On The Way Back To The Mission

"...Someone cleans this up, everyone. Go back to where you came from." Looking at the sect master of the Eagerburning Flames Sect with a smile on his face, sect master Holoriu slightly moved his body away before finally leaving for sure. Never did he say any words or show any 'worry' towards the other sect masters and pastor, leaving sect master Farno speechless but also burning, seething in anger and inactivity.

Everyone was still looking around, fear and anxiousness all over their faces as they looked at the puddle of black substance, still acting like some sort of magma and remembering those screams directly coming out from hell… It made such a great number on them that they began to silently leave without a single notice or order being needed in truth.

“...Leave,” after sect master Holoriu left, sect master Farno looked at his entourage, then at Ciemnosc, the place black goo splattered all around Ciemnosc with some pieces of ice slowly dissolving into nothing. He spoke his command, and the elders, grand ancestor and grand elder of his sect moved towards the exit with several different expressions among them.

It was a rough day for the Eagerburning Flames Sect. But their sect master’s attitude at having the well-reputed Radarf as the best alchemist to exist killed by seemingly ‘another’ genius so easily and with what seemed to be a medicine of the old man’s own games impressed Ciemnosc who didn’t expect things to end as smooth as this.

Ciemnosc watched the sect master of the Eagerburning Flames Sect depart all the way until his back was out of Ciemnosc’s very own eyesight. Ciemnosc then looked back at where sect master Yolin was still standing and saw her retracting her long pike’s shaft into a minute one before placing it back in her Covert Space bag and facing Ciemnosc.

“Need some time?” Looking at his bloody-colored lips, she then looked into his eyes and noticed from his hands that he was no longer seemingly anxious or nervous as if wanting to do something, but both feeling restricted and restrained in many ways but not anymore.

“...” Ciemnosc shook his head. He lifted his face to gaze at the ceiling for a bit more before lowering it and walking over towards a balcony yet again like when he first did so when he was about to be sent to the mission’s location. “You can follow me if you want, sect master Yolin.”

Step, steps, steps, steps, steps…

His footsteps were calm, serene like the night that had already arrived. And when he disappeared into the balcony with the doors closing behind his back, she only let her heart thump a few more beats before making her way towards it.

…Several minutes later, even almost half an hour, Ciemnosc was with his back almost fully straight and looking into the distance, with the sect master beauty of the Preferential Light Justice Sect ‘hugging’ him from behind. Her breasts were bountiful enough for Ciemnosc to not be able to straighten his back completely while he was also quite quiet.

Following his quietness, she maintained silence for quite a good while, all the way until she finally spoke at these moments with not a cold voice but still an emotionless one. “I’ll be leaving now, be careful of not asking for death anymore while I’m gone. There’s no way I’m going out of my sect to simply rescue a kid like you. You’ll need luck, if not brains, from now on if you want to survive.”

“Mm, I got it,” Ciemnosc said in agreement but didn’t nod. He casually lifted his right hand and back-held her right hand on his right shoulder without feeling any shame. He was so casual that even the sect master didn’t bother moving his hand out or ordering him to it.

“I’ll give you two months extra, but that is only after you arrive at the mission port, don’t think you can fool us. It would be easy for us to join up together and ambush you to death in your own territory.” Sect master Yolin ‘warned’, but even she herself was aware that he was reminding her of the troubles ahead for his own life even outside such a dangerous ‘home’.

“I know, it’d be even better if it’s like that. Otherwise, how am I to break apart my enemies’ bodies and form bonds within my new troops?” Ciemnosc let go of her hand and continued lifelessly gazing into the distance, he didn’t add anything up, but sect master Yolin did. “During this month, your old troops will be attacked, so be sure that you’ll be facing a lesser number going back, and it is also our own numbers that will grow in just this one month.”

“Both because of the success your corps have had and also because of the blueprints you’ve ‘given’ to every single party here so generously.” Sect Master Yolin looked at the back of Ciemnosc’s head for a while and mentally sighed. It was just as he said, he was immune to honey traps and enticing, so she just let out a really cold breath of air from her lips against the skin of his nape before turning around and leaving him wholly alone.

“...” On the other hand, Ciemnosc simply placed his right elbow on the handrail and supported his chin with his right palm, his back bent as he looked at the starless and moonless sky with serene eyes. He didn’t say a single thing to someone’s probe early on that was now gone, he just gazed into the sky and thought and thought and thought.

Ciemnosc couldn’t tell what would wait for him, or not, further beyond this little rock, nor did he bother finding out with the imagination inside his head. He just stared emptily at everything before himself, before another person finally came from the other side into the balcony and looked at him, looking at the sky.

…Several tens of seconds went by, and the handrail that Ciemnosc was using for supporting his chin was now gone, though it was actually still there but had been twisted away off the front and was now projecting from the sides to allow Ciemnosc to hang his feet on the balcony’s edge.

