Still somewhat stunned, Adamu tried to observe anything, only for nothing to reflect into his eyes.

“Sigh… Obviously, the Illusion ceased, yet here I am. Soo… It is not that the Illusion is created every Midnight, but that it is temporarily… suppressed at Dawn?” Adamu was puzzled because of the implications. “That… or something entirely else is going on.”

Dismissing the Realm shaking secrets from his mind, Adamu focused on the here and now, mainly on what to do and how to get out. However, before attempting anything, he examined the Sun Bearer’s Runic Pattern at the bottom of its shaft.

“Hmm…” Sensing and comparing the sensations to his memories, Adamu received a welcoming surprise. “Either I underestimated the achievable energetic compression rate within the Energy Reserve Runic Pattern or the expenditure exhibited via the Dispersal Runic Pattern.”

“Whichever it is, I am glad only a fourth or so of Ina’s Glory got consumed so far.”

Leaving Sun Bearer aside, Adamu pondered on getting out of his current situation.

In the end, the solutions boiled down to either trying to dispel the True Darkness hiding the entrance, and then, maybe, digging himself out, exploring the tunnels and seeking a way out, or waiting for the passage of Time to open naturally.

The first held the possibility of a cave-in if the True Darkness got dispelled. The second bore the possibility of getting lost. While the third was the most safe, it was also the most boring option of the three.

Ignoring the third, for the moment, Adamu pondered on the second when a possibility surfaced in his mind.

Concentrating for a moment, Adamu probed the Compulsion cast on him.

Adamu’s idea was that now that he was familiar with the Compulsion’s plans and desires, all while remaining in control, to a degree at least, after being forced/coerced to trek through the ancient forest despite the dangers, he would be able to use it as a natural/unnatural compass in his head.

Nonetheless, as Adamu tested the sensations he noticed a peculiarity.

The feeling no longer pointed south. No. Instead, it pointed down. Down into the earth, as if the destination was at the bottom of the rat/cat den. Realizing the truth and understanding the possible cause, a memory rushed to his awareness. In fact, it was one of the last memories he made before being sort of reincarnated/copied/integrated into this new body.

Whichever of the three, or none, turned out to be the truth, Adamu ignored for the moment.

Instead, his mind settled on the individual that enabled his future self to return to the past to enable his future self to manifest in the past in the first place. Better said, without that individual's permission, it would not have been possible because Adamu had already been on Mortalities’ knee, thereby could not have executed any Time shenanigans in the first place.

“Causality?” Just saying the Name made the world around Adamu echo with power and purpose. “Time and Fate? Meaning? The Compulsion is not actually just a Compulsion to go south but to arrive at a certain place during a certain timeframe. Meaning. Anything blocking me from reaching it actually counts as a hindrance to be either circumnavigated or dealt with.”

“Huh… Guess now it is about figuring out which of the two scenarios I am looking at.”

“Praise be to Ina, The Light of the World,” Adamu declared. “May She Reign Eternally as the Rightful Throne in the Skies Above to banish the Darkness Below Forevermore.“

Only there was no light show around him to announce whether his Prayer was being heard or not.

“Mmm… Dimensional Isolation Factor?” Adamu pondered, but no answer reached him.

Considering everything for a moment, Adamu held Sun Bearer with two hands before his slightly lowered head.

“Oh, Light of the World,” Adamu chanted while resonating his Spirit with the reserve of Ina’s Glory inside the bottom part of the spear shaft. Then, Adamu pulled on the energy right to the Channeling Runic Pattern and then via it right into the air above where the spearhead should have been. Once there, Adamu dug up part of his old knowledge and quickly directed the energy into a pattern related to the Profound Laws of Light.

Once everything was where he wanted it to be, he spoke the rest of the Prayer.

“Grant this Mortal the Power to banish the Darkness before his Sight, Eternal Light.”

Instantly, Adamu felt a foreign influence settle on the little Hard Light Construct he planned to manifest. It began to squeeze from all sides on the little ball to deny its birth. Unfortunately, it seemed that Ina’s Glory, even cut off from its Source, triumphed over the True Darkness, thus allowing the little ball of True Light to manifest above Adamu.

