Death... and me
chapter-9

Turen brought Roan close to the Black Orb, and the elder took a drop of his blood with a needle. Still, Roan seemed to not even feel it. He was the first baby to not start crying right after the blood was taken. Of course, the elder was surprised but didn't put much importance on it.

The elder then dropped the blood on the Black Orb and waited for the result. Finally, the Orb started to shine, and the color began to appear. However, everyone was taken aback when they saw that. The Orb's light... was Dark!

As mentioned before, the Orb was supposed to show only seven colors. Gray, Brown, Yellow, Green, Blue, Red, and Purple. Dark was definitely not one of them. If the Orb wasn't shining with a blacklight, they might have thought it wasn't working at all.

"This... What kind of aptitude is a black color?"

The three elders looked at each other in dismay. They had never seen this color before. They couldn't even tell if it was bad or good.

Turen looked at the elders, waiting for an answer.

"Cough, cough. For now, wait on the side. We will bring your kid to the Tribe Leader later."

Turen was surprised. He didn't expect that he would be able to meet the legendary Juri Varen personally. Juri is seen as a savior to the Varen Tribe, so everyone looked up to him. Still, he spent most of his time cultivating or dealing with the Tribe's external affairs, so very few could talk to him anytime they wanted.

Turen looked at Hamarlie and a smile on his face while nodding at her. Hamarlia, of course, heard what the elder said, so she was also happy. Even if it turns out that Black Color is a bad attitude, the chance of meeting Juri was already a great honor for them. It could easily be seen on the other parents' eyes that they, too, were jealous of such a chance.

Rean was the next one in the line. Hamarlia was then called forward to have him tested. Just like Roan, Rean also had a different and curious Hair Color. Other than old men and women, people wouldn't have this kind of Hair. However, Rean's hair color wasn't exactly the same. His one was really pure White, while the old would be more like silver.

The elder then pricked the needle on Rean's palm and took a drop of blood. Just like Roan, Rean didn't care about that needle, so he obviously didn't cry. When Roan didn't cry, they didn't think much, but his twin brother also didn't even flinch after they took a drop of his blood.

"Could it be..."

The elder then put the blood on the Black Orb. A few moments later, a new color appeared. Once again, it was a color that shouldn't be there. Just like Rean's Hair, the Orb shined with pure White Light!

"As I thought."

Although it was hard to believe, after seeing what happened with Rean's twin brother, they did have a little expectation that Rean would also show something different. It turned out that they were right, that Orb's White Color was more than enough to prove such conjecture.

Once again, the elder asked Hamarlia to stand at the side and wait for the time they would go see the Tribe Leader.

The tests continued. In the end, just one extra baby with a Brown Talent appeared, much for his parent's delight. Even if he wasn't a Yellow Color like Gulo, it didn't change the fact that he would receive the Tribe's support to become a warrior. That was more than enough for them.

While their parents were discussing the next step with the elders, Rean and Roan were also talking to each other.

"Well, we would need to be idiots to not understand that our aptitude colors are definitely related to the White and Black thread. But I wonder if it is a good thing or not."

Roan snorted after hearing that.

"What do you think? It should be much better. After all, gray is supposed to be the lowest aptitude. Even though we didn't get any of the next six colors, I find it hard to believe that we would be beneath the gray. Of course, I can't guarantee it, this is just my conjecture based on chances."

Rean agreed with him.

"Anyway, I would like to try this cultivation thing. Do you have any idea how to do that? You said that you were responsible for collecting Souls in our entire Universe back then. No doubt you had bumped in something like this before, right?"

Roan immediately shook his head.

"Our Universe doesn't have this Spiritual Energy thing. That much I can guarantee you. So no race that I know had ever done something like cultivation before. All their evolution, humans included, happened through tens of thousands of generations and an absurd amount of time. The way that they can change their bodies' structure with this Body Transformation Realm is simply inconceivable back there."

Rean was surprised to know that. Even though such a thing didn't exist on earth, sure the chances of existing somewhere else were high, right? After all, they were talking about an entire Universe back there. So the fact that it didn't exist anywhere really left Rean shocked.

"It seems like we really came to another Universe."

Roan confirmed.

"I told you before, this could only be another Universe. There is no way I couldn't feel the link of my Soul with he Underworld if that was not the case."

Those words reminded Rean of something else.

"Oh, right! Did you find anything? You said that you were just waiting to be born to check the outside world. Will you be able to go back?"

Roan shook his head.

"No. There is simply nothing at all. At this moment, I'm almost the same as any other Soul that is born in this place. I can only follow its rules. The only difference is that both you and I can feel the presence of the Spiritual Energy already. From what I found out, it shouldn't be something possible before one turns into five years old."

Rean agreed with Roan. The main reason why kids would only start their warrior training at the age of five is that they can't feel the presence of Spiritual Energy before that. According to Rean's conjecture, it was probably because their bodies weren't developed enough to receive it yet.

"We can just wait and see what happens."