A week went by and Rio sold the corpses of the beasts he killed and invested it in food, potions, and anything he may need in an emergency in the secret realm.
The fifty people went back to the same hall that we were in last week and we were blindfolded and told to follow blindly, after 20 minutes of walking through cold and warm temperature environments they told us to remove our blindfolds and we were inside a massive hall, maybe half the size of the arena, with a portal at the top of the stairs.
A jade token was given to everyone and we were told how it works, "All you have to do is circulate your mana into this, the more mana provided the further you can show up on other people's radars." the elder explained before urging us to enter the portal.
Everybody was hesitant to go into the portal, not knowing the unknown is an instinctive fear in all humans until one girl stepped up, the girl had long flowing snow-white hair with fair pale skin to match and voluptuous curves in all the right places, and he eyes had an unnatural tone of gold and the aura emitted was very valiant.
She decisively entered the secret realm, which drew gazes of admiration and respect, after a few seconds another person stepped up and entered followed by people disregarding their previous fear and entering the portal, everybody was in apart from Daniel, Lara, and Rio, with her standing further from the two of them.
"I don't know if we are going to separate, so if we do let's try to find each other first," he said and we entered in the respective order
Once Rio entered, he saw nothing but darkness, and then suddenly, Rio's body started to feel strange and out of control; Rio's body started to elongate and twist in various manners but Rio couldn't fully focus on that matter as his mind seemed to be disorientated and he couldn't think straight
Whilst Rio tried to regain his bearing and sanity which seems to continuously be thrown into chaos, Rio's body started stretching out even further and further until he was no thinner than a noodle string and suddenly, Rio blacked out.
"uh, what happened?" Rio started out instinctively before realizing he was seeming to be falling, however at the moment, Rio could only see a light red sky, when Rio tried adjusting his body to see where he was dropping to, Rio saw a place with different environments, some had lush green scenery whilst some seemed to be a swamp of some kind where there was mud scatter everywhere.
There were places like the desert, forest, a place that seemed the land was black with red lines, Rio saw different infrastructures however way too small for him to see what they were.
Rio's mind seemed to be distracted by the strange view and then realized he was falling from about fifty thousand feet in the air which was rapidly decreasing every second.
"How unlucky do I have to be to be placed at the very top of this realm, and no matter what defensive skill I used, I would still end up worse than meat paste, at least with meat paste there would be something there, at this speed, the moment I touch the floor I will be everywhere within the whole 5-mile radius"
The more time passed the closer Rio got to his certain death and at this moment Rio seemed to have reached the ten thousand feet mark, so he has about thirty seconds, out of desperation Rio still used everything he could.
Rio used the adaptive shell technique to the max, inserting all the mana it could muster and the bronze turtle martial art, knowing it would be useless, but what's the harm?
Whilst thinking of the useless acts I was doing, Rio was regretting not learning a flight technique that would really help right now, however, only Mage masters know how to fly, since the mana in their body is so abundant and pure so they could easily utilize it to control their body.
Whilst keeping his mind busy and distracted from his impending doom, Rio was thinking if would get another chance at reincarnation and if he would stay a human, maybe Rio turn up like the reincarnated animal novels, Rio giggled in his mind right before landing on the floor and splattering into red mist covering the whole place in red...
Or that was what was supposed to happen, however just before Rio splattered on the ground, he stopped an inch from the ground and was gently placed on the floor as if the whole terrifying descent never happened. While in shock and reviewing what I just went through, there was no logic Rio could think of that would possibly make sense.
Rio just pushed it off as 'the secret realm really does have mysterious secrets' and tried settling my heart, since he was just on the brink of death in one of the scariest ways possible. Imagine knowing your impending doom but could do nothing but lay there whilst every second brings you closer to death.
After a minute of stabilizing my mind and heart, Rio stood up and surveyed the area he was placed in, maybe every other participant got placed in the same way he did. The elder should've told us if that really was the case.
The lush green plain showed endless greenery in every direction Rio looked, if Rio hadn't seen the actual realm from above, he would have thought that the secret realm was just made up of grass and plants.
Rio remembered before nearly falling to death there was an infrastructure nearby, however, due to his situation he was paying attention, Rio closed his eyes and tried to think back to when he was falling to see if he could find where the place was, after creasing his eyebrows trying to search for the location, Rio determined it was somewhere north.
Rio started walking north, a mount or a flying technique would be really useful, maybe Rio could find one here, if not he would try to see if he could find one back at the academy.
After about 3 hours of walking north, Rio found the infrastructure, he saw when falling. It had a round base with a similar smaller one on top, making it have the shape of a double-layer cake, with the base red and everything else black.
Rio went closer to the place but heard noises
"Hahahaha, I hit the jackpot, Jack"
"Yeah, you can even sell arts that don't suit you and earn a lot of spirit stones," the person said in a humble manner
Rio slowly went close peeking inside one of the entrances and saw two people, one in white robes and one in a purple robe with golden outer laces, 'they seemed to have a master and servant type of relationship.' Rio thought before the purple-robed man attacked Jack
However, he seemed to have expected this and immediately activated his defensive spell, summoning a bluish dome surrounding him, with a small crack where it was just attacked, the difference between inner and core disciples is a realm after all.
If he indeed used his full power, Jack would be critically injured or most likely dead.