Unsealing Emptiness

Chapter 459: A Spirit Again?

’...Will I really have to eat living things?’

Ozul was beginning to think he had no other choice in this matter.

Yet the thought of something alive entering his mouth didn’t sit well with him at all. But at the same time, he would really go through with the experiment if all other means were drained.

...

It was the middle of the night when Blaze, Raven, and Zier were seen exhausted and battered.

They fought for so long that Zier didn’t even have the strength to use his Spiritual Arts to manipulate blood anymore. Thus, they were all soaked in red and reeked of a disgusting smell.

If that wasn’t bad enough already, the waves of Beasts also seemed never-ending.

No matter how many they killed, more would show up before they could even catch their breaths.

If it wasn’t for Ozul helping them out occasionally, they would’ve already succumbed to the onslaught of ’beast waves’.

Only now in the middle of the night had things calmed down to the point that they could sit down and take a little rest.

"..huf...That...hu...was too much..." Zier panted between his words.

Raven sat down in a relaxed posture, not saying anything. But her heavy breaths could be heard by all.

Blaze was the only one with a smile on his face. He was visibly excited to have let go of himself after all this while.

Unknown to himself, something unfamiliar was throbbing in his chest.

Resting on a thick tree bark, Ozul’s attention was grabbed by the anomaly he felt from Blaze’s direction.

’At least someone benefited...’ he thought, as he put all his focus on examining Blaze’s body.

It didn’t take him long to analyze that the source of this unfamiliar Spiritual Essence was the crystal beads embedded in his forehead.

A streak of Spiritual Essence was seeping through those crystals and converging around his heart.

At this revelation, he spoke up, "Do you not feel it?"

Raven and Zier turned to look in his direction as well.

Being asked such a question, Blaze looked confused, if his blank expression was anything to go by.

"Never mind," he answered.

Since those crystals were something he was born with, they must not be harmful, he thought.

He remembered Ember had told them something about ’Ice Princes’ and ’Ice Monarch’s Legacy’. Those crystals were an indication of Blaze being an Ice Prince.

’Should’ve asked her what exactly that entailed for him...’ Ozul didn’t know why he had forgotten about this matter.

If there was a legacy that could make Blaze stronger, it would only make his life easier.

Now, however, was not the time to dwell on that topic.

He needed something to make himself stronger.

Raven stood up to clean herself. Although exhausted, even she felt a little satisfaction bubbling up inside her heart.

Blaza and Zier stood up to clean as well as they pushed aside the corpses of the beasts.

"Let’s move," Ozul ordered.

Staying there would only attract more beasts because of the rotting corpses.

And so, they slowly marched deeper into this strange forest. The beasts here were even more vicious than those outside.

...

The beasts of the night were more dangerous than those of the day.

They made up for their strength with exceptional instincts and a knack for catching their prey off-guard.

Ozul kept his senses spread to a safe range and eliminated all things that even hinted at a speck of maliciousness.

It was only a while later that he felt something was off. He paused.

"What happened?" Zier asked as he tensed up.

Not only were there strange howling noises every so often, but the forest bed would also squirm under their feet occasionally. It had freaked him out more than once now.

Raven and Blaze were also prepared to face off against anything as they stood on both sides of Ozul.

"Something is wrong..." he muttered.

His words only made Zier freak out more.

He hurriedly took out his needles and pricked himself.

Raven eyed him strangely as she watched him smudge his blood around the needles.

Zier almost blushed and explained himself quickly, "Uhm... I am trying something new with my blood..."

Ember had explained to him in private how his blood was different, which he already knew. But she also gave him multiple books on poison, healing, and blood arts after that.

He was confused at first, but once he began to read through them, it quickly dawned upon him what he needed to do.

After smudging his blood on the needle, he unstrapped the leather pouch hung on his waist and pinched out a purple substance before he rubbed it over that same needle.

Blaze too seemed curious as they hadn’t seen him do this before.

The needle suddenly floated beside Zier, ready to pounce on anything he deemed dangerous.

