Kirk slowly came to his senses as he watched the monstrous humanoid creature turn into a puddle. The black liquid evaporated, then the wind rose and carried it away, leaving no trace behind.
He blinked and brushed his hand against the grass with a blank look on his face. Тhe monster was there just a few moments ago; he clearly remembered it.
A thought that all of this was just another nightmare visited him; the cave taught him to doubt every damn thing, no matter the circumstances. But... so what if it was another nightmare? At least for now, he was safe.
He raised his head and saw the sun shining through the leaves, a sight so familiar yet so distant.
He suddenly remembered two flashes of light that appeared during the last moments of his imprisonment. They illuminated the grey-clothed man's pale face that showed nothing but fear. Then the world spun and went dark for the umpteenth time.
Kirk grabbed his head and tried to recall everything that happened to him—the cave, its smell, and the man and his crazy laugh—but his memories were blurred. Every time he tried to take a peek at those events, a sharp pain would pierce through his head.
He shook it and looked around. The grass, the trees, and a gurgling creek somewhere deep within the forest; every sound seemed to be cherry-picked to calm his mind. His body relaxed a little.
He sat down on the warm ground and closed his eyes, clearing his head from useless thoughts.
"Where am I?"
He instinctively tried to scan his surroundings with his soul force, and the headache returned. But he didn't have time to care about it, since he noticed a foreign presence all around him.
Everywhere he looked, he found strange threads of energy. There were two types, yet they acted as one. He couldn't explain why, but he suddenly felt extremely curious.
Kirk sent a thread of his consciousness—something everyone could do after their soul reached a certain level—and tried to interact with them. He immediately felt the eagerness with which they 'jumped' at him, attaching themselves to his soul.
"What in the world is this thing?" he couldn't help but blurt out in amazement.
It felt so refreshing and comfortable that he even forgot how to breathe.
For a while, more and more of these tiny threads continued to invade Kirk's spiritual sea, transforming it in an unknown way.
Cold sweat covered his body after he finally managed to sever the connection between him and this strange energy. He rose to his feet and found them shaking. His heart was beating so fast he felt lightheaded.
A metallic taste soon filled Kirk's mouth, and he lost his consciousness.
***
Kirk didn't know how much time has passed when he finally woke up, but the sky was already growing dark. Heavy clouds hung over the forest, threatening to summon a massive flood at any moment. The sun was saying goodbye with its last rays, which painted the world in bittersweet colors. A portion of them fell on Kirk's frowning face, accompanied by first raindrops.
He was in no rush to get up as he carefully examined the changes that had taken place within his body. He suddenly realized that the first question to which he had to find the answer was not, "Where am I?" but strangely enough, "What am I?"
He immediately noticed that his soul has changed. It felt as though he woke up with a third arm or a second head. He was suddenly overcome by a deep feeling of unease.
The soul was the most important and elusive part of the body. It was very difficult to recover if something happened to it.
He tried not to panic and continued to examine the anomaly. But suddenly, a realization struck him—how come he could perceive anything at all with his soul? Wasn't he a cripple through and through? So, in the end, this was only a dream...
"Maybe it was that light?"
Another wave of pain crashed against his head. Kirk winced and curled up on the ground. After the pain finally ebbed away, he heaved a sigh of relief—at that moment, it felt as if his soul were going to explode. It seemed as if those memories were deliberately concealed from him.
"Awooo!"
Suddenly, Kirk heard a bone-chilling howl that came from the depths of the forest. He turned his head and managed to catch a glimpse of a giant wolf rushing toward him. Its body was massive enough to be mistaken for a small hill. It was a direwolf – ranked among the most ferocious beasts out there. And a mature one at that!
"No, this is definitely not a dream! I have to run!"
The adrenaline pumped through his body as he darted in the opposite direction from the beast. The trees were huge and scattered over a large area, making it impossible to hide. Not that hiding could solve anything in this situation; it would be a huge insult to the predator's keen senses of smell and hearing.
The only thing Kirk could hope for was a cave big enough for him to sneak into, but small enough to block his pursuer.
He noticed a giant tree that towered over the rest of the forest; he could see its trunk spiraling toward the clouds through the dark foliage.
Under the cover of the night, he ran like a madman, dodging every stone and tree branch that obstructed his path. Behind him came the horror in the face of a shadow. Its red eyes glowed in the dark, firmly locked onto its prey.
The silence of the night was shattered by another howl as more shadows joined the hunt. Kirk didn't care as he was already climbing up the roots that zigzagged in and out of the ground.
A violent gust of wind greeted him from behind and a huge wound appeared on his back.
Kirk let out a painful groan and smashed into the ground between the two giant roots on which he stood a moment ago. He heard his bones cracking, as pain paralyzed his body.
