The Land spirit vanished from the third order dungeon without a sound, without a trace, as if she had never been there at all.
On a mountain peak littered with the corpses of beasts, their blood still steaming in the cold air, Norlan lay unconscious. Beside him, Titus was doing his best to delay his own evolution.
Sweat beaded on his forehead, not from physical exertion but from the sheer mental discipline required to hold back the tide of change surging through his cells.
His thinking was simple. The more he delayed the evolution, the more he could observe and introspect.
Every subtle shift, every flicker of energy within his body, every rune that surfaced and then sank back into the depths of his being, all of it was priceless to him. He wanted to absorb these insights, to engrave them into his nascent domain expression, and finally transform it into a genuine domain expression.
Perhaps, if fortune smiled upon him, he might even go a step further and deduce his first form.
Suddenly, his eyes shrank to pinpricks. His mind absolved itself from introspection, snapping back to full alertness. He looked toward Norlan, and a chill crawled up his spine.
A young girl, no older than nine years old, appeared near Norlan like a specter.
There was no warning. No prior notice. No kind of disturbance to declare her presence. It was as if she was not even human.
Her form seemed to be stitched from the earth itself, her hair the color of moss after rain, her eyes holding the weight of buried continents.
The truth was, she was not human. This was Earth's Land spirit. Born not from a civilization's accumulated destiny, but from the accumulation of one man's destiny. A favored one of the Celestial Tower of Providence.
That man was Norlan Aurelius Grimblade. But how could Titus even know that?
Titus felt his heart constrict. His breathing grew heavy all of a sudden as the Land spirit gave him a look. And in that look, killing intent could not be hidden. It was cold, ancient, and utterly without mercy.
It seemed this Land spirit was also aware of Titus's hand in Norlan's grievances, aware of the suffering he had allowed or perhaps caused by his decisions.
"What are you!" Titus barked, his voice cracking despite the dread coiling in his chest. He tried to rise, to put distance between himself and this apparition, but his legs would not obey.
The Land spirit glared even harder, her small face twisted with a fury that did not belong on a child.
Then, suddenly, she smiled. She stuck out her tongue, winked with an almost playful mischief, and vanished into the unconscious Norlan's body, merging with him like a drop of water returning to the ocean.
***
Albera.
Lower Celestial Belt.
Celestial zone 49 ;also known as The Devouring Gyre desert.
They called this place the Maw. A place no cartographer who ventured close enough to name it ever returned.
A sandstorm that moved across the wastes not with the chaos of a natural storm but with the deliberation of something that had learned to be still on the inside. A formation so intricate that would put even the most formidable formation grandmasters to shame.
This was simply the work of a divine being.
With it's enchantments that drew creatures to it being worse than any sound or smell.
It was a pull seated somewhere beneath instinct, a compulsion that felt, terribly, like recognition. Birds, wolves, men, they all walked in. And for those that do enter the storm,return only as bones, arranged at its outer edge with an almost tender neatness.
This was the Devouring Gyre desert. A forbidden zone on Celestial zone 49.
At its heart, the sand did not go. It threw itself against an invisible boundary and fell back, grain by grain, as though it knew better.
As the storm howled at the boundary outside. In here, the air barely moved.
Inside the wyvern was a hall. The bones overhead vaulted high enough to swallow shadows, and the spectral flesh between the ribs filtered the light into something pale and sourceless.
On the throne, a bony man suddenly jolted up and and extended his divine sense unilaterally.
He had felt his opportunity. An aura that would potentially elevate his status into a higher level being, hence directly facilitate his breakthrough into the next realm.
His divine sense writhed throughout the wyvern skeleton, alarming all and sundry and scaring them out of their wits.
Then with a maniacal laugh,the body Sovereign's voice reverberated throughout the layout.
"So it's indeed there! My opportunity is indeed there! The divination was accurate! The divination was accurate!"
"Good! Good! Good! "
He laughed his heart out for a while. After a long period however,he frowned. Next he bellowed.
"Nero! Why are you still not completing your assigned task?
Is it that I have become complacent and my words are no longer law?"
With that,all and sundry felt a bony chill pervade their souls.
Even Nero,a generational genius who had awakened into their Racial Expression felt suffocated.
After a second or two,Nero came out of his fear and hurriedly clothed himself. The five or so concubines that could still walk after this session of congugal dances quick to help him. A grim expression on their faces,their outcomes unknown for tempting this young master to forgo his duties.