It was the Spiritual Artifact given by Ember, but what he had done with his blood and the purple substance was something only he knew.

Ozul’s focus was entirely on his surroundings as he waited for something to happen.

As Raven used the Scarlet Eyes, she began to scan everything as well. It was only a few moments later that she realized what was wrong.

"There is no life here..." she muttered.

Except for the forest which seemed like an entity of itself, there were not even insects near them anymore.

"Get ready," Blaze told Zier. It was never a good sign when all traces of life disappeared in such a forest. In his experience, this situation hinted at the existence of something that could eradicate all life without discrimination.

Just then, there was a fog that crawled toward them in a hauntingly slow manner.

"I cannot see past that fog, do not touch it," Raven hurriedly mentioned.

Her Scarlet Eyes had reached an acceptable level. She could even see past non-living things.

’Is it alive?’ Ozul wondered as well.

’Hunger...’

There were emotions in that fog, that much he could feel. But at the same time, it felt like those emotions and feelings didn’t originate from that fog.

Raven imbued her Spiritual Essence in one of her daggers and threw it into the fog. The blade was lodged into one of the tree barks.

Nothing happened.

No one jumped out of the fog and it still kept advancing.

"Stay behind me. That dagger is melting..." Ozul told them. He was the only one who could clearly look past that fog.

He quickly summoned a ball of Purity, trying to test the fog as well.

The Purity turned and twisted before spreading out in all directions, creating a meters-wide thin sheet of black in front of them.

The fog was only in front of them, so if the Purity couldn’t contain it either, they would still have the choice of retreating.

All of them waited as the fog continued forward, eventually coming into contact with the sheet of stretched-out Purity.

But right as the fog touched the Purity, something unexpected happened.

*KHhh...*

The fog, as if a beast shrinking in fear, was suddenly sucked back!

In the next moment, they couldn’t even see the fog that was threatening to envelop the whole of the jungle.

"What... happened?" Zier couldn’t help but ask, though no one could answer him.

Ozul stayed still, his eyes stared ahead without blinking. The ’hunger’ he sensed was still there even when that fog had disappeared.

’Is it afraid of Purity?’ he thought, but it needed to be tested.

A silence descended on them which seemed even more eerie than the fog.

"It’s getting colder," Raven mentioned.

The others had felt it too.

"Y-you..."

A cracked voice followed soon after. It was loud enough to be heard by everyone, yet it felt as if someone was whispering.

One look at Zier and you could tell that he was scared out of his wits. It was such a dark place, and it felt as if a ghost was haunting them now.

"Get back!"

Ozul hurriedly shouted as something rushed toward them.

Blaze turned his fists into ice while Raven took out her weapons.

In a panic, the needle which moved with Zier’s will, shot ahead and hit the blurry figure which had just appeared in their vision.

But instead of piercing its body, the silver needle phased through that figure and was lodged right beside Raven’s previously thrown dagger!

"..."

"If this is what you meant by trying new things, stop trying." Blaze deadpanned at Zier, not expecting the needle to do that.

Before Zier could retort, however, the being in front of them spoke again.

"You..."

Ozul’s eyes widened in surprise. He remembered this scene. It was decades ago when he had come across something exactly like this.

"Spirit..." he muttered to himself.

The being in front of him was translucent, a wraith-like thing that floated above the ground.

The reason Zier’s needle had phased through it wasn’t because of his experiment, but because of this ’Spirit.’

"...Child..." It called out to Ozul.

The wraith did not have any distinct features. There was only a vague outline of something like a torso and two glowing eyes on the top. Its body below was just a blur of smoke.

Ozul remembered it from a long time ago. In the Broken World, he was traversing a forest back then, and he had come across a legendary creature known to those men as the Dark Druid.

He recalled distinctively the incident because of his conversation with the Dark Druid who had introduced itself as a Spirit instead.

The Spirit was curious because there was something inside of her related to him.

"...Why are you so peculiar?..." The Spirit asked, ignoring the fact that Zier had attacked her earlier.