I wake up to the warm embrace of the blizzard leopard's skinned pelt draped over me and steaming stew in front of me as I sit up and look around. I see a woman hunched over my sword and clothes, cleaning the blood off them. "Who are you?" I croak from my dry throat. "I am Clara, the shadow sovereign spirit. I am what is left after she ascended to sage-hood and you have intruded into my separate dimension. How did you do it? And who are you?". As I sit up and walk to her, "uh-hum. You seem to be nude." as she blushes and turns away.
I quickly cover myself and retrieve my clothes after entering shadow stalk to make myself a little less visible, quickly putting on my clothes as I feel her gaze upon my back. "It has been some time since I had a male companion in my den." a glint of lust appears in her eyes as my cloak is back on. I sit back down on the bed and slowly devour the stew as I finish my bowl of stew and stand up. "Well, it's about time I should head out. Where's the exit?" I am eager to leave. "That's the problem. This is the inheritance dimension where you must finish the test and trials, claim the inheritance or die under the tribulation of heaven." She says with a sickening smile. "One more thing, lover boy, time is 4 times slower here than it is in the real world."
"Show me the damn test, so I can pass them and leave this accursed place." As I spit the sentence out of my mouth, a silver snake wrapped around my wrist and turned into a runic bracelet. "Now you can't use the exit till you get the inheritance." She sneered. "You tricked me, you deceived the witch. You wanted me to be trapped here with you for eternity." I glare venomously at her. She smiles and leads me to a bronze silver and, Gold door.
I stare at the doors, confused and worried as a feeling of fear and loneliness radiating from the doors creep into my bones. "Pick one door and that will decide your fate. One leads to certain death, one leads to the exit, one leads to the inheritance. The only hint I can give you is 'what is more valuable than gold when against a wall and sturdier than silver when arrows rain'.". I stared at the doors and thought of the clues before thinking back of a blacksmith in the mid-16th century when he said the poem before forging a bronze shield and sword for the king of England. I walk up to the bronze door, confidently opening it before teleporting to a cave with a small chest sitting on some azure colored sand. "what is that?" point at the chest and sand. "Oh, that is the reward for passing the first of five tests, but it will take a week for the next test to open up again. That is your new cultivation method called 'abyssal gathering' and the azure sand is ground soul shard of A-rank yeti. All of this is to bring around an unfamiliar shadow sovereign and you're the only shadow war-torn in 1100 years and the first one to be here since she left."
I approach the chest and a tome dissolves into my skin and forms a dragon symbol on my back. "What is this thing?" I feel it crawl across my back as the dragon glides across my skin and slides into my hand. "Awe! It seems you got a gift not intended by my former self. That's abyssal dragon Armageddon. It seems you're quite favored by the goddess.". I sit down in the azure sand and begin my week-long cultivation. The sand and Armageddon speeding through the previously unimaginable chasm of power.
A week in the real world flies by at an incredible speed as I slowly recover the cultivation I lost from forging Rulers Bane. I open my eyes for the first time in a month in this world to the sound of her wicked laugh and I know that the time has come for the second test. As I stand up, I notice Armageddon looks more detailed than the little ink smudge he was. His scales look realer and his color a dark blackish-purple instead of light gray. "What is happening to him?" I asked Clara the witch, "He moves up in rank when you do. You two are the same. Oh!!! I hope you read the cultivation tome thoroughly. The drawback is quite brutal as you cultivate higher."
"How do I read the tome again if I only saw it and it dissolved into the air?" I am confused. "Look in your soul sea and you'll see the tome. You can read and study it," she replied. "The next test is simple: all you have to do is survive for one day while being hunted by D-rank wargs. Simple right?". I stare at her in disbelief. "how do you expect me to run from a pack of D-rank wargs as a rank E?" she shrugs and snaps her fingers as I'm transported into a grassy plain. I hear the sudden howl and it breaks me free from my thoughts. I instantly break out in a dead run while activating shadow stalk and despair dance, running at full speed towards the heavy flora. As I run, a timer appears in the air 24:00:00 and starts signaling I have 1 IRW (in the real world) day to survive. As I make it to the trees and look back, I see a D-rank leader and mid-tier E-rank subordinates. "Fuck, they already have my scent. " I keep running till I can't see any light from above and shadows dance around me. I know this is the place for me to win. I set up snares and small spike pits from what my father taught me and old medieval books and games. They look crude but efficient. These should do against the E-rank but the D-rank may be a problem. From what I know about wargs, they have a pack of mind and sensory sharing, making them the perfect team hunters, so if I can make them lose their 360° degree view, I might have a chance of killing them. Sitting down in the middle of the small clearing of trees, I wait and cultivate.
I am pulled from any cultivation after hearing a large growl from about 300 yards. Damn, they already made it here and I haven't even reached peak E-rank yet. When they finally reach me, I can tell the leader is missing. I remember what Fang said " stretch out your magic, use the darkness as your eyes, an extension of your body" I try to focus, but an E-rank jumps at my throat. I side step and slice my ruler's bane cleanly lopping off its head. Rulers bane absorbs part of its blood as I look in astonishment, but before I know it, 3 more come charging at me and I look at the timer 16:01:59 I activate despair dance and begin weaving through killing countless E-rank. I feel something coming from behind, but before I turn around, my shirt shreds and Armageddon breaks from my skin into the size of a large dog and kills the E-rank and devours its soul shard.