After devouring the squirrel steaks and sinew stew, leaving nothing more than a few drops lingering at the bottom of the pot, the three of them retired to their sleeping bags. Leon was exhausted. So much had happened in the last twenty-four hours that it didn’t even feel real. His life the previous two weeks had been a blur of violence and death, making him wonder how he was still alive.

He also thought about why he was still alive.

As far as Leon could tell, there was no reason for his continued existence. He didn’t deserve to live more than anyone else. And even if he did, what influence did his perceived value have over a nuclear bomb? People liked to pretend they had control over their surroundings, but there was nothing a regular person could do to stop a bus from running them over.

Reality was chaos. Life was nothing more than a coincidence that people were lucky to experience, and while a small amount of control could be exerted over a person’s surroundings, some things were simply up to random chance. Or fate, if Leon was being charitable. But that didn’t have to be the case anymore, did it?

Staring up at the empty sky, the black dome above him devoid of stars, Leon remembered that he had gained control over something today. His health was now his to decide. With an elixir of Bloodroot berries on hand, almost any injury could be recovered from in seconds. And his cultivation… If he kept progressing, wouldn’t he eventually become immune to mundane illnesses and injuries? With no one and nothing to harm him, a long and happy life would be much easier to achieve.

Was that the purpose of cultivation? To exert order in a world of chaos and expand your locus of control?

Yawning, Leon closed his eyes. Unlike the naps Claire and Sophia had taken earlier, he had remained awake, diligently brewing the healing elixirs for hours. He didn’t even take a single break. Not to mention that he had also been severely injured for most of the morning, cooking every elixir save the last two while suffering from various degrees of pain.

The girls whispered to one another on the other side of the fire, but that was because of the lingering energy born from their mid-day naps. Weeks of limited sleep compounded with the strain of their bodies undergoing months of healing in seconds would soon catch up to them. Content listening to the crackles and pops of the dying fire, Leon slowly drifted off to sleep with a renewed sense of hope for the future.

And in that deep slumber, he dreamed for the first time in recent memory. Leon stood in the front seat of his father’s car. It didn’t go, but that didn’t really matter to a small child. Leon was more than happy to stand on the seat and turn the steering wheel as he pretended to drive, his father watching him as he leaned on the fence and smoked.

The moo cows would normally stand in the shade of the house and watch his father work on his beloved car, but today they lingered on the other side of the paddock where his mother was feeding them. She wiped the sweat off her forehead and waved to Leon and his father, both of whom waved back.

His mother cheered and ran to him but his father made it first since he was closer. He leaned into the driver’s side door and waved again, waiting for Leon to copy him. Leon waved back at his father in the cute way that small children did, almost as if they were grabbing something without moving their arm. His father called him his little genius, cooing endless praise.

It must’ve been the first time he waved.

Sadly, this was not a dream he would remember. The memories began to fade as soon as Leon woke up, and by the time he sat up from his sleeping bag, they were all gone. Nothing more than a distant impression in the deepest recesses of his mind.

Leon packed his things and poked the girls awake. There wasn’t much to carry so the whole process took less than a few minutes. Once he was done packing his own stuff, however, he realised that Claire and Sophia were still fast asleep.

With nothing to do, Leon wandered through the forest in search of something to eat. He quickly found a bushel of regular blueberries and some mushrooms, but his meagre harvest was not enough to feed three mouths. Continuing his foraging, Leon’s body sunk into a comfortable rhythm, leaving him alone with his thoughts.

Which, for a lot of people, was not very enjoyable.

Indecision gnawed at him like a… not a squirrel, since he was doing the gnawing as of late. His thoughts were stress-inducing, nonetheless. There was so much he wanted to do and see. Whether it was exploring the pocket world or hiding in a cave and cultivating for a hundred years, Leon craved to learn more about these mystical arts that were so new to him. If he could walk further on the path of cultivation, his return to the real world could also become smoother than glass.

Why be afraid of the horrible spider demons when he could blast them all away? Why care about finding his friends when he could fly or teleport over to them? Leon sighed, kneeling down to pick a mushroom that may very well kill him in a single bite.

He needed to get back to his friends and family. Remaining in this pocket world for too long would raise the chances of him finding nothing but corpses. On the other hand, he might find his own way into an early grave if he left too early.

Standing up, Leon decided on a vague course of action. He would explore the smaller realms until he sated his curiosity and then make his way to the top of the mountain in the central pocket world. Finding an exit could take years in this place, so it was best to find one now and worry about going back later.

With enough food, Leon wandered back to camp with a plastic bag full of berries, mushrooms, and herbs. When he rounded the last tree and spotted the girls, he found them in a panic. Sophia was trembling while Claire held her knife out, ready to fight anything that stepped out of the brush. Leon ran over, worried that some creature was nearby, but when the girls spotted him, their shoulders slumped and their postures shifted back to normal.

