“Don’t stop running!”

Arson didn’t look away from the Dragon swooping toward him from above. Anastasia had shared with him on his rousing that he was skilled with a bow, but it wasn’t until he felt the weapon in his hands that he believed her. The bow he held had its own internal power source and the ability to conjure arrows by drawing on the archer's mana. So even though he couldn’t access his own mana, the weapon he now held could.

“Shhh, I’m focusing…”

Anastasia aimed her same laser point right between the swooping drakes eyes, and Arson couldn’t help but squint as he smiled, taking aim; a dazzling arrow seemingly made from dragon’s bones forming directly between his fingertips .

“Well then bloody fire then, you maniac!”

“As you wish,” Arson whispered, loosing the arrow in the instant the drake lowered to his eye level. As this was the first time Arson fired the bow, neither he nor Anastasia knew the power of the bow in Arson’s hands, nor how the weapon would be affected by being infused with his mana.

The arrow rocketed forward like a fired ballista, sending Arson in one direction and shredding through the drake’s skull as if it was made of soft clay. Arson’s back bounced off the wall behind him and drake guts and gore rained down all around the tunnel he’d stood inside only a moment prior; his body sliding down the tunnel wall until he found himself sitting on the ground, shaking his head to clear the sudden daze that tried to overtake his rattled mind.

“Well, sparks! I see why those drakes and dragons stayed clear of that thing. Did you see that? It bloody exploded,” Anastasia said.

“Yeah, that was kinda impossible to miss,” Arson said chuckling. He rose to his feet and looked at the bow once more, and then back down the tunnel.

“How long did you say we’ve been in here?”

“A little over a fortnight, why?”

“I think it's time to get out of here…”

Arson practiced with the bow every day from that point on. Luckily for him once his mind had been wiped clean, everything he experienced within the trial realm was no longer erased.

This was rewarding for Anastasia as he could remember details about the things they learned while within the trial, but anything she tried to explain to him about his life before entering, would disappear from his mind by the following morning.

So his quickly developing skills with the bow were always available for Arson to depend on, but anything else would only leave the young man with a headache.

“There are three up ahead. Do you want sights for all of them?”

Arson nodded to Anastasia’s whispered inquiry. He lay on his stomach unmoving, looking for the three drakes Anastasia had pointed out.

His focus had been entirely on the light pouring into the nest from one of the exits. Arson's urge to sprint toward the opening immediately stifled only by the three laser sights that raced across the open space between him and the exit.

The drakes seemed to be hiding in the darkness just below a small hill formed from bones that was awkwardly piled up high toward the exit, which Arson wouldn’t have understood the need for, until he saw a drake use the hill of bones as a landing perch.

In one fluid motion Arson rose and did his best to focus on all three points at once as he took a deep breath. It had taken him days to perform the feat he was about to attempt to a lesser degree, but as he exhaled three tightly wound arrows formed coiled around one another. All three knocked perfectly in the same instance that he was able to focus on all his targets.

The moment there was no air left in his lungs, Arson let go of the bow string. Though he expected a powerful recoil, he’d never summoned three arrows at once, causing himself to be pushed back slightly, even though he’d tried to use his rear leg within his one legged kneel to brace himself.

Sparks…

Arson cursed mentally as the three arrows spun apart from one another and he was easily able to tell that the arrow spinning to the right was off its mark. After days of shooting, Arson had actually become a better shot than he’d even been previously, so drew back on the bowstring instantly once he saw the arrow go wide.

The first two arrows slid silently into the middle and leftmost drakes' skulls, as the third arrow pierced through the eye of the third drake. He hadn’t fired with enough power to completely obliterate the drakes from head to toe for two reasons. The first being sound, and the second being the accuracy of the arrows flight diminishing slightly when multiple arrows were fired with more power.

“It's gonna roar, buddy. Forget the shot and make a move!”

Arson cursed, and fired anyway; the drake roaring violently before it pushed off the ground, just barely missing his fourth arrow.

“Could you just be wrong one sparking time, just once? Could luck be on my side?” said Arson, sprinting toward the drake. He fired rapidly at the creatures wings, its remaining eye and stomach, but the drake's aerial flexibility was heightened having already had its life threatened, and its brethren being killed right beside itself.

