Red always thought of his detection power as a sixth sense, hence the name. Yet, if that was the case, why couldn’t he detect himself with this crimson sense? He could see himself with his vision, smell his own odor, and hear his own voice, so why would this detection power be an exception?

Perhaps the boy had the wrong idea in the first place. He understood little about the power, so it wouldn’t be surprising for him to be off the mark with his conjectures. Yet, this detail left Red both curious and unnerved.

What would he feel if he could detect his own fluctuation? Would he be able to detect the mist? Would he feel his own dwindling life essence?

This was something he decided to work towards understanding. The usefulness of his crimson sense couldn’t be overstated. It saved his life countless times, and Red felt as if he barely scratched the surface of what this power was capable of. However, there were some things he was worried about regarding it.

The boy was wary of the demonic origins of his crimson sense, and he wasn’t sure whether using it contributed towards his demonification. Yet, he couldn’t “turn off” the ability, as he found out, so he didn’t have a choice. Since that was the case, he decided to take the hawk’s advice and seek to explore and understand this power in the future.

Red spent the next half an hour studying his companions' fluctuations as he laid in bed. Already he found out details he couldn’t pick out before. In particular, the boy discerned one specific trait from his observations.

‘It seems the younger you are, the more active your fluctuation is.’

It was extremely easy to miss this at first. Yet, the more he observed it, the more easily he could feel them. There was a certain “vibration” to every signal he detected. It didn’t seem to be tied to the strength of the fluctuation itself, yet it hinted at a potential strength that was hidden inside the body of each individual.

The most active fluctuation was Allen’s by far, followed by Eiwin, Narcha, and Rimold in this order, which just so happened to match with their ages as far as Red knew. Then there were the other ones whose fluctuations were slower - the order being Rog, Goulth, Domeron, and Hector.

In fact, Hector’s fluctuation was much more inert compared to the rest of them. It was like each “wave” his crimson sense detected coming from the elder was dozens of times stronger than the others in the sect, yet they didn’t come as frequently as the others either. Red guessed this had to do with his age.

‘I wonder how old he is.’

Was the elder close to death? You never knew with a cultivator. If the boy wanted to know, he would need to experiment with others around town.

Still, the little time he spent studying his companions with his powers yielded him far more knowledge than he was expecting. Perhaps in the future he would be able to tell much more about an individual other than just their strength and age.

‘Not now, though… Now I need to sleep.’

Red laid his head down on the bed and closed his eyes. For some reason, as darkness started to take his consciousness, the boy had a strange feeling that something was waiting for him.

These thoughts didn’t have the opportunity to develop, as his exhaustion carried him to the land beyond.

…

Cold, hard ground.

This was the first thing Red felt. He immediately knew where he was.

The boy opened his eyes.

Endless black sand. Bone mountains. A blood crimson sky. A dark sun.

He was in hell again.

‘So that’s what was calling for me…’

Red didn’t feel any comfort in knowing he predicted his foray into this realm.

The boy tried to get up, before feeling a pressure on his wrist. He looked down, noticing a skeletal hand grabbing his hand. He followed the bones up with his gaze, before coming to rest on a human skeleton wearing plated armor, lying motionless on the ground by his side.

Red was shocked.

‘Where did this come from?’

The boy observed the skeleton, noticing the ornaments decorating his armor. He felt as if he had seen this scene before, but no matter how much he concentrated on it, he couldn’t recall where. All he could think about was the emotional distress he had felt back then.

It was as if a part of his memory had gone missing.

‘Wait…’

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Red’s eyes widened. His feelings seemed to be exactly the same as his fellow sect members who had their memory wiped out after leaving the trial.

The boy felt his blood run cold. Had his memory been messed with, too?

After analyzing the situation, Red felt this was almost certainly what had happened. Yet, who could have done this?

Was it the hawk spirit? What reason did it have to do something like that after being so open with his knowledge?

Was it the mist? Could it have been trying to hide something from the boy?

Red felt a sense of dread come over him. He freed himself from the skeletal grip and sat cross-legged on the ground.

He closed his eyes and concentrated on the meditation technique. The boy felt his awareness expand, and he peered inside his own body.

Red’s mind was shaken again. The mist, which had burrowed into almost every corner of his body, was nowhere to be seen. The boy checked it again, but there was nothing.

‘Where did it go?’

Red almost fell into a panic again under the strangeness of this situation. The fact the mist had possibly altered his memories made the boy reassess the entire relationship with this demonic presence.

He took a deep breath, using the meditation technique to calm himself down again. Red recalled the hawk’s words.

