When Aleus's sky ship reached the palace the temporary sparring arena wasn't missed by Hiro and the rest as such they went there to see what was going on. And by coming here they would also gain a source of information, catching up on everything they had missed.

  (Gadra would be proud.)

  Thought Hiro staring at his opponent unconscious on the ground while a healing rune master scrambled to his side.

  (Clearly there was a hidden scheme to this challenge but what does it matter, a scheme is only as good as there is strength to carry it out.)

  Hiro continued no longer sparing the situation a second glance and walked off the platform to regroup with Aleus, ignoring the numerous gazes on him be it admiring, curious, fearful or disdainful.

  "It seems I still underestimated you, tell me how much of a challenge was the dragon when you fought it?"

  Asked Aleus immediately after meeting up.

  "My answer remains unchanged, the lack of effectiveness through physical harm and multiple clone bodies."

  He answered plainly, Aleus smiled bitterly at this as a thought emerged.

  "Are you a rune grandmaster?"

  Genuinely asked Isis, she had only arrived and hadn't been up to speed with most things, Hiro being one of them. At first he was her greatest curiousity but after learning of the outside situation and fragment subjugation, Hiro became the least of her thoughts.

  "Master, the thing is, Hiro isn't a rune practitioner. But I do think his strength isn't any less than a grandmaster."

  "Makes sense, I did think it strange that he was wasting energy using a rune of concealment to hide the ones on his body."

  Isis did not show any signs of shock and accepted the fact with ease. As a finder she was quite confident in her ability to locate and identify runes on objects and people even when concealed. But on Hiro she saw nothing, not even a trace of the rune of concealment itself, this was what she had found hard to accept.

  And her conclusion of Hiro being a rune grandmaster gave her a reason for failing to notice anything but of course the main point was defeating Kruger with just one move and evidently still holding back.

  "It seems we'll have to adjust our engraved runes, I'm assuming it wasn't that far behind in speed and power."

  Said Aleus becoming melancholic, the original thought was that Hiro roughly had the strength of a master but that was now overturned and by extension the fragments strength had to be reevaluated.

  "I'll have to speak with my father about this and that ruin, the rest of you can remain here and enjoy the show."

  "Then we'll leave together while you explain everything we've missed. Plus there's something I've been meaning to ask."

  Said Hiro getting off his seat, Isis did the same as she too explained her reason for leaving.

  "I explored that ruin for quite some time and know more about it than you, so I'll be joining you. Not to mention it's something I should be reporting to the king about to begin with."

  The three of them left just like that, heading back to the palace and not surprisingly they weren't the only ones leaving, Oldomus, Vazpin and others also left. Aleus's conclusion wasn't just his, they were all observant it was just that Hiro was difficult to evaluate by their standards.

  He didn't use life force, thus their estimation of his power based on this wasn't reliable so they chose to analyse however much might he displayed but even after factoring that he was holding back when he fought Jura they were still wrong, Hiro was simply too good at holding back. With the strength they now believed he had it wouldn't be strange to not control it precisely enough that Jura was reduced to chunks of flesh with just one strike.

  Along the way Aleus told Hiro everything he had learned in that brief period, from this Hiro became aware that the subjugation was the next day. He was glad to hear this but also anxious. There was no telling if he was going to face a major obstacle against the fragment this time around thus he felt more firm on what he had planned to do, assessing the improvements of his senses, the first being his life sense.

  The fragment wasn't a traditional living being and could infuse life force into the earth to make clones of itself that shared the same mind as the main body. Thus by improving his life sense there was a chance it could be way better than before that he can notice something. It was quite regretful he could not sense wills the same way he sensed life force, otherwise distinguishing the real fragment from clones would be a breeze.

  "Is it possible to suppress a person's senses with runes?"

  Hiro finally asked and Aleus didn't betray his hopes.

  "Depends on the senses, I for one only know the rune of blindness, deafness, anosmia and unfeeling. Master do you know of any more."

  "I remember Oldomus saying he has a rune that numbs the senses of taste but not completely."

  Hiro dismissed, those already stated by Aleus were enough for his objective. Thus he requested they be engraved on him on the spot. Aleus took on the task while Isis went ahead of him.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  "Your body its unlike anything I've ever seen, what did you do to it?"

  Aleus asked astonished at Hiro's robust body, while he held his wrist and was engraving from the palm up to the elbow. It felt like he was trying to scratch diamond with glass, a feeling he had long since forgotten.

  "Is something wrong with it?"

  Hiro was perplexed.

  "No, your body is great. Better than anything I've ever seen, not to be rude but I feel like an apprentice trying to engrave an elder beast here. There's barely any effect, in fact even this much is because you aren't resisting if not I wouldn't be able to engrave anything on you."

  Aleus said honestly while admiring, his hand moving more enthusiastically than initially. Though he would not admit it, right now his thoughts of Hiro were closer to an object of curiosity that had fallen into his grasp.

  Going all out in his engraving he was soon finished, the four runes were engraved on Hiro multiple times thus his hand now looked like it had been tattooed in gold from elbow down without leaving much space. Afterwards the runes were activated and Hiro's perception of the world was reduced to nearly zero.