To his left, behind himself, Valeria stood there with casually worn clothes, but with still some sense of beautiful lady-like self on her and worry on her face as she looked at his back and jet black hair as well. If it wasn’t because of his slightly pale skin, his head would’ve never been noticed by her.

Step, step whoosh~, thud.

Planting her bum on the balcony’s floor at last, right beside Ciemnosc to his left, Valeria was now also dangling her feet at the edge of it while gazing at him, who was in turn still gazing at the sky and farther beyond this sect’s territory.

Finally, she looked at the sky and beyond these lands herself. She began to feel the ease from just looking around, whereas she could not discern anything in the day, let alone during the night right now. But she ended up. Because of that, understanding why Ciemnosc would lose himself in such activities for no reason every time he could.

“Are you just going to stare around all night?” Finally asking, Valeria still continued to look around. While Ciemnosc slowly lowered his head until he was only gazing at whatever he could of the sect’s territory, but with most buildings being completely lightless.

“...” Looking at her to his left, Ciemnosc was quite silent for a while, meaningful eyes flashed at her, but she kept looking at the sky. Maybe it was guilty, a guilty conscience. Maybe it was shame, embarrassment, for whatever she was told and couldn’t believe but ended up ‘leaving him’ in a place full of strangers and danger.

Finally, at last… Ciemnosc replied with his eyes getting back to looking at the sky. “There’s nothing wrong with enjoying all these lands’ darkness before I depart from some other far away from here. I don’t know anything that will happen in the future.”

Valeria let out a rough sigh through her nostrils after barely sniffing in some air, a kind of most potent feeling of being mildly affected assaulted her sense, and she could not believe her feelings were in such turmoil that it made her feel a little bit sick; as if she was an ordinary ‘mortal’ person. And just the thought of that was sickening to her.

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Rustle, rustle.

“...” Still not daring to look him in the eye, nor ‘just’ at his face, Valeria went over and lunged at his shoulders with her arms right above it. Passing through the space above them, hugged his neck and her left side profile all against his, her eyebrows frowning and her lips slightly pursed in worry still.

“Be very careful on your way back, I am no longer going to go back to you nor to the mission. So be careful, Ciemnosc, and don’t worry about me, just yourself and your well-being, alright?”

After Valeria said that, she felt his left hand push her right shoulder a little bit, but they hugged for at least a couple minutes before he parted her from himself. It was also only then that Valeria got to look him in the eye and he calmly looked back, not a single word and much less ‘berating’ or reproach on his face, simply looking back at her.

“I got it,” Ciemnosc said after a few more seconds with Valeria finally calming down after a while of ‘this’ moment. He continued, his voice trailing off in the night and to all angles imaginable, “I am not planning to throw my life away at any moment. I already know…”

‘I know that I will go on even with all of this happening and that I can’t stop.’ Ciemnosc became thoughtful after saying his words. He intertwined with Ciemnosc’s hands as they both then fell on their backs and looked skywards yet again. The dark deep blue sky was like a muse, and their eyes trailed around it all the brush.

Valeria became, from that moment on, really physically close to Ciemnosc as they spent another long forgotten night fully clothed against each other’s bodies and with her body almost resting on his with her hands not daring to take him away from themselves, clinging dearly to his hands and fingers…to his hold on her.

. . .

A month would always quickly go by in an ordinary person’s life, pretty fast when really thought about it, and it was an ordinary and regular thought as well despite the ‘low’ life expectancy.

During this month, besides mastering what is basically all of the basics of array formations and their elementary ‘stages’ for when starting and towards the path that was still waiting for him; Ciemnosc was also making some improvements of his own that he thought were ‘nice’ or ‘okay’.

Of course, being Ciemnosc, he would be thinking long and hard about things such as ‘remodeling’ and improving the array formations that elder Apegos gave to his brain hungry for knowledge…in secret.

It was not a problem for Ciemnosc to hide away from the array formations set up for vigilance or…spying… And it even seemed to be well understood by elder Apegos, as he was grumpier than ever lately. As for elder Apegos’s reaction when he found out what transpired in the yearly banquet grand event? He was ‘meh, ah ok’ with it and just kept on helping Ciemnosc whenever needed or asked for it.

In any case, Ciemnosc was already a kind of a master when it came to selecting which array formations to retouch, giving them either a twig here or there or rather just directly changing most of their structure with a percentage of more than 50%.

It wasn’t just that which Ciemnosc kept on studying. Even though he had not had the materials to try creating some Mortal weapon or 2, he still kept on forging many, many top-notch quality weapons, even going from starting to understand how to ‘repair’ and actually improve and enhance a weapon to a top notch quality and making it look either like new or perfectly good with battle hardened ‘experience’ of its own.

