A lost opportunity

Calming his panicking mind, Ruel tried to focus on keeping the flow of energy steady.

He was surprised and scared by what this damned voice was doing in his mind.

"Ah, so you will ignore me now?…. That's a bad thing to do, you know," he said while sneering at Ruel, his eyes glowing with deep malice.

"Let me show you some ethics!" Just as he said that a big ray of red light hit Ruel.

His pupils dilated at what had happened and the aperture shook with the sudden damage he took.

A ray of clarity hit his head, and Ruel finally understood what had happened.

The damned demon was really inside his body and shaken his concentration with that attack!

Looking at Ruel's expression, he gave a big laugh.

"Hahahaha, how does it feel to live with a stigma that you won't be able to wash?" The mocking laughter reverberated, piercing Ruel's ears and igniting fury within him. His gaze fixated on the voice's direction, even though the figure remained unseen.

Only rage clouded his eyes at the moment.

"I will destroy you! I will kill you again and again and again!!"

"You sick bastard, just you wait! This time, I will personally end you!" His voice trembled, betraying the sheer anger coursing through his veins.

In just mere seconds, Ruel's opportunity slipped away, slipping through his fingers like sand. Time seemed to stretch endlessly, feeling like an eternity, amplifying the weight of the situation.

He felt like he was in quicksand, everything in his bounds slipping away and fading into nothingness.

Ruel lost his opportunity.

This all happened in less than ten seconds, but to him, it had felt like an eternity.

This turn of events blindsided Ruel. It was something he hadn't anticipated, catching him off guard and leaving him grappling with disbelief

Even with his hundreds of years of experience, he couldn't have imagined a scenario like this.

"This is just the start human cultivator. You will see hell with what I will do in the future," said the demon lord while his sound faded in the background.

Only endless rage swelled inside Ruel. His mind was in disarray.

How was the Demon Lord inside his body?

How come Ruel didn't notice him until now?

How??!

These questions gnawed at him. His mind was in disarray. He was too lost at this point.

Ruel noticed him only when he stomped all over him.

Yet who could blame him? He was just in the first realm and didn't have the powers to see through these things.

There was nothing he could do, as this was not within his powers. Hell, he couldn't even peek inside his aperture without a root stone.

The Demon Lord disrupted the formation of spiritual roots. The mass of spiritual energy Ruel had gathered was lost in the process. However, the energy that was initially wrapped remained at the spiritual root.

But even then, it would take him much more time to start the process of gathering and weaving spiritual energy around the root.

A single attack had crushed all his hopes of doing something more significant than he could have done. Becoming greater than he ever was.

His train of thought stopped there. He had to change the outcome right now! Every second wasted was lowering his chances more and more.

He had to try again!

Taking a deep breath and finally calming himself down, he reached out to the dissipating mass of energy. Gathering it again in his hands with the utmost concentration.

Just as the Demon Lord's voice vanished, Ruel gathered two significant pieces of information from it.

Firstly, even though he was residing inside Ruel's body, he couldn't exercise all of his power, otherwise, Ruel would have died in that one attack.

His mind was inside the aperture, in a tired state after weaving so much spiritual energy. If the attack had been more powerful, Ruel would have died right there and then.

Second was that he could not intervene much inside Ruel's body, he could not actively intervene in something Ruel was doing in the real world.

If he could, then there were plenty of chances of killing Ruel in the short yet long period since his regression.

Leaving these thoughts behind, Ruel actively focused on forming the sphere. He had less than five minutes to increase the percentage of his formation.

Every minute that passed by, he felt as if his mind would crash. He had to put his utmost concentration into weaving it again.

This time his speed was higher, as he wasn't even thinking about saving some energy for the time he would integrate the element into his spiritual roots.

Just as the last second passed by, a big tremor went past his aperture, indicating that the time was up.

With a big sigh, Ruel looked at his spiritual roots.

It was 87 percent complete. This would have been an extraordinary feat if people outside knew about it.

Anything above 80 percent was genius-level talent, and anything above 90 was just heaven-defying.

But in no way was he satisfied with this much. He could have done much more, far more than this, but that all was just ifs.

As the damn bastard had said, this was his stigma to bear his sin.

The path of cultivation wasn't easy, but this was an anomaly.

And Ruel now knew how the Demon Lord had entered his body. It was the keeper's fault!

The Demon Lord was his doing, he was one of the gifts that damn old fucker was talking about.

But the biggest question still remained: how?

The keeper was far above Ruel in power, even the Demon Lord was an ant in front of him, and that supreme of a being wouldn't have noticed this demon inside Ruel?

Bullshit.

He had known about it, but the question still remained: how was this a boon to Ruel in any way?

This was more of a curse than anything.

Just as he was thinking about all this, another trembling happened inside the aperture. This indicated the start of element integration inside the spiritual root.

Leaving these thoughts behind, Ruel stood up, looking at the small fragments of elements that suddenly appeared inside his aperture.

They were everywhere around Ruel.