"But..." Berry started, her voice trailing off as she looked at the boy before her.
"Just stop mentioning rewards, and it will be fine," William interrupted, his tone leaving no room for negotiation. "Now, let's talk about what we are actually going to do about your problem."
He ignored her stunned silence and brought the spirit crystal closer to his eyes, squinting as if he were peering into the very heart of the universe. Berry watched him, her mind a whirlwind of conflicting emotions.
She knew that if she pushed the matter of payment now, he would likely shut down or refuse to help entirely. But that didn't mean she had accepted his terms.
In her world, a person who saved your future held the highest possible place in your heart and life. She remained quiet, masking her inner thoughts behind a facade of patient observation.
She made a silent, solemn vow: if he truly managed to mend her fractured soul, she would dedicate every resource at her disposal to elevating him. She looked at his small, underdeveloped frame and his tattered porter's uniform, and an involuntary sigh escaped her.
How had it come to this? If she returned to the Long Clan and told her father—the acting patriarch—that a porter with twelve spirit points was the only one capable of solving a mystery that had baffled the kingdom's greatest physicians, he would likely have her committed to a sanitarium.
William, however, was oblivious to her internal monologue. His entire being was focused on the microscopic dance of red and golden light trapped within the crystal's lattice.
Based on his vast reservoir of future knowledge, he knew that a standard Phoenix spirit typically manifested as a vibrant, shimmering pink. While it could carry hues of crimson depending on the host's affinity, it almost never displayed such a concentrated, regal gold.
He hadn't shared the full truth with Berry yet, but he wasn't just seeing "dots." To his trained eyes, the clusters of light were forming a spectral Topological Arrangement. He could see the jagged, aggressive silhouette of a Dragon spirit side-by-side with the elegant, sweeping curves of a Phoenix pattern.
But the golden dots... they were the anomaly.
There was no discernible pattern to the gold. It didn't form wings, or a tail, or a crest. Instead, the golden light seemed to be acting as a fluid, flowing through the gaps between the two warring spirits. He watched the stone for five agonising minutes, his breath hitching as he performed a mental Spectral Harmonic Analysis.
Finally, the realisation hit him like a physical blow to the chest.
"Damn!" he hissed, the curse escaping his lips before he could stop it.
"What? What is it?" Berry's composure shattered instantly. Like any girl her age faced with a cryptic medical diagnosis, she immediately jumped to the worst possible conclusion. "Is it bad? Is it that bad? Am I going to die? Is my spirit rotting?"
William glanced at her, momentarily speechless. For a brief second, the master-soul within him felt a pang of genuine, human envy.
This girl, standing in a dusty forest in a backwater kingdom, was not just a "twin spirit" host. She was an anomaly among anomalies. She was possessed of a luck so extreme it bordered on the divine.
"It's a good thing," he finally managed to say, his voice thick with lingering shock. "You... you are truly blessed with a luck I can't even describe."
"Me?" Berry pointed a finger at herself, her eyes wide. The terror vanished as quickly as it had appeared, replaced by her natural, radiant spark. "What did you find? Come on, tell me! I always knew I was a genius, hahaha!"
In that moment, she let her guard down completely, showing a side of her personality she hid from the rest of the Academy: a carefree, almost boisterous joy. William looked at her, caught between a smile and a laugh. Her resilience was infectious, but the secret he had just uncovered was anything but lighthearted.
"Your two spirits aren't fighting only for dominance," William began, his eyes fixed on the crystal with an intensity that made the air feel thin. "For reasons I'm still deciphering, they are actually attempting to merge."
He held the stone steady, pointing toward the centre of the glowing core. "Come closer. Look past the outer layer. Do you see those red and faint red dots suspended in the middle of that golden tornado?"
The golden lights had shifted. They were no longer scattered specks but had organised into a violent, spinning vortex—a shape William privately dubbed the Golden Tornado. Enclosed within that swirling golden wall were the red dots, but as William peered deeper, he realised his initial assessment had been slightly off.
He had been searching for the distinct signature of the Phoenix, and he finally found it hidden in plain sight. Previously, he had assumed the red cluster was entirely the Dragon spirit. He was wrong.
Upon closer inspection, the "red" was actually a binary system: half were a deep, bruised dark red, while the others were a slightly fainter, more translucent crimson. Without the hyper-focused attention of a seasoned master, anyone would have missed the distinction.
But Berry was a young woman, and she possessed a natural, innate talent for color differentiation that far surpassed the typical spirit master's blunt perception.
"Yes," she said, needing only a single, sharp glance before she pulled back. "There are definitely two different types of red in there. Are those the two spirits I have?"
"They are," William nodded, feeling a fresh wave of envy at how effortlessly she had identified the split that had taken him minutes to verify.
"Then... what about these golden specks of light making the tornado?"
"They are the result of the merger," William said, his voice tinged with pure, scholarly jealousy. "A totally new spirit energy."
"A third spirit?!!" Unlike William, who saw the terrifying complexity of the situation, Berry was delighted for an entirely different reason. "I have three types of spirits inside my body? Wow! That's incredible!"
William looked at her, wondering how his master—the most disciplined soul he had ever known—would react to such reckless optimism.
"There are three spirits for now," he explained, trying to simplify the cosmic mechanics for her. "But in the future, only one will remain. Think of it as a spirit mutation. Yes... That's the best way to describe it."
"Oh! So I just have to wait until the two finally finish merging?" She was quick-witted enough to grasp the logic on her own.
"We can't do that," William countered, shaking his head firmly. "If we leave them to continue this uncontrolled fighting and merging, the friction will be catastrophic. Not only will the process eventually damage your physical body, but it will permanently scar your spirit channels and meridians."
"Spirit... what?"
William froze. He had let his vast knowledge slip out in his casual, instructive tone again. Terms like meridians and channels were part of the advanced spiritual anatomy of the outer worlds, far beyond the rudimentary teachings of the Academy.
"Never mind that for now," he said, hurriedly covering his slip of tongue. "What matters is that we need to intervene. We must control this process. Once we make these two spirits compatible with one another, your bottleneck will shatter instantly."
"Compatible..." Berry's brow furrowed as she sank into deep thought. The concept seemed paradoxical to her.
"But aren't dragons and phoenixes like fire and water? One is the king of the earth, and the other is the queen of the sky. How can we possibly make two hostile spirits like that compatible?"
William wasn't surprised by her confusion. In this world, spirit masters viewed their souls as static tools—rigid and unchangeable. They understood the 'what' of their power, but they were almost entirely ignorant of the 'how' and the 'why.'