After getting some rest, Luna was already running again through the flesh territory. And as expected, the dream world seemed to be one hell of a territory.

This part of it was abandoned. Dark and gritty with monsters of all kinds. No plant looked edible, and the rot smell was something that she could not ignore even if she wanted to.

She had not diverted at all from Anna's trail. She had left behind so many signs of battle that it was impossible to miss.

Many of the creatures she had killed were burned to a crisp by something that resembled actual flames. While others had burn holes in definitive areas--something that could only be done by direct attacks like lightning or light-based attacks. It could also be very controlled fire attacks. But to strike directly like this, one needs to have great control of fire.

Something very similar to what Storm Rider could do.

"Anna isn't an elemental user." Luna stared at the creature lying on the ground. There was a hole in its skull from the top to its mouth. "This is a lighting attack."

She analyzed its corpse for a few minutes, then concluded that Anna had a certain artifact that could manipulate elemental powers somehow. After all, Ascender Anna is not your ordinary support ascender. She was an enchantress. One whose Aura made her into a better one.

Enchanters are rarely fighters, but the ones who are are known for their skill and resourcefulness. Rita is one of the enchanters with great combat experience.

Luna would've liked to become an enchanter and maybe learn how to make her own weapons, but using her rule qi might expose her, or not even make her good weapons.

"Enchanting might be a loophole to learning actual sorcery. But its complexity makes it hard for me to master. I need to learn runes and their purposes to create certain enchantments. But to do what Emily could do, I need to understand the concept of runes and how essence truly works. I need to master Insight."

She opened her hand and put out her palm. She then called out her essence. The sparks of gold appeared in response and danced on the surface. With a simple command, she transformed the golden sparks into a small flame.

She held it for five minutes before it died and disappeared right away.

This was real sorcery. Sorcery she was capable of because of her connection to the sun god and the Heavenly Supreme.

Luna had to find a way of going beyond this. Cultivation is very grand. So, there has to be a way of learning all this while staying on the true path. The path that can make her a divine being.

She followed Anna's presence until the topography started to feel more raised as she moved.

Soon, Luna was walking up a narrow path, entering a flesh hill with weird vegetation. The black trees were gone, replaced by brown grass that grew on the surface. The red mist above her was less, and more creatures roamed this part of the flesh territory.

She finally arrived at a jagged cliffside, where a bone bridge stretched across a massive chasm. The cliffs stood tall and pale, their edges carved by wind and time. The bridge itself was a crude construct—thin and brittle-looking, woven together from the bones of countless fallen beasts.

Far below, an ocean of skeletal remains sprawled in every direction. Some bones were no longer than her arm, while others belonged to behemoths whose ribs could hold cities. It wasn't just a pit; it was a graveyard for ancient creatures.

Gulp! Luna's senses flared as she stood at the bridge's edge. Without needing to think, her hand summoned the shadow wolf dagger. Cold sweat dampened her brow as her instincts screamed in protest.

But Luna did not listen to them. She stepped forward. Each bone creaked beneath her feet. The weight of death echoed in every crunch.

But then, while she's moving carefully, Luna starts noticing that she's being watched by something. Its gaze is cold and creeping. It pressed against her skin like frost.

Then the bridge moved.

A gust howled up from below, shaking the bones violently. Luna quickly reached for the sides and grabbed on. Her heart pounded as the bridge twisted, trying to toss her into the grave below.

Then came the voice.

"Luna…!"

A whisper—yet thunderous in her ears.

"The Witch… Lunaris!"

She gritted her teeth as the gusts intensified. The bridge convulsed beneath her hands, nearly bucking her off.

[LUNARIS RYU FENG!]

Her blood turned to ice.

That voice was divine.

A wave of divine pressure crashed over her like a tidal wave, heavier than the sky. This was not an illusion this time. Something down there knew her. It knew her true name and the old name of her clan.

Her body moved on instinct. Gasping, she reached for bone after bone, now crawling across the bridge like it was a swinging death trap. Falling off meant certain, impalement-laced death. And knowing what she was capable of, she wouldn't even die instantly.

She hauled herself to the far edge and collapsed onto the sticky, twisted earth.

Gasp!

She panted, covered in sweat, her limbs trembling from the exertion—and something deeper. "It used great communication."

Luna was familiar with Great communication because she had experienced it before. It was the power to speak through essence. A sign that someone had truly become one with the world around them. It was one of the greater divine arts.

Luna was inferior to that being, and therefore her entire body was in shock after hearing its voice through Great Communication.

She knew her strength more than anyone else. Therefore, Luna didn't risk staying here any longer. She bolted up the incline, leaving the bridge and the trench behind. She didn't want to know what it was. Not when she's still a first gate user.

***

Many days followed.

Luna continued fighting her way through the harsh territory.

The further she traveled, the worse the landscape became. Grotesque beasts tore through the silence. The air thinned, and the world was turning more into a nightmare world.