To really become well versed on this ‘new’ method of forging and so on; and such a ‘new’ method, for Ciemnosc, was even resourceless. Meaning he could do as many of these as he wanted as long as he had basic materials for repairing them, as that was all that he needed for everything: repairing broken or damaged goods, enhancing them, and improving them.

Though there was a large need for those materials for each weapon to be essentially upgraded, Ciemnosc was surely bent on keep on studying on and on so that he would be able to take up fewer and fewer resources. Hence, he did, and by the time the month was coming to its end, he had already halved the amount of resources needed for each weapon to be upgraded.

As for Ciemnosc suddenly buying hundreds of thousands of damaged or broken goods through this month, nobody thought much of it, even elder Apegos and it was just right that it happened like this. After all, it was basically mandatory for a Craftsperson experienced in the vocation of forging-creation to be able to smelt damaged or broken in order to gain some more raw material from them and create better and useful other weapons or even armor and tools.

Ciemnosc was also seen as a talented little boy in Craftsmanship, a kind of talent that, according to rumors-spreaders, it hadn’t seen in ten thousand years!

Of course, it was only normal that such thoughts were wrong and even more in their heads, as it was, in truth, a talent and potential never before seen in the entire world. But, of course, Ciemnosc wasn’t going to go out here around challenging people and marking his talent as real and authentic so that he wouldn’t lose face - even if he was to lose face and credibility.

Naturally, Ciemnosc never stopped directly forging more and more weapons. As for armor, since he wasn’t able to make those like Fu Lan’s armor, then he might as well just focus on making hundreds of thousands of top notch quality weapons for his corps and recruits of such.

Of course, he wouldn’t just finish it all up for every single sect disciple in just a month. But with what he was doing and with the other Craftspeople still at the stronghold and outposts working their hearts out for making ‘stuff’, it was bound to be more than sufficient at least. It was all, however, thanks to Ciemnosc, who was able to reduce the others’ workload by a huge margin.

When it came to alchemy, especially pill concocting, Ciemnosc became a sudden crazed mad alchemist of sorts. But it was well understandable from Ciemnosc’s point of view, as seeing how suddenly important it was for him and his direct survival as well as the old man employing such a weird ‘method’ for flaming up the cauldron and changing to his heart’s content the heat as well as direct melting of flora and incorporation of their properties into a liquid and then into a pill.

It was all a new world for Ciemnosc that was neither in the books nor in the knowledge imparted to him by that elder Apegos. Something he could only start thinking of when he saw them being employed by that old man, even if they were just silly and even boring to watch, especially to Ciemnosc who couldn’t help seeing the herbs’ dissatisfaction; let alone the white tulip’s.

He didn’t try to directly do weird stuff with flames and the cauldron itself. He had vowed to his heart and dignity that he would not become that old man’s legacy even if it was just in appearance or image.

Instead, Ciemnosc began drawing, putting his thoughts on paper, and forming them into the most articulate, finest, and overly thought processes all for the sake of…creating a sort of formula that would be used for his future endeavors in the pill concocting section of his alchemy. A ‘method’ of sorts, which he, of course, couldn’t create in even 1 year with his knowledge of what he could imagine.

By the end of the 1st month, Ciemnosc had drawn, written, and elaborated so many things that he had ended up filling 3 cm deep the entire basement under the mountain-rock building a couple of times… Of course, afterwards, he burned it all down, lest some acting elders ‘suddenly’ appear down here, and like the rest of Craftsmanship history in the world; it disappears after being robbed by the Self-Mutilating Honores Sect.

He was also in the midst of creating it, not even having already made it all and completed it, hence having started to perform it to concoct his next batches of pills with his new method and so on and henceforth.

And though there wasn’t much to do when it came to Creatures, Ciemnosc still extended his study time for those matters as well. And by the end of the month, he had managed to read every single book relating to Creatures and with so many examples, resumes to extremely detailed information about the same creature giving a little bit more brand new information to Ciemnosc.

It was also in this way, however, that Ciemnosc became an ‘all-kinds-of-knowledge’ hungry and thirsty fellow who wouldn’t let any book’s cover go without his notice. And sure enough, once he practically memorized to the back of his skin inside every existent Creature in the world, Ciemnosc began learning the world itself. Not just its history and cultivators’ organizations as he had done so far - but with even tales and stories. Either from the ‘ordinary people’ or from books with the knowledge that was alien to Ciemnosc but extremely well known to ‘them’.

Of course, it was that ‘extremely known’ since it was their only way of staying alive as ‘ordinary and mortal ones’ when living in a world ruled by cultivators, the world of cultivation and filled with energy.

…Soon, a large convoy left the sect’s territory westwards, both by air and foot. There was a sudden and immensely large line of people moving…towards the Little Lake from the Self-Mutilating Honores Sect yet again. But so much larger than before.

…

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This is the beginning of Volume 2 — Shadow of the Region.