Ember grins.
"I'm going to need to borrow that self-regeneration skill of yours; this would be quite painful without it."
I activate my buff and give him access to this mythic-grade skill. Then the imagery of Trax losing control of his body and power flashes through my mind as I watch the red gem float above Ember's hand.
"Is this really safe to do here...?"
The gem slowly spins above his palm, and I feel small portions of his true mana control vibrate out from his barrier the closer it falls toward him.
"-And what about concealing our presence? If you're about to do what I think, won't this leave us without any way of hiding our true power once we return?"
The ripples get more intense, and waves of dense mana and even Ember's soul energy start to become visible to my senses as he brings the gem even closer while responding.
"Possibly. However, possibly not. Absorbing a single stone will decay our barriers, but we can conceal our mana control with Qi from your new friends."
He points to the three sleeping teammates on the cliffside nearby, then looks up toward the sky and continues.
"If we make it to the top of the construct, there's a good chance I can broker a deal with its creator to get us a better limiter. If not, we'll be strong enough to handle deceiving those A-Class hunters by the time we're done here. They're only red cores themselves."
I raise an eyebrow.
"Hey—this is a lot to drop on me all at once... Its creator? Whatever made this realm is still here...? And the A-Class Hunters at the Association can wield divine energy? Is that why they didn't practically explode from eating those stones?"
Ember smirks.
"Right... eating those fragments to power the rift wasn't necessary, it was just a show."
Ember's gaze wanders the sky again, then comes back down to meet mine.
"As for if the creator is still here... I don't know. The construct patterns are familiar, but they're very old. We'll have to climb higher. I can't see the top yet. If you'd like to take a glimpse into the divine realm, follow my lead. I can't answer all your questions by simply explaining them; you'll have to see the truth for yourself."
He grins and drops the red core into his mouth.
It disappears, and I feel dense waves of energy hit my barrier while the same crimson light I witnessed in the fiery bird glows in his eyes.
An aura grows around his body, just the same as the flaming scavenger bird's did.
The vitals on my Rising Emperor's Domain interface are pretty interesting to watch.
His health bar slowly trickles down, then his mana starts to fall after as the self-regeneration skill kicks in and heals him slowly.
The red aura around him continues to expand, and I watch with curiosity for a full minute before the light begins to subside and the red glow from his eyes fades.
We're left both floating in the sky just as we were before, but now his limiter is completely gone and shattered. The only thing left blocking his mana control is a new barrier of pure Qi.
Other than the usage of mana from the use of self-regeneration, he's completely fine and unaltered.
"Your turn."
While nothing seems to be wrong with him, the thought of breaking the limiter that kept those with soul energy awakened unaware of my power isn't a very logical move. The A-Class guards aren't what I'm worried about; it's more so about those yellow-golden eyes I felt peer down on me during my match, and the unknown of what else was inside the Apex Region's black box that I wasn't able to sense.
Ever since these divine fragments showed up, and especially since we entered this rift, Ember has been acting extremely strange.
He'd normally want to keep our presence completely hidden as well, but for whatever reason, the reward from using this energy right now highly outweighs the risks in his mind. I'm unsure what this reward may be, but It's clear there's only one way to find out.
I let out a sigh and let one of the red gems fall from my storage into my palm, letting extremely strong rippling waves of energy disrupt my limiter on contact. Then, I toss the crystal into my open mouth, swallow, and prepare for the worst.
For a split second, nothing happens.
Then, the sound of high-pitched bells ringing gets louder and louder in my ears while a strong wave-like pressure expands from my chest.
My vision turns completely red, and the limiter that rests millimeters over my skin starts to vibrate at faster and faster speeds until it shatters completely.
Every cell of my body begins to heat up, and it feels like my flesh is melting from the inside out from a million different individual sources. Immediately, I activate my self-regeneration skill on full blast to feel myself healing just as fast as I'm burning alive.
I try to look around, but my eyes see nothing but the vague outline of a mountain to my right and Ember's form to my left, watching with his arms crossed from a distance.
It may be painful, but none of my survival instincts scream at me to make it stop.
Surprisingly, every sign from my subconscious mind is telling me to stop regenerating myself altogether, but I don't give in to the odd thoughts.
Every second that passes turns my vision more red, but the outlines grow sharper.
After about half a minute, I become very used to the feeling of my whole body being burned constantly from the inside out and take a breath of air while trying to make sense of what's happening.
I activate my all-seeing eye and use my buffs to enhance my vision and perception.
With it, the burning sensation throughout my whole body increases by staggering degrees as well.
I feel the majority of the heat move toward my head and eyes as the crimson energy seeps into the very fabric of my all-seeing eye's skill and enhances it in ways I wasn't aware were even possible.
In an instant, I can see again with clarity beyond anything I've ever experienced before.
It's like I've always been blind but never knew it.
I stare down at my hands and see shimmering red threads moving through them, moving above and below my skin, eating away at my blood, muscles, and even bones while my skill rebuilds them.
The shimmering threads all lead back to my chest.
Inside, I see my heart, a small white sphere full of dense mana and Qi, two black demon cores, and now, sitting in the center of all of them, pumping out red fabrics of glistening energy, the faint pink outline of a translucent core, just like the jaguars and weaker scavenger birds had below me.
I can feel my heartbeat, blood flow, and see my own breath making small disruptions in the air.
My gaze turns upward, and I see Ember watching me with a grin.
Faint traces of the red lines flicker all throughout his being as well, and a small translucent core has begun to form in his chest too. However, in the center of his, there is a faint spark of gold and silver glimmering light that mine lacks.
The more I try to concentrate on this anomaly in his body, the harder it is to see. It's like my mind pushes my eyes away from it.
My gaze turns upward, and my eyes widen as I begin to see what Ember has been staring at this whole time...
The sky is made of what looks like an infinite amount of intricately woven purple threads.
They're all made of this same energy that rings with the pitch of a beautiful bell.
I turn my head side to side, and it's all I see.
All of the energy flowing from the deep purple strands leads back to a single source, and it's up in the sky. I can't tell exactly where or how high, but I know the source is up there...
For as far as my vision can go, more and more shimmering purple strands create the world I'm floating in.
I turn to the mountain next to me and my eyes widen more, as it too is made completely out of beautiful flowing purple strands of vibrating divine energy.
I float over to the wall with an outstretched hand to try and look deeper into the strands; however, the sound of bells in my ears begins to get softer the closer I get. At the same time, the thickness of the red strands in my arms and legs decreases, and the hot energy surrounding my eyes fades away.
The energy from the red stone slips away from me just as fast as it came, and my vision of the true world before me ceases too.
It's like a pair of dark sunglasses are forcefully pushed over my eyes at dusk, making it impossible to see the outlines of what I hardly even managed to conceptualize before.
My normal vision returns to me, leaving my hand to press against the stone wall of the mountain, and I can't make out the difference of this cliff to a normal rock I'd find out in the desert of Sector 2.
A shiver runs through my body, and I feel cold like I'm missing a part of myself. The only thing I can think of doing right now is immediately eating another red fragment to get the warm sensation I just felt back.
Just as I reach into my item storage to pull out another, Ember's voice brings me back to my senses.
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Author's Note:
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