Vincent stopped speaking and took a few steps back, calmly observing her as she sat at the end of the tunnel.
The darkness essence here was thick enough for his skin to feel it, though just faintly.
After several minutes, Vincent inwardly nodded.
'She is no longer trembling, it means the heat in the seed has started to rise. This is incomparably quicker compared to my first session.'
'Sadly, I didn't have a guide and could only find everything after numerous attempts and errors which almost cost me my life in the process.'
'But it was all worth it or I wouldn't be where I am right now.'
He kept observing her as she kept her focus and wasn't moving at all.
Vincent couldn't help but nod.
'Looks like she's more suitable for Essence Cultivation than I previously thought.'
'If she continues in this manner, she might catch up to me much faster than I assumed.'
Vincent didn't feel jealous though. He knew the clear advantages and disadvantages in their seeds.
While he was observing her state from the side, Alisia was in complete focus.
The heat in her chest was rising up.
'It's just as he said. There's something near my heart that becomes hotter and hotter as time goes on.'
But the speed of it was much faster than she had expected and soon the heat reached the level where it started to become uncomfortable.
By his words, she could wait a bit longer before starting the distribution.
Vincent calmly observed how she started to have a red flush on her cheeks as sighs of sweat began to slowly appear on her forehead.
'She's very close. Though the window of action is narrow, if she manages to actually do it from her first try…'
"Argh…"
Alisia suddenly groaned in pain as her eyes shut open as she felt as if her heart was stabbed by a scorched needle.
Her face turned pale, then she suddenly threw up something hot, staining her chin, neck and robe in steamed blood.
Vincent was already beside her, supporting her back from the fall.
"Sor-ry… I was… too… g-greed-" She weakly uttered and then lost consciousness.
Vincent's body immediately covered in green and bluish veins.
Without hesitation, he inserted his hand under her robe and placed his palm in between her breasts.
After immediate suppression of raising desire, he used his accelerated regeneration ability by combining wood and water elements together on her chest to reduce the inflicted damage on her heart from the backlash.
Externally, his expression didn't change, but inwardly he was both slightly alarmed and relieved at the same time.
'She let the seed absorb more essence than it could handle at the moment. Now, after she has experienced this situation herself, she will be much more cautious later on.'
…
After an unknown time, Alisia's eyes trembled lightly and slowly opened up.
She slightly groaned from lingering pain in her chest.
Her eyes weakly roamed around. She was in the forest in front of the mine.
Afterwards, they lowered and she blushed after seeing that instead of her upper robe, she was wearing a black man's shirt.
'This…'
Only then did she notice that she was leaning not on the sturdy tree, but on something soft and warm.
She weakly chuckled and raised her head. Upon seeing Vincent calmly looking down at her, a warm sensation appeared deep in her heart.
"Sorry… I've become overconfident and failed." she could clearly remember the sensation in the exact moment something went wrong. It was quite frightening.
But to her surprise, Vincent slowly shook his head, "No, you did quite well actually. At least in comparison to my first session, you did much better. What you need to do now is to not forget what led to this failure and keep trying and trying again until you succeed."
Alisia gazed into his eyes and suddenly asked, "How… can you be so confident in myself when I'm struggling?"
Vincent lightly smiled, "Isn't this what relationships are about? Support the other side no matter the situation?"
Alisia's heart skipped a beat as she gazed up at him in silence.
"Will you mind if I lay a bit longer?" she suddenly asked.
After seeing that he gave her a silent approval, she inwardly reinforced her emotions and casually leaned back on his chest, comfortably with closed eyes.
Vincent briefly looked at her blond head from above with a warm feeling in his heart and then looked around.
This part of the forest was quite peaceful, at least at the moment.
But they shouldn't stay in the open for long as he knew that wolves from time to time roam in the nearby area.
Several minutes later, Vincent began to hear some cute snoring on his chest.
Inwardly smiling, he moved his thoughts to his own training session that he'll soon begin after she gets a good rest.
Forcefully entering the Spiritual World is very dangerous so he needs to prepare himself mentally, because if even a slight mistake occurs, there would be no-one to help him as his soul will get trapped there, leaving his body in the Physical World like an empty shell that keeps functioning as per usual, but with nothing within it.
Such a state is even worse than being a vegetable and he has no intention to become such a thing.
As he focused on his mental preparations, he didn't notice that several meters behind him, a two green eyes from within the tree were curiously observing him before slowly disappearing.
…
"Scouts…So the time is approaching once again, " an elderly man in a red robe slowly spoke as he looked at several carcasses of various beasts.
Within them was a corpse of a half-human male with scars.
The man's hand then suddenly turned a blaze as he casually waved towards the corpses and they started to wildly burn.
A foul stench of churned flesh hastily covered the area.
Beside him stood several other red robed people of various ages and genders.
"Father, maybe we should act first this time? I have a strange feeling that this wave will be different from the previous ones," suddenly a middle-aged man spoke with strong resemblance to the elder one.
The elder man already thought about this and shook his head, "No. We already sent our scouts, but no-one came back."
"If we lose more manpower, the city will not hold up and we'll be forced to abandon it."
"Don't forget the reason the main clan created a branch in this city and send us here," the elder man finished.
"What about the Greywind clan?" his son asked.
"Our two clans don't contact each other very often despite being quite close, but they must be in a similar situation as we are."
The middle-aged man nodded to his father's words before he turned to his two kids.
"Do not leave the city at all and focus on your training."
"After the wave arrives and ends around half a year from now, the envoys from the main clan will arrive."
"If you both show your best and reach 1st stage, there's a chance they accept you into the main clan. If not, you'll be stuck like me here for the rest of your lives," the middle-aged man spoke seriously as he looked at his son and daughter.
The boy and girl around 16 years old l, exchanged glances and nodded, "We'll try our best to not shame our families name."