** Second day in the Valley of Floating Waterfalls – Night
The rain was falling as if the sky itself were collapsing onto the world. These weren't raindrops—they were liquid spears, thick and unrelenting, like an ocean being poured mercilessly over the treetops. Winds tore through the leaves with violence, howling through the branches and turning the forest into a tropical chaos. Lightning lit up the gray sky with blinding flashes that made the shadows leap off the rocks.
Glenn huffed, soaked to the bone, as he dragged the last bundle of woven branches to cover the back of the improvised cave where they would spend the night.
The tree the branches came from was as leafy as it was stubborn, and wrestling with its limbs felt like combat training in itself. Every tug earned a new cut on his arm, a leaf in his eye, a surge of frustration.
On the other side, Silas was calmly leaning against the Sleipnirs, sheltered under an enchanted overcoat that didn't have a single drop of water on it. He looked cozier than a guest at a luxury inn.
"Why do I have to set up camp like this, huh, you cursed old man?" Glenn growled through clenched teeth as he shoved the last branch against the wet rock. "I'm doing all this with three affinities blocked... THREE!!"
Silas, without opening his eyes, answered in a calm voice.
"It's necessary."
"That's a lie!" Glenn shouted over a clap of thunder. "You're enjoying this!"
The old man slowly opened one eye and shrugged.
"Maybe a little."
Glenn wanted to curse half of Silas's family tree, but he was too tired for that. Twenty minutes later, with his hands scraped and his fingers numb, he finally managed to seal the cave entrance. The shelter was ready—or as close to ready as nature would allow.
Soaked, exhausted, and shivering with cold, Glenn walked to the central campfire and dropped to the damp stone floor with a thud.
Silas didn't move a muscle.
"..." Glenn stayed silent for a few seconds, catching his breath. Until he couldn't take it anymore. He turned and asked:
"Why don't we just go explore one of those floating islands?"
"The ones up there. That look like cities in the sky. With waterfalls pouring into nowhere and even lights glowing at night. You saw them too. Are you seriously telling me it's not worth seeing what's up there?"
This time, Silas opened both eyes. His expression, once relaxed, twisted into something between mockery and disbelief.
"Hahaha… So now you're telling jokes? A little comedy before bed? Must be."
He adjusted slightly, brushing off a stray leaf from his enchanted overcoat, still dry as a desert morning.
"You can barely outrun monkeys with rocks for brains who only think about their next banana... and now you want to play celestial explorer? Give me a break."
His tone turned sour.
"Those islands, those 'glowing floating cities', are not amusement parks for some overexcited rookie cultivator chasing shiny lights. They're the kind of place that crushes your soul before your body even hits the ground. And by the way, your body's been falling apart way too easily for my liking."
Glenn opened his mouth to argue, but Silas raised a finger, silencing him.
"This forest has rules. Layers. And everything crawling down here, everything that's almost torn your head off in the last 48 hours, that's just the 'basic level.' The islands above are another world, Glenn. A whole different level of existence. Creatures that make those monkeys look like anemic baby rabbits."
The old man leaned back against the Sleipnirs, gave a long sigh, and added with irony:
"But sure. If you want to go up, I can tie you to a balloon and wave goodbye from the edge. Just don't come crying when you turn into cultivator purée the second you cross the edge of the first island."
Silence.
Glenn's face soured even more at the information.
"So no, kid. You're not going up there yet. You're staying right here. Wet, shivering, without your affinities, because that's the only way you might finally start hearing what the valley is trying to teach you."
He gave a crooked smile. Almost paternal.
Almost.
"Welcome to real cultivation."
Glenn clenched his fists, staring at the fire with narrowed eyes.
'Damn old man…' he thought.
At that point, he still couldn't quite understand what the old man was trying to teach him.
**
** Twenty-fifth day
A devastating explosion ripped through the forest like the roar of living thunder. The blast tore an ancient tree from its roots and hurled it against a distant cliffside. A crimson blur spun through the air, spiraling like a bloodstained shooting star before crashing into the ground at high speed.