  (Reminds me of my training days)

  Hiro thought as the world around him became like an abyss, he could not feel anything except the taste of air when he opened his mouth. But he did not sense if his body actually moved when he wanted it to. This was beyond anything he had ever experienced with the help of Soltia's magic in the past.

  But having life sense the world wasn't a complete abyss, he could sense the position of anything with life force. But it wasn't as simple as knowing location, after becoming a sword supreme grandmaster he could not only detect the presence of life in his immediate surroundings but also tell how much life force a living being had, by using these features even when he was not looking at a person or creature directly he could indentify them with great accuracy. Distinguishing people by life force only had one downside, it did not work for anything he encountered for the first time.

  And by relying on this sense he separated from Aleus, travelling back to his room.

  Walking there was not difficult, it had its challenges making it more than the average walk down any path but most of all it felt strange. He traveled mostly on intuition, he would not bump into anyone that he was sure of and the occasional run in with plants assured him of his path, as he treated them landmarks.

  (Let's just hope there's no inanimate object in the way.)

  With Epsilon he wasn't worried of a terrible fall but the holy sword wouldn't necessarily help him get passed certain obstacles, a wall for instance, a wall wasn't alive without miraculously tasting it he wouldn't even know it was there in his current state.

  "Don't worry I'll warn you if there's any in the way. But I doubt you have any thing to worry about, who would leave obstacles along the palace corridor."

  Said B One startling Hiro, he could actually hear him but thinking about it nothing was strange about this. B One speaking normally couldn't be heard by anyone except Hiro so this didn't seem too strange at all.

  (What are you B One, you don't have life force but you're not a soul, are you like the curse phantoms summoned by Invidia or a pure will?)

  "Like I said, I'm an outsider. Don't expect outsiders to be anything you know. You can name every type of existence in the Free Worlds but I wouldn't any of them and you would be lucky if any of your guesses were any other invader."

  Hiro could only helplessly accept this fact, no matter how much B One looked human he wasn't, appearances were simply not the end of any being's description.

  (There's that flower, the door should be right about here)

  Hiro noted, he had already arrived at his room.

  The no feeling of touch was proving to be the hardest, when he performed an action he could not be sure it really was accomplished. Like now needing to opening the door, he could not tell if he held the door knob or was simply grasping at air. He could feel the life force in his hand doing the action but not whether his hand touched something and that he was in fact standing right before the door to his room.

  (Moment of truth)

  When he pushed and walked forward, there was no resistance meaning the door was opened. His face had a look of accomplishment but even that he was not even aware of. After he went inside and closed the door he sat cross legged at the center of the room.

  His gaze began to wander, looking at the numerous denizens of the palace. Most of them were rune practitioners, now that he was like this he wanted to sense once more, someone infuse life force into a rune or draw life force from the world. He focused on them for quite some time that changes began to appear, a faint light was born in his abyss world view.

  His life sense was developing rapidly or rather was reaching its maximum capabilities before stepping into untapped potential in order to compensate for the absence of the other senses. But despite how sudden it seemed this was something as basic as breathing, since time immemorial it was a known as fact that the senses working together didn't display their maximum potential. Only after the senses are restricted could it be seen how little each sense was being used compared to how capable it is, hence the classic blind fold method to improve hearing and smell.

  (I have to focus on this speck of light.)

  Hiro thought already seeing a breakthrough from his efforts, and continued to concentrate without faltering. Moments passed and more specks of light emerged and each became bigger and bigger, they had irregular shapes and were white in color.

  (I did not expect such a development.)

  He thought in realisation and trace of joy, the figures of white light would appear where he sensed life force. After coming to a conclusion he focused on life force that hadn't become light to his perception until they were all like this, figures of white light in various forms but mostly humanoid silhouettes. And there was another, brighter than all and seemed to stretch to no end and was a pale blue light color, the world's life force he was sure.

  After the development of his life sense became stable Hiro was sure of his conclusion, it was like he had gained a new pair of eyes, life eyes, eyes that only saw life force and nothing more.

  (If a comparison is to be made as a sword expert I could see the blood when a person bleeds and after becoming a supreme grandmaster I could even hear and feel the blood within a person but now I can see the blood within a person even without any wounds as though the rest of the flesh is invisible. This must be because I've advanced high enough that it's nearly a new ability at this point. As expected senses are the simplest to assess, but more importantly this is my second gain for the day.)

  Indeed this was his second discovered gain of the day, the first, the improvement to how much he could do with sword attributes granting.

  Being in this world and learning about what rune apprentices all the way to rune masters could do he had an epiphany. It was without question that increasing in rank old abilities would become stronger or mutate in their own way. So in the case of attribute granting be it getting stronger or mutating how would it change, he wasn't sure at first but after learning of difference in what rune practitioners could engrave based on skill, his thoughts became clear.

  As a sword sage he could only grantt attributes to other solid objects. In the case of it becoming stronger it wasn't absurd to expect it to affect liquids and in the case of mutations it wasn't strange to have the object have its attributes influenced far greater than before thus when he slapped the water rings and granted them sword attributes they were affected, further more changing shape to resemble swords something that hadn't happened till that point.

  "Soon even the air will be within my grasp."

  He said shattering the runes across his arm with just a thought of resistance and the world was restored in his eyes and he could see far more than before.