‘Analyze everything with an open and rational mind…’

There was no point in panicking. There were many things Red didn’t and couldn’t hope to understand about this situation and this place yet, so he had to focus on the things he could understand.

First, he focused on himself.

Curiously enough, Red was wearing the same clothes he wore when he had first entered this place - that being the fancy garbs Eiwin provided him on his first night in the sect. He hadn’t noticed this before, and this strange occurrence confused him. None of his belongings were with him, unfortunately.

Red’s hand moved up, feeling the side of his face which had undergone demonification. To his surprise, all he felt was smooth skin, which left him even more flabbergasted.

‘What happened to my scales?’

The boy couldn’t think of a reasonable explanation. Wasn’t this supposed to be the Infernal Realm? Why was his demonification reversed in this place?

The only possibility Red could think about was if this wasn’t his actual body he was currently in, but rather a dream version of himself or something similar.

‘Everything here still feels so real, though.’

The boy managed to use his meditation technique to inspect his body. Was this something possible in a dream? Red didn’t know, but upon finding nothing else after a thorough self inspection, he examined the armored skeleton.

From experience, the boy was able to tell this skeleton belonged to a man. There were no signs of rot on the bones, which meant that either things didn’t decompose in this place on this corpse was very recent. Red looked through his armor and body, but was unable to find anything. There were no signs of cracks or fractures on his skeleton either, which made the cause of death unclear.

‘Why was he grabbing onto me?’

Red was unsure of what kind of interaction other than a fight could result in that, considering his own cautious nature. The more important part, though, was what was this person doing here.

‘Could it be another individual who made a deal with the mist?’

That would make sense. Technically, Red didn’t really know if he was the first person to bring this demonic presence out of the underground, so it might have already spread to the world at large without his knowledge. Yet, the most important part was why was this individual right next to him?

There were so many questions Red had, and all answers he could provide were mere conjecture. It was somewhat frustrating for the boy, but he didn’t lose spirit.

The answers might not come quick or easily, but one always has to start from somewhere. Conjecture was the first step toward true knowledge.

Red looked around, noticing the large bone mound he had been moving to the last time he had been in this dream. The mountain-sized rib still looked impossibly far away, but this was the closest thing the boy had in his vicinity.

He thought about taking the man’s plate armor with himself, but he changed his mind after feeling how heavy the equipment was. Instead, the boy took apart the man’s skeleton before taking a few of his limb bones and ribs with himself as some kind of improvised weapon. This was unlikely to defend him against anything in this place, but it was preferable to walking unarmed.

Besides, Red still had an idea.

He used one of the broken bones to stab at his own hand. The task was surprisingly difficult, as the skeleton seemed to be more brittle than Red was expecting, but eventually the boy succeeded. A fine stream of blood flowed down his palm before dripping onto the black sand below.

The fluid just flowed between the grains before disappearing with no further reaction. It looked like his blood invoked no magical reaction in this place.

Red looked back at his wound, noticing it had yet to regenerate. It seemed as if that power was tied to the mist inside his body. He wondered whether his crimson sense would still work here, but even if it did, there was nothing for the boy to detect.

He tightened his fists, putting pressure on the bleeding to stop it. Then, his gaze wandered back to the mountain in the distance.

‘Another endless journey, then?’

Red was used to those at this point. He walked forward.

…

Time passed by.

Once more, Red was uncertain how long exactly. It could have been a few hours, or it could have been a few days. To his surprise, though, this time around, he was making progress.

The bone mound got progressively bigger in his vision, which meant that this place wasn’t some kind of spatial distortion, like the inheritance ground he had come from. However, even after walking for an eternity, Red had yet to reach the protruding mountain, and he was already near the point of exhaustion.

‘This is strange… I shouldn’t be this tired.’

Red guessed this was another side effect of having the mist leave his body. His improved endurance was gone, and now the boy was back to being a ten-year-old child with three veins open. His progress was inevitably slowed down because of this.

Just as the boy was contemplating sitting down to rest, he felt the ground rumble. He stood on guard.

‘Could it be that fiend?’

Red recalled the first time he came to this place and the impossibly large demon that burst out from beneath the black sand. This rumbling was a prelude to it. Yet, even as the rumbling continued, the boy couldn’t see any signs of this creature.

Red frowned, wondering what was happening before he felt something. It was a familiar sensation in some ways, yet this time it filled him with dread that the boy didn’t think imaginable.

He shivered and looked up.

The blood sky trembled. The firmament seemed to grow ever so close to the boy. And then, in the center of it all, was the dark star.

It shimmered, and Red saw something on its surface.

He saw rage.

He saw violence.

He saw death.

He saw destruction.

He saw the end of everything.

Then he saw nothing.