"BOOOOOOOOM."
The impact formed a crater the size of a house. Dust, gravel, and golden leaves exploded in every direction.
Across the clearing, Glenn emerged standing, panting. His clothes were in tatters, covered in soot, torn like rags from a battlefield. On his back, tied with makeshift leather straps, swung a completely golden sugarcane stalk, as if it had been forged from the sun's own shine.
His trophy. His curse. His prize.
And before him, rising from the chaos of the explosion, the creature appeared.
The mutant monkey's skin had a dark rust hue, its bristling fur shimmered with static electricity, and a third eye—black and pulsing—opened in the center of its forehead. Its muscles were grotesque, layered like slabs of stone, and four massive arms hung like cranes of destruction. Its nostrils flared with hatred and greed.
It was of the same species as the one Glenn had fought on the first day.
But this one… was far more violent and bloodthirsty.
Without warning, the monkey crouched slightly and, in an instant, launched forward like a living arrow, leaving a trail of shredded leaves and compressed air.
Glenn didn't blink.
His eyes, now trained and attuned to the rhythm of spatial energy, glowed with soft silver hues.
And when the monster was only three meters away, with two arms raised to crush him like an insolent insect—
"vuuuuuum..."
As if time froze for a second, a spatial rift tore through the air in front of him—silent, precise, and inevitable.
The monkey had no time to react. Mid-leap, still in the air, it was sucked into the rift as if diving headfirst into a black hole.
On the other side of the clearing, the rift opened again, and the creature's colossal body exploded out of it, launched directly into the trunk of a tree three meters wide.
The impact was monstrous.
The trunk snapped with a dry crack, star-shaped fractures spread through the wood, and the entire upper half of the tree collapsed with a roar of breaking branches and falling leaves. The gorilla's body hit the ground, tearing up earth with the weight of a living avalanche.
Silence.
Glenn didn't move for a second. Sweat trickled down his temple. The golden cane still swung on his back.
His peace didn't last long.
A beam of condensed fire—dense as a plasma lance—sliced through the forest like a blazing blade, incinerating trees, bushes, and the very air in its path. The high-pitched sound it carried was like the wail of something dying too fast to be seen, too intense to be ignored.
Glenn dove instinctively into a spatial rift, his body vanishing into an invisible tear in the fabric of reality.
Reappearing five hundred meters ahead, Glenn landed between two moss-covered stones.
But there was no relief.
Before he could breathe, a massive spinning tree trunk appeared just inches from his face—thrown by the monkey.
The scene slowed down, as if the world slipped into slow motion.
His body reacted on its own. Glenn arched his back at an impossible angle, his bones cracking like ancient hinges. The trunk whooshed by, barely missing him—so close that his cheek felt the heat and friction of the compressed air. He fell sideways, rolling across the ground like a weightless doll, his chest heaving, eyes wide.
There was no time to stand.
Just a few meters away, the mutant monkey was charging like a crimson nightmare, all four limbs tearing at the ground, propelling its monstrous bulk with terrifying agility. From its third eye, a white smoke began to condense—slithering through the air like solid poison.
Then it detonated.
A fireball, wilder than the last, ripped through the ground with brutal violence. Glenn forced his legs to move—wounded, but determined. In one final, desperate push, he threw himself to the side, opening a lateral rift like a slash in a glass veil.
Behind him, the explosion followed through, like a blazing avalanche. The heat caught him, searing his back, licking at his clothes with tongues of hellfire. But the sugarcane remained untouched.
And just before the fire could consume him completely, the rift sealed with a dry snap.
Darkness. Silence. A moment to breathe.
Glenn reappeared on a low slope and kept running without looking back. His lungs burned, his legs trembled, and still… the monkey was there, like a killing shadow that never tired.
He barely had time to notice the terrain shift.
Ahead, the forest opened into a small clearing, squeezed between roots and rocks. A prepared space.
This was it.
As soon as he crossed the trap's threshold, Glenn felt the mechanism he'd set activate with a subtle whisper in the air. A disguised signal, nearly imperceptible.