Some battles, she barely won, walking away bleeding, broken, and burning. Other times, she didn't win at all. She ran. Hid and prayed the monsters wouldn't follow her into the mud and marrow.

By the fourth day, she barely flinched at the sound of bone snapping.

Luna dragged herself out of the fleshlands using her sword as a walking stick. Every step was agony. Her body screamed with pain, and the only reason she hadn't collapsed for good was sheer, unbreakable will.

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The twisted terrain slowly began to change. The grotesque trees thinned, and the stench of blood began to fade. She climbed a steep, muddy slope and finally caught sight of something different—signs of life.

Under one gnarled tree, she found a circle of dry wood and pale ash.

Still warm.

Someone had made a fire here just hours ago.

Luna crouched beside it, her breath shallow. "If it's Anna," she muttered, her voice cracked and hoarse, "then she must be close."

She rose and slipped into the mindset of a tracker. The cold expression returned to her face as she activated her huntress instincts. She searched carefully, eyes scanning the ground, hands brushing over leaves, bark, and roots.

Then she saw it. Brown patches on the dark soil.

Blood.

She knelt beside them, pressed her fingers gently into the dirt, and closed her eyes. Essence flowed through her fingertips, scanning the remnants.

A flicker.

A pulse.

Weak Qi.

Luna's eyes opened, a sharp glint flashing across her face.

"It's human."

She immediately picked up her pace and started following the trail of blood. She wasn't sure of which direction she was running in. But the urgency she felt made her blood cold with fear.

What if Anna was already dead, and Luna was too late?

'No. I trust her strength.'

She followed the trail and started noticing corpses of creatures. There was a giant headless green snake, a tree creature whose body was now charred and covered in black.

Another creature, an owl tiger, was hanging at the tip of an obsidian glass-like rock growing out of the ground. The owl tiger was a cursed creature she had seen quite a few times. It was almost the size of a full-grown tiger.

However, the one hanging on the rock was twenty times the size of an owl tiger. It was also fiercer, with claws resembling blades that could cleanly cut a tree.

Anna wasn't a combat-focused ascender. And yet she had done this much damage to something this big.

She swallowed her saliva and continued walking. She tried to ping Anna's suit a few times. It was still offline.

'Of course an ascender like her would not keep her suit online.'

Anna was one of Phillips's special ones. Such a situation was within her expectations.

The blood trail eventually led Luna to a cave surrounded by silver and blue grass.

"Who's there?"

A strained voice came from the cave before Luna stepped forward.

"Someone."

Luna responded. It could be a creature mimicking a human tongue.

"Silly. I said Who the hell is there. If you don't tell me, I will…urgh!" Her threat was cut short by a pained groan that came from talking too much.

Luna straightened herself and stared at the cave's entrance briefly. "I can help you. My name is Lara, I am an ascender."

"La…ra…you're still alive?" she painfully laughed. It echoed loudly, but the noise she made was silenced by the barrier.

Luna didn't get what was funny about the situation. She just shook her head. "Yes, I am. Now release this place and let me in."

"Don't…don't you know how to perform basic sorcery? Find the rune and break the enchantment. I can't move."

Luna started looking around and immediately found the first rune, hidden perfectly on a rock inside a bush. She poured some of her essence into the rune.

"Shatter!" she hissed, and the rune self-detected.

She sensed the powerful shift in the air. The barrier was gone. Essence manipulation wasn't hard when it involved just essence. She had only willed the essence to destroy the rune, and that's it. It was similar to how one could command zenshi to burn or create a barrier. It was a matter of will.

She stepped into the cave after decoding the last of the runes. The inside was dim and cool, but not silent. A faint, ragged breath echoed off the stone walls.

Anna was slumped on a rock deeper inside. Her body was trembling. One hand pressed tightly against her side where a brutal wound gaped open—flesh torn away, exposing dark tissue and glistening muscle.

But strangely, there was no blood.

The wound was fresh. Luna could see that clearly. However, not a single drop flowed from it.

"Help… help me," Anna whispered. Her voice was barely audible, her arm weakly reaching out.

Zenshi flickered at her fingertips. Then an artifact shimmered into existence—a rotating ring covered in glowing runes, spinning slowly in the air.

"Use that to heal me."

It floated over to Luna. She caught it carefully, feeling the quiet power within.

"What is this? How does it work?"

"It's a tissue builder," Anna murmured. "I can't bleed. But as you can see, I can still lose flesh… the Owl Tiger got me good."

She winced, forcing herself to speak through the pain. "I've been fighting for… I don't even know how long. Days? Weeks? I pushed through the flesh swamp and thought I'd finally made it out."

She gestured faintly to the mouth of the cave behind Luna, where a real forest was just starting to reclaim the land.

"I thought I was safe. But the creatures here were worse than I imagined. I fought everything. Burned them. Froze them. Crushed them. I proved I deserved to live."

