Chapter 137: Soul Gates [POWER STONE BONUS]

A moment later, the rooftop door opened and Sophia entered. Her eyes immediately widened when she saw Alex, and her expression changed when she noticed that his shirt was covered in blood and that blood was still flowing from his nose and mouth.

"Alex!" she called out.

Sophia rushed toward him.

The Ascendant from Stefan’s faction also peeked inside from the doorway and immediately stiffened when he saw Alex’s condition. He opened his mouth and closed it several times, seemingly unsure of what he should do, but he quickly regained his composure and swept his gaze across the rooftop.

After confirming that there was no monster nearby, he immediately rushed downstairs. Alex did not stop him because there was no point, especially when the man was clearly too panicked to listen to anything he said.

"Can you heal me?" Alex asked as Sophia reached him.

She was already healing him before he had finished speaking. Her expression became serious as her Faith moved through his body, and Alex could feel her examining what he had been calling the Soul Gate in his navel.

Sophia frowned as she focused on it. "What did you do? I can feel that there is some damage there, but I can’t heal it."

"It’s not really damage, so just leave it alone and heal my head," Alex said as he tapped his forehead.

Sophia looked confused, but she nodded and stopped trying to heal the Soul Gate. She seemed capable of sensing the damage he had caused by forcibly smashing the gates open, but since Alex told her it was fine, she decided to leave it alone and focused on healing his head instead.

Alex had to lower his Advanced Battle Instinct Spell to the absolute minimum so that she could properly heal the damage. By the time Sophia finished, sweat covered her forehead, and she looked at Alex with a worried expression as she tried to catch her breath.

"You could have died because of whatever you did," she said, pressing her lips into a thin line.

"I’ll be more careful next time," Alex said. Now that he had time to think about what he had done, he realized that he had been far too reckless.

The problem had not only been the Soul Gates he had smashed open. The sheer amount of unstable mana he had forced into his brain had also caused significant damage, and the only reason his brain had continued functioning was because he had been reinforcing it continuously.

Without that reinforcement, the damage would have been enough to fatally injure him, and Alex could not help but sigh internally when he realized just how reckless he had been.

He had become restless after seeing the blue cross marking his sister’s high school on the map. He wanted to reach his family as quickly as possible, but if he got seriously injured and it delayed him, he might not be able to reach them in time.

"Alex, I know I shouldn’t say this when you’re the reason most people here are still alive, but please don’t be reckless. Before you tell me away, I know you’re doing this because you want to reach your family, and I want to do the same, but you still have to make sure you’re safe enough to actually reach them," Sophia said with concern.

Mia was nearby and nodded along, looking at Sophia as if encouraging her to scold Alex a little more. Alex noticed the cat and smiled wryly before getting to his feet.

"I’ll be careful," he said.

Unfortunately, the moment he took a step, Alex nearly fell face-first onto the ground. His body itself was fine, but the Soul Gates he had destroyed were still aching badly, making even a simple movement uncomfortable.

It felt like someone going to the gym for the first time, getting too excited and exercising far more than they should, only to wake up the next day with every muscle in their body protesting. Alex could tolerate the pain, though, because compared to the advantage he had gained from the Advanced Battle Instinct Spell, a little discomfort was nothing.

Alex was about to leave the rooftop with Sophia when the door suddenly opened again. Stefan, Holland, Elizabeth, Tina, Robert, Kevin, and Zach rushed inside, while Ophelia followed behind them carrying Charlotta, making the rooftop entrance crowded in an instant.

’That guy really screamed to the whole building about my condition,’ Alex thought with an internal sigh.

Before anyone could say anything, Alex raised his voice and said, "Everything is alright, so there’s no need to worry."

Stefan stopped before speaking and looked at Alex’s blood-covered clothes. His gaze then moved around the rooftop, likely checking for monsters, but there was no monster corpse anywhere, which only made his expression more uncertain.

"Did you fight a monster?" Stefan asked.

Alex remained silent for a moment. He was not going to explain that the blood covering his shirt had come from training, because that would make him sound like a complete maniac, but he also did not want to lie and claim that he had fought a monster.

There was no reason to correct them if they came to the wrong conclusion on their own. As long as Alex did not actually lie, he had no problem letting them believe that he had fought something.

"Let’s go downstairs. Stefan, come to the meeting room afterward. I have something I want to discuss with you," Alex said.

Everyone went downstairs, and Alex could feel several gazes on his back as they moved through the building. He ignored them and entered the temporary apartment, where he took a clean shirt from his backpack and changed out of the blood-covered one.

As soon as he finished changing, a screen appeared in front of him.

[Mind: 14 → 15.]

..

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