Juin did not know how long he was out for, but when he woke up, he was back in his bedroom. His entire body felt like lead as he tried to get out of bed."Argh… Urgh… F*ck…" he groaned with each and every movement. Everything from top to toe was completely sore.
"Where are you going?" Wesley said. He was walking up the stairs with a tray filled with dishes when he saw Juin slowly dragging himself out of the bedroom. "I brought you dinner. Mrs. Martin made you some stir fry chicken breast."
"Toi… let…" Juin groaned as he continued to drag himself to the toilet.
Chuckling, Wesley walked past him and went into their bedroom. Once he placed the tray on the table, he stripped Juin"s sweat-stained bedsheet and threw them into the laundry basket.
"Urgh," Wesley groaned as he pinched his nose with his right hand and sprayed the room with a small can of air freshener. "Even with the windows open, this still reeks!"
He then sprayed Juin"s mattress with the air freshener as well before putting on a fresh bedsheet. Mrs. Martin had promised him his favorite dessert, chocolate cake, for tomorrow if he helped Juin out today. Hence, here he was, on a Sat.u.r.day night, cleaning up his roommate"s bed for him.
About 15 minutes later, he could hear Juin"s groans coming from across the hallway. Instead of helping him, Wesley merely sat down on his bed as he waited for Juin to return from his tough journey to the toilet.
He then turned around as Juin changed out of his dirty clothes and into a fresh pair of pajama bottoms.
"I don"t understand," Juin mumbled as he slowly lowered himself down on the bed, groaning and clenching his jaws the whole time. When he was finally seated down on the bed, he sighed. "Why would those jocks at school lift all the time when it would end up in so much pain?"
There was a moment of silence before Wesley replied, "You only end up like this cause you have never exercised much before. After a couple of days, your body would get used to the pain."
Juin sighed. He looked at the food that Wesley brought up and said, "I don"t really have any appet.i.te."
"Mrs. Martin said that you need to eat everything on the tray, or she will be mad," Wesley said as he stood up to go to his table. Sitting down at his table, he said while opening up his textbook, "Oh, and she said to let you know that you and your friends from school don"t have to wear the preppy uniforms, so don"t worry too much about it."
"Mm…" Juin replied. He had to eat at an awkward angle because he did not trust his arms to not drop anything. He was only holding a fork now, and even then, his hand was trembling so much that it took a long time for a piece of chicken to travel from the plate to his mouth.
"Weird… Where"s Lucifer?" Juin thought as he looked around the room. For some reason, he did not see Lucifer at all ever since he woke up. "He didn"t wake me up for my theory lesson..." he thought, wondering if he should be happy or afraid that Lucifer might be thinking of worse methods to torture him.
…
In the world within Juin"s mind, Lucifer was floating in front of Juin"s shackled soul. As usual, he was sitting in midair with his legs crossed as he wore an intense expression on his face. The intense energy that he felt two days ago when Juin unknowingly released the Daemon Flame, as well as the fact that someone placed a powerful shackle on him, made Lucifer suspicious of Juin"s ident.i.ty.
Then, today… Juin managed to raise so many low-level Soul Fire b.a.l.l.s, when even natural-born demons would have trouble calling up more than ten fireb.a.l.l.s at first try. And a human called up hundreds, almost basically filling up the vast white environment!
"Could it be…" Lucifer thought with a serious expression as he stared at Juin"s soul. He was wondering if the current Juin was actually a "fake" Juin, in the sense that Juin"s body had been taken over by another ent.i.ty. And if so, when?
Lucifer closed his eyes and tried to sense the entirety of the area, but a few minutes later, he frowned, and a bead of drop rolled from his forehead to his chin, and when it dropped off his chin and landed on the white floor, Lucifer opened his eyes.
"An endless realm…" Lucifer mumbled to himself. "How is that possible?!"
Even his own realm, or more known as the Soul Dimension, had a limit to it. How could a human soul have an endless realm? Lucifer had yet to tell Juin this, but this white area that they often came into was a Soul Dimension, an area where one could use to strengthen their soul.
Time pa.s.sed by slower in the Soul Dimension, which meant that one could get more learning done.
It was basically a small world that was attached to one"s soul; the strength and size of which depended on the owner"s soul strength. Most supernatural beings could only control a small Soul Dimension, and even high-ranked beings could only control one that was as big as Singapore.
"Izzy said that the stronger one"s soul is, the stronger one"s body would be. Juin"s soul is definitely strong, stronger than even low-ranked demons, but why is his physical body so weak?" Lucifer wondered out loud in frustration, finding everything to be incomprehensible at the moment. He wondered if this was what Juin felt most of the time.
He then looked over at Juin"s floating soul and thought about the symbols that he saw on those invisible shackles. "Could it be that those shackles are the reason why?"
He remembered the pain he felt when he was attacked by the unknown mage, which resulted in his soul being ejected out of his physical body. When he recalled the pain, he could not help but s.h.i.+ver slightly even though he was supposedly the fearless demon king.
Those black symbols were attacking his physical body... and they were slowly getting higher and higher, and at that time, Lucifer could feel his soul energy being drained out. It was a good thing that Izzy did what she did or he would have lost all his soul strength.
The golden symbols on Juin"s shackles… What if they worked the same way, but that they were attacking his soul instead? What if the symbols were draining Juin"s soul energy away, thus causing his physical body to react negatively by getting weaker and weaker?
"What if…" Lucifer narrowed his eyes as he stared at Juin"s face. He then made up his mind and conjured up a mid-level Daemon Flame ball. Moving his hands around the ball, he then shaped it into a bow. While holding the Daemon Flame bow with his right hand, he used his left hand to conjure up another Daemon Flame ball, which he then turned into an arrow.
Getting into position, he aimed the arrow at where the invisible shackles were. He remembered the positions clearly, and after making sure of it, he released the Daemon Flame arrow.
Swooos.h.!.+
The arrow flew toward Juin"s left wrist, and just half an inch lower, it would have hit his wrist.
BAM!