The moment Timi activated the Trait, he felt his mind stabilize.
The strange influence pressing down on him weakened.
But only slightly.
His knees still threatened to bend; something continued urging him to lower himself before the young man standing ahead.
Michael naturally noticed Timi's strangeness.
He had originally been about to greet Lily before turning his attention toward the unfamiliar youth she'd brought with her.
In fact, Michael already possessed a certain suspicion regarding the boy's identity.
Lily hadn't spoken about many people she'd met during her first experiences in the Origin Battlefield, and there was one particular Awakener she'd mentioned more than once.
Michael suspected this was probably him.
Before he could confirm anything, however, he noticed the boy's strange condition.
His complexion had visibly paled, sweat dropping from his forehead, and although his completely black eyes made ordinary changes in his pupils impossible to observe, the fear on his face wasn't difficult to recognize.
What happened? Michael was filled with confusion.
For a brief moment, he even wondered whether he'd somehow activated one of his engraved forms without noticing and transformed into something horrifying.
His consciousness swept over himself and discovered nothing.
He was still completely normal.
At most, he was a tall and rather handsome young man.
He certainly wasn't displaying anything that should make a teenager look as though he'd just encountered some primordial monster.
Michael's confusion only increased.
"Cousin!"
Lily reached a very different conclusion.
Her eyes moved from Timi's increasingly pale expression to Michael.
Michael looked at her.
"Stop bullying my friend!"
"...What?"
Lily frowned as she stepped slightly closer to Timi.
"Whatever you're doing, stop it! Look at him!"
Michael's expression became even stranger.
He wasn't doing anything.
Unfortunately, Lily had already convicted him.
It wasn't entirely unreasonable either.
Michael might appear serious most of the time, especially to people unfamiliar with him, but Lily had known him for practically her entire life.
Though he had indeed changed quite a bit during his early awakening days, she was still very familiar with him.
She knew perfectly well that he wasn't above being mischievous. If he wasn't, he wouldn't have named one of his most-used undead Lily. Yes, he'd actually looked at her and felt her name was good enough for one of his undead to share. Fortunately, Lily's human form, or giant form, was quite pleasing to the eye, or it would have been a nightmare.
Whenever Lily thought of this, she secretly vowed to return the favor if the opportunity arose.
Though Michael was falsely accused by his cousin, one couldn't blame Lily, considering her perspective.
Timi had been fine before.
Then he'd arrived before Michael and suddenly started sweating, turning pale and nearly dropping to his knees.
Who else was she supposed to blame?
Clearly, her cousin was doing something.
Yet while Lily was wrong, she wasn't entirely wrong either.
Michael really was the problem.
He just wasn't deliberately causing it.
Michael opened his mouth before closing it again.
His green eyes returned to Timi.
While Michael and Lily had their brief exchange, Timi was in no state to care about what either of them was saying.
Panic filled him.
So did a small amount of regret.
Maybe following Lily here had been a mistake.
Unfortunately, now wasn't the time to think about that.
His knees were still slowly losing strength.
Whatever influence was affecting him hadn't disappeared after activating [Stubborn Mind]. At most, the Trait had weakened it slightly and bought him a little more time.
If things continued like this, he really would kneel.
Timi didn't know what that would mean.
Perhaps nothing.
Perhaps there would be consequences he couldn't understand.
He wasn't willing to find out.
His attention rapidly swept through the Traits available to him before settling on another.
Unlike [Stubborn Mind], this one wasn't defensive.
Quite the opposite.
[Bloodthirsty Heart]
Timi hesitated for only a fraction of a second before activating it.
Almost immediately, his mental state began changing.
If [Stubborn Mind] strengthened the walls around his consciousness, [Bloodthirsty Heart] filled everything within those walls with aggression.
His heartbeat accelerated further, but no longer entirely from panic.
A violent impulse began rising from somewhere deep inside him, encouraging Timi to meet threats rather than submit to them.
[Bloodthirsty Heart] didn't make him mindless, but it amplified aggression, suppressed hesitation and fear, and increased his willingness to respond violently when threatened.
Timi saw potential in this Trait, along with the other one.
[Stubborn Mind] would keep his thoughts stable.
[Bloodthirsty Heart] would oppose the instinct demanding submission.
This Trait had come from the same creature responsible for one of the greatest changes his body had undergone since awakening.
A Shadow Demon.
The demon had appeared on Earth and had nearly killed him.
Even now, Timi considered it one of the strongest creatures he'd ever personally fought.
Killing it had been worth the danger.
After devouring its corpse, Devour had extracted an extraordinary-grade bloodline.
It remained one of the most valuable things Timi had ever obtained.
The bloodline improved his affinity toward darkness, strengthened him in shadowed environments, enhanced several aspects of his body, and provided a foundation capable of more than the average human could achieve.
It was also responsible for the direction his appearance had gradually taken, as his completely black eyes were connected to this Trait.
They hadn't always looked like this, but thanks to a mutation in his bloodline, they now looked like this.
Devour allowed Timi to grow at an absurd rate, but not everything could be improved equally easily.
Stats were simple.
Traits were manageable.
Certain abilities could be strengthened by consuming creatures possessing compatible characteristics.
But Bloodlines were different.
Fortunately, Timi discovered the method was fusing Compatibility Traits that could help the bloodline strengthen and possibly advance.
[Bloodthirsty Heart] was one such Trait, but thanks to it, it had also caused the mutation in his eyes.
As the two Traits worked together, thin black veins began extending from beneath Timi's completely black eyes, resembling faint cracks spreading across his skin.
Combined with his pitch-black eyes and increasingly pale complexion, the change made the already unusual-looking teenager appear considerably more terrifying.
