Chapter 136: A Cracked Heart
"Agh!"
"It hurts like hell!"
Silas burst out of the bathtub, stumbling onto the floor as though he had just escaped a volcano. Every inch of his body throbbed with a level of pain he had never experienced before.
All he had done was meditate a little longer than usual. The process had stopped feeling as smooth as before, yet instead of giving in, he had forced himself to endure through sheer will.
Surprisingly, his will had broken long before the pain did.
The agony overwhelmed him, tearing him out of the Time Mind World before he could even understand what was happening.
Silas stood there in confusion, anger slowly rising within him. Ever since returning from the mission, everything had been going wrong.
"I need to calm down..."
He took several slow breaths, his gaze drifting toward the bathtub. The instant the memory of that unbearable pain resurfaced, however, he immediately turned away and dashed out of the bathroom.
"I won’t solve anything if I keep letting this rage control me."
He suddenly stopped.
"Wait..."
"This isn’t my rage."
"It’s the Shadowheart’s."
Had he realised this under different circumstances, panic would have been his first reaction. Rage meant the Shadowheart was trying to seize control of his body.
Yet instead of fear, a smile slowly spread across his face.
"You bastard."
"So you’ve finally started resisting those black threads."
The smile lasted only a moment before fading into a helpless shake of his head.
"At least give me a sign."
"Tell me where I can find a proper knife to cut those damned vines off you."
"Useless bastard."
Despite the insults, he felt much better.
’At least I’m not alone in this mess.’
That single thought eased the pressure weighing on his mind. The panic slowly receded, allowing his thoughts to settle once more.
Silas walked into the study room, sat at his desk, and pulled out several blank sheets of paper along with a pen.
At first, he tried putting his thoughts into words, but they refused to take shape. Instead of forcing them, he began drawing.
Circle after circle covered the paper until nearly an hour had passed and the once-blank sheets were drowned beneath black ink.
It looked meaningless, yet the simple act of drawing gradually untangled the chaos inside his head.
"It all started after the Shadowheart stole the flower and baited the dragon..."
He filled page after page with scattered observations, slowly tracing every strange event back to a single moment. The instant the Shadowheart seized control of his body, everything had changed after that.
"But I tested the entire plan inside the Time Mind World before doing it, and nothing felt abnormal back then..."
His instincts insisted that the answer lay there, but the memory refused to reveal anything useful.
Silas replayed every detail of that day, carefully separating the important moments from the chaos that followed. Unfortunately, the harder he searched, the more frustrated he became.
"Everything about that day was strange."
He rubbed his temples, already sensing that this problem ran far deeper than he had hoped.
"Then I’ll start with the moment I entered the Time Mind World to come up with the plan."
Unable to trust his instincts any longer, he decided to rely on logic instead.
Unfortunately, that memory proved just as troublesome.
"Dammit, Darius."
"I can’t even remember how many times I came out to speak with you whenever the plan fell apart..."
Silas tried to reconstruct the sequence of events, but the memories blurred together. Everything had happened too quickly. The moment he realised how valuable Darius’ judgment was, he had begun seeking him out whenever the slightest flaw appeared in his plans.
"Wait..."
His eyes suddenly widened.
"I’ve never faced that problem before..."
"My Time Mind World has never failed to solve a problem."
He finally noticed the first true anomaly.
At the time, the dragon’s overwhelming presence, the pressure of Gaia Calling, and the endless dangers surrounding them had buried that detail beneath everything else. He had dismissed it as nothing more than a limitation of his Time Mind World, but now, after carefully retracing every step, he realised how reckless that conclusion had been.
"My special world has always found an answer, no matter the situation."
He muttered under his breath, frustration rising inside him. Such a subtle change had escaped his attention entirely.
"If that was the first sign of this curse..."
"Then my instincts were right."
His gaze shifted toward the pile of papers scattered across the desk, each filled with notes as he tried to reconstruct everything that had happened since encountering the dragon.
"It all began there."
He no longer doubted it, yet he still couldn’t determine what had gone wrong or what had triggered the change.
’Dragons are terrifying creatures.’
His Monster Studies teacher’s voice surfaced from memory.
