Chapter 708: I’m Better Than You

Grey’s smile widened. "I understand Elementals better than they understand themselves, and I’ll prove it."

That got exactly the reaction he wanted.

Aelthar’s water formation surged around him, and the audience exploded into noise. Breejara took the chance to remind everyone that Grey had never taken part in Element Formation before today as though trying to call him stupid in a not-so-subtle way.

Grey barely heard any of it. As water replaced the flames around his platform, his mind was already running through the lessons he’d paid three lives for.

The Elemental blueprints he’d made were the first piece.

Grey had spent countless hours learning how Elemental existence differed from ordinary biological life. He’d learned enough to reproduce those principles inside mechs that progressed from the lowest Classes all the way to Dominus.

His mistake in the first three attempts was treating the element as raw material that had to be reforged into something resembling a human organ. Elementals didn’t exist that way.

Their elements kept an ethereal rhythm, even while doing jobs that flesh normally handled. A Fire Elemental didn’t need to turn flame into meat before that flame could be a hand. A Water Elemental didn’t need to grow blood vessels out of tissue before water could carry whatever its body needed.

So, Grey wouldn’t force the water to become flesh. He would make his existence recognize the water as though it had always been flesh.

The countdown began.

Sabrina looked at Grey one last time before turning away, unable to watch him punch through his chest again.

She had no idea he’d already done this three times. Grey decided she absolutely didn’t need to know, well... unless he came up with an exceptionally funny way to tell her later.

The challenge started, and Grey’s hand went into his chest for the fourth time. He crushed his heart, pulled his arm free, and immediately let water flood into the empty space.

This time, he didn’t try to make a perfect replica. There were no carefully sculpted valves, no miniature anatomical model made of liquid.

Grey started with Soul Link instead.

The invisible roadmap was exactly where he’d expected it to be. Every Neural pathway that should have crossed his missing heart was preserved in a deeper layer, even though the tissue that used to carry them was gone.

Grey let the water settle into that space without forcing it into anything stiff and flesh-like. Then, he reached through Soul Link and invited the Neural Frame to recognize what was there.

Blue pathways appeared inside the liquid. The audience reacted, and Aelthar’s expression tightened.

Grey went deeper.

Prosthetics had always been hard for exactly this reason, even before Grey had the words to explain it.

Replacing the mechanical function of a body part wasn’t enough, not when the Neural Frame expected something that actually belonged to the person. The closer a replacement got to the core of someone’s existence, the harder it was to integrate.

Soul Link solved the roadmap, but it still didn’t solve the heart.

Neural pathways alone weren’t enough. Grey needed blood to enter the water and act as though it had entered living chambers. He needed pressure to change without him calculating it, and contractions to happen according to what his body needed, not according to commands he kept issuing over and over.

He needed the element to stop being a replacement he controlled. It had to become something his body considered as unquestionably his as the flesh he’d been born with.

That would take the part of Soul Link that Grey had only ever experienced from the other side. Prometheus had done it. So, Grey reached for that same depth.

The world around him seemed to dull as his awareness sank past the visible Neural Frame, past the signals and pathways he once thought made up everything he was.

Down there, his soul held something far more fundamental. It was an imprint that remembered his body even when the body itself was gone, the same truth Rebirth followed every time it rebuilt him from death.

Grey touched that imprint with the water.

For an instant, nothing happened. Then, his whole body shuddered, and the liquid in his chest pulsed.

Grey hadn’t told it to.

Blood entered the water without spreading through it. Channels formed where there were no physical valves, and the pressure shifted according to what his body needed.

The element was still clearly water. However, the deeper rules governing it had started acting as though the difference between water and heart no longer mattered.

Grey understood what was happening, and he pushed further.

Soul Link didn’t need to mimic flesh. That was still thinking too shallow. Grey needed Soul Link to decide that this was flesh.

The distinction vanished.

Water spread out from his chest in hair-thin streams of radiant blue, following the paths of Grey’s circulatory system as though testing how far his body would accept the change.

Everywhere the element touched, his Neural Frame responded. It didn’t reject the foreign structure. It extended through it with the ease of something coming back to a place it already belonged.

The heart in Grey’s chest changed again, though not physically. It was still liquid.

Yet, Grey could feel it becoming self-sustaining in a way none of his earlier attempts had managed. Every beat now came from the same unconscious processes that had run the flesh heart he’d destroyed.

His soul wasn’t ordering water to imitate an organ anymore. It was forcing the truth of an organ onto water.

Aelthar’s gaze locked onto him.

His own water heart was forming quickly, far faster than Grey’s. It was refined by instincts and experience Grey couldn’t hope to match after only four tries, and that had been enough to beat him before.

However, the numbers above their platforms weren’t moving in the same direction anymore. Aelthar’s stability climbed smoothly while Grey’s recognition started accelerating.

Breejara’s commentary slowed down as she watched the readings.

"Grey Temolt appears to be attempting a form of elemental integration I am not presently familiar with."

There was a lot less amusement in her voice now. Grey barely noticed.

The water spread further.

His veins started glowing sky blue under his skin as liquid elemental energy wove itself together with his blood and Neural pathways without destroying either.

Translucent blue strands appeared in the white hair hanging around Grey’s face, drifting with a faint fluidity that had nothing to do with the air. When he opened his eyes fully, the whites and irises were gone. Two clear orbs of water stared across the stage.

Aelthar stopped looking amused.

Grey could feel the last distinction disappearing inside his chest. The water wasn’t replacing his heart anymore. It was his heart.

The Genesis System reacted.

ELEMENTAL ORGAN RECOGNITION: COMPLETE

STABILITY: 100%

SELF-SUSTAINING FUNCTION CONFIRMED

Aelthar’s own formation was still climbing when golden light erupted around Grey.

VICTOR: GREY TEMOLT

The auction hall vanished under a wall of sound. Grey’s attention stayed locked on the towering Fire Elemental across from him.

Radiant sky-blue veins kept crawling over his body. His watery eyes reflected Aelthar’s stunned face, while the liquid heart in his chest beat with the steady rhythm of something that had always been there.

Grey smiled. "I’m better than you."