There is still some time before the sun comes out, based on his experience. So Nai decided to forget sleep this time and search for things nearby.
He remembered those bizarre monsters— slimes seemed to leave something behind in their deaths. Although those were just a few glimpses, his current heightened eyesight shouldn't be wrong.
Actually, he had no need to search for them, as those things were revealing their extraordinariness to himself.
"This is the first one." Nai lowered himself and picked up a black, unadorned dim ring that was gathering and absorbing the fog around the grassland with the other objects.
Nothing happened when he picked it up. As for why he picked it up directly and recklessly, It can be said that he was a lazy man.
Thinking so much will only cause him to burn more of his brain cells, which he finds wasteful to use.
"Since I already killed them, these objects they left behind should be the loot, right?" However, this was by no means a game world where he could always reset if he died or didn't like the ending.
Nai knew that, but he still did it. He picked it up unprotected.
And he guessed it right: nothing happened to him or to the ring that was still absorbing the remaining fog in the surroundings.
A while later, there were no changes except that the fog around him had turned faint enough for the ring to stop absorbing it.
Since it has come to this. "I might as well gather those things first before I lose sight of them."
Ten minutes later, Nai sat on top of the walls. In front of him were a piece of cloth and fifteen small objects that were placed on top of it.
Most of them are dim black unadorned rings, a bigger ring that looked like a collar, and some medium ones that seem to be for arms and feet, like bracers. There's one that is a dim white color.
"There should be some connections to it but., Nothing happened when I gathered them all. It should be safe." Although he spoken it like that, he still wrapped them up and walked back to the pond.
The walls around the pond are now debris. There's no need to climb or jump anymore. The garden was destroyed, and the shelter has caved in.
"It seems I would need to rebuild a temporary one before my castle is completed." With a flick of his hand, the wrapped cloth in his hand was unwrapped when he made a throwing motion just now.
In the end, those unadorned rings, small, medium, and big, were sent flying to the pond water, which has remained clear till now.
The reason he had the idea of purifying this was because one of those rings was found in the pond.
It was a dim white ring. This shows that the pond was indeed extraordinary, not just in healing, cure, regeneration, revitalization, and rejuvenation.
But also in its ability to purify filth and dirty things.
Even the fog's darkness can't resist the pond's neutralizing properties. Even then, the dim starlight above illuminates his surroundings.
Which made it easier for him to fight in the dark back then.
...
There were movements in the water. Bubbles that looked like how seawater would react when one jumped on them.
It looked acidic.
A while later, when all those bubbling things stopped. Nai took off his clothes and dove underwater to collect those rings.
Now all of them looked whiter but not brighter. Now in his hands, they looked like dead corals with no holes in them. Still have their ring shape.
After collecting them all. He swam up to the shore and dried himself using the wool clothes he used to dry himself before wearing a coat, using a vine to make himself a belt.
By the time he returned, he was back near the pond. Raelgar and Gahani were already sleeping deeply side by side, not far from the walls.
The accumulated stress along with their all-time tense nerves they had been keeping up all these weeks were soon found an outlet to release.
Nai had a hunch that they might not wake up till the whole day.
He didn't mind; naturally, he can sympathize with them. So he would let them be. Anyway, he can make them work harder after that.
They should be grateful.
Sitting on the ground before he examined the rings out of the wrap. The sight of the broken mud bricks around him made him sigh at that battle just a while ago.
"Even the mud brick specialness couldn't take the blow of that muscular giant back then. If I were to be hit by that, surely I wouldn't be able to stand up for a few hours."
That's why it's important to fight over long distances. With distance, one can think more, prepare more, increase accuracy more, avoid being hit, dodge more, and live much longer.
This is the advantage of being a ranger.
"I'll be needing a bow, arrows and more spears to throw—a javelin?" Nai would craft them after he had enough time to spare.
He immediately laid the rings on top of the cloth covering the ground. He picked one medium-sized ring up for a closer look. "What use are they for?"
"A material for making a magical item?"
"Is this a magical item?"
"An accessory?
"Storage ring?"
Nai decided to wear it, but it was too small for him, so he took it down and picked a finger-size ring instead.
This time, he fit it right on his second finger. "Just the right fit. Must be meant for it."
Nai waited for a while, but nothing happened. He thought for a moment before searching for some blood on his bloodstained suit. "Ah, I found it."
The blood has already hardened, but it doesn't matter. He pinched it into powder and sprinkled it on top of the ring.
Although he can always take on a fresh drop of blood from him. Such a thing is one of the things he hates—self-harm.
"I'm such a kid, afraid of pain. How could I agree to that?" Only those who were too confident and truly reckless with no sense of their surroundings would cut themselves apart just to squeeze out a drop of blood for an experiment.
At the same time, the powdered blood touched the ring. Then, with a poof, it turned into a white smoke that flew up to his Moon's Blessing.
"That's it?" Although he was saying that, he was actually overjoyed. He found one of the rings used! "So that's what you would use it for."
At the same time, the ring transformed into smoke and entered the Moon's Blessing. Some kind of information mysteriously appeared in his mind, like it had always been there.
No, it wasn't.
It's an insight.
The information isn't clear, but his heart can read it completely, as he thought he knew it all along but couldn't remember it in his mind.
"Devour? By devouring these rings, my moon's blessing will grow." In his heart, the mystery of his moon's blessing is one of the biggest things he has in view of this world.
Using the pond water to clean, his blood as fire, and the moon's blessing as the furnace There is a possibility of awakening an ability related to the moon as long as enough rings are refined.
Without another thought, he sprinkled the remaining blood powder he had on the other rings. Of course, he left one finger-size ring just in case he would need it in the future or in remembrance.
Soon the remaining rings turned into clouds of smoke that entered the moon's blessing like winding rivers in mid-air.
"This is so fantastic; this feels much more fantasy now." He took a deep breath as he wore the last ring on his ring finger.
To turn corporeal into intangible, he had truly experience it.
He decided, "This will be my trophy, the proof of my first fight and victory against this world's strange encounter."
Feeling somewhat proud, Nai decided to lay down and gaze at the far-off stars.
The moon's blessing on his neck is undergoing some kind of change. He didn't know what was happening on it because he couldn't see it from his angle.
A silver dust-like light appeared around an inch from it before slowly vibrating as time passed.
"There's no moon today. So how could it absorb moonlight?" Actually, he already knows.
For the past three years, he has been living here. He already noticed that,, even in the moonless night. The moon's blessing won't stop absorbing moonlight just because it isn't present in the eyes.
"The moon has always been above. It's just that the sun is powerless to let it show its side on this kind of day every month." Nai was talking about the new moon on every calendar.