If Ian hadn't already left the living room.
He would certainly have been able to connect Clark's injury to the passenger jet crash earlier that morning, which wasn't fully saved. Clearly, Superman had encountered a rather mysterious crisis.
Of course.
Even if Ian knew this, he couldn't do anything about it. He was still very weak, and anything capable of harming Superman was something he couldn't approach right now.
In the upstairs hallway.
Ian chatted with his two brothers for a while, showing off his writing talent, before finally returning to his own room. Jonathan was still outside, shouting for Ian to come exercise with him.
"I'll add exercising to my schedule!" Ian replied through the door. After hearing their footsteps fade away, he plopped down onto his bed.
"What exactly is going on." He pulled his jacket open again, exposing the pendant beneath his shirt. It was still glowing, the dark, eerie light flickering like breathing.
The black light was cast upon Ian's face, driving away the room's electric light. Ian frowned, holding the pendant up to his eyes to inspect it closely.
He mainly wanted to find the evil spirit's figure inside the pendant.
"Is anyone in there? Answer me?" Ian tapped the pendant with his finger. This was just a bored act with no real purpose, yet he hadn't expected it to actually produce some kind of effect.
The moment the words left his mouth.
The pendant's light suddenly intensified and flashed violently, increasing in frequency, as if responding to his question. Ian's breathing hitched. He subconsciously glanced below his line of sight.
No additional negative status appeared.
"Buzz~"
The pendant abruptly began to vibrate faintly. The metal patterns on the surface of the pendant started to twist and writhe, unfolding like a living thing, as if opening some kind of door. Next, wisps of black matter spilled out of the pendant, floating lightly like silk ribbons, softly interweaving in the air.
Ian's eyes widened.
He watched the black matter condense and reorganize in front of him, eventually—forming a sentence. A proper sentence, in English as if taken straight from a textbook.
[An interesting soul deserves commendation.]
The characters floated in mid-air.
The shape was neat and formal.
As if penned by a gentleman.
Every stroke exuded an ancient and mysterious aura. They hovered in the air, swaying slightly, as if being buffeted by an invisible wind, capable of drifting away at any moment.
"What the hell?"
Ian was a little stunned. He reached out, wanting to touch the words, but just as his fingertip was about to make contact, the black characters suddenly dispersed like spilled ink.
Splash
They swirled and converged in the air like stirred ink.
Ian thought he heard a familiar wailing sound.
It was the voice of the nun evil spirit from before.
"Sure enough! It ran into the pendant!" Ian was astonished by his own clever guess, but he also realized that the nun evil spirit might not have willingly entered the pendant.
Soon.
As the wailing of the evil spirit faded, the black matter finally condensed into a thumb-sized black crystal floating in the air in front of Ian.
It slowly descended.
Ian hesitated for a moment but reached out to catch it.
The instant the crystal landed in his palm, a cold sensation spread across his skin, like gripping ice from the deepest pole, and like truly touching a frigid soul.
"Did the pendant give me a gift?" Ian murmured, holding the crystal up to the light for a closer look. He was hesitating, wondering if this thing needed to be swallowed whole. The black crystal was not entirely transparent, within it, one could vaguely see flowing dark shadows, like imprisoned mist.
It didn't look like it tasted very good.
"But it seems very hard." Ian swore he only wanted to test which was harder, the black crystal or his teeth. Even if his teeth shattered, he could still complete his "leveling" for the day.
However.
Driven by this simple curiosity, he was almost startled out of his wits. How to put it—no crisis occurred, but the change completely exceeded his expectations.
The moment the black crystal neared Ian's mouth, before he could even lick it to taste its savor, it instantly liquefied against his lip and slipped inside like a cool liquid.
It truly melted in his mouth, refined in an instant.
There was no bitterness or wicked burning sensation. Instead, it was like a mouthful of ice-cold spring water, chilling him to the bone, instantly integrating into his limbs and bones, a bit like a slippery jelly that moves on its own.
An unprecedented feeling of clarity swept through his brain.
Ian felt stronger.
Especially his mental state, which was noticeably better.
Not only that.
[Strength: 5.6 -> 5.8]
[Constitution: 4.5 -> 4.7]
[Intelligence: 2.4 -> 2.6]
[Spirit: 4.2 -> 6.8]
Not only did his [Spirit] and [Intelligence] attributes increase, but even his [Strength] and [Constitution] attributes saw a slight rise. Of course, the largest increase was in the [Spirit] attribute.
This was more than Ian had estimated he would gain from eating the remaining evil spirit. It even directly caused him, as a [Berserker], to become a state where his [Spirit] was stronger than his [Strength].
His lineage was certainly impure.
"I didn't expect it to actually be a gift." Ian was first delighted. Then, he noticed that a strange pattern had appeared on the back of his hand at some point.
The design was bizarre.
Like a black eye.
"Is this the price for a windfall from heaven?" Ian was slightly astonished but didn't panic. He tried to rub it off fiercely with his other hand, but he couldn't scrub it away.
His skin turned red from rubbing, but the pattern didn't budge.
It was like a brand.
Ian subconsciously looked at his status bar, expecting a new negative status, but instead, the original negative status, [Soul Corruption], had disappeared.
In its place was a new status display.
"No wonder I felt like I lost a lot of my wit." Ian felt a little regretful. He believed the [Soul Corruption] status would certainly add surprises at certain specific moments.
However.
Unexpectedly, it was gone so quietly.
Without even a wave of a sleeve.
No time to say goodbye.
The status that now appeared in the position of the original status bar also looked like a pair of eyes, just like the pattern on Ian's hand. This was clearly the "official" explanation for the brand on Ian's hand.
Only.
Unlike the negative status Ian liked, this was a status with absolutely no effect. Applied to Ian, it brought no changes to him.
[Death Knight Vassal]
Only the name of the status revealed what it truly was.
***
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***
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