they paraded their deeper thoughts and feelings about. Especially Rebecca who hid them just as much as her physical body. While the two talked deeply, Jaren brushing her hair on occasions, he actually cracked a smile and appeared relieved.

In their hushed tones, Rebecca told him, “I think… he’ll kill me. I’m not entirely remade, but I don’t want to die. Not again.”

“It’ll be okay. I’ll talk to them later, let’s get you dressed and take you to see everyone,” he eased the terseness in her voice and helped her put on some simpler clothing. Well, simple at their level. The leather pants used the hide of a gold tier beast, her linen shirt was actually a mithril tier plant, and the leather coat on top utilised a mithril tier once more. It stood up to her rapid and powerful movements, whilst at least defending her a tiny bit.

“Could I have my daggers too?” She spoke aloud and Akevorax threw the pair of Low-rank treasure tools over to her, the same she utilised against the progenitor back then. Rather than speak once more, she nodded as her sign of appreciation.

While the two walked ahead to the teleportation array, Akevorax initiated a series of tests to confirm her internals all worked as expected.

The Elder eyes scanned her body, revealing it functioned like a perfectly healthy human, and even with an enhancement of Origin Force no abnormalities appeared. Her new Mind perfectly melded with the Body and Soul, so far this was the best result they’d ever had. However, her nervous footsteps and Jaren’s lip-biting did not go unnoticed.

Not enough to kill her over though, she just died and suddenly came back to life. Jaren was clearly extremely stressed after watching her revive and die so much, no way he wanted this success dead too.

“Hold on. There’s something I need to check,” Akevorax called out and immediately released a flush of mana, scaring the pair immensely. But both stopped in place and turned anyway, Rebecca stared at him with both a bit of fear and discontent, an acceptable emotion… But this wasn’t a test.

“What’s the matter? I don’t think she’s wrong to be unhappy about potentially dying?” Jaren naturally defended her, and Akevorax fully agreed with that response. But that was never the problem.

He felt an issue of far greater magnitude.

“Why did the storm suddenly grow larger?” Akevorax’s statement shocked the two of them, and the sharpened gaze looked at Rebecca as no more than meat on a chopping block. She stepped back, both in fear and towards the array so nearby.

He didn’t need more of a confirmation, this alone was enough.

The group’s tension exploded, Akevorax not at all hesitating to draw out the dark orb and fling it straight for Rebecca’s heart. She already used her cycled mana to launch backwards into the array, but with his attack’s objectively greater speed she stood no chance…

Until a blast of arrows struck the orb’s side, diverting the path ever so slightly and tearing through her arm instead.

Akevorax immediately fired it towards her once more, but the slight delay already landed Rebecca on the array. It took a mere fraction of a second for some runes formed of mana to transform into a completely new set, and she activated the array.

Gone. Just like that.

Akevorax saw the exact location and knew its specifics as well… A teleporter that anyone can access so long as they pay a price. It was one of the consistent locations the group memorised long ago in case they were separated and had to teleport back. A safety measure which backfired immensely.

He glared at Jaren who looked back without the faintest regret.

The dragon shouted to try and get some logic through the man’s head, “Why would you protect her? Who knows what sort of problems she’s hidden, and now she’s gone! Why?”

Jaren didn’t raise his voice though, but neither did he smile foolishly. He responded calmly, quietly almost, “Why does it have to be perfect? Can’t she just be herself… You didn’t have to push her away. I’ll go find her.”

He cut his own thoughts off abruptly and stored his bow once more, stepping into the array and activating it once more with the same coordinates. Akevorax tried to find words to respond with, but he hardly got out a sentence before the same flash of light consumed Jaren’s figure and teleported the archer away…

And now came the part where he had to explain to the others what just happened.

Not to mention the storm grew slightly once more, it seemed that the route he took was objectively poor. If possible maybe he should’ve just accepted this imperfect Rebecca, after all, it was purely a matter of obsession that he wanted everything how it was before. Jaren’s absence generally made things harder overall, whilst far from the strongest, he was definitely best at improvised tactics amongst the group. His bloodline only excelled further at that since it granted such a huge array of tools.

Now, let alone that their best sneak attacker was gone, they’d also lost a valuable ranged attacker.

He couldn’t allow these losses to continue racking up. It was unfair on them all, especially since any threat to Raccelline perished long ago. While the eternals wanted her, they didn’t really care for her over Akevorax.

As he left the arrays behind him, Akevorax teleported back to the Dragonlands and spent the better part of the day just thinking.

How to explain this, what his reasoning was, how he knew it was wrong… Then dragged Jaren into it because of all the people he would never refuse such an option.

It would be best to cut ties here, after Mala helped with the array, he’d make this their final interaction. If he died, then Raccelline could leave with them. If he survived, then he would hold up his end of the deal and help save her father…

But at times like this, it’s a good thing you don’t let overreacting children make the decisions.

As not long after, Mala was rubbing her head and saying, “Akevorax, for the love of Manus, shut the fuck up.”

Truly, she had a way with words.