The Glimpse dissolved back into the raw data of potentiality, leaving me crouched in the ferns, the echo of my own simulated power a cold hum in my veins. A few dozen yards away, the five survivors, blissfully unaware of the harrowing future I had just subjected them to, were beginning their methodical work on the Skulker's corpse. The real Chris clutched his bleeding arm. The real Gror leaned heavily on his hammer, favoring his gashed leg. The brutal reality of their fight, a hard-won victory steeped in sweat and blood, was a stark contrast to the effortless, terrifying dominance I had just displayed in my mind.

For a long moment, I remained perfectly still, processing the dual realities that now coexisted in my memory. My heart hammered against my ribs, not with physical exertion, but with the chilling weight of what I'd learned — and what I'd been willing to do to learn it. I had just walked two separate, branching paths of a possible future. One where I was a healer, a valuable, welcome asset to be folded into their cynical worldview. The other… the other path was darker. It was a future where I was Eren Kai, an entity of incomprehensible power who could break their bodies and their spirits without even drawing his sword. Both paths led to the intelligence I needed, but the second one left a stain on my soul, a disturbing readiness to use overwhelming force that felt both necessary and profoundly ugly.

I had known, abstractly, that my journey to find Anna would eventually lead me into conflict with other humans. It was an intellectual certainty, a sad but unavoidable fact of this new, savage universe where a hungry survivor with a knife was just as deadly as a monstrous beast. But thinking about it and experiencing it, even within the consequence-free sandbox of a Glimpse, were two vastly different things. In that simulated future, I had looked into Chris' eyes, and Paula's, and seen not just the calculated aggression of a predator, but the deep, soul-hollowing terror of prey. And I had been the one to put it there. The thought of having to do that for real, to visit that kind of spirit-crushing dominance upon another human being who was, at their core, just trying to survive a nightmare... it left a bitter, metallic taste in my mouth. It was a line I knew I might have to cross, but I was not prepared for how it would feel.

With a deep, silent breath that did little to calm the turmoil inside me, I turned away from them. The Glimpse had provided me with a perfect, viable cover story and a deep, unsettling understanding of their psychology. The wisest course of action, the one that avoided any immediate risk or moral compromise, was to simply… leave. Confronting them now, even as a benevolent healer, was a needless complication that could spiral out of my control. Their path led to the Kyorian stronghold, Nexus Delta-7, a place teeming with Imperial eyes and sanctioned guilds — a place I had to avoid at all costs. My path led to the Prime System settlement, a neutral zone, a place of fragile hope and potential answers. Our destinations were different. For now. I filed their names, faces, and capabilities away in a secure corner of my mind. A problem for another day, perhaps, but a problem I now understood intimately.

I melted back into the crimson forest, a ghost leaving no trace of my passage, my decision made. The next two days of travel were a blur of purposeful motion and stark, brutal beauty. I moved with a renewed sense of urgency, pushing my body harder now that I was clear of the survivor group. The landscape grew stranger with every step, the chaotic influence of the Confluence becoming more pronounced and more hostile. I crossed a wide, sluggish river that flowed not with water, but with a viscous, silver liquid that hummed with a low, metallic energy. Its banks were lined with pulsating, phosphorescent fungi that cast an eerie, corpse-blue light on my face, making the world seem like a submerged grave. I skirted a petrified forest where the trees were made of black, volcanic glass that sang a high, keening note when the wind blew through them, a sound like a thousand grieving spirits.

The local fauna was just as alien and twice as aggressive. I was stalked for nearly half a day by a pack of what I could only describe as Weasels — long, sinuous creatures whose fur seemed to drink the light, allowing them to blend perfectly into the dim forest floor. My [True Sight] picked up their Tier 2 auras as a messy swarm of low-level predatory intent, a chaotic buzz of hunger and malice. They were patient, flanking me for hours, waiting for a moment of weakness. When they finally decided to strike, lunging from the gloom with needle-like teeth coated in a paralytic venom, the encounter was over before it began. Again, I didn't even bother to draw a weapon. A single, focused pulse of raw Mana from my outstretched hand sent a concussive blast rippling through the air. It wasn't an explosion; it was a pure, non-elemental wave of force that hit the entire pack simultaneously, knocking them senseless. It was pest control, not a fight. They lay twitching on the forest floor as I walked past without a second glance.

Later that same day, I was forced to deal with a much more significant threat. A Thorn-Shelled Behemoth, a lumbering Tier 3 creature that looked like a nightmarish fusion of a turtle and a porcupine, completely blocked a narrow canyon pass that would save me hours of travel. It was the size of a large transport vehicle, its domed shell covered in foot-long, razor-sharp crystalline spines that shimmered with a dangerous light. Its aura was a singular, stubborn point of territorial aggression. A few months ago, a beast like this would have been a significant, drawn-out battle for me and Jeeves, requiring careful planning and tactical positioning.

Now, it was simply an obstacle. I had neither the time nor the inclination to find a way around the canyon. I stood at the canyon's entrance, a hundred meters from the beast, and activated my [True Sight]. The world resolved into a web of energies, and I could clearly see the primary network of energy channels running just beneath the Behemoth's thick, armored shell. Instead of engaging it physically, I simply stood my ground, drew a deep, centering breath, and began to manipulate the ambient Mana in the air, gathering it, twisting it, compressing it into a dense, vibrating needle of pure force that hummed silently before me.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The Behemoth roared, its primitive instincts sensing the immense gathering of power. It lowered its massive head to charge. Before it could take its second lumbering step, I released the Mana needle. It shot across the canyon with an invisible, soundless hum and struck a key energetic nexus point at the base of the beast's skull.

