Jiro stopped talking the moment Tsunade told him to wait.
He glanced sideways at Ruby. Her eyes were locked on the crystal in his hand with an intensity that almost looked hungry. When she noticed him staring at her, she quickly turned her face away and stared at the table instead.
Fifteen seconds passed. Then twenty.
Finally, a strange sensation started somewhere deep in his chest, like a quiet thirst that had nothing to do with water. The crystal in his hand felt heavier all of a sudden. It was as if his body was craving something, and the nectar had a massive supply of it. That sucking sensation only grew stronger with every heartbeat.
Within a minute, it became impossible to ignore. The blue light inside the nectar began to shift, bleeding toward white, growing brighter and brighter as he kept holding on to it.
The pull kept intensifying.
“What do I do?” Jiro asked, voice tight. He looked at the Pope. “Should I keep holding it, or let go?”
Among the people, the most excited person was the nobleman who handed him the nectar. He leaned forward so fast his chair scraped loudly against the floor. His eyes were shining.
“Do not release it under any circumstances! The reaction is excellent….keep absorbing….”
“No.” The Pope’s voice cut across him sharply. “Sage-sama, release it at once. Your mana veins are not tempered yet. Taking in that much immortal-realm energy in one attempt is dangerous.”
The two men started talking over each other. One insisted he keep going. The other demanded he stop. Jiro sat trapped between them, all the while the crystal was growing warmer in his palm, the internal pull turning almost painful. With so much energy flowing into him, his body was growing warmer, too. Sweat started beading on his forehead.
Tsunade moved before either of the older men could finish arguing.
She crossed the distance as fast as she could, snatched the nectar out of Jiro’s hand, and threw it hard across the hall. Even after it left her fingers, the crystal still drifted back toward Jiro, as if invisible threads were still connected to him. It glowed brighter, refusing to fall properly. Find the original chapter at g.com.
Ruby reacted without hesitation.
She shoved her chair back, stepped out, and kicked the floating crystal with the side of her foot. The impact sent it skidding across the stone floor until it finally lost its white light and returned to ordinary dull blue near the far wall.
Only then did the pull disappear.
Jiro slumped back into his seat. Sweat had broken out across his entire face and the back of his neck. His breathing was uneven. He fumbled with the high collar of his robe, yanking it open, then grabbed the cup of water in front of him and drained it in three long swallows. Ruby silently refilled it from the pitcher. He drank that one too.
The nobleman recovered first.
“Well? Sage-sama? How do you feel now? Is there already mana circulating inside you?”
The Pope turned on him with rare, open irritation.
“You idiot. What kind of question is that? A single contact does not fill a body with usable mana. He would need to do this dozens of times before his veins even begin to recognize the energy properly. And you…” He stopped himself, exhaled hard through his nose, then continued in a colder voice. “I only allowed you here today because you claimed you could secure a reliable cultivator as the Sage’s tutor. If I had known you would push him into something this reckless, I would never have let you near him.”
The nobleman did not look particularly wounded by the scolding. If anything, he looked even more excited. He hurried across the hall, picked up the fallen nectar, polished it once on his sleeve, and slipped it carefully into an inner pocket of his Hanfu-like outfit.
Then he turned back to Jiro with a bow that somehow managed to look both respectful and unpleasant.
“Sage-sama. I shall take my leave for today. I truly hope we meet again very soon.” He gave a low, lingering smile that made Jiro’s skin crawl, then walked out of the hall without another word. This chapter is updated first at novelping.com.
Only after the doors closed did the Pope release a long breath and sit back down.
“Sage-sama. Let us have our lunch now.”
Jiro wiped the remaining sweat from his brow with the back of his wrist. His voice still sounded a little rough from all of what just happened. The hunger from his stomach seemed to have disappeared long ago.
“Your Holiness, you still haven’t said it clearly. Do I have the potential to cultivate or not? Does this reaction from the nectar mean I passed?”
The Pope’s stern expression softened by a careful fraction. He wiped his hands on a small handkerchief, then inclined his head.
“My apologies, Sage-sama. That man’s interruption completely pushed the proper words out of my mind. For what it's worth, Congratulations, Sage-sama. The reaction was clear and strong. Your body really does absorb mana from the immortal realm. You possess the potential to form a mana core in your heart. So, you could say, cultivation is within your reach.”
For a second, Jiro just sat there.
Seeing the old man wasn’t joking with him, a real smile broke across his face before he could stop it. Relief and excitement mixed together in his chest. Witnessing Jiro’s happiness, Tsunade’s shoulders eased, too. Ruby’s eyes lit up with open approval as her master was safe and happy. Even the one-thumbed captain who had arrived late offered a short, respectful nod.
One after another, they offered quiet congratulations.
For the first time since the oracle’s name had been spoken in the village square of Doldia, the future of Jiro felt less like a heavy sentence and more like a door to something greater than life that had just unlocked.