The air was crisp that morning—clean in the way only wild land untouched by human hands could be. The team moved along a narrow trail winding through a stretch of rolling hills.
They had fallen into a rhythm over the last few days: walk, scout, camp, rotate watch. Repeat. There wasn't much reason to speak unless it was important.
The silence wasn't hostile—it was the kind that came from mutual understanding and a simple lack of things to discuss. But silence could leave space for thoughts to get loud.
Lily walked near the middle of the team, a few steps behind Walter. Her eyes scanned the terrain by habit, but her hands were busy.
She pulled a thin strip of leather from her belt pouch—worn, flexible, already bearing a few notches—and marked a fresh line into it with the tip of her knife. Then another. She paused before adding a third.
Ethan glanced over. "That a new hobby?"
Lily didn't look up. "It's a time tracker."
Victor raised an eyebrow. "Since when do you care about time?"
A beat passed before she answered. "Since I realised it's been five months since the Wish Event."
The words caused everyone to come to a stop.
Sam slowed his pace, turning slightly. "Five months?"
"Yea, over four since we left Richard's zone," she added, slipping the marked leather back into her pouch.
Walter looked down the trail ahead of them, expression unreadable.
"I meant to tell you earlier," Lily said. "I asked a merchant about it after they told me their goods were months old."
No one said anything right away.
"That tower must've taken longer than we thought... with the way things felt distorted and no day-night cycle we could've spent ages in there without realising." Walter tapped his cane against the ground.
"There's a lot we still don't know about that obelisk and the tower. I have to say I didn't expect that much time to have passed. It felt much shorter than that." AJ added.
They continued walking—they were now three days' walk away from the dig site. Sam was using the team's collective memory of their view of the mountain from before the obelisk transported them.
He was making rough guesses based on the angle. It was a crude method that lacked any kind of precision but it was the best they had.
"Hey Sam." Ethan called out.
"What's up?"
"Can you guess at how far away we are from the safe zone?" Ethan said.
Sam's steps slowed. They shifted subtly, attention narrowing.
He exhaled through his nose. "At our current pace... my estimates are at about a month."
Lily blinked. "A month?"
"That's if we don't get slowed down by weather or terrain."
Walter gave a low hum. "That would make it nearly six months away from the safe zone... from Maria."
Silence rippled across them.
Even with all they'd seen and been through, six months was a long time. Half a year spent wandering in the wilderness.
Half a year away from Maria and the safe zone—people would change in that length of time. Was Maria still okay? Would she resent them for taking so long?
Victor adjusted the strap on his pack, expression unreadable. "It won't be the same when we get back."
Lily nodded.
"She's strong," Ethan said, though the words lacked his usual force. "Maria's stubborn and smart, she'll have made it work."
Sam didn't speak at first. He kept walking, eyes forward, then finally answered, "We have to be ready for anything. The Richard we knew was dangerous. But if he's been given this long to stabilise..."
"He'll have dug in deep," Walter finished for him.
"He'll have more followers and they'll be stronger than last time. Maria likely would've followed through with her deal. Exchanging her cultivation knowledge for safety." Sam's tone was calm.
The conversation faded into silence again.
But the words lingered. Maria. Richard. Six months.
Despite their new strength and hard-won knowledge, none of them felt confident about their chances against Richard and his lackeys.
The trail bent downward into a shallow canyon, its floor choked with mist. Rocks jutted up from the ground like broken pillars. The mist shimmered faintly, catching the light in irregular pulses—almost like it was breathing.
AJ tensed on Sam's shoulder.
Walter stepped forward and inhaled slowly, eyes narrowing. "The mana here is thick."
Victor crouched, pressing his palm flat against the earth. After a moment, he pulled it back and flexed his fingers. "It seems to be leaking up through the ground. Like the land's been overfed and can't hold it anymore."
Lily knelt beside a cluster of spiralling stalks—long, translucent plants veined with flickering blue light. She brushed a finger along the edge of one.
Sparks arced along its surface, dancing over her skin. She pulled her hand back, blinking. "Everything here's absorbing large amounts of mana and yet it's still this concentrated."
"What do we do?" Ethan asked, eyes flicking between the warped terrain and the walls of mist around them. "We going through or around?"
Sam studied the terrain. The canyon wasn't wide, but the ridges rose steep and broken on either side. Climbing them would be very risky.
"We go through," Sam said. "This could be a great opportunity to improve our cultivation."
They stepped forward as one, descending fully into the mist.
---
The change was immediate.
The air pressed against their skin like warm water, thick and slow. Every breath buzzed faintly in their chests, like they were inhaling something alive.
The sounds of their footsteps echoed around them just a half-beat off, as if the world was repeating their movements out of sync.
Ethan frowned. "Anyone else feel... strange?"
"Our bodies are reacting to the mana," Lily said, her voice sounding distant.
