Chapter 146: Legion

By the time actual evening was settling over the academy Alden was finally standing in front of his mirror in his dorm room.

He had changed into formal attire. A fitted high collared coat in black and silver with embroidery running clean along the edges and sleeves. Dark vest over his chest. A neat cravat.

The whole thing made him look considerably more like a young noble than a student and he was aware of this.

He tilted his head from side to side looking at his own reflection. "Not bad." He adjusted the collar once. "Yeah. This works."

Then his eyes drifted to the translucent system window hovering at the edge of his vision.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[Human Soul: 1]

[Soul: Augustus Solaris]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Alden stared at the name for a moment.

He had been thinking about this since the tournament honestly. Every other soul he had collected had come from beasts.

This was the first human one. And not just any human either. Augustus Solaris. The dead prince of the Astern Empire who had led a vampire army to the academy and ended up extracted by Alden’s own hand.

He looked at the equip option.

’What exactly does a human soul do?’

He activated it.

Crack.

A faint crystalline blue light burst from beneath his feet and started crawling upward over his legs and chest and arms like ice spreading across glass. It reached his neck and then his face and then his vision went briefly blue.

His height shifted. His jaw sharpened. His hair changed color and his face restructured itself in the span of a few seconds and when the blue light dissolved into floating particles he was looking at a completely different person in the mirror.

Augustus Solaris looked back at him.

Alden opened his mouth slowly.

"...Damn."

He raised a hand and touched his own face. Same sharp jaw, same eyes same build. He turned to check the side profile and that was exactly right too. He flexed his arms experimentally and felt the same body responding.

’This is basically perfect shapeshifting. Not just altering size or age like Darius does. This reproduces an entire person down to the last detail. If I can collect more human souls from people who are already dead I could use any identity I need whenever I need it. The possibilities this opens up are genuinely insane.’

He was still turning in front of the mirror checking different angles with a growing grin when the door clicked open behind him.

"Where have you been since yesterday Alde—"

Nicholas and Leon walked in. Nicholas got through the door first with Leon right behind him still mid-sentence.

Both of them stopped.

The room went completely silent.

Nicholas stared at the figure standing by the mirror. The blood left his face in about a second.

His hand dropped instinctively toward the hilt of his sword.

Leon stepped back and hit the door frame. "A... Augustus?!" His voice cracked slightly. "You’re ALIVE?! Alden didn’t kill you?!"

Alden looked between the two of them blankly.

"...Seriously?"

Nicholas was still staring at the spot by the mirror like he was watching something that couldn’t exist. His sword hand hadn’t moved away from the hilt yet.

Alden raised both hands immediately. "Guys. Relax."

He pulled up the system window in his mind and triggered the deactivation.

The blue light came back and spread across his body again and reversed everything in a few seconds.

Hair going dark again. Face shifting back. When the light dissolved it was just Alden standing there in his formal coat spreading his arms.

"See? It’s me."

Nicholas stayed frozen for another full three seconds staring at the exact spot.

Then he slowly exhaled and moved his hand away from his sword. "That was..." He let out a breath that was mostly exasperation.

"You almost gave me a full cardiac event!" Leon pointed an accusing finger at him. "You looked EXACTLY like the dead prince!"

"How did you just do that?"

"I told you guys before, didn’t I? I have my ways with my skill," Alden said simply. He glanced back at the system window for a moment with the quiet expression of someone already running through future uses. ’Human souls are more useful than I thought by a lot.’

He closed the window and looked at his two friends properly.

Nicholas had gotten his composure back but something in his expression had shifted. He and Leon shared a quick look. Alden caught it.

"You two didn’t come here just to check on me, Right?" Alden said.

Leon’s light energy dropped. Nicholas’s jaw tightened slightly.

"No," Leon said. He stepped further into the room and the playfulness was completely gone. "There’s something you need to hear."

Alden straightened up. "What happened?"

"Something happened here while we were all gone this past week." Leon paused for a second like he was still working out how to say it. "Legion has gone missing."

Alden went still.

"He disappeared sometime during the week we were in Apothesis," Nicholas said quietly. "The academy searched the entire grounds. They went through every wing every dormitory every training area. They sent people outside the perimeter to check the surrounding territory."

Leon looked at him. "Nobody found a single trace of where he went."

Alden stood there for a moment without speaking.

Legion. Who had refused the Upper Academy without giving a reason.

Who had bumped his fist against Alden’s at the gate and said next time it’ll probably be on a battlefield. Who was ranked eighth and had looked up at the open sky with that easy certain smile and said if I don’t make it this year I’ll make it next.

The person who had stepped in front of a hit that wasn’t meant for him. Who had handed off everything to other people so naturally that you only noticed afterward how much he had been carrying the whole time.

Alden’s eyes darkened.

"When exactly did he disappear?" he said.