Roars of wild aggression filled the tunnels behind Arson and he knew he had to do something immediately, or his chance to exit the nest would be taken.

“Anastasia, blind that bloody beast now!”

A brilliant white light poured from Arson’s wrist in the drake's direction, washing across the creature’s face in a flash; his watch needing no help to understand what he needed in that moment.

Arson slid, once more finding himself in a single leg crouch. He felt time slow for the first time since his mind had been cleared of all his original life’s memories, and Arson pulled back the bowstring as hard as he could, firing without a single instant of hesitation.

The arrow itself flowed through the center of the light Anastasia shined and even before the drake could think to dive toward Arson across the distance, its head was shaved clean off from its long neck.

Arson’s head spun at the large drain on his mana, struggling to get to his feet, feeling completely lightheaded as he wobbled slightly. He stumbled a few times as he tried to rush toward the hill of dragon bones, spurred onward by the growing sound of DragonKin behind him.

“Incoming!”

Arson glanced over his shoulder as he made it to the hill's base. A pour of various sized drakes flooding the room behind him. He turned to fire, but a series of unintelligible profanity coming from his wrist, caused him to immediately turn around and begin to climb as fast as possible.

“I’m going, I’m going!”

Even as he managed to crest the top of the hill made of bones, Arson felt the roars that came from behind himself grow to such a crescendo that the hill beneath him began to vibrate.

“Arson dove out of the hole and ended up plummeting through the open air. Unable to fly, he screamed; his legs and arms peddling through the open air for what felt to him to be an eternity, until he smashed bodily into a river below.

The flow of the river immediately threatened to pull him back into the nest, and he almost let go of the bow he held in a panic trying to swim to the surface of the incredibly deep river. Luckily for him he was closer to one side of the wide current that rushed toward the nest, and didn’t have to struggle for two long before he made it to the nearby shoreline.

His head broke free of the water and he gasped for air, desperately flailing as he tried to pull himself completely out of the river. The weight of the bow he still grasped threatened to drag him backward until he got his torso out of the rapids and pulled the heavy weapon out.

He flopped onto his back, blinking repeatedly to clear his eyes of water and sand, only to catch sight of dozens of drakes diving in his direction.

“Wow, you didn’t die,” Anastasia yelled in excitement.

“Don’t say that just yet,” Arson said scrambling to his feet.

“I guess it's true what they say about sink or swim. Or would it be plummet or fly in your case? I’m unsure,” Anastasia said even as golden lines of light pierced the light of day as if it was the middle of night. Arson began to fire shot after shot, trying to backpedal slowly while maintaining a semblance of balance for each shot he took.

“You talk a lot, you know that?”

“That’s hilarious coming from you, but hopefully you remember this moment when you get your memories back.”

“If I get them back, that is…”

“Aww, don’t talk like that. It's not like we won’t get out of here, we just need to stay focused like you always say.”

Arson stayed silent, and continued to fire. Drakes were struck so precisely that Arson’s shots began to pin them to the side of the nest. He wasn’t firing nearly fast enough to stop the swarm of beasts flying toward him and was forced to change tactics.

“I need another flare!”

A brilliant burst of white light filled the air, And Arson charged a shot, filling the bone arrow with as much mana as he could. The arrow began to vibrate, barely able to contain the mana being used to fill it.

The dragons above were disoriented by the flood of light before themselves, giving Arson just enough time to fire at the cluster thrashing about wildly above him.

The arrow Arson shot only held its form momentarily. The projectile shot forward, keeping its form for but a breath before it disintegrated. Regardless of this however, the energy still rocketed forward like a beam of swirling devastation, formed from heat and mana, killing everything it touched.

“Man, mana lightning is really scary. I don’t even know if I could consume that stuff without being turned to dust,” Anastasia stated simply. Arson was in awe of what he’d just done, and didn’t step back until ash started to rain down all around him, slowly leaving a layer of ashen mana all over his head and shoulders as if he suffered from extreme dandruff.

Only a few drakes survived, but even the living now suffered from great injury. Missing wings, arms, legs, and even an entire tail had been wiped away as easily as the waters of the river he plunged into had washed away the days of grime that clung to his body after days of trudging through the depths of the nest.