“There are limits, it seems.” Adamu noted as he observed the illuminated distance because everything past about three meters before and behind him remained hidden within True Darkness.

Done with the first experiment, Adamu withdrew the energy supplying the Hard Light Construct and observed its existence briefly because it remained very bright to look at.

Either way, even after minutes passed, the Hard Light Construct remained.

“Now all that remains is seeing how long it lasts because there is no way it will last forever. Not in the current conditions.” Nodding with glee at a successfully cast/prayed Spell/Miracle, Adamu quickly checked the reserves inside Sun Bearer and immediately compared the difference between before and after since it was very fresh in his mind. “Must be the initial resistance that consumed more. Oh, well. It should be fine if I don't plan on staying for too long.”

Before leaving the vanished den entrance, Adamu took Sun Bearer and sort of plucked the top part of his spear shaft inside it.

That done, Adamu made his way deeper into the den.

Had the Spell/Miracle been manifested directly through Adamu's Spirit, he could directly control the Hard Light Construct. But since it happened through Sun Bearer, this was the best way to remain within the Light’s radius consistently.

During the dive, Adamu would occasionally mark the tunnels and forks.

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Just in case, of course. After all, the Compulsion only pointed down and not the specific pathways to take.

From time to time, he would even take paths that did not point down at all in order to explore them. However, as the hours slowly passed, no rat/cat was to be seen. Still, Adamu did not lower his guard. The world had taught/reminded him of its dangers right from day one of his birth in this new Realm.

As such, Adamu would rather spend some time exploring the side tunnels than be ambushed from out of nowhere.

Nonetheless, the more Adamu explored, the bigger the tunnel network became and the larger the internal map extended in his mind. Thus, from time to time, he also engraved a general map near the forks, not only to help him in an emergency but also to solidify the information in his mind.

A few hours after that, Adamu felt the first prongs of desire for the Noon Prayer.

“Nice to have an internal clock like this where it's hard to recognize the passage of Time.” Adamu commented before doing the Noon Prayer when it was time, but just like the Dawn Prayer, no light show occurred near him. “At least, it still counts to the Oath.”

More hours later, Adamu finally reached the bottom part of the rat/cat den.

The first signs were the first dispatched rat/cat creatures. However, unlike how it was on the surface, within the tunnels they did not group in seven. In fact, they did not group at all, hence, it was very easy for Adamu to kill one whenever one appeared before him. Still, as the rat/cat creatures appeared, Adamu quickly devised a strategy for effectively killing them, and it rested on the Eternal Light stuck on the top of Sun Bearer.

Actually, it was similar to how he had done it with a group of them. When the first sounds of one of its presence reached Adamu, he dimmed the Hard Light Construct to bare existence, thus becoming a beacon for them to rush onto, and not away from, so they would smother the light source out of existence.

Then, when it did reach Adamu, he quickly flared the True Light back to its full potency before swinging the shaft to kill the rat/cat creature as it stunned and, therefore, unresponsive.

A few variations of the tactic were explored, like the moments of Light expansion, but overall that remained the best strategy to deal with them with minimal resources.

Still, after Adamu got rid of them, a peculiarity occurred.

The anomaly stemmed from the fact that, despite killing the creatures and receiving the reward, they did not immediately dissolve into smoke, and they never did as long as True Light shined down on them. Instead, when he left and then returned, the creature was gone. The few experiments Adamu could do showed that the longer the True Light shined on their bodies, the longer it took for the remains to smoke away.

Overall, a few theories later, Adamu ignored the problem entirely and continued his downward trend into the deep rat/cat den.

Though, on the plus side, the more Adamu killed, the stronger the signs of Essence Awakening felt within him, which, if his conjecture was right, should occur on the 100th absorbed strain of Pure Essence, and he was only short seven of them.

93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99… 100…

The 100th strand of Pure Essence came and dissolved into Adamu’s body.

Then, similar to those just before it, Adamu noticed the sensations of the physical boundaries of his biological vessel unravel. However, the more time passed, the more the feeling remained without anything transpiring. No, in fact, the more time passed, the weaker it became. Soon enough, Adamu sensed the 100th strand of Pure Essence separate from the boundary and slither away from his biological body to dissipate as if no more space existed within his physical vessel.

