Death... and me

Fran continued. "I'm still not completely convinced he isn't the human the humanoid race is looking for."

"Didn't we decide that he wasn't?" The guy was even more confused.

Fran sighed in response, saying, "You call Jakar a brat, but you're pretty much a brat yourself. You have no idea how many appearance-changing methods exist in the Realm of Gods. He wouldn't be the first one I saw that could change his appearance both inside and outside. As for his Fire Element affinity, I can think of at least four spirit races that can help someone hide it or make it look like something else. Let alone the humanoid races, which are known for their countless different cultivation techniques. Without that, the humanoid races would probably be nothing more than slaves for the other powers today."

"I see..." The young Winged Provis understood. "Then, who did you call? Even you or Luio couldn't see through his appearance; if he really is using another appearance, that is."

"You will see when they arrive." Unsurprisingly, Fran didn't answer the question.

Time continued to pass as Rean waited for that one-month deadline. To keep up pretenses, Rean and Jakar met every few days, which was arranged by Fran. The funny thing was that Rean really tried to convince Jakar to stay. At the very least, Rean didn't think the odds to be worse than the advantages. The Divine Energy in this mountain range was very high, one of the highest he had seen so far. Everyone was determined to do everything for Jakar as well. Last but not least, he did have his family.

Yet, Jakar was deadset on going out, so he always brushed Rean's words aside. Not to mention he knew Rean was doing that to get even more Iridescent Tears from his uncle Fran.

It was on the third week that Rean noticed the arrival of a spirit race he hadn't seen before. Usually, he wouldn't pay much attention to them as there were many different spirits. However, these ones were just... 'So weak...' Surprisingly, every single one of them didn't have cultivation higher than the Foundation Establishment Realm. Such spirits shouldn't even have the necessary resources to move around.

If Rean had to compare them to something, he would call them semi-transparent eyeballs. Each one of them had several eyes around their bodies, each one different from the other. However, they weren't material. Instead, they were really spirits made out of energy with a Spirit Core and all that floated to move.

However, something surprised Rean a lot more than their cultivation. It was the fact that all the spirits around them seemed to treat those weak spirits with a lot of respect. It wasn't every day one saw experts at the Void Tempering Realm and above treating low-level beings that way.

It was then that Fran himself appeared. "Welcome, friends from the Glimpse Race. I'm incredibly thankful that your superiors sent you here on such short notice."

'Glimpse Race?' Rean didn't know anything about them.

The bigger one of them came forward and did the talking with Fran. "Your Winged Provis race is one of the protector races of our territory, so the elders didn't mind. So, is he really here?"

In response, Fran waved his hand as Spatial Power gathered on his hand.

Rean, who didn't know what was happening, felt his body being captured by Fran's Spatial Power and being dragged over in a second. "What the hell?"

Fran ignored his words and looked back at the member of the Glimpse Race. "This is the human I talked about. Could you look into it?"

Rean couldn't do anything as he and Roan looked at what was happening. Of course, Roan looked from inside the Soul Gem Dimensional Realm. 'Seems like they haven't given up yet.'

The spirits of the Glimpse Race then gathered around Rean and focused all their eyes. As for the spirit that talked to Fran, he stayed in the middle with Rean. All the eyes then began to shine with different colors as their lights seemed to focus on the spirit on Rean's side.

That leader member of the Glimpse Race absorbed all the light before it suddenly burst out with great amounts of Soul Power. The Soul Power struck Rean's body as if trying to force something out.

However, Rean didn't feel anything at all. Those actions only puzzled him even more. It was at that moment that Rean saw what seemed to be a copy of himself appearing above that spirit's floating body. It was a very small copy, but it was him nonetheless. 'So weird...'

*Crack, crack, crack...*

Surprisingly, that copy of himself began to crack almost as soon as it appeared. That was especially shocking for Fran and the spirits who knew these guys.

*Crack, crack, crack...*

*Shatter!*

*Arrrgh!*

The spirit felt a huge backlash from that event as many of his eyes cracked as well. The same happened to the other members of the Glimpse Race, and they all suffered together. In the next second, they stopped what they were doing before they completely destroyed themselves.

"W-What happened?" Fran immediately asked. What he was expecting to see didn't appear at all.

The leader of the Glimpse Race group went silent, and so did the others. They were first focusing on stabilizing the injuries caused by the backlash just now. Nevertheless, every single one of them was shocked by what happened, much more than Fran or anyone else.

Fran didn't hurry them up and just waited. Rean, obviously, was as puzzled as ever, but he couldn't even talk with Fran holding him there.

A few minutes later, the leader of the Glimpse Race was the first to open one of his eyes as he looked at Rean. It was more like he was looking at a ghost. "Fran, let's talk somewhere else."

Fran didn't waste time and quickly used his Spatial Powers to teleport Rean and the Glimpse Race members to a private location. "No one will bother us here."

The leader nodded in response and paid attention to Rean. "I can't look into his past. It's being protected by a higher power that we can't break. That power almost killed us. If we hadn't shared the burden between all of us, we would probably have died to the backlash."

'Look... into my past?' That was the first time Rean and Roan heard something like that.