Lily noticed this, and her annoyance toward Michael disappeared, replaced by concern.
"Timi?"
Timi didn't answer. His entire concentration was currently devoted to remaining standing.
Michael's frown deepened.
Something is definitely wrong.
After a not-so-brief hesitation, Michael used Detect on Timi.
Upon getting a set of information, Michael's expression changed.
"A Death Knight!"
Nowadays, Michael paid considerably more attention to anything even remotely connected to his Class.
Rina was one example.
Her original Class was Maid, yet through her connection with Michael, she'd obtained the secondary Class Death Servant. However, it was only a temporary post, so the essence of the Class was probably not brought out to the maximum.
Michael's gaze sharpened.
There was no evidence yet, but his instincts immediately told him the answer to Timi's strange behavior probably lay there.
Class suppression?
The term surfaced naturally in Michael's mind.
Yet even he wasn't certain such a phenomenon actually existed.
Perhaps it did.
The universe was enormous, and Michael certainly hadn't learned every secret surrounding Classes.
It was entirely possible that higher Classes naturally suppressed lower Classes belonging to the same system or conceptual path.
The reason such a phenomenon wasn't widely known could simply be because the circumstances necessary to observe it were absurdly rare.
Classes weren't cabbages growing beside the road.
Ordinary Classes could be relatively common, but truly special Classes were another matter entirely.
Even Demigods might live their entire lives without encountering someone possessing a Class with enough conceptual superiority over their own to produce an obvious reaction.
And Death's Heir was anything but ordinary.
Michael's frown deepened.
Still, he wasn't convinced.
If this really was Class suppression, then exactly what was being suppressed?
Timi wasn't undead.
That much Michael could determine immediately.
He was alive.
Thanks to his Class, Michael possessed almost absolute authority over undead creatures, especially those vastly weaker than himself. Their instinctive submission toward him wouldn't have surprised him.
But Timi was clearly human, or at least fundamentally living.
Unless he was mistaken, and it was never about authority over the undead at all.
Perhaps Death's Heir possessed an influence over death-related Classes that Michael had simply never encountered before.
Or perhaps the cause wasn't his Class.
Michael didn't know.
What mattered was that he finally had a plausible direction, giving him an idea of what he had to do to relieve Timi from whatever episode he was currently going through.
Michael restrained himself and deliberately pulled everything inward.
Even the subtle pressure produced simply by the quality of his existence was suppressed as much as Michael could consciously manage.
The transformation was immediate.
To Lily, Michael barely seemed to change.
But to someone sufficiently sensitive, it was almost bizarre.
One moment, an indescribable depth existed around him.
The next, it vanished.
Michael suddenly seemed ordinary.
Still tall.
Still annoyingly handsome.
But beyond that, there wasn't the slightest indication that the young man standing before them possessed any supernatural power whatsoever.
Timi felt the difference far more clearly than anyone else.
The influence over him finally disappeared, and his knees immediately stopped threatening to buckle.
The invisible command his body had been struggling against vanished so abruptly that he almost stumbled from the sudden absence of resistance.
His breathing remained heavy.
Sweat still covered his forehead.
The black veins surrounding his eyes remained visible as [Bloodthirsty Heart] continued influencing his mind.
But the terrifying sensation was gone.
Timi stared at Michael, with Michael staring back.
Timi's lips parted, a curse already on the tip of his tongue.
"Fu..."
"Hi there. You can call me Michael Norman," Michael said with a slight, forced smile, still remembering the current situation, and added, "I'm Lily's cousin. I don't know if she's told you much about me yet."
Timi's mouth snapped shut.
"..."
Another bead of sweat rolled down his forehead.
His body even trembled slightly as his completely black eyes stared at Michael in shock.
Michael Norman.
Timi's mind went completely blank.
Michael Norman.
The same Michael Norman whose name he had heard through two Universal Announcements.
The same person he'd literally been thinking about moments earlier, and had even compared to Lily's mysterious cousin!
Fuck!
It was actually a fucking big shot!
Timi's expression became complicated.
For a moment, he genuinely didn't know how he was supposed to feel.
Should he be angry?
This was the bastard whose mere presence had almost forced him onto his knees without apparently even realizing it.
Or should he feel honored?
Timi might not understand much about the greater universe, but even he understood that what he'd just felt was surely not the means of an ordinary supernatural.
Timi's black eyes slowly shifted toward Lily.
So she had been telling the truth.
Every single time she'd bragged about her cousin, she'd actually been talking about Michael Norman.
The realization somehow made Timi even more speechless.
Lily noticed Timi seemed to have recovered from Michael's prank and felt a little relieved, before shooting a resentful look at Michael, who could only sigh helplessly.
On the other hand, Timi was wondering and hoping he hadn't spoken ill of Lily's cousin in front of her yet.
To a certain extent, Timi also felt resentful at Lily, thinking of her as completely unreliable and a fake poor lady.
Such a scammer.
Timi looked away and took a slow breath.
Whatever complicated feelings he had could wait.
Michael had introduced himself.
It would be rude not to respond.
Timi straightened himself and gave his full name.
"Timilehin Adeyemi Peterstone."
Michael's eyebrows rose slightly.
That's a rather long name, no? Michael thought but didn't say aloud. Instead, his heart started to race as he finally discovered the identity of the youth in front of him, his suspicions confirmed.
Timi continued, his voice considerably steadier now.
"Everyone calls me Timi, though. If the original is too cumbersome, just call me Timi."
"Timilehin..." Michael repeated once, committing the unfamiliar name to memory before smiling. "Nice to meet you."
The normal length for chapters from now on will be a merge of the usual two chapters. In a while, I'll update again and return to daily two chapters, but with more content in each for more visible progress.
Thank you for the continued support!