Althea noticed his discomfort and quickly stepped in to explain the specifics.

"That's a malevolent oath worm. All you have to do is ingest it to assimilate its mass. It has an especially weak will, but has a strong, compelling soul debt: To take control of your body and devour you if you renege on certain words you define in the debt," she explained. "That's where you repeat the Preceptor's order. And after the requirements have been reached without you defaulting, or breaking your words, you will reach full assimilation, and the debt of the soul mass will be rendered null and void."

Finn breathed out softly with a sigh, finally having the full picture of the matter. Effectively, as long as he didn't plan on reneging on his words, the worm would only be a temporary tenant. But that didn't help mellow the fact he still would have to swallow something so disgusting-looking.

He glanced up quickly and noticed the extremely unimpressed look on the Preceptor's face and couldn't help but swallow a gulp.

Come on Finn, just close your eyes and imagine you're swallowing some raw egg yolks… or maybe some kind of cold, foul-tasting jello, he grimaced and quickly downed the worm in one go.

The cold, slick mass slid down his throat, squirming all the way to his stomach as its mass slowly dissolved and latched onto Finn's soul itself.

Immediately, Finn, who was about to shudder in disgust, stilled. His eyes were shut tight in concentration, as he abruptly delved into his consciousness.

Within, he 'saw' and 'felt' the worm in its soul form, latching into him and trying to enforce its weak will and subsequent demanding soul debt.

As it latched on to his soul, before it could even table its clause, Finn tried to also reach out to it naturally and get the process done. But immediately his 'attention' focused on it fully, he felt its presence rapidly fade and extinguish brutally till there was nothing left.

Huh? Finn thought in surprise. What's going on? Where's the worm? He searched through his soul, trying to find traces of its presence… but there wasn't the slightest trace to be found. It had been devoured utterly and wholly.

Fuck! Did I kill it?! Finn didn't even know how to react. How did it even happen? He only reached forward and the soul mass was utterly destroyed! What was he going to tell the Preceptor?!

His eyes were still shut tightly as his brain raced with frantic thoughts — Thoughts about what would happen next, and how, if the Preceptor finds out and tries to peer into his soul to check, he might find out some secret of Finn's soul that he was not willing to reveal to anyone.

Okay. Okay. Calm down Finn. This is about the time to recite the oath.

Immediately, just like Althea had, he recited the exact same words the Preceptor ordered them to, before mimicking the strained look and calm sigh and slowly opening his eyes.

His eyes met the same intense stare of the Preceptor. The stare that looked as though the state of his very soul was being peered into.

Finn practically held his breath in tension, bracing for the moment the old man would confirm the disappearance of the malevolent oath worm and make a more concerted effort to find out what had happened.

He tried to maintain the strained, focused expression he'd copied from Althea, praying his facade was convincing enough.

The silence between them continued pensively for an excruciatingly long minute, interspersed only by the sound of the torrential rain downpour and the hissing of the doused flames.

The silence stretched past a minute, and Finn now knew the Preceptor had noticed something. His heart began to beat more rapidly, increasing with each second the Preceptor kept staring at him.

A sudden frown colored the Preceptor's face, striking another round of thudding heartbeats in Finn. He didn't know how his facade held up, but he knew he was probably now doing a terrible job. He could feel himself slipping, and immediately, he knew he had to do something.

Without thinking, he clung onto the fading feeling of the Oath worm, remembering how his soul had felt when it latched on to him.

He didn't understand the mechanism — logically, this was utterly nonsensical — there was no way to mimic a soul mass. Not when it still had a form, and most certainly not when it had been destroyed. But the same vague intuition that had saved his life time and time again, guided him.

He instinctively forced his own soul to adopt the vibrational frequency of the worm's presence his soul 'remembered,' and even went further to formulate the feeling of a compliant, recently assimilated soul debt.

He was simply doing nonsense, yet the instinctive part of him that he couldn't explain made him feel like this was the right thing to do.

Finn knew he had nothing else but this, it was either he was right about this, which would then make him know for certain that his 'vague intuition' was way more than just that. Or, he was wrong, and his 'intuition' so far was merely a series of uncanny strokes of luck.

Either way, Finn left the results up to fate now.

He stared into the old man's eyes, which looked distant, with the deep frown still etched on his face. But then, to Finn's profound relief, the crease on the Preceptor's brows slowly relaxed. The intense pressure in his stare lifted.

He blinked, then performed a subtle double-take, as if making sure of something.

"Good," the old man simply said, finally breaking his gaze away. The look in his eyes gave no hint as to what he had seen, or failed to see. His expression remained unreadable. If anything, he only looked kind of exhausted.

"Strengthen your minds, both of you. The people you will encounter in the coming weeks will be vastly powerful," the Preceptor switched to addressing them with a softer tone, but yet still blunt in his delivery. "I wish you could at least give your farewells to your loved ones. It may be a very long time before you return to Aethelos. Because after the information exchange on those neutral islands, your journey continues to a whole other continent… Feraxia."

The old man paused, giving them time to take his words in before continuing. "The continent of magical beasts and the greatest beast tamer Arcanists in the world, as you both already know. But more importantly to us Ossuarists, it is the home of the very heart of our Order. The headquarters of the Ossuary itself… Soul Sanctum."

The Preceptor's words seemed to have had its intended effect, as immediately, Althea clenched a fist by her side and looked towards the horizon resolutely.

Finn, on the other hand, only half-heartedly gave a nod. All that he could think of was the Preceptor's earlier word — '...Good.'

Good? What does good mean?

Internally, he was still reeling from the fact that his ridiculous attempt had somehow worked. It had actually worked. His thoughts spiralled at the implications of his successful attempt. Now he knew for sure that his intuition wasn't just that. It was neither some vague nonsense feeling, nor a misconception borne out of pure luck of repeated coincidences…

That new realization made him think back to his hidden title: The Errant Heretic.

Was this a kind of manifestation of that title? Finn couldn't stop his rapidly beating heart.

Finally!

For the very first time, Finn was filled with a renewed sense of direction and purpose. He had found what seemed to be a tangible clue in his attempt to understand the uniqueness of his soul and how he had arrived in this world.

The 'arrival-in-this-world' part was still vague for now, but at least he had finally taken the first step in what seemed to be a clear direction towards understanding the uniqueness of his soul better.

As the thoughts flowed through his mind, Preceptor Elias urged his floating sword forward with blistering speed, and the wyvern carrying them followed, accelerating into the torrential downpour.

The jolt of speed brought Finn's attention back to the present, and with a resolute gaze that mirrored Althea's, but for a different reason, he looked out at the horizon. The darkness of the rain-streaked sky was almost like a symbolic parallel to the daunting journey that lay ahead.

A bright ray of sunlight broke through the thinning clouds as they sped forward in the air and Finn couldn't help but smile.

It seemed even the world agreed things were looking up for him…

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A/N: This marks the end of the first volume. Thank you to everyone who has supported the book so far by buying chapters, giving Golden Tickets and Power stones, and also commenting regularly! I hope you continue to support Magical Soul Parade as we move on to the next volume.

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