William watched Berry closely, bracing himself for an outburst. He knew that for a spirit master of her standing, questioning the source of her failure was akin to poking an open wound.
In the hierarchy of the Academy, where power was the only currency, her stagnation was a public humiliation that the Long Clan struggled to hide. He feared he had overstepped, breaking the fragile rapport they had built.
However, the reaction he received was the polar opposite of what he expected. Berry paused, gave him a long, inquisitive glance, and then erupted into a fit of genuine, melodic laughter.
"Is this all? Wow," she said, wiping a stray tear of mirth from her eye. "I thought you were going to ask for something truly scandalous. You're just like the others after all, obsessed with that number."
William remained silent, his expression unreadable. He didn't offer a polite smile or a defensive retort; he simply waited for the laughter to die down and for the truth to emerge.
"It's not a secret anyway," she said, shrugging her shoulders. She adopted an air of forced cheerfulness that felt like a thin porcelain mask over a growing void.
"I don't know what went wrong. I've tried every manual in the Long Clan's library. I've meditated under frozen waterfalls and consumed elixirs that cost more than this entire Academy sector. But no matter what I do, my spirit power won't budge a single inch. I've been stuck at ninety-nine for over a year and a half. Can you imagine the frustration? My father even dragged every high-tier physician in the kingdom to inspect me, convinced I'd been poisoned by a rival clan. Can you believe that?"
As she spoke, William's suspicion deepened into a cold certainty. Her spirit wasn't just "radiant"—it was blinding. Even while discussing a topic that would have driven most geniuses to a state of catatonic despair, she glowed with a resilient, defiant energy.
This was the girl who was supposed to kill herself in less than thirty days? It was impossible. A girl with this much fire in her soul wouldn't surrender to a bottleneck. If she died in the forest, it wouldn't be by her own hand. It would be an execution masked as a tragedy.
"Can I ask one more thing?" William ventured, his voice steadying. He had confirmed his hunch; now he needed to diagnose the disease.
"What? Do you want to try your luck and claim the reward my father offered for a cure?" she asked lightly, her tone teasing.
William didn't flinch. "I might know a method. It's an ancient technique I learned from my family before... well, before everything."
He offered the white lie smoothly, providing a plausible source for the forbidden knowledge he was about to use. "Do you happen to have a spirit crystal and a candle of light on you?"
Berry didn't ask questions. She simply touched a slender, silver-filigree bracelet on her right wrist. William's eyes sharpened. It was a high-grade spatial storage item, a relic that could buy a small city. To a porter, it was a legendary artefact; to her, it was a common accessory.
"Here," she said, and with a faint shimmer of light, dozens of high-quality spirit crystals and bundles of green-spotted candles appeared in her palm. She held them out as if they were worthless pebbles. "Is this enough?"
"I... I only need one of each," William said, momentarily stunned by the sheer waste of resources. He reached out and selected a single crystal and one candle, waiting for her to return the rest to her storage.
But Berry didn't pull her hand back. "Just take them," she said, her voice softening with genuine kindness.
"I know porters are never given enough supplies. I don't know what really brought you out here tonight, but these candles might save your life if you run into something faster than you. Consider it a tip for the 'ancient family method'."
William looked at the pile of wealth in her hand and then into her red eyes. He realised she wouldn't take a "no" for an answer. She wasn't pitying him; she was protecting him in the only way she knew how.
"Thanks," he said, stashing the crystals and candles into his tattered bag. "Now, I need you to do exactly as I say. This test only works if the person with the bottleneck performs the infusion themselves."
He handed back the chosen crystal and candle, then began to explain the process of the Spectral Refraction Test he had performed earlier in his cabin. He detailed the specific way to melt the wax and the exact rhythm required to pulse spirit energy into the stone.
Berry listened with a faint, amused smile. It was clear she didn't believe a word of it. In her mind, this was likely a game—a way for a lonely, imaginative porter to feel important and stay in the company of a pretty girl a little longer.
She took the items, her expression one of indulgent curiosity, as if she were humouring a child's tall tale.
Being a young lady of such striking beauty made Berry the natural centre of gravity wherever she went. Whether in her own lectures or among the senior disciples, she was constantly trailed by eyes filled with either admiration or envy.
Her prestigious lineage and the immense wealth of the Long Clan only intensified the scrutiny. Most boys her age would have been stammering or tripping over their own feet in her presence, but William remained clinical, his focus entirely on the crystal in her hands.
"Rub it evenly. Yes, exactly like that," William instructed, his voice devoid of the subservience common to porters. He guided her hands with the steady patience of a master craftsman.
Under her fingers, the green medicinal wax coated the glistening facets of the spirit crystal in a uniform layer. "Now, inject your spirit power into the core."
"Then what?" she asked, leaning in closer. Her eyes sparkled with the giddy anticipation of a child waiting for a street magician to pull a rabbit from a hat.
"Keep pouring your energy in until I tell you to stop," William replied. He didn't know whether to laugh at her innocence or cry at the sheer waste of her potential.
He stepped back slightly, his eyes fixed on the stone, waiting for the results of this diagnostic technique—a method far more precise than anything the Novistic Kingdom's physicians could devise.
William already knew the nature of her spirit. As a direct descendant of the Long Clan, she carried the Fire Dragon Spirit, a high-tier manifestation of raw, elemental fury.
The moment Berry's energy surged into the crystal, the green matter didn't just vanish—it evaporated in a flash of heat. At the centre of the stone, the change was instantaneous and violent.
Unlike the twelve meagre specks William had produced, ninety-nine brilliant white dots shimmered into existence, crowded together in a dense, vibrating cluster.
But it was the secondary reaction that caused William's breath to catch.
"Wow! There are lights inside!" Berry gasped. She hadn't expected this "game" to yield anything so visually stunning. "What are these? They're beautiful... Red and... golden?"
She raised the crystal to her eye level, mesmerised by the way the colours danced around the white dots. The red was like a living flame, while the gold possessed a metallic, regal sheen. When she looked up to share her delight, however, she was met with William's wide-eyed, horrified expression.
"What's wrong?" Her smile faltered. Looking at the crystal, she felt a strange, instinctive intimacy with those flickering lights, but looking at William, she felt a cold spike of anxiety.
"No wonder..." William whispered, his voice trembling with a mix of awe and dread. "No wonder you couldn't break through. It wasn't stagnation. It was a siege."
The tone of his voice hit Berry like a physical blow. The playful, indulgent mask she had been wearing shattered.
The authority, the gravity, and the sheer conviction in his eyes told her that this wasn't a game. She came from a clan that prided itself on ancient knowledge, yet she had never seen a diagnostic tool reveal the colours of spirit essence in such a raw, unfiltered way.
"Phew, I just mistook you for a moment," she muttered, trying to force the scepticism back into her mind.
She tried to convince herself that William was just a porter, a weak boy who had stumbled upon a curious trick. How could a failure with twelve spirit points understand a problem that had baffled the kingdom's greatest physicians?
But William didn't give her the chance to retreat into denial. He met her gaze with a look so mature and firm that it felt as though an ancient soul was staring out from behind the child's eyes.
"I know exactly what is holding you back, Lady Berry," he said, his voice dropping to a low, iron-clad register. "And I know a method that can help you break through tonight."
Berry's breath hitched. For a long, agonising moment, her lungs seemed to forget their function. She stared at him, her heart thudding against her ribs in a ragged, uneven rhythm. "Come on... stop saying such dangerous things," she finally wheezed, patting her chest as if to steady her soul.