“Where have you been?” Claire scolded, putting her hands on her hips. “We were worried sick. Do you have any idea how terrifying it is to find one of your companions missing when you wake up, possibly dragged away by god knows what in the middle of the night?”

“Did you not notice that my sleeping bag is rolled up?” Leon said, raising his eyebrow. “Not to be rude to any wild beasts, but I don’t think they are intelligent or dexterous enough to roll up and tie a sleeping bag to a backpack.”

Claire froze, glancing over at the neat bundle. “I… see.”

The awkward silence stretched for a moment until something poked out from under her arm.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Sophia said, letting go of Claire’s arm and walking up to Leon. “We were very worried.”

Leon had wanted to tease Claire, but when he saw Sophia wipe away the tears in the corner of her eyes, he stopped himself and held up the bag for them to see.

“I’m sorry I scared you. I was out foraging for breakfast and lost track of the time. I promise I won’t do it again, okay?”

Sophia nodded her head while Claire leapt at the opportunity to change the subject. “What did you find? Looks like a lot of grass to be entirely honest.”

Leon set the bag down and pulled out the different groups of ingredients. First, he put the blueberries in a bowl, earning a few noises of appreciation. Next, he grabbed a bushel of some kind of herb, the rich scent of lemon following closely behind.

“Lemon grass!” Sophia said, grabbing a piece by the stem. “Uncle Jonas has some in a planter out the front of his cabin. Or, he had some. I’m not sure what’s happened to them now.”

“Is it edible? It smelled so good that I was happy to grab it just to ward away the smell of Claire's cooking.”

“It is edible,” Sophia said, giggling at her sister’s expense, “but only the bottom third. Cymbopogon Citratus is very stringy so it’s best made into an oil. We can also put it in boiled water to make tea, which supposedly helps with nausea and stomach ulcers! It also possesses two chemicals that function as antiseptics, meaning we might be able to make soap by mixing it with the fat from the squirrel!”

Leon nodded enthusiastically, glancing at Claire with a questioning gaze. “Wow, that’s incredible. Good thing I found so much of it then.”

“She’s the smart one,” Claire shrugged, “and I’m the athlete, I guess.”

Leon bit his tongue - holding back a joke where he asked if they had a third sister who could cook - and pulled out the mushrooms from the bag, setting them down beside the bushel of lemongrass.

“Do either of you know much about mycology, or whatever the study of fungus is called?”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“These are…” Claire started, breaking some of them and showing Sophia. “all foreign to me. I would throw them all away if none of them can be used for alchemy.”

“Is there no way to find out if they can be eaten?”

“There probably are but I don’t know any of those methods. Some of these mushrooms have been infected by whatever is going on in this weird place, making them highly unpredictable. I would use them for alchemy or toss them. No sense in risking your life for two calories and a thimble of water.”

Leon turned a mushroom over in his hand, admiring its red and gold colouring. They all possessed an unusually high amount of aura. It was a shame that he had no idea if they were alchemical ingredients or normal plants. The remaining Bloodroot berries had a high amount of aura but that didn’t necessarily mean they were useful. Shrugging his shoulders, Leon pocketed the ones with the brightest aura and tossed the normal ones out.

They ate the blueberries and fried some of the leftover squirrel meat for breakfast. Sophia also boiled some lemongrass tea, making a joke that they might need its ulcer-healing properties if Claire was going to keep cooking. She was pinched for that but it mustn't have hurt because she was giggling the whole time.

Once they were all ready to go, Leon requested that they explore the outer realms before moving onto the Central Plane. His logic was that if an exit were to be found, it would either be in a smaller realm on the outskirts or found on the mountain of the central pocket world. He was biased in that he wanted to explore a bit, but who wasn’t?

It just so happened that his idea was also the best one.

For the rest of the morning and deep into the afternoon, Leon and the girls explored over fifty different pocket worlds. Some were barely ten metres across, making it quite easy and quick to explore, while others spanned entire acres of land. The larger pocket worlds were less common but that didn’t mean much when one large dimension could fit thirty of the smaller ones.

There were many ruins scattered about the place, too. Sometimes it was part of a house, others it was a wall or a courtyard, but most of the signs of civilisation were old roads made up of grey stone bricks. Reclaimed by nature, the shattered paths were fairly common sights. They were covered in plant growth and often broken apart from tree roots pushing up underneath, making them nothing more than pieces of stone in the ground.

Leon was silently disappointed. He tried to hide his dwindling enthusiasm for adventuring, but it seemed that Claire was catching on despite his efforts not to look like a child having a tantrum.

“Sorry, I should have warned you.”

“About what?” Leon said, glancing back at her. They were trudging through a forest, and while it was different from the forests he knew, the trees were the same as every other one in this dimension. Some combination of red and gold could be seen in every single pocket world, numbing Leon to his original excitement. It was still beautiful at least.

“That there are a bunch of scary monsters here and not much else.”

