The bigger problem was that Arthur simply had too many abilities, which made designing a battle armor suited to him even more difficult than it already was.
Gu Yue hadn't been studying design for very many years, and even with her head spinning from the effort, her progress remained slow.
Quite unusually, Na'er hadn't jumped into the conversation. The topic of battle armor was too advanced for her, and she genuinely had nothing to contribute.
She wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed.
In fact, she and Agravaine were cut from the same cloth, both content to coast along, both having picked mech mechanic as their specialty just to check a box.
Arthur noticed the flash of frustration that passed through Gu Yue's eyes.
He sat up and, for once, let go of that insufferable air he usually wore, his voice becoming more measured. "No rush. We'll take it step by step. I'm still a long way off from the Soul King rank you'd normally need to equip battle armor."
Which wasn't entirely true. He wasn't that far off.
Gu Yue refused to concede the point. "Who said anything about simplifying it for you? Whatever I design is going to fit you perfectly."
She paused, then something seemed to occur to her. Her eyes shifted with a new idea. "But you'll have to cooperate with me. Set aside some time every week so I can record your physical data in detail."
"No problem!" Arthur thumped his chest in agreement. It wasn't as though he had anything pressing to do, and if helping Gu Yue move her work along could also kill some time, there was no reason to refuse.
Xie Xie watched the two of them going back and forth with each other and couldn't resist getting a dig in. "Are you two really just working on battle armor together? You're awfully cozy about it."
"Shut your mouth!" Na'er was the first to take offense. She sent Xie Xie stumbling with a kick.
Why was he always trying to pair people off like that?
Tang Wulin shook his head at the scene, thinking Xie Xie truly never learned. He had no idea how many times Na'er had already knocked him around, and here he was stirring things up again.
Xu Xiaoyan watched everything in silence. Na'er, fiercely territorial as she was, remained Xu Xiaoyan's greatest rival.
Absolutely insufferable.
She quietly resolved to push harder in her cultivation.
Once she had truly come into her own, she would find a way to deal with Na'er, and then claim Arthur for herself. The whole world had suffered under Na'er for long enough.
Xie Xie, sent stumbling by Na'er's kick, clutched his backside with a pained grimace. "Na'er, what is wrong with you? What did I do to you?"
"Hmph!" Na'er planted her hands on her hips, her violet eyes wide and bristling, like a cat with its fur standing on end.
"Arthur and Gu Yue are just working on battle armor. Don't go spreading nonsense!"
Everything else she could let slide, but Arthur was hers, and she wasn't about to let anyone say whatever they pleased about him.
Watching Na'er all ruffled and indignant, Xu Xiaoyan stroked the Star Wheel Ice Staff in her hands and felt her conviction harden.
Tang Wulin looked from one side to the other, and something about the mood began to feel distinctly off.
He scratched his head with an oblivious expression. "I'm hungry. I'm going to go eat."
And with that, he turned and promptly made his escape.
A tactical retreat, if there ever was one.
The days that followed were easy and unhurried.
Arthur settled into a steady routine.
He slept until he woke naturally in the mornings, then slipped over to the training ground just before Wu Changkong's session began and found a shaded spot to lounge in while he watched the rest of Class Zero get chased around in a panic by their teacher.
Some evenings after class, he would help Gu Yue record her data.
Na'er remained Arthur's most devoted shadow, attached to him at every moment outside of class hours.
Whenever Gu Yue called him over for a recording session, Na'er would sneak to Gu Yue's door and peer through the gap, watching to make sure Gu Yue wasn't getting too hands-on with Arthur, terrified that something might be going on that she wasn't supposed to see.
Xu Xiaoyan, meanwhile, threw herself into a frenzy of self-imposed training.
Every evening after the regular sessions ended, she would slip off to the small grove behind the academy to practice on her own, either communing with the power of the stars or using the tree trunks as a stand-in for Na'er, casting her control abilities over and over while muttering to herself: "Na'er, don't you move. Arthur will be mine eventually."
And so a year and a half passed.
Counting carefully, it had been two and a half years since the Skysea Alliance Tournament came to a close.