A second later, the mutant monkey stormed into the space, blinded by fury, smoke still leaking from its central eye—and then the sky fell.
Five massive trunks, bound by vines and shaped like pendulums, swung down from the treetops, spinning with centrifugal force and slicing the air like spears of living wood.
But the monkey was no ordinary beast.
With unreal reflexes, it leapt left, twisting its body like a deadly dancer. The first trunk missed him by inches. He spun mid-air, using his right arm to push off the trunk he'd just dodged, and flipped backward as if floating. The third trap swiped beneath him. The fourth tree, aimed at his ribs, was intercepted by all four of his arms which struck it with such force it shattered into splinters.
The fifth tree, swinging straight at his head, was incinerated when another beam of red light burst from his forehead. The blast flung him backward from the impact. The monkey spun violently across the ground, whirling like a top. And though he escaped the trap, his body was beginning to accumulate damage.
When he finally stopped rolling—
"Crack."
The subtle sound of glass shattering echoed above his head.
The mutant looked up.
And saw it.
A colossal boulder, the size of a wagon, emerged from a spatial rift high above, falling with the weight of a planet. The air around it shimmered from the impact force, its surface glowing with active runes.
The third eye blinked in terror.
But it was too late.
The rock fell like a meteor summoned by the gods, engulfing the creature in a blinding flash, followed by the dry sound of something being crushed—and the ground giving way under the weight of collapse.
Silence. Dust. Shock.
Glenn, kneeling at a distance, gasped for breath.
No celebration.No lowering of his guard.
He knew that in the Floating Waterfalls Valley, nothing died easily.
The sound of crushed bones still echoed through the trees, but Glenn didn't rely on luck.
His legs were already moving, tearing through the brush toward the last trap he had prepared.
Behind him, the unmistakable sound of stone being dragged sliced the air—deep, slow, and terrifying. As if the very ground was being forced to move.
The creature had survived.
With half its body crushed, ribs exposed, one arm dangling uselessly, the mutant monkey rose from the wreckage. A deformed, instinct-driven monster that seemed to lack any concept of pain.
Its eyes—all three—locked onto the enemy who had stolen its treasure.That damned demon.Glenn.
With a roar that shook the branches, the beast launched itself once more into the chase.
Glenn ran as if the world were collapsing behind him—and in a way, it was. Suffering without access to the lightning he always relied on to boost his speed. All he could use now was his spatial affinity.
He shot through a narrow corridor between ancient trees, their trunks curving like arches. And then, without stopping, he activated the trap.
His body vanished into a spatial rift, reappearing six hundred meters ahead, still in motion.
But the creature didn't hesitate.
Even mutilated, the monkey catapulted itself forward with animalistic power. It used its two remaining arms to grab the nearby trees and, with its leg muscles, hurled itself ahead, flying down the corridor with suicidal force.
And everything exploded.
The seemingly normal trees were nothing but hollow shells. From within each one, thousands of razor-thin wooden spears—black, hardened, like titanium thorns—fired in perfect synchrony, creating a spiked storm. A true tunnel of death.
The corridor became a piercing hell.
The monkey was struck mid-air, every inch of its body shredded, pierced, torn. The spears punched through its mutant hide, tore tendons, broke bones, sending blood spraying like crimson rain across the leaves.
But… it kept coming.
Every meter flown seemed to rip more of it apart, but the creature pressed on, fueled by primal hatred.
Glenn, now farther ahead, stopped running.
He was smiling.Not in relief.In triumph.
Like a hunter savoring the kill.As if the hunt had finally ended.
But then—
Everything turned black and white.
Without warning.No sound.No wind.
Time froze.
The leaves stopped swaying.The waterfalls in the sky halted mid-air, like someone had paused the world.
The dust hung still.The spears floated.The monkey, suspended in time, was frozen.
And Glenn…
Glenn looked to the side, confused.
His body wouldn't move.His hand trembled.And when he looked down…
His torso had been severed in two—split from the waist.