Leon stopped when something rustled in a nearby bush. Claire silently pulled out her knife, and as Leon began to cycle his Qi, Sophia grabbed onto his left sleeve. Thankfully she knew to grab the crippled arm. A little nose poked out of the bush, and from it came a squirrel’s head. Sophia flinched, but the squirrel did nothing to scare her.

It sniffed the air, scanned the area, and then ran up a tree when it spotted them. Claire had explained more about the squirrel incident, enlightening him on the confusing scene he had first walked in on. The squirrels were normally like the one they just encountered. Docile and energetic, if a little curious. Claire had often spotted them eating the native berries and some nuts that must grow in the trees.

He'd have to go climbing soon to see if they were edible.

It made him question if the stone they found in its chest was the cause of its strange behaviour.

Sighing, Leon glanced around the new pocket world and felt all desire to explore die out inside his chest. He didn’t know what he expected to find but it was definitely more interesting than this. He didn’t even find any ingredients with dense aura besides more Bloodroot Berries. Even then, the amount of aura they possessed was far greater than anything else he'd found. The bush looked like it had been decorated with red Christmas lights while the mushrooms he kept were only slightly brighter than the ambient aura in the environment.

“Can we go and look at the central pocket world? We can come back and continue looking for an exit here, I would just like to see what we’re getting into if we don’t find a way out now.”

Claire nodded her head and guided Leon to his left. Before, they had literally walked in a ring around the central pocket world. They could see how the spaces connected, as the areas that didn’t connect with one another would turn the bubble solid and impassable. It also showed an endless sky rather than the connected pocket world.

Up close, Leon began to see through the bubble. The endless forest was split in two, one side red while the other was the colour of pure, unblemished gold. Matching that aesthetic was the mountain itself in the distance. The enormous mountain was split down the middle, appearing as if a sword had cut it in half over a million years ago.

Nothing about the cut looked sharp, exactly.

It looked worn by time and nature, rounding out its edges.

It made Leon wonder if the mountain was like that due to natural erosion. Then again, the two halves of the pocket world could’ve been teleported in and connected together. It appeared as if they were two separate halves. The red side was made out of some dark, blood-soaked crystal while the other was composed of lustrous golden metal, looking nothing alike

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Claire said, waking Leon from his reverie.

“Yeah, it’s incredible. Do you have any idea why the mountains are like that?”

Claire shook her head. “No clue. Some guesses, sure, but nothing concrete.”

“Those mountains seem to be the source of the corruption,” Sophia said, “their taint extending so far as to alter the flora and fauna of adjacent pocket worlds. Since nothing like this exists in our world, I assume it has something to do with cultivation. Maybe natural aura is the cause, but we don’t have to make guesses about that anymore since Leon can actually investigate it himself.”

Leon nodded and stepped through into the central pocket world. Immediately taking note of the location he appeared at, he was less than twenty metres away from the split. Sadly, there was no visible cut down the middle. It was just an intermingling of the two forces, creating a chaotic region of sorts. Gold and red grass sprouted up in a rough line. The two colours never combined, merely taking over portions of the same pieces of grass or tree, turning them half red and gold.

Ignoring the strange scene, Leon turned and admired the dichotomy of the colours. To his left was an endless forest of grass the colour of dried blood, red bark dripping with crimson sap, and leaves that almost looked like they were dipped in bright red paint. To his right was the opposite. A sea of fiery red and yellow grass, golden trunks, followed by endless canopies of shining golden leaves.

Leon breathed in and remarked on how different the air felt. It was humid and heavy, and as he was standing in the blood forest, the air almost had a metallic quality to it. Leon pulled the trigger and activated his aura sight. It was really his aura senses, but the former sounded better in his head.

Besides, he was mostly looking anyway.

The first thing Leon noticed was the density. Compared to the outer realms, the amount of aura lingering in the air was several times greater. The second was the flora. Leon gasped as he saw random flowers shining with the same light that the Bloodroot Berries did, counting at least five different plants just within his vicinity.

He would definitely be picking those before they returned.

Leon glanced up at the mountains, curious at what he would find. He recoiled and collapsed to the ground. His eyes burned from the power of what he saw, the image searing itself into his mind despite only catching the faintest of glimpses.

The mountains blazed with power. Endless columns of natural aura rocketed up into the air, their density at least a thousand times greater than the scraps that were lingering around him.

A crimson waterfall fell up into the sky above the blood mountain, pooling on the domed roof of the pocket world like an ocean of blood. On the other side, a cyclone of fire thundered out of the gold mountain, bubbling and lashing out at the sea of blood pressed up against it. He couldn’t understand how such power could exist.

He didn’t even know what it meant.

Taking a deep breath, Leon focused on breathing in the sickly sweet air to cope with the agony in his eyes and head. But when the pain began to subside, he felt something brush against his left arm. It went completely numb after being transformed, but now that it was out of its sling and touching the grass, Leon could feel the tiny blades on his skin.

He smiled, glad that he was recovering until something pierced into the palm of his hand, burrowing its way up and into his arm.