Heaven's Greatest Professor

Agnes was aware of his Celestial background, so it did not take long for him to convince her that he could heal her. Of course, she was a little sceptical at first, but after he introduced the pure, unblemished silver radiance, her surprise only grew.

"I'm not experienced in it, so it might take a while," he said, clutching her palm and pushing the warm radiance essence through the connection. Healing flesh wounds would be a lot easier than something as delicate as this.

"I doubt it," Agnes said, keeping her face neutral, even if she felt anything by the somewhat intimate way of their fingers locked with each other, and more importantly, their essences mingling together. "Amiya takes ages to heal me, while for anyone else it is only a few minutes.

She gives excuses like purifying dark essence takes her effort and time, and that I am infested more than a regular ranker. Well, I kind of agree with the latter, but that doesn't mean I can tolerate her incessant act while trying to heal— Ahh~"

Agnes let out a sigh, goosebumps crawling up on her arms. She blinked and stared at him.

"Interesting," he said, feeling his radiance essence being slowly swallowed up by her dark essence. He had thought there would be a conflict between the light and darkness, but his essence wasn't purely light; it was life, with some higher concept of life essence.

"Interesting? It's more than just interesting," Agnes said, her expression brightening. "I can actually feel my essence becoming stronger by swallowing up the light essence."

"Really?" he was not as enthusiastic about that as she was, considering that through radiance power he could augment his runes and scripts. "Sadly, my job is purifying your essence, not empowering you."

With that, he increased the intensity of the infusion by a couple of folds. Assuming from her reaction, he did not think that would hurt her in any way.

However, within a couple of minutes, Agnes was covered in sweat. He first thought it would be a difficult and more delicate job, but within a couple of minutes, he had already cleared a quarter of the foreign presence from her essence. The purification was a lot slower at the beginning, as Agnes's essence unconsciously hindered his advances. Discover more content at m,v l'e|m-p| y r

But after a little while, their familiarity grew. And finding the purification working, the last bit of her reservations fell away. His radiance essence could flow in her more freely now.

"You! You... this?!" Agnes uttered in awe, wordless.

"What?" He raised his eyebrows. "It's working..."

"I did not say it's not working," she said, gritting her teeth. She wiped the sweat from her face, swatting a clumsy palm, still staring at the silver light flowing between their palms. Even the veins in her arm were glowing in dim silver light with the essence moving through. "Do you even realise what you're doing?

It's not just purifying the foreign presence, no, you're literally refining my essence."

He stared at her for a moment in concentration. "Sorry, I can't stop that. Yet."

"No, don't stop it," Agnes said, louder than usual. "It's not painful or anything, just a little worked up. After all, what you did in two minutes takes me hours of composed meditation and circulation."

"If you're sure about it," he muttered.

Refinement was a fundamental part of being a ranker. Every day a ranker's strength grows, and essence refinement is the only and absolute way to make all that strength truly yours, and to purify all the foul impurities.

He remembered Ariha helping him refine his essence after his heart transplant for a few days, fearing he might hurt himself or damage his newly carved channels, undoing all her work.

"It's amazing, truly," Agnes said, another layer of sweat forming on her face. "Amiya almost heavily injured my channels on her first few tries of purifying the foreign presence, yet your essence... It's as if it could never damage even if you let it wreak havoc throughout my channels."

He didn't agree with her sentiment completely, but she was almost right in assuming that. It would take a lot of inattention on his part to hurt her channels with silver radiance essence, which was the essence of healing. But if he were to work with Golden Essence, he wasn't so sure how well he would fare.

"So what do you plan on doing from here on out?" he asked.

Agnes didn't answer immediately. She shot him a deeper look before saying, "I noticed you removed your disguise?"

"Well, I came out of my trial with a lot of things weighing on my mind, it had come off whenever I didn't even notice until Jenni pointed it out," he said. That reminded him, he might heal Jenni completely with his silver radiance essence.

"Has anyone else noticed you in the camp?" Agnes asked.

"I had my stealth on for the most part, so other than the Azalea Garden ladies, and a couple of people from Marcus Valerius' team, nobody noticed me."

Agnes thought for a moment and then nodded. "It's not really a problem if no one sees you stealing anything too expensive," she muttered. "The best case would be people not even realising we have stolen anything, or the forsakens taking it with them..."

"I guess," he said.

"Which means you cannot join the main group," Agnes said. "Although the prince isn't very bright in these aspects, he has people with him who might do background checks and whatnot after you. Instead, it will be better if they have no idea of your existence at all."

"So I would just advance alone and take whatever you need on my own?"

"No, you wouldn't know what I need," she said. "Instead, you'll take me with you to the core of this subspace. Gods, it has been over a month I've been in this hellhole, and barely making any advance. But with our abilities combined, we will move unhindered through the path, without having to worry about all the burdens..."