“Well… Talk about dispersing one's expectation.” Adamu noted, absent-mindedly, as he went over the possible reasons. “Do I need to manually do it, or am I missing something obvious?” Pondering for a few more seconds, Adamu ignored his surroundings and plopped on the ground.

“Let me review my knowledge about Essence Awakening once again in-depth.”

Let's see, Essence Awakening is done through physical exercise to excite the already present Life Energy within the biological body to change its passive state into its active state, hence becoming Essence, thereby energizing the flesh to the same new active state.

To help the process of Essence Awakening, meditation is involved by constantly visualizing the methodology one wants.

This strengthens one's focus, all while creating the neural circuitry for the shape and purpose of the methodology deep within the subconscious and unconscious mind, even without the Essence to fuel its shape and purpose.

That way, when it is active, Essence Awakening will automatically take the path of least resistance instead of manifesting something totally random because Life Energy/Essence remains innately linked to Chaos and not Order.

Therefore, the mental construct gives Life Energy/Essence a form and a purpose, thus establishing Order out of Chaos, thus manifesting pure potential during Essence Awakening, thus the mental construct transforms from an idea, a hypothesis, into an actual methodology.

Oh… Guess, I found the problem.

Standing up, Adamu knew what he had to do, and although he had fixed part of the problem by gathering the necessary Pure Essence inside him, the other one still remained.

Time.

The Time required for him to meditate and ingrain a mental construct within his mind, only his mental construct wasn't even close to being ready for that kind of integration since Adamu had not refined the methodology he wanted to use.

“Hmph…” Shaking his head and away from the problem, Adamu made his way back to the upper parts of the rat/cat den. Still, since nothing bothered him, and the stroll was dull, the previous mental topic returned, and that was when he discovered another problem that had only just revealed itself with the 100th strand of Pure Essence not integrating and instead dissolving away.

It was not the integrating that was the problem but the dissolving part because it should not have occurred. Adamu had felt it, and clearly at that. His body had reached the physical and biological boundaries for the profound. That meant Adamu was already at the precipice of Essence Awakening, even without a methodology to guide the process. Only, instead of already randomly manifesting something, anything for that matter, the Essence Awakening stopped from happening altogether. Almost as if…

“Almost as if my body refused to allow the Essence Awakening to occur.” Realizing it, but then Adam corrected the reasoning. “Not my body, but the Blood of the First of Men, aka, the unawakened bloodline inside me.”

“Damn it…” Adamu cursed lightly. “I wanted to leave that variable for after Awakening.”

“Sigh.”

Dusk came, and Adamu Prayed in gratitude before continuing his trek outside the rat/cat den.

Once he was close to it, he slowly made his way there.

First, it was to check if suddenly more rat/cat creatures would manifest, and second, to confirm if the giant bear/cat monstrosity would appear to continue the hunt for him.

Then, just as Adamu took the last tunnel, the surrounding True Darkness around his bubble of True Light started to flow. The only reason Adamu even noticed that it did was because the illumination at the edges began to wobble strongly.

Ceasing walking, Adamu observed it for a moment when everything stopped, and the illumination from his Hard Light Construct exploded in brightness that blinded even Adamu. Urgently regulating it, the usual brilliance returned, only it too was lowered further to basically only glow like a particularly powerful firefly fluttering in throughout the ordinary Realm nights.

Regardless, it took but seconds for Adamu to reach the entrance. However, compared to how it looked the previous night after the monstrous bear/cat ravaged it, it was like it never happened.

At least, if one included there being less tunnel length on top of ignoring the greater opening.

However, it was after confirming that no creatures or monstrosities appeared and Adamu left the entrance to reach the ancient and giant forest that something unexpected occurred.

The Compulsion inside Adamu, which should have sparked to the forefront of his thoughts with the urge to rush south, failed to make its presence known.

Oh, it was still there, but it refused to show itself.

In fact, not only had it refused to present itself, but it still continued pointing down into the rat/cat den as if the solution to reaching south lay within.

“Huh… This has to be one of those rare recommendations of ‘The shortest path is not always the quickest path!’”