Chapter 44: Chapter 44

The faint steam still curled from the strange cup between them.

Aziel leaned back, his gaze fixed on Alkroz, now less a stranger and more a mystery waiting to unfold.

The silence that followed wasn’t empty, it was dense, layered with unspoken questions neither seemed ready to voice.

"Alkroz, huh," Aziel said finally, his tone casual but his mind still grinding through possibilities.

"You don’t really strike me as the friendly scientist type."

Alkroz chuckled softly, sitting back down. "And you don’t strike me as the kind who should even exist here."

Aziel smirked faintly, tapping his fingers against the table.

"Fair. I guess introductions should go both ways. Name’s Aziel." ʀᴇᴀᴅ ʟᴀᴛᴇsᴛ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀᴛ novel(ꜰ)ire.net

The way Alkroz’s eyes flicked up at that name, briefly, sharply, didn’t go unnoticed.

A flicker of recognition? Or just curiosity?

"Aziel," Alkroz repeated under his breath, almost as if tasting the word, then nodded slowly. "Strange. It doesn’t sound like a Plasma name."

"Probably because it isn’t, it’s my human name," Aziel replied, the edge in his tone both playful and deliberate.

Alkroz continued to write for quite a while this time, his pen gliding over the paper in steady, deliberate strokes.

Aziel watched him in silence, thoughts wandering as he tapped his fingers idly against the table.

’If he finds out I’m from the Frost Clan,’ he wondered, ’how would this scientist react?’

The scratching of the pen stopped.

Alkroz lifted his head, eyes narrowing slightly as he turned the paper around.

Recently, a hot topic has been circulating in the Revenant Consortium. Two autophage dissipations occurred simultaneously within one rotation. Do you know anything about it? Perhaps your body’s transformation is related to it?

Aziel read the question carefully, his brows furrowing. The term "autophage dissipation" still lingered in his mind, a phrase he’d heard before but never fully understood.

He hesitated for a moment before writing his reply.

Had I confirmed what exactly autophage dissipation means, it would’ve been easier to answer precisely.

He slid the paper back, and Alkroz’s expression shifted as understanding dawned.

Then, unexpectedly, the man spoke instead of writing, a habit Aziel had already assumed he’d abandoned.

"Well, you see..." Alkroz began, his tone faintly amused, "autophage dissipation is a term used when the energy levels of a Plasma drop below a critical threshold. When that happens, their body can no longer sustain itself and begins to feed on its own essence, slowly dissolving into entropy."

He paused briefly, twirling the pen between his fingers before continuing.

"And though it’s not officially classified as such, when a Plasma’s energy output exceeds the super-saturation limit, when it spirals out of control, that too is considered a form of autophage dissipation."

Aziel’s eyes narrowed slightly at the explanation.

He had yet added another weapon to his arsenal with that question.

Aziel suddenly straightened, a flicker of realization crossing his face, something he remembered, yet couldn’t possibly say aloud. Not with this all-ears listening to everything they had to say.

Without a word, he snatched the paper and began writing. This time, his pen didn’t stop.

The scratch of ink stretched on and on, longer than Alkroz had written at any point. By the time Aziel finally paused, Alkroz had already finished his cup of powdered stones, and was halfway through pouring himself another.

’I think I’ve witnessed something similar,’ Aziel wrote at last, the lines hurried but heavy. ’Though I’m not entirely sure. When I was in the Farlands, I saw another Plasma in the distance, trying to coalesce an energy storm. Something went wrong... and it died. Instantly.’

His hand hesitated, but only briefly, before continuing.

’And as for the next one... when I had to fight a Plasma while still in my human body, I’m certain. It plunged its tendrils into me, and I saw it, that aurora-colored gas flowing straight into my veins. It coursed violently through me, chaotic and wild, until the pain became unbearable, like my body was being torn apart from within.’

Aziel stopped there, his eyes lingering on the final line, as if even the memory had weight. Then he slid the paper forward, his expression unreadable.

Alkroz gave the paper a lazy glance while sipping from his cup, until, halfway through, his eyes widened, the calm in them snapping into sharp disbelief.

"You... you fought another Plasma?" he blurted, almost choking on his drink.

Aziel simply nodded, his expression unreadable, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to admit.

The scientist froze for a moment, then suddenly hurled his cup aside, liquid splattering across the floor.

In the next second, he seized his pen and began to write with such force that even the desk trembled under his hand.

’As you said, the Plasma plunged its tentacles into you, right? That means it was attempting to overload your body with energy, more than a human frame could ever hold, until you exploded from within. But here’s the thing, that’s almost unheard of. A Plasma would never willingly take a step leading to its own demise. If it sensed its energy levels dropping below the survival threshold, it would’ve withdrawn long before that happened. That’s their primal instinct.’

He paused, the pen hovering just above the paper, eyes narrowing with calculation.

he added, his handwriting rough but deliberate.

’that there was no one else there?’

"As far as I’m concerned, there were only the two of us at that time. I’m sure of that."

Aziel said, stretching slightly, a faint yawn escaping him as though the entire subject bored him more than it should have.

Alkroz’s eyes lingered on him for a moment, suspicion flickering behind the gleam of curiosity, but Aziel had already reached for another sheet from the messy pile between them.

He twirled the pen idly between his fingers before writing, his expression calm, almost casual.

’What is this thing they call Forbidden Soul? And yeah, no need for the whole lore dump, I already extracted it out.’

He added a small mark at the corner of the note, something between sarcasm and exhaustion, (pepe: sadgelife), and slid the paper across the desk toward Alkroz.