AJ shifted slightly, his form rippling. "The saturation is so high, it's practically forcing its way into our bodies."
Sam stopped and focused for a moment. He attempted to gather mana into his body.
It came faster than expected.
He staggered slightly. The flow didn't just respond—it rushed. His limbs tingled, mana flooding his system with reckless eagerness. Once he gave it a path it rushed forward on its own.
Walter steadied him. "Be careful, controlling such large amounts of mana is too difficult for us now."
"Something's off about this place," Lily murmured. "The mana is too crowded and it wants to escape yet it's stuck here. Something must be holding all the mana in this area."
The mist thickened the deeper they moved in. There were very few plants but the ones that did manage to adapt grew stranger.
Bloated fungi that pulsed with light, vines that curled towards them, responding to their presence. The terrain sloped downward, deeper into a basin where the mana was even thicker.
AJ felt the pull of the strange flora—each plant humming with potential, ripe for absorption and analysis. But after what happened at the Obsidian Sect's dig site, he was hesitant.
The memory of that material's rejection still echoed in his core. For now, he focused on absorbing the ambient mana saturating the air.
His absorption rate had increased drastically—at least fivefold. It poured into him, smooth and uninterrupted.
He still hadn't found a limit to how much mana he could contain; under normal conditions his rate of accumulation was simply too slow to ever test it.
But here, surrounded by abundance, that might finally change.
They continued wandering through the mist, moving slowly, they decided to look for a safe place to train.
Visibility was poor, and every step forward felt like wading through half-formed shadows. The mix of poor visibility and the general lack of life in such a mana-dense area left little to describe.
Outside of the rocky terrain below their feet and the occasional strange glowing plant they could only see mist.
They hoped they would be able to leave or find a spot that provided enough cover to stay in relatively quickly.
After another few hours the terrain that had sloped downward began to level out again. To one side they spotted an opening—a natural hollow nestled between curved stone walls.
The mist pooled here, gathering low to the ground and rising to their knees. It swirled in slow, lazy spirals, as though the land itself were exhaling.
"This'll do," Sam said, scanning the area. "It's sheltered, and the density here is even higher than before."
Ethan dropped his pack and flexed his arms. "I can feel the mana forcing its way inside me as we speak."
Lily turned in a slow circle, feeling the energy in the air press against her skin like static.
They set up camp quickly, a low fire built from dried fungi found clinging to the stone. It burned with a dull green flame, barely visible through the haze.
No one bothered with tents. The air was warm and strangely comforting.
Sam sat as they settled in. "Focus on controlling the mana as you absorb it. If you blindly absorb large quantities of mana it'll run rampant inside you."
The others spread out, each finding space among the rocks and fungi to sit or lie down. The mist curled around them like a blanket, diffusing the little light that remained.
Sam crossed his legs and closed his eyes. The mana flowed to him easily, like a tide drawn to shore.
Ethan lay flat on his back, arms crossed behind his head. "This is the easiest training I've ever done," he muttered.
Victor didn't answer. He sat rigid, palms pressed to his thighs, expression neutral. But the faint shimmer of energy around his body spoke volumes.
Lily stood for a while, breathing deeply. She didn't sit until she felt her mana stabilise. Then, she lowered herself onto a smooth patch of stone, fingers twitching every so often as the energy slipped into her system.
AJ remained still beside Sam, form low and dense, drawing in mana in a quiet, constant stream. The rate was accelerating steadily now. There was no resistance—no pressure, no friction. A one-way flow into him.
The minutes blurred into hours.
They let the mist work its way into their systems, accumulating and circulating it.
The hours turned into a whole day as they were engrossed by their cultivation progress.
Their mana reserves were filling up. The circulation of mana was slowly strengthening their bodies whilst also allowing them to practise controlling the flow of mana.
AJ lost track of how much he had absorbed. He could feel his structure thickening, layers forming in ways they hadn't before. The energy was anchoring itself. Not just stored, it was integrated.
Sam's internal reservoir, once a shallow basin, was now approaching something deeper.
Without fully realising it, he had started circulating his mana along specific routes—natural paths carved into his body.
His energy flowed quicker, smoother, more efficiently than ever before, as if his body contained an invisible network of highways.
The mana within him glowed brighter with each cycle, accelerating, gathering momentum.
And then—
A sound.
A low dragging scrape against stone, distant but clear in the unnatural quiet. Then another. And another.
Ethan sat up, tension snapping through his shoulders. "You hear that?"
Lily was already on her feet. "It's coming closer."
Victor had his blade drawn before anyone else moved. "There are multiple. I can make out at least three."
AJ grew in size, his previously compressed form growing to the size of a car tire. "The mana is being drawn to them, whatever they are, they're recklessly absorbing the surrounding mana."
The air thickened with a new kind of pressure. No shapes had emerged yet, but the mist had changed. It wasn't swirling lazily anymore. It was coiling.