The Behemoth froze mid-stride, a statue of rage and momentum. Its massive body shuddered violently once, a grotesque, full-body tremor, and then it simply… switched off. It crashed to the ground with a deafening thud that shook the canyon walls, its life-force extinguished in an instant. There was no collateral damage, no explosive spell effect, just a quiet, clean, and utterly dominant display of precise power. It was like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer, only the sledgehammer was wielded with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel.

As I walked past the creature's immense, lifeless bulk, a sobering realization settled heavily upon me. The fight with Chris' survivor group, the almost contemptuous ease with which I had dispatched the local wildlife… it was all painting a very clear, very isolating picture. The gap between myself and even the most hardened 'extreme' tutorial graduate was no longer just a gap; it was a chasm of epic proportions.

Those five survivors had worked together with near-perfect synergy, a testament to their shared trauma and skill, and they had still sustained injuries taking down a single, high-Tier 2 Skulker. I, alone, had just effortlessly executed a solid Tier 3 threat without even getting my heart rate up. This wasn't just about my skills or my Essence Manifestation numbers, which were already formidable. Chris, Paula, and the others were likely at the middle of Tier 2. And they were the cream of the crop, the elites who had survived the worst the Empire could throw at them. And I had overwhelmed them in the Glimpse without breaking a sweat.

The difference wasn't just my training. It was my foundation. It was the S+ Soul Strength, an attribute so rare the System itself had marked it as an anomaly. It was the Grade S Soul Gate Integrity, meticulously reforged in Kharonus' agonizing, soul-scorching crucible. And it was the Sanctum itself, [The Veiled Path], a personal, evolving pocket of reality that served as a force multiplier for my growth, providing unique structures, a Gauntlet for accelerated training, and a resonant Core that amplified my every gain.

The survivors from Nunamnir had been given Kyorian tools to survive a Kyorian test. I, by some fluke of cosmic chance, had been given the keys to the fundamental engine of the universe and was slowly, painstakingly, figuring out how to build my own car. We were playing two completely different games, governed by two different sets of rules. The realization was both exhilarating and profoundly alienating. I was stronger, yes, infinitely stronger than I could have imagined. But I was also more Other. More alone in the fundamental nature of my power. That strength was my greatest asset in my desperate search for Anna, but it was also my greatest liability in trying to reconnect with a humanity that would, rightly, be terrified of what I'd become.

On the seventh day, the terrain finally began to yield. The wild, chaotic mix of Confluence biomes started to give way to something more uniform, more familiar. The trees became less alien, their leaves a terrestrial green instead of blood-red. The ground became more stable. And then, a scent on the wind, almost imperceptible at first, grew stronger with every step: woodsmoke. The smell of civilization.

My pace quickened, my heart beginning to hammer in my chest with a nervous, hopeful rhythm that overrode the exhaustion of the journey. I crested a final, rolling hill, pushing through a line of strange, fern-like trees, and then I saw it.

The settlement.

It lay in a wide, natural basin, nestled in the protective curve of a slow-moving river. It was exactly as the Prime System's broadcast had described it: rudimentary. It was a haphazard collection of simple, blocky structures made from some kind of compressed, earth-toned material. They were functional, ugly, and utterly devoid of the cold, brutalist aesthetic of Kyorian architecture. Smoke curled from dozens of different chimneys, a fragile-looking but determinedly-built wooden palisade wall had been erected around the settlement's perimeter, and I could see thousands of figures moving about inside.

In the center of the settlement, a single, pale blue crystal, the size of a large boulder, pulsed with a soft, gentle light. Its calming energy washed over the entire basin. It was the source of the promised suppression field, a beacon of muted safety in the vast wilderness.

This was it. The place where thousands of souls from my translocation wave had been deposited. It was a place of desperation, of confusion, of simmering violence. But it was also a place of hope.

My [True Sight] revealed a chaotic storm of hundreds of low-Tier auras milling about inside the walls. Most were flickering Tier 1 lights, but there was a significant scattering of stronger Tier 2 signatures — survivors who, like Chris' group, had managed to excel in their tutorials. It was a powder keg of traumatized, armed individuals from countless different species, all crammed together in a fragile, new community.

I stood there for a long time on that hill, a silent, veiled observer watching the fledgling town. The weight of the past seven days, of the Glimpse, of the miles traveled, settled onto my shoulders. The loneliness of the journey was over. Now came the hard part. Walking into the crowd, becoming one of them, and searching every face, listening to every story, all while hiding the bottomless chasm of power that truly separated me from them.

I pulled my simple leather cloak tighter around my shoulders, ensuring my sheathed sword was hidden. My face settled into a careful mask of weary travel, the one I had practiced and perfected in my mind. It was time to become the lone healer, the sole survivor, looking for a place to rest. Looking for his sister.

With a final, deep breath that felt like the beginning of an entirely new chapter of my life, I started down the hill. My steps were slow and even, broadcasting weariness and not power, as I made my way towards the settlement's crudely built gate. The hunt was over. The search was about to begin.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.