’Even after two centuries in Eldrune and countless battles against them, humanity still doesn’t understand the limits of their power.’
Silas fell silent.
The more he pondered those words, the more they seemed to fit everything that had happened.
"It explains too much."
His eyes narrowed as an almost irresistible urge to punch the dragon in the face surged through him.
"Calm down, bastard."
He immediately realised the anger wasn’t his own; it belonged to Shadowheart.
Instead of frightening him, the realisation only strengthened his conviction. It was another piece of evidence that his theory was correct.
Unfortunately, it still left him back where he started. He got no answers, only more questions.
"It has to be related to my Mana."
He abandoned his attempt to sort through every strange event and focused instead on anything that could have interfered with his Mana or his Mana Heart.
The answer appeared almost immediately.
"...No way."
He slowly rose to his feet, his body trembling.
"The movement technique Shadowheart taught me..."
"It can’t be."
He wasn’t speaking to himself. His eyes remained fixed on the empty air, as though Shadowheart were standing before him.
Among everything that had happened, only one event had directly interfered with both his Mana and his Mana Heart.
"It wasn’t the technique itself..."
"It was absorbing Mana Crystals and forcing their mana through my body to fuel it."
As he recalled the torrent of Mana rushing from the crystals, flowing through his arm before passing directly through his Mana Heart, certainty settled over him.
That was where everything had begun.
"You son of a bitch..."
"You taught me something that didn’t just ruin me..."
"It has been killing you too."
"What an idiot."
Silas felt a surge of rage; this time came entirely from himself. If not for seeing how effortlessly the Shadowheart toyed with the dragon, he would have never even considered absorbing Mana from crystals.
"I didn’t even know I could absorb Mana from those rocks until you showed me."
"What a jerk."
Yet the anger disappeared as quickly as it came.
Silas couldn’t fool himself. Without that technique, the Shadowheart would have never escaped the dragon, and he would have never found the courage to face the beast alone.
"Still... all of this started because of you."
He sat down, his voice now completely devoid of the rage from moments ago.
The Shadowheart might have thrown him into a disaster, but it had also led him to gain the dragon’s blood and forced him through experiences he had only ever heard about in stories.
"I shouldn’t waste my energy on this shit."
Cursing the Shadowheart wouldn’t change the past. Instead, he calmed himself and began piecing together the events he knew for certain.
As soon as he connected two incidents separated by several days, everything suddenly clicked.
After encountering the dragon for the first time, he had continued fighting monsters without relying on his Time Mind World until the distress signal appeared.
"Wait..."
A faint memory surfaced.
"I used to meditate inside the outpost during those days."
He carefully recalled those moments, and there was no mistaking it.
"I couldn’t reach the same level of focus I had before."
"The sounds of battle... the monsters’ roars... they kept pulling me out."
Silas slowly narrowed his eyes. That had been the first symptom.
His Mana Heart had already been affected back then, yet he had overlooked it completely.
"And that’s all thanks to you."
"Bastard."
Had the dragon not occupied every corner of his mind after their first encounter, he might have realised something was wrong much sooner.
"So the longer I remain like this... the worse it’ll become."
That was the first conclusion he reached after marking the three anchor points he had uncovered.
"Or..."
Another possibility emerged.
"The more Mana I absorbed from those crystals... the worse I became."
Silence filled the room as he considered both theories.
The difference between them was enormous.
If the crystals were the sole cause, then avoiding them from now on should stop his condition from worsening. That would buy him enough time to gather more clues, conduct research, and search for a cure.
But if his condition continued to deteriorate on its own... Then he was in real trouble.
Every passing day would push him closer to a point of no return.
"I can’t waste another second thinking about it."
There was no way to determine which theory was correct, so he chose to assume the worst.
"I’ll find a cure within days."
"One week at most."
"Or else..."
His gaze drifted toward the bottle filled with shimmering orange blood.
Cher had said that drinking it could heal any wound or affliction. That was why she had also warned him to be in perfect condition beforehand.
Otherwise, its power would be wasted.
"But how am I supposed to cure something no one has ever seen before?"
Silas knew that his Mana Heart had always been his greatest gift, his greatest secret.
But now, it had become his heaviest shackle.