Arthur was now twelve years old, which was quite the advanced age.
He was still at rank forty, having yet to form a new soul ring. Even so, his soul power had continued to grow steadily.
Once he absorbed the hundred-thousand-year soul bone and the hundred-thousand-year soul spirit, he expected to climb directly past rank fifty.
In his room, Arthur took out the hundred-thousand-year soul bone he had received from Shrek Academy.
It was a left arm bone, an exceptionally rare find. Soul bones for spirit-type users were almost always skull bones, so this was his first time encountering a left arm bone.
Though to be fair, he hadn't encountered many soul bones to begin with.
"About time." Sensing his Spiritual Power at the peak of the Spirit Sea Realm, Arthur decided today was the day he would break through to the Spirit Abyss Realm.
The air in the room grew gradually dense and heavy.
The hundred-thousand-year soul bone floated above Arthur's palm, radiating a faint luminescence, with faint ripples of Spiritual Power spreading outward from it.
Arthur sat cross-legged on his bed. The Red Dragon's furnace heart quickened its pulse, and scarlet-gold soul power wove itself into a dense protective web throughout his body.
Absorbing a hundred-thousand-year soul bone carried enormous risk. For Arthur, it was of little concern. With the power of the ley lines watching over him, dying wasn't really on the table.
And if he couldn't die, he might as well push it to the limit.
If something actually went wrong, the Douluo plane would intervene on its own. As its ordained lord, Arthur was, in effect, the plane's own flesh and blood.
He gave the soul bone a light flick.
It drifted over and pressed itself against his left arm, and a cold sensation spread instantly from the point of contact, followed immediately by an enormous, nearly suffocating surge of energy that poured into him like a dam giving way.
A deep resonant hum filled the air.
The silver-violet markings on the soul bone blazed to life, dissolving into countless tiny threads of light that burrowed through Arthur's blood vessels and down into the marrow of his bones.
Sharp, violent pain swept through his entire body in an instant, as though countless small blades were scraping along the inside of his arm bone.
Arthur's jaw locked tight. The veins at his temples stood out in sharp relief. Cold sweat traced lines down his face.
Within his sea of consciousness, what had been a still and placid expanse of Spiritual Power erupted into a raging storm. The soul bone's weight on his physical body was manageable.
The real problem was the Spiritual Power it contained, which was simply overwhelming.
The silver-violet torrent slammed against Arthur's Spiritual Power with such force that it nearly shattered, and fine cracks even began forming along the edges of his sea of consciousness.
The worst of it was coming.
Arthur opened himself up deliberately and drew on the forces of heaven and earth.
In that instant, ley line energy surged up through his feet and into his body.
Simultaneously, a thread of heavenly force descended from the void above.
Both powers came from deep within the Douluo plane itself, and working in tandem they bore down relentlessly on the wild and rampaging energy locked within the hundred-thousand-year soul bone.
Under the assault, the soul bone seemed to let out something like a wail, and then it began to fracture.
Perhaps that was just his imagination. Soul bones couldn't cry out.
The Red Dragon's furnace heart roared in his chest as the scarlet-gold soul power surged fiercely through him in its cycles.
The bones of his left arm were wrapped in scorching heat. The shattered fragments dissolved into the bone itself as every inch of his left arm greedily consumed the energy pouring out of the soul bone.
Crack. Crack.
The crisp sounds of bone reconstruction came one after another. Arthur's left arm pulsed and trembled, and silver-violet light seeped through from beneath the skin, casting the entire bedroom in an otherworldly glow.
Within his sea of consciousness, Arthur's Spiritual Power became a smelting furnace, refining the overwhelming silver-violet energy and consuming it entirely.
The sea of consciousness, once no larger than a lake, expanded with furious speed, its boundaries pushing outward and outward.
At last it became a golden ocean. Across its surface drifted scattered points of silver-violet starlight: the fully refined essence of the soul bone's original power.
A soundless detonation rang out from the depths of his sea of consciousness, and Arthur's Spiritual Power broke through.
The Spirit Abyss Realm.