(Cyrus POV)
It took me two full days to recover from the wounds I received from the queen of the aurora moths. During those days, all I could do was meditate and force cosmic energy to accelerate my healing. I created a makeshift shelter where I could rest while entering my nexus. After absorbing the remaining cores, including the one from the queen, I was able to increase the size of my core once again. When I went inside my nexus, I managed to push the maximum distance of my ability to fifteen meters, allowing me to reach the second spot on the resonance trial.
This meant my new limit allowed me to activate my ability up to eight times. However, I was still relatively far from completing the resonance trial. The next target was thirty meters away, meaning I would need to double the size of my core once again. That meant I needed to continue hunting. Having a deeper pool of cosmic energy now made the task of hunting astral behemoths less daunting, but after taking out that colony, the number of astral behemoths roaming the forest was few and far between. Hunting in the wild was no longer a viable option.
I either had to find another rift that had recently opened or enter the grade-two rift and hope I could kill whatever I came across. It didn't take much pondering; I knew there wasn't another rift nearby. I had to enter the rift in the forest. "It's really just my luck, I swear. Nothing has been going my way at all," I muttered to myself. "If only I could fully absorb this battery, I'd feel better about this situation. I guess I'm just gonna have to make do with what I got," I continued, grabbing a spear fashioned from the wood of a nearby tree.
Starving because I hadn't eaten in the past few days, I scoured the river in search of fish before starting my next task. After an hour, I managed to find several large fish in the area. The hard part was figuring out how to cook them. I normally relied on my father for that, for obvious reasons. It nearly took me longer to find the correct materials in the forest to make a fire than it did to catch the fish. But I was resourceful, and finally able to satisfy my hunger.
With my belly and celestial core full, there was nothing else for me to do. I knew time was of the essence. I had to defeat that rift in order to save my father. I didn't know what to expect—I had never entered a rift that wasn't already cleared. Honestly, I had only entered a rift a few times before this moment. Fear and anxiety boiled up inside me as I realized this might be something I wouldn't come back from.
"Get it together, Cy," I said, slapping my face with both hands, trying to get rid of the nerves. Forcing myself to take several deep breaths to calm my heart rate, my father's words resurfaced in my head: *You are capable of much more than your fears say.* He often said that while training me over the past several years on the run. The image of his golden eyes engraved in my memory encouraging me through all my hardships, led me to finally steel my fortitude and take this challenge head-on.
With my body, mind, and spirit finally aligned I entered a state of deep meditation and began my astral projection. Now in my astral form, I could see my body as it sat in a ditch-like shelter covered with moss, branches, and leaves—something resembling what a beaver or woodchuck would make. I had to take extra precautions since no one was around to watch over my body. Taking one last glance, I made my way to the astral rift.
Now in my astral form, I could see the rift more clearly as I got closer to the cosmic phenomenon. The rift resembled the portal to the nexus, except its spiraling energy was more like a raging whirlpool in the ocean rather than a calm rotation. The vortex's turbulent flow of cosmic energy felt similar to that of an astral behemoth, exuding a pressure akin to something of the voidborn rank.
Without hesitation, I placed my hand on the rift and let my astral body get pulled in. The sensation was very similar to my first experience taking the starbirth trial. As soon as I was pulled in, my body accelerated through a deep and vast void until I was spit out into a terrain unlike anything I had ever seen before. This wasn't the beautiful astral realm I had recently become familiar with. This was a barren wasteland, with a sky that looked as if it had been scorched by the very sun itself. The ground beneath me felt like it was one earthquake away from complete destruction, with fissures running across the landscape like veins.
Even in my astral form, the very atmosphere felt like it would burn my throat with every breath. With no sense of direction, I began moving forward, toward the grand mountain range ahead. I hoped that by doing this I could get a better lay of the land and a better understanding of where this rift had taken me.
The more I walked through the wasteland, the more details I noticed. Large skeletons of various astral behemoths lay lifeless and undisturbed. Jets of hot pressurized gas shot from fissures in the ground, resembling geysers from the physical world. A few times, I nearly got sent flying into the air just by walking too close. Yet still there was no sign of life.
Walking past another behemoth skeleton, I found myself at the foot of the mountain. With nowhere to go but up. I began climbing, imbuing my astral body with cosmic energy. I needed to pierce the large structure, creating divots in the mountainside for my hands and feet. Realizing I could simply launch myself upward, I started propelling myself higher, sinking my hands into the mountain's surface before my next jump.
With no concept of time in this dimension, I had no idea how long it took me to reach the top. But judging by my efforts, it could have been anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour. In total, it took about fifty jumps to reach the summit—a mountain larger than most skyscrapers back in Arthenos.
Now sitting at the peak, I could see that the open expanse stretched infinitely in all directions. As I scanned the landscape, something caught my eye at the base of the mountain. I saw large masses of figures walking toward an entrance—a door standing alone in the middle of the wasteland.
"So, the prodigal prince finally shows up," a voice whispered in my ear. I abruptly tried to dash away. Hovering in the direction I had been standing, I saw a ghostly white, translucent figure taking the shape of a young adolescent. Their eyes were golden-yellow, like my father's, and they wore the traditional braids that many in our clan donned.
"Who… and what are you?" I asked, my voice shaken.
"Oh, you don't remember me, Cy? We used to play together at school before we all died. Huh, so I guess it's true—traitors really do suffer from memory loss."
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