In the brilliance of day, water continuously fought land for an eternal conquest. Nature continued to feed on light, animals continued to feel on nature, and beasts continued to feed on animals, thus was the cycle of life. Light snow rained down from the sky which would soon engulf the land and the living.
On a shore that contained piles of rock in a variation of sizes, densities, and specialties, a barely recognizable corpse of a beast could be seen. The reason for this abnormality was due to the beast's front half being completely blown off leaving only half of its body.
*Shake*
Suddenly the corpse started shaking, the shaking soon turned more chaotic, and then...
*TEAR*
a fissure was formed from inside the corpse. Soon silence engulfed the surroundings.
****
The sun was setting, the snow continued its assault on the lands growing fiercer by the minute, the living began to take shelter, and nature found itself in a period of rest.
Inside the beast's corpse, Ares lay, the many stab wounds seemed to have dried, while 3 swords were still dug into his body causing constant pain while his mind was in a numb state.
Even then, Ares began moving his trembling arms which screamed for rest, and grabbed the meat from the corpse of the beast.
*Crunch*
He took some in his hand and began eating to regain as much energy as he could. After an hour more of eating, Ares began crawling out of the corpse to find something to quench his thirst.
Luckily the corpse lay on a shore that was filled with fresh water which he began trudging towards despite the snow obstructing his path.
"Haah... haah...", despite the closeness, Ares was completely out of breath for any movement he made.
Not long after, Ares arrived next to the shore which seemed silent as of now, and moved his mouth toward the water but halted himself.
'Why struggle?' Ares questioned himself.
*Splash*
'I failed to break through the 1st Layer. Shouldn't it be better to end it all now and let go of the suffering?' Ares closed his eyes as he thrust his entire head into the pool of water with the intent to drown himself.
'NO' Ares abruptly pulled his head back and began to gasp for air.
'Until I find the end of my Path, I will keep moving.' Ares convinced himself but soon felt jolts of pain throughout his body.
'First I need to get rid of these...' Ares said as he began looking at the swords still dug into his flesh and the countless stabs around his body.
He then began to slowly take out the swords, but due to his only experience with healing involving Bola, he was rather crude.
*Spurt*
As Ares pulled one of the swords out of his body, blood immediately began to gush out and without wasting a second, Ares used his energy to close the wound.
After doing the same with the other swords, Ares began to question an observation he noticed about his energy.
'It feels more... abundant? But I failed to break through the 1st Layer. Should I try to check?' with hesitation, Ares closed his eyes as he began to direct his lilac energy towards his brain.
After nearly half of his energy found itself around Ares's brain, he began to make a 'connection' between his energy and brain.
Immediately, Ares opened his eyes and was met with a sight that many would describe as 'diabolical', but to Ares, it felt like the most comforting place he would ever know.
'So this is the World of Path.' Ares thought as he saw mountains that emanated with mystic power, trees that shone with dread reaching nothing but all, a sky that seemed to howl in pains that no man could fathom, innumerable amounts of jet-black waves constantly warring on land, imperial purple to lavender-like mist covered the space edging the current world, but despite these details that dwarfed anything Ares had ever seen, something else caught his attention as he faced the sky.
A black dot that seemed to be invaluable and obscured by the titanic topography but when looked closely they would notice the dot moving—albeit gradually. But what brought upon Ares's curiosity was how anything that touched the dot simply disappeared, with no resistance, aftershocks, or even struggle.
'Why is that following...' Ares remarked as he saw a small purple light rotating around the black dot while the black dot, unlike anything else it touched, seemed to leave the light alone.
Suddenly Ares was struck with a thought as he observed the curious phenomenon.
'Soul... my Soul' he said as he observed the mystic black dot.
'The light that follows should be the 1st Layer, or to be more exact, a pseudo 1st Layer.' Ares theorized as he observed the phenomenon but was soon perplexed by the phenomenon.
'According to Bola, only those who have completed the 1st Layer of their respective Path can enter the World of Path.'
Layers encircle one's Soul which is both the 'container' and 'emitter' of one's energy. So when one makes Layers, they are essentially forming a 'connection' between one's identity and the cosmos, the problem is Ares doesn't have this 'connection' but rather the complete opposite. Due to this realization, Ares tried to forcefully inject it into my body. This method barely worked as he only absorbed a minuscule portion of the energy he tried to inject, the rest of the energy dissipated into the explosion that blasted the beast's body away.
'I am more of a pseudo 1st Layer than the real thing so how can I be here?' then Ares looked back at the small dot of lilac light and noticed something.
'It's weakening.' Ares observed that the light grew dimmer and then realized he needed 'fuel' to power his Layer. But what 'fuel' could power the Path?
'Cosmos's energy.' Ares thought as he opened his eyes to the blizzard which seemed to rage on even more fiercely than before.
Ares sat up with a trembling body and began to do the same thing he had done before by gathering his energy in the form of a net and capturing the cosmos's energy that surround him.
*Hzzzzzz*
However this time Ares made a small net and captured a minuscule amount of cosmos energy which caused the repelling to significantly lessen. Then instead of trying to forcefully inject the cosmos's energy towards him, he first began to 'attack' the cosmos energy like a virus.
"Ughh..." Ares immediately began to experience a severe headache but kept maintaining his focus.
After some time, the cosmos energy which was previously completely white had a shade of purple. Seeing the 'attack' had worked in lessening the power of the cosmos' energy, Ares began to devour the energy which was far more subdued causing no explosion to occur like last time.
After nearly an hour Ares managed to devour all of the energy and went back to World of Path and immediately saw the pseudo 1st Layer have gained some level of vitality.
'I need to continue doing this to break through. But before that...' Ares slowly got up with his trembling legs that could break at any moment.
"Seems like the company is here..." Ares said as his naked figure emerged from the corpse to gaze at nearly a dozen arctic wolves with 2 elongated horns on top of their heads while their body reached the size of 2 meters in height and nearly 5 meters long that had already surrounded the beast's corpse.
"Haah... Haah..." Ares began breathing heavily from the combined effects of the freezing blizzard, the beasts Killing Intent, and the overexertion of his body.
"I'm done with this," Unconsciously, Ares emitted an enormous amount of Killing Intent completely dwarfing the wolves'.
*Cough**Cough**Cough*
Immediately blood started coming out of Ares's nose, ears, and even eyes, but the wolves seemed to show a now more fearful look towards Ares despite his miniature size.
'Time to leave.' Ares thought as he began to turn in particles leaving the wolves in a daze.