"Rough landing?" Nyx snickered as she stopped next to him. "Maybe I shouldn't have let you go."

Leo scowled, shooting her a glare. "Very funny… Not all of us were blessed with perfect wings."

The feline just laughed again and offered him a shadow tendril to pull him up. He took it and jumped to his feet, quickly swiping the dust from his body.

"Have you seen anything interesting on your way down?" he asked. "I didn't have much time to look."

"Lava, rocks, and fire… Oh! And three Daemons sleeping by the river close to the edge of the island."

Leo frowned. "They didn't wake up when we fought their kin? Weird… I have noticed this before, but Nightmares here function completely differently than back on Earth. No idea why, though."

"Does it matter?" Nyx asked as they moved through the stone forest toward the lava river.

He shrugged. "Not really. It just makes me curious, that's all."

"Curiosity killed the cat," she shot back. Then she realized what she said and narrowed her eyes at him. "Don't you dare."

Leo raised his hands, holding back a grin. "I didn't say anything. It's just your imagination."

She snorted. "Try lying to someone who isn't permanently connected to your mind."

He opened his mouth to retort, only to close it again. She got me there…

"Yes, I do… Now get to work and do your thing."

"All right, all right. Give me a moment."

With that said, Leo crouched down and placed his hands on the ground. Essence stirred within his soul, slowly flowing into his arms. As it did that, he supplied it with a quite vague intent. After all, he didn't really know what he was searching for.

There we go, he thought as the Hunter's Pulse escaped out of his hands. With the amount of Essence he provided, it easily encompassed the entire floating island, both the land and what was beneath it.

A moment later, the skill snapped back, delivering its findings—which pretty much amounted to nothing. All it found were the Nightmares sleeping in the distance.

Let's try again just to make sure, he decided and fired off another Hunter's Pulse. Yet, this time, he made it search only for any signs of life deep inside the island.

"Still nothing." He sighed, standing up. "Either this place is empty, or my skill is more useless here than I thought."

Nyx nodded. "And which do you think is the case?"

"Hopefully, the former. After my first trial, finding Essence signatures even from far away shouldn't be a problem." He paused for a moment as realization struck him like lightning. "Unless those hatcheries are somehow hidden from my pulse… Then we're fucked."

Even the feline grimaced at that. True, they still had almost thirty-four hours left before the System's seal broke and the Earth was lost, but there were many, many islands in this layer. If they were forced to search them by hand, not even a full week would be enough.

"Let's move," he announced, already picking up his pace.

Nyx followed, and together, they ran toward this island's edge— right where the three Daemons were sleeping. His shadows rushed out first, swallowing the nearest beast and crushing it alive. That finally awoke the other two, but before they could even move, dark tendrils erupted from their bodies, killing them on the spot.

Leo quickly devoured two of the corpses and approached the third one. This time, he ignored the body and grabbed the fiery longsword lying a few feet away. It still warmed his hand, but with each second, the handle grew colder and colder. Similarly, the flame licking the serrated blade also faded after a moment.

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To make it even more interesting, his Identify didn't provide him any information about the blade.

The others turned to dust when I consumed the bodies… But what if I do this?

He channeled a bit of Essence into the blade and swung it at the corpse of its previous wielder. With his monstrous strength behind the blow, the sword should have cut the beast in two, but instead, it barely scratched its skin. Though, he still heard a few bones crack.

So, only the original wielder can use it. Leo summed up, dropping the sword. Guess that's what the System meant by Origin Weapon.

"Are you done?" Nyx asked as she stepped away from the river of lava.

"Yeah." He nodded, wiping his snout with his cloak. "By the way? Aren't you too hot standing so close to that? I'm sweating here like a pig."

The feline shrugged. "I can feel the heat, but it doesn't affect me like you. I don't think my body is even capable of sweating."

"Lucky," he muttered.

"Said the Prime Akirian with an Old One's shard in his chest."

"…Fair."

----------------------------------------

"Nyx! I got something!" Leo shouted as his Hunter's Pulse returned. He quickly separated all the useless information from the good part and smiled as a crimson trail appeared before him. "Bingo."

The feline, who was in the middle of eating a Daemon, trotted toward him. "What is it?"

He shrugged. "No idea, but it's the first time I detected it. Come on, I got a trail."

Nyx threw one last longing look at the unfinished meal. "Lead the way," she mumbled.

"You can eat more later. You said it yourself, we got priorities."

She nodded, but her face scrunched into a pout—or maybe it was a scowl? It was quite hard to tell those two expressions apart with her. She was definitely brooding, though.

He shook his head in silent laughter, choosing not to speak and just run toward their new target. Nyx joined his side a moment later, and together, they weaved through the forest of burning stone trees. The ever-present lava also accompanied them through this trip in the form of tiny streams that ran across the entire island.

"This should be it," he muttered, stopping right before a small cave entrance. He would fit in, but just barely.

A wave of heat blasted him in the face as he stepped closer, forcing him to back off. "Yeah… that's definitely it." He turned to Nyx. "Want to go first?"

The feline snorted and pushed past him, entering the cave. Leo ducked his head and followed a bit behind. He also instantly hid his cloak. He was sweating enough without it.

"Huh…" he hummed as the tunnel widened. Fiery red veins also began to snake along the walls, their glow intensifying the deeper they went.

Finally, after a few minutes of slow walking, the tunnel opened into a large chamber, spacious enough to fit a small warehouse. Most of the space was taken by a bubbling lava pond that cast a soft, warm light across the entire room.

However, after already spending so much time in this layer, the lava wasn't what caught Leo's eye. No, that honor belonged to two—well, three—other features of this chamber.

First, the massive gray eggs, each the size of a cow. There were dozens of them strewn around the entire room. Some even clung to the walls or the ceiling above the lava pond. How exactly? He had no idea, but he at least knew what was hiding inside those eggs.

Larvae—the second thing that caught his attention.

They were tiny, no bigger than a small dog, with crimson, half-transparent skin that glowed from within. While fewer in number than the eggs, there were still plenty of them crawling across the chamber. The most interesting thing was that they all came from the pond, leaving a trail of lava in their wake.

And finally, there was the slender pillar rising from the center of the pond. It stretched nearly to the ceiling, its violet, metallic surface glinting each time a bubble of lava burst. It was engraved with more symbols Leo couldn't recognize, not that he needed to. Identify provided him with all the information he needed.

Sealing Pillar… Got ya. Now, how to destroy you? He mused, stepping closer to the lava pond. For now, he ignored the larvae. At this stage, they were no threat, and the System only confirmed that. Those things first needed to form an egg, incubate, and then get out as new Lesser Infernal Daemons.

"What's the plan?" Nyx asked, voicing his thoughts.

Leo shrugged and summoned a single Greater Crystallized Essence out of his soul. "This should be enough, don't you think?"

"Your choice."

He took that as an invitation to continue and pushed Essence into the crystal. Once it could take no more, he used his shadows to deliver the ticking bomb to the base of the pillar.

"And… Boom!"

The unstable Crystallized Essence exploded, sending a tremor through the entire cave as the pillar shattered. Its pieces fell into the pond, slowly disappearing underneath its surface.

However, not all was good.

With his enhanced sense, Leo caught a series of muffled screeches coming from outside. They never stopped, and soon, a System notification answered why.

Well done! One of the two sealing pillars has been destroyed. Please proceed to the next one.

Warning! Your position has been revealed to the entire layer. Nightmare Pursuit in progress. Good Luck.

Great...