Jensen watched her leave. He could tell that she still had a faint suspicion that he was the one.
However, he did not plan on addressing it, nor did he plan on leaving her apartment… at least for now.
He planned to refine the blood in his Blood Storage, then try to break through to the next level.
But first, he wanted to find a way that would allow him to speak with Xal'Zyraeth in the presence of other people.
"What do you mean by you forgot to mention the effect on my personality?"
"Just like I said… I forgot to mention the effect the bloodline would have on you."
"What effect?"
"You have the bloodline of a primal race… of course you gain every other thing that comes with it, including the pride."
"Pride?"
Xal'Zyraeth explained, "Yes, pride. I wouldn't want to be compared with lesser creatures like vampires, and you inherited that as well."
"That is why a lot of people with bloodlines from powerful races tend to have unreasonable pride that transitions into arrogance."
"It happens subconsciously, so you will likely ignore it most of the time, but watch that slave of yours and you will see it happen in real time."
Jensen nodded, understanding the general principle. "It can't be that bad."
"Oh, it is that bad when it turns to arrogance," Xal'Zyraeth clarified. "But the pride itself? That is a different matter. The flaw is not in having pride, but in letting it blind you. Used correctly, pride can even protect you. It can stop you from debasing yourself when the world expects you to bend."
"I have spent enough time in your world to see enough to understand it, so now I can give you a good example."
"Take a prostitute, for example… she sells her body to buy resources, allowing her to climb to the peak of your world… without doubt, she would find people that ignore her process, but the stigma will always remain."
"The same goes for men too, although the tolerance looks higher. Pride will stop you from doing something like that."
"I thought you said morals weren't everything?" Jensen chuckled.
"Oh, it really isn't, but when you are prideful, there are certain things you just wouldn't do," Xal'Zyraeth said with a smile.
"Pride is what makes you choose who you become, rather than letting circumstance decide. Your slave's pride will surface whether you want it to or not. Watch closely. You will see her look down on someone she has no right to look down on. When that happens, do not crush it… just remind her who she is now."
Jensen nodded. "By the way, you have been with me, and I haven't gone anywhere. There is no way you know everything about humanity."
"Your worldview is still limited; my senses allow me to view everything happening on this planet. I just can't interfere," Xal'Zyraeth said.
"Should I tell you what that boy you all call the Immortal Dragon King is doing? Of course, you should be ready to pay the price."
"No, thank you." Jensen immediately shook his head; the last thing he needed was an increase in the difficulty of his life.
Finding a way to talk to Xal'Zyraeth incognito was surprisingly simple.
He reached for the familiar feeling and used the first skill he created, Thought Input.
Unlike the time he'd used it on his father and others, where he simply put one thought after another, he didn't try to form words like hello.
This time, he shot out his thoughts as rapidly as possible until they were all linked, like it was just one continuous input.
He imagined it like flicking a latch on a door over and over, as fast as his mind could manage without waiting for a response.
Just creating the connection and holding it open with a rapid, stuttering pulse of energy instead of one long, draining shove.
And it worked because Xal'Zyraeth let him.
Since the ring was pressed against his skin and the distance was next to nothing, the energy cost was the mental equivalent of blinking.
Jensen felt the channel lock into place, as a tiny silver thread was now stretching from the space behind his eyes to the cold metal on his hand.
'Got it,' Jensen thought, keeping his face completely blank.
He took a casual sip of his drink that he had previously set aside. 'Can you hear me?'
He waited for Xal'Zyraeth's familiar voice to answer so he could find a way to create another connection for Xal'Zyraeth to respond to him.
But nothing came.
'Can you hear me?' Jensen tried again, but still silence.
And then, it happened.
He felt a pull, and before he could do anything about it, the channel he created between himself, and the ring suddenly flipped.
Jensen almost choked on his drink. Only now did he realize that mind connections like this were a two-way road.
"Ah. You finally notice," the answer he already knew came from Xal'Zyraeth through the mind link. "The road is paved both ways, little one."
'Reversal,' Jensen thought, the concept hitting him like cold water. 'Of course. Why wouldn't it be reversible?'
He wasn't mad or anything… he had just started learning how cultivation worked a few days ago, and he was more focused on his Bloodline Path than the Mind Path.
Jensen's mind ran as he slowly put together what happened, and he had a perfect analogy for it.
'Take my mind as a room and Xal'Zyraeth as another room connected by a hall.'
'I opened the door to your mind and walked down the hall. I was so focused on knocking open his door, I didn't think about the fact that he could just… walk out of his and into mine.'
'Mind connection is like a hallway,' he thought, the idea crystallizing. 'You open your door, walk down the hall, open their door, and drop off a thought. But if your own door is unguarded… there's nothing stopping them from taking the same hall to your room.'
He had to be far more cautious with the skill and find ways to defend his door.
'But… the offensive potential… at least the support potential of the skill was far too good to simply abandon.'
He could very much picture it.
If he was in a sword fight and, in a split second before a strike, he opened a channel to his opponent, he wouldn't try to control them or anything.
He'd just… scream into their mind.
Or maybe even just a good screech, or maybe even a crazy uneven vibration, the mental equivalent of a rusty nail scraped across a chalkboard.
He was very sure it would make anyone flinch, and from what he knew from his battles, a flinch was all he'd need to make a difference.
'Later,' he thought.
First, he had to find the right frequency to shatter someone's concentration without frying his own brain, but that was for another day.
"The energy I use is next to nothing, so I can keep it open indefinitely, but I was wondering, can anyone find it?"
"Find it?" Xal'Zyraeth sounded almost insulted, and maybe he was. "No one can find it."
Although Jensen knew how it sounded to Xal'Zyraeth, he still had to be very thorough, and he also had another question.
Before he could ask, Xal'Zyraeth answered, "Since you created the link yourself, the universe would not interfere. All I did was cloak it with a little modification."