Her eyes grew distant, voice hoarse.

"But then the serpent came."

Luna froze.

"I spent everything. Every last drop of zenshi. I had to dig deep into sorcery, and the price is pain."

Anna's hand dropped from her wound. She stared up at Luna, her face pale but determined.

"Please. Heal me. I can't die here. Not after everything."

Luna did not hesitate one bit. "How does it work?"

Anna responded weakly.

"It contains a fragment of the concept of life. My master designed it. All you have to do is let it absorb some of your qi, then it will restore my tissue."

'A fragment from the concept of life!' Luna did not show it on her face, but she was excited when she heard that.

"Did you say a fragment from the concept of life? Are you saying this artifact wasn't created by someone's aura?"

She started feeding it with essence from the world around them. She was unsure about her essence reacting to the artifact.

It began to slowly rotate clockwise as a steamy blue energy entered its ring.

"An Aura? No. My master discovered…" She stopped to catch her breath. If she stopped talking, the pain would be much worse.

She continued, "My master discovered the original sorcery. The one that worked by borrowing fragments of concepts from the universe. He calls it universal sorcery, or god magic. With it, he believes we can defy the heavens."

Luna's eyes sparkled with light. This was it. This was the insight she needed.

"How do you borrow fragments of concepts?"

"Are you really asking me that while I'm about to die?"

"You're not going to die," she argued. "And there is nothing wrong with being curious," she added.

"Hah. Well, have you heard of the law of existence?" Anna question. "It is a law that states that All Existence is linked with an origin. As humans, we are linked to an origin known as life. Life is the mother of all concepts; therefore, we are linked to all concepts of the universe."

"My master discovered that he can borrow those concepts as fragments and temporarily use them to create Artifacts."

"Does he use runes to link with those fragmented concepts?" Luna asked. "Also, who is your master?"

"Ascender Mi Jin. He currently works for House Feng and the Government."

Mi Jin? That name didn't ring a bell. He wasn't famous, nor was he someone talked about widely like Roy Atlas, the genius who created one of the most powerful artifacts in the world.

How did Mi Jin discover something this groundbreaking and not expose it? Well, maybe he wasn't in search of fame. Or the whole thing sounded ridiculous to the others.

Suddenly, the ring ceased spinning. It hovered in midair for a moment--silent and waiting. Then, it began rotating in the opposite direction.

A shift occurred, and the Concept of Life awakened.

Warmth radiated outward, flooding the cave in golden light that made the stone walls pulse like the inside of a living being. The energy was gentle but ancient and meaningful—a fragment of a divine law.

Anna gritted her teeth as her ruined flesh began to knit itself back together. Torn muscle reformed. Her organs stitched themselves whole. The missing chunk of her side returned, cell by cell.

Color flushed back into her cheeks, and her breathing evened.

Luna's eyes widened. She could feel it too. The ring's power trembled the fabric of the world itself, and her soul gate responded with unease, shaking beneath the weight of a law not meant for mortals.

When the ring finally slowed to a stop, both Luna and Anna stood renewed.

Anna dismissed it with a flick of her hand, and it vanished the moment a sliver of zenshi returned to her veins. She summoned her glasses, perched herself atop the rock again, and stretched as though returning from a long nap.

"Thank you," she said.

"No problem," Luna replied, still catching her breath. "I wasn't going to survive this place if you died anyway."

Anna chuckled, adjusting her glasses. "Harsh. But fair. If you had died, I'd be doing everything I could to replicate the Noctis Dial."

She opened her palm and summoned it.

It was circular, resembling a traditional compass with a convex glass dome that resembled the moon. It was made from a black material that shimmered even inside the dark cave. And inside, the needle resembled a slender, silvery thread of liquid moonlight that doesn't spin but drifts, as if gently pushed by tides.

It was currently inactive, so it was drifting aimlessly.

This was the Noctis dial. To activate, it needed essence from both participants of the trial. From then, the pair was supposed to continue feeding it essence for it to point towards the Castle.

She held it out, and Luna took it carefully.

"I don't have enough essence to use it yet," Anna added. "Give me a few hours. We'll move as soon as I'm stable."

Luna nodded, her attention already fixed on the device.

She turned it over in her hand, studying the faint script carved into the rim of the dial. The symbols were script from an old world, woven together like a prayer.

She mouthed the words quietly, translating them from memory:

"To the goddess of dreams. The goddess who knows our hearts, guide my heart to you."

Intrigued, she studied it even more for a few minutes before adding a little pulse of energy into the artifact just to see how it would react.

Its gears moved, and the words on the ring glowed. The needle, which was rotating, drifted clockwise and came to a sharp halt, pointing upwards.

'Hmm…'

She exited the cave and stared at the violet and dark blue sky for a while.

She immediately turned away and snapped out of it.

"What am I doing?" She asked herself. "Curiosity killed the cat, Luna."

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