TBATE - The Help of a Certain Being

New Threat; Lilia's Awakening

"Cynthia, you go and get Tessia an available dorm for her, ideally nearby mine or at least the Twins. If there aren't any available, you know where to find me."

I dismissed myself from our group as I made my way to my training room for some overnight training and my next meeting with Zalam.

I'm getting there, Zalam. Patience. I'm sure you have plenty of that, yeah?

Whatever. Just hurry the hell up so you can get your shit. And I need to talk to you about some things.

Coming, coming. Jeez, you Outer Gods and your lack of patience. Why not go play around with your other timelines or something? I'm almost at my training room anyway.

I opened the doors to the training hall where I was greeted by a tired Mary.

"Good evening, Kuro." She yawned, stretching her arms. "Some late night training, I suppose?"

"You could say that," I said as I walked past her. "Please do get some sleep, by the way. You look very tired."

"Uh-huh!" was all I got as I walked to my training room.

I opened the doors to my training room and took in the abundance of mana. "Hoo... This room really is quite helpful, in many ways."

Yeah, yeah, whatever. I'm pulling you in.

I closed my eyes as I felt a sudden lack of mana. In the pitch black room, sat Zalam, his usual suit-like attire as cleaned and practically untouched as the last time I'd seen it.

His facial features were, simply put, perfect. Masculine, symmetrical features with bright, Azure Blue eyes and a head of Scarlet Red hair tied back into a ponytail, hanging over his chair.

"So, it seems like you've taken quite the trouble of giving me what I want," I commented as I stared at the two floating boxes above his hand.

"Well, it's not like I care much anymore. You and that knowledge of your past life added to your genius intuition and imagination allowed you to exploit every last one of my gifts," he spoke, almost in a grumbling tone.

"Sheesh, am I really that bad?" I asked as I tilted my head in confusion.

"I sure as hell haven't seen someone of your caliber yet. Here's your stuff. A Fire-based soul killer with a bonus evolution feature and a Wind-based soul killer with the same thing.

And Portal Creation, bonded directly to you, so even without a mana core, you can use it. You can also use it with a weapon in hand, depending on the type.

Swords, daggers, scythes and greatswords in particular are some of the better options I'd recommend.

I made sure you got all the benefits." He pointed a finger at me and the boxes began gravitating toward me, floating to my held out hands before slowly falling into them.

"You sure went all out for this, dude." The moment the boxes touched my hands, a bright light shone and they disappeared.

I felt the knowledge flood into my mind, storing it away inside my now library-like mindscape.

My mind had grown significantly from the extra few lifetime's worth of memory storage Zalam gave me.

I could simply just scroll through my mind's storages for whatever I might've needed if and when I needed it. There was nothing more simple yet beneficial to me.

"Well, now that you've adjusted to those new additions, stuff you need to know.

There're a few more obstacles I found in your timeline while you were busy suppressing Cyrus."