Lying on his back, he lifted his head and saw a giant head looming over him. Their eyes met, and for a second, the beast felt like retreating. But immediately afterward, it opened its maw and let out an angry roar, clearly ashamed of its previous actions.
Kirk kept staring at it with bloodshot eyes. The stench from the wolf's throat assaulted his nostrils, but it was nothing compared to the cave.
"So this is how I die... how stupid."
He closed his eyes.
***
He waited for a while, but nothing happened. His eardrums were ruptured from the roar, so he couldn't hear what was happening around him.
He opened his eyes and witnessed a gruesome scene. The beast was hanging mid-air, 'supported' by dozens of thick roots that pierced through its body. Eyes, mouth, head, chest... Nothing was spared.
Kirk narrowed his eyes.
"This looks like The Gaia Forests, which means I am tens of thousands of kilometers east of Fifth Southgate City. Even though at the very border, this should still be the Vascan Empire's territory."
This time he really couldn't believe his eyes. Traveling such a large amount of space in an instant was unheard of. He speculated, but even his master, Halifax, shouldn't have heard of such a thing.
"I must be dreaming... Then why does it hurt so much?" He tried to move but then decided against it.
It was the middle of the night and the rain had begun not long ago; the clouds looked like they were about to fall from the sky. If anything, he should start thinking of what to do with his paralyzed and broken back. A small pool of blood has already formed on the ground, and his head began to feel dizzy.
"No, I must not sleep. Sleep is the cousin of death."
He knitted his brows in deep thought, trying to come up with a solution.
He couldn't move but could think. And that's everything he needed to start cultivating the inner energy. The first step would be to open a chakra point. Since his soul wasn't crippled, he decided to test if the same applied to his body. Maybe he could even restore his shattered Profound Core.
Kirk tried to locate his chakra points but found none whatsoever. Even though his 'new' soul could pierce and see through something as dense as a rock, he still failed miserably. His body seemed to resist his own spiritual senses, which confused him greatly.
How could he begin cultivating his inner energy if he couldn't even locate his chakra points? For the vast majority of practitioners, no thought was more painful than this.
But he didn't panic. He laid on the ground completely naked while the rain washed over his body. He could see every drop with such clarity that he could count them all.
He felt extremely tired but didn't give up; in fact, such thoughts never visited his mind. He tried once again, but still nothing. He couldn't feel his limbs for all the blood was slowly being pumped to his vital organs. His powerful soul was the sole thing that kept him from collapsing and eventually dying.
"It seems that there is no other choice."
Kirk spread his consciousness and immediately sensed the energy with dualistic nature. It began to flock to him like rivers to the sea. The same feeling took control over his body. All the pain immediately disappeared, replaced by pure bliss.
This time, he managed to stay conscious. He didn't understand what was happening, but at least, he was still alive. The process continued for some time and eventually came to a stop. It wasn't that he willed it, but rather something didn't let him.
He scanned his inner world for any visible transformation, and sure, everything had changed. His body was now filled to the brim with those two types of energy; a little more and he would explode.
"Have I reached a bottleneck?" he thought.
The internal bleeding wasn't stopped but the comfortable feeling was still present. This felt more like taking a warm bath after working for days on end than cultivation.
He racked his brain but didn't find a way out of this situation. The energy was slowly healing his body, which was the only thing he knew, so he just decided to wait for everything to happen naturally.
Minutes turned into hours. The direwolf's corpse started to rot, and it wasn't clear, what happened to the rest of the pack, not that Kirk was particularly interested. All of his attention revolved around his own body.
From the moment the unknown energy entered his soul, it became tangible and spread to the rest of his body. The more time passed, the faster the process of assimilation became. In the end, every last bit of it was consumed to restore his body to health, although partially.
But what really brought a smile to Kirk's face was that he was once again able to control the elemental energy.
***
It stopped raining just as quickly as it had begun a few hours ago. The moons once more blessed the sky with their presence. Their light illuminated the forest, giving life to dancing shadows. On the horizon, one could already see the first sunrays.
Kirk noticed that there was something peculiar about the light that came from the moons, but he couldn't put his finger on it.
"I have a weird feeling," he murmured to himself. "What year is it? How much time has passed?"
A month? A year? Kirk wouldn't find that surprising. The cave altered his sense of time and tempered with his biological clock – something that was innate to the world of cultivation.
Cultivators could sense the passage of time by observing the elemental energy around them. It was something everyone could achieve with enough training. They just had to summon the tiniest strand of energy from their bodies and calculate the counter-force with which the primordial energies of the world resisted it.
Nature had a cycle of its own, which was simply called The Great Cycle. It lasted for centuries and was very convenient when it came to tracking large amounts of time. The more resistance, the farther in the cycle you were.
Kirk lifted his finger and a tiny slash of light appeared above it for a brief moment.
"This can't be..."
He stared in shock at his hand.