Azrael stood, still trying to shake off the laughter from earlier.

Beside him, an empty vial rolled freely across the floor.

"Okay. I am ready."

[Are you sure you do not want to take the slower approach?]

The system asked.

"Trust me. And besides, I cannot feel the pain in here anyway. But if I have not managed it within an hour, let me know."

The system replied with a thumbs up.

Azrael nodded and began.

Pop.

The essence had not even fully reached his eyes before they exploded.

They regenerated almost immediately.

Azrael poured essence back in without pause.

And so the grueling process began.

Explosion after explosion reverberated through the white space.

Before the echo of one could fade, another covered it.

An endless rhythm of destruction.

Azrael stopped after a while, breathing heavily.

"How much time has passed?" He asked.

He glanced at the floor and nearly gagged at the sight of the countless membranes scattered across it.

[Ten minutes. Your eyes have exploded two hundred and thirty six times.]

"And the hour is not up yet?" Azrael asked.

[Correct. Are you reconsidering?]

"Is someone worried about me?" Azrael asked.

[I simply do not want to spend another ten million years drifting through the void looking for a new host. There is a difference.]

Azrael shook his head.

"Whatever. I am doing this for at least an hour."

Without waiting for a response, he continued.

[Thirty two minutes.]

The system said sometime later.

[You have improved considerably. You might actually get this.]

"Ha," Azrael laughed.

Boom.

Something exploded.

But it was not his eyes this time.

It was the world around him.

The space seemed to gain an entirely new layer of light, the same clarity he had glimpsed briefly when aura first activated, except this time it held.

Azrael looked around, eyes wide.

"System. I got it."

[Congratulations.]

"Thank you," Azrael said.

[You should maintain it for a while longer to establish a proper essence pathway. Otherwise it will collapse the moment you stop focusing.]

"You really are more sensible in here."

The system did not reply.

Azrael pulled all the essence back and began the process again from scratch.

As the system had predicted, the eyes exploded.

The difference this time was that it was not immediate. The nerves had built some resistance from the repeated conditioning.

"How long did it take me to first activate aura?" Azrael asked, ignoring the eyes still regrowing from his sockets.

[Thirty seven minutes.]

"Faster than I expected," he said.

Time blurred after that.

"That is one hundred consecutive aura activations without a single explosion," Azrael said.

[Four hours total. That was longer than anticipated.]

Azrael sighed.

"Well. I can use aura freely now."

He turned the ability over in his mind, thinking through everything it opened up.

"How surprised would Aiden be when he sees this?"

He let the essence in his eyes dissolve.

"The clarity is genuinely addictive," he admitted.

"But the essence cost is brutal," he added.

If not for how much it drained him, he would have kept it active at all times.

"Now. Rage essence and how to control it properly."

He sat with the thought for a moment.

He already knew how to summon rage essence and let it move through him. What he lacked was the ability to maintain it deliberately, especially under the kind of fear Ymir had pressed into them. That part still felt almost unreachable.

[You are aware that she was the direct source of that fear, correct?]

The system asked.

Azrael nodded.

He sat down on the floor at the same time, legs folding over each other.

"I heard your warning in the moment. I just could not do anything about it," he replied. "Besides, she was using it as a method to force us to learn how to overcome fear through rage."

The system said nothing.

"Overcome fear with greater rage," Azrael said slowly, drawing the words out.

"Yes. I need to become angry enough that the fear itself gets consumed by it," he said.

"But what can make me that angry?"

He searched his memory.

Nothing surfaced at first.

Then it did.

"Yes. That is more than enough."

The thought of the gunshot. Of being shot in the back by someone he had trusted. What stronger source of anger was there than that?

He rose smoothly.

He did not overthink it.

A crimson essence began to spread around him, denser than anything he had produced during class.

"Not enough," he said, forcing the words out against the pressure building inside him.

The sound of the gunshot replayed in his mind.

"Argh."

He yelled, veins standing out sharply across his neck and skull.

The essence darkened, growing heavier with each breath.

Just as Azrael was on the edge of losing control, something stopped him.

It felt like an arm wrapping around him. Soft and tender, almost weightless.

The rage essence poured back into his body gently.

He dropped to the floor.

Conscious, but his body had nothing left to give.

His mouth still worked fine though.

"System. Why did I just feel an arm wrap around me?" He asked.

[You are likely hallucinating from pushing too far.]

"It felt real," Azrael said.

[That is what people who hallucinate always say. It always feels real.]

Azrael opened his mouth, thought about it, and closed it again.

"If you say so," he finally said.

A silence settled between them, longer than usual.

"Do you think what I managed was enough to push through Ymir’s fear next time?" Azrael asked.

The system scoffed.

[You overcame that a long time ago.]

"A long time ago?" Azrael asked, furrowing his brows.

[You maintained that form for four hours straight.]

Azrael blinked.

"It felt like barely a minute."

[As I said. You were hallucinating. Likely a side effect of pushing the rage essence past your current limit.]

Azrael looked around the white space and exhaled.

"Maybe I really did overdo it."

He said nothing more after that, just sitting with the quiet of the space for a while.

"How much time do I have left?" He asked.

[Three.]

"Three minutes. That is fine."

[Two.]

Azrael’s eyes widened slightly.

[One.]

His body began to dissolve like pixels fading from a screen.