***
Earth's Stasis World
In an inauspicious valley, where the grass grew gray and the trees twisted into unnatural shapes, two gentlemen were locked in a rather weird battle.
One wielded a pocket watch as his weapon, its chain rattling with each movement, the face of the watch glowing with stored energy.
The other wielded business cards sharp as razors between his fingers, each one edged with spiritual inscriptions that hummed softly in the stale air.
Their enmity had already formed and reached a point where it was either one died or they both died.
These gentlemen were Edwin Marsh and Sir Richard Hexwill, respectively.
Sir Richard Hexwill was indignant. He had been viciously ambushed in his own mansion by a man he had once considered family, or even a personal friend. The betrayal cut deeper than any blade. He could not let go of the fact that if not for the world ending at the right moment, he would have perished by Edwin's hand.
Edwin Marsh, on the other hand, was also indignant. He could not believe his luck. Why did the world have to end at such a moment? Could it not have let him finish what he started and then end? Now, all he was left with was an enmity that had already passed the point of resolution. There was no going back.
There was no forgiveness and he was not going to be the one becoming indecisive. He cursed.
It was all because of the mission he had received from his system, Edwin thought bitterly. It had required him to absorb another system within a strict time limit. And his friend Richard Hexwill had been the closest. To Edwin, it wasn't personal. It was just Hexwill's rotten luck to be the only system in his vicinity.
The two locked eyes, ready to attack. Muscles tensed. Spiritual energy crackled in the air between them.
The next moment, however, the scenery changed as a bloodlust emanated from the valley entrance.
"Damn! Such an interesting standoff you have here! You could not even hear the screams of others as I slaughtered them."
Their gazes met the third party, and their eyes widened in shock.
At the inauspicious valley entrance stood a short, bald, Asian looking man. He held a Jian sword over his shoulder, the blade long and straight, its edge still glistening. The sword tip trickled blood that fell onto this old man's rather weird oversized shirt. A shirt that was once white but was now full of fresh blood stains, dark and wet.
He hid his non wielding hand behind his back. But from the blood dripping parallel to this man's contrasting pink shorts, the two gentlemen could guess what that hidden hand held. Especially since all around the man, corpses lay strewn, beheaded. Executed from the upper neck neatly for some disgusting reason that made the skin crawl.
Sir Richard Hexwill scanned the visage with an ugly expression twisting his features. It seemed that a few of his subordinates were missing from the pile.
"Oh, you finally noticed. Quite the observer you are."
"Where are Hayley and Luna? Did you slaughter them too?" Hexwill spoke in a rather chilling voice. Calm and deranged, like a blade being sharpened in the dark.
"So those are the names. I have to say," the bald man paused, savoring the tension, "those two are quite the runners." Then, with an exaggerated flourish of his non wielding hand, he displayed a blonde haired head dripping blood to the two gentlemen.
The two froze in shock.
This head belonged to Leonard Sharpe. An eighth level Awakened Mortal. A combat genius that even they would have to take seriously if they fought one on one. And here he was, reduced to a bloody trophy.
They exchanged looks. An understanding formed instantly between former enemies. They acted almost simultaneously, lunging at the bald man from two different directions. Pincering him with two deadly attacks, one from the pocket watch and one from the razor sharp business cards.
However, before these mighty men could clash, a thick streak of purple light exploded from the distance, blanketing the sky summit in an otherworldly glow. Like a rocket tearing free from its launch pad, the aura shot skyward with relentless, uneven pulses of power. Each surge was wilder than the last, shaking the very air around it and sending tremors through the ground beneath their feet.
***
Two miles into the forest, far away from the inauspicious valley, a pair of sisters also felt and saw the soaring sight.
They were battered and tired, their clothes torn, their faces smeared with dirt and sweat. They forced themselves to catch a breath as they looked toward the commotion in the distance. Their chests heaved. Their legs trembled from exhaustion.
For some reason, they felt longing for whatever was there. They felt their bodies tremble with excitement as they felt the tremors of the pulsing purple sky. It called to them. It pulled at something deep inside their souls.
They changed directions right there and then, abandoning their previous path without a second thought.
These two were Hayley and Luna. Norlan's so called adopted sisters. And for some unknown reason, they were part of an insignificant effect of a guiding cause, a ripple from a stone dropped into the pond of fate long ago.