“How powerful am I really, Anastasia?”

His watch stayed silent for a moment, but eventually Anastasia spoke. Her voice unusually soft and filled with a compassionate tone Arson could sense she’d never used in his direction, even without his memories to prove the truth of what he felt coming from her.

“More powerful than even you knew, maybe even more powerful than even your betters could understand…”

Arson nodded, looking once more at the bow in his hands, contemplating throwing the weapon aside, but feeling somehow that the action would be wrong.

He’d escaped and had told himself that he would leave the powerful artifact aside once he gained his freedom, but now—

“I’m picking up a distortion just beyond that series of islands behind you. The only thing I’ve analyzed with the same energy since we entered this zone was the entrance itself,” Anastasia said in a far more cheery tone, the words making Arson look over his shoulder.

“Hmm, not like we have anything better to do.”

Arson looked back at the nest, brushing aside an urge that told him leaving a mountain's worth of treasures behind like haphazardly fumbled gold coins, was fine; the immeasurable wealth and priceless items underneath the sleeping titanic dragon being left, was indeed not a mistake, forcing himself to press on at a preternatural jog.

Why do I feel like I’m going to come back here at some point…

“Hmm... I don’t like that look on your face.”

Arson’s brow rose and he scoffed before he replied.

“What look?”

“I didn’t like that scoff either, reminds me of your mother…”

“What did I do wrong now, woman? You don’t like my face, you don’t like my mannerisms, soon you won’t like the sound of my voice,” Arson said chuckling more to himself than in Anastasia’s direction.

“You didn’t do anything exactly, you just make that face normally when you’re planning something that is going to put both of our lives at risk is all, made me worried that I was missing something,” explained Anastasia with a chuckle of her own.

“Well that makes me feel kinda good. At least some things about me don’t change.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m not going to fight anything the size of a sparking city,” Arson said while he picked up his pace toward the direction Anastasia had pointed him toward.

“Good.”

“Not yet at least. I need to get my memories back first. I mean, I can’t even use that Overlay thing you keep talking about, maybe when I get that back we can take a crack at the nest again.”

“What!”

…

Almarine’s face scrunched up at the HoloScreen that displayed one of the realm layer’s greatest contenders in the DungeonBall industry being carried to a hospital. This among many other occurrences struck her as wrong.

Though she didn’t follow the sport as closely as many of her orphans, she was still aware of the likelihood of that particular woman being injured was nearly impossible. The Jade of this realm layer was one of few Cultivators that she deemed worthy to become her own disciple, maybe even the heir to her own legacy.

One problem at a time, you must first figure out how to clean off the food on your current plate…

Almarine turned to face Alister Kim, one of many of her connected prodigal acolytes, and smiled.

“Sorry I have been incredibly scatterbrained as of late. Something seems wrong with our realm, which is why I have called you here,” Almarine said. Alister nodded slowly, also staring at the screen beside her desk, the massive wall of holograms apparently distracting him as well.

“I feel that I am missing something important everyday I wake up, but when I check, nothing is amiss, every goal is met, every task completed timely, every enemy…”

Almarine glanced at the screen once more, turning it off once she realized her visitor was consumed by what was being displayed; the man finally looking her way. With Alister sitting directly before her she could tell he wasn’t the one who’d betrayed her.

A large piece of her soul was currently inaccessible, and until she figured out who was no longer a devout member of her own growing pantheon, the entirety of her incredible power and abilities, would remain locked away. She could still rival many greater gods easily, but the loss of any of her truly powerful followers always left her mind itching, and her soul shifting about with a chaotic heat that left her powerbase in constant flux. Able to move mountains with a thought in one moment, but unable to freeze a mere cup of water with mana the next.

“What is it that you need of me, Ms. Almarine?”

Almarine smiled, and spread her arms wide.

“Simple child, I need you to find out which of my orphans had betrayed me.”

“Hmm, is this a kill order?” Alister Kim asked, now wearing a smile of his own. The skilled Cultivator instantly rose to his feet, excitement stretching across his face as he waited for Almarine’s command.

“Absolutely…!”