FUCK!!!!!!!
MY EYES! THEY ARE IN MY EYES!!!!
ASTRIS NULLIS AVENUM!
Despite my sorcery, I hit the ground hard. Very hard.
"Oww! Oww! Fuck!
One of my eyes was blurry, the other was eaten alive by those grotesque spiders.
The Lone Mother, Weaver of Death.
That's what Julien said its name was, that fucking mirror monster.
He said he was with The Alchemists of Law, some interdimensional terrorist organization.
I wonder if they're here too.
I tried to see the outside world through my eye but it was blurry.
I need to heal myself but I already used almost all of my aether to escape it. I need more but I can barely move.
Do I call out for help? Or will that just get me killed faster. I don't know the attitude towards outsiders here.
Fuck it. I'll call out, if I don't I'm going to die here anyway.
"HELP! HELP! HELP!" I screamed out.
Not soon after, a voice responded.
"I hear you! Where are you!"
"Just follow the sound of my voice" I said
"Wait, I think I know where you are!" He exclaimed
I then saw a blurry figure in my vision, I couldn't exactly tell what he looked like but he had pale skin and black eyes.
"You look terrible, like you shouldn't be alive. Are you a young master?" He asked me
A..Young what now? What sort of dialect is that?
"What do you mean by that?" I asked him pallidly
His silence hinted at the fact that he was shocked, "You mean, you don't know what a young master is? Are you some backwater village mortal? No, it can't be, not with clothes like that." He whispered loudly to himself.
Mortal? No, I'm a sorcerer. He must be talking about my astris robe. I guess it does look shiny, wealth here seems to be exclusive to sorcerers. At least I know it isn't damaged that much.
"Are you perhaps a cultivator from a hermit clan?" He asked.
Clan? Does he mean family or town by that? Is this dimension a tribal place? As for cultivator, it might be an alternative word for sorcerer but I can't be sure, let's test it.
"I don't know anything about gardening." I said
"You really don't know anything do you." He said to me, sounding downcast.
"If you're waiting for me to die so that you can loot my corpse, know that I've primed sorceries to detonate my body." I said to him.
He jumped back in my blurred vision.
"What makes you think I would ever do something such as that! Know that I, Lan Hua Yan Fei of the righteous Lan Hua sect always follows the righteous path!" He said loudly, acting appalled.
Such a strange name.
I sighed loudly, "Known for your benevolence or not, that fact remains that you, upon seeing my dying body, didn't call for help. Instead you approached me to stop me from yelling so that I'd die quieter, since it would be bad for others to be around when you loot my corpse. You, Mr. Fei may be a reputable person but you are not a good person." I spoke deeply.
"..."
"Some thoughts should be going through your head right now, how should I ensure my reputation is safe may be one. I am going to yell out help louder now. Since you were concerned that people may have heard me if I kept yelling originally, I assume that people are somewhere around and there will be a sizable chance of people hearing me and coming to my aid. If those people are also from different reputable tribes and they come at the same time, unless they are completely friendly and in on it together, they, under the pressure of each other will help me and if they are from tribes other than your own, I will rat you out to them and they will place your clan under fire and I will be sure to execute you." I spoke, seemingly telling him the future.
"You seem to have lied, you are an intelligent young master indeed." He said darkly.
I then saw him performing hand sigils, hand sigils I didn't recognize at all, most likely preparing a sorcery.
I took a deep breath, "Astris Clavis Nota!"
A starlit key, no bigger than a house key manifested in his neck.
His eyes widened in complete shock, grasping at his neck.
I didn't recognize his hand sigils, he probably didn't recognize my words as incantations. Plus it was pretty fast.
Following those thoughts, the cultivator fell to the floor in a bleeding mess.
I raised my left hand and grasped a ghostly key identical to the one in his neck. Pointing the key towards his neck, I turned it and the other key followed suit.
The ghostly key in my hand turned real and then I crushed it, shattering it into miniature stars.
The stars danced around my dying body and started to repair it fully.
If I had the Virgo affinity, this type of restoration could be done with the aether of a blade of grass, I wouldn't have had to resort to such measures.
The cultivator's blood turned azure blue as he started to collapse into bright-blue dust that scattered in the wind.
I soon got up, my vision restored. Sighing, I looked around at my environment. I was in a green forest, green. That's not a common natural color.
Is this place abnormal, or is green a natural color here?
I continued to walk through the strange green forest.
I still don't have enough aether, I need to find some more victims. I wasn't vindictive enough last time. I wouldn't have lost so badly if I had more aether.
Thinking this thought, I heard singing nearby.
Coming to the source of the noise, I found a woman bathing in the waterfall.
Ah, I'm sorry.
I targeted a small pebble with my sorcery, causing it to shine with a light that invoked a sense of wonder.
Seeing the shining rock, the girl approached the pebble and picked it up.
Bingo!
The delayed aether alteration has been activated.
I quickly hid in the bushes and planned to use the aether alteration to track her path back to her village, assuming she had one.
After waiting in the trees for a while her location started to change.
Traveling westward to an unknown location.
I quickly picked up speed and trailed her a few moonshines back. Her position then stagnated, noticing this change I started to approach slower eventually approaching a a wall comprised of a series of bright green tube intertwined with twine.
I flicked the tubes with my left hand, hollow. Feeling the sides I began to scratch, eventually pulling back a strand of it.
It's comprised of segmented strands which lay on top of each other. That's characteristic of organic matter. It's most likely a plant but it could also be a root of some kind.
I then heard some footsteps on the other side of the strange green wall.
Have I made a commotion?
I took a step back slowly, sinking back into the green foliage.
Turning around, I aimed to trace the wall to a gate and then enter the town for the normal direction, pretending to be a wanderer trader of a distant land, which I was to be fair.
I'll sell the used up sigil keepers I still have on me.
Traveling around the perimeter of the wall, a portion of the gate became visible to my aether-infused eyes.
I smirked before locating the path that led to the gate. Going 3 moonshines away from the gate I looked both ways and entered the path.
I quickly traversed to the open green gate and was met with two guards with red feathered spears and unusual headgear.
"Halt! What is your business with the Hua Tai clan!" They instantly commanded me.
Placing my left hand on my heart I started to speak with a courtesy, "My name is Mathias Calypses, a wanderer selling wares of a mystical nature." I said
"From which clan do you hail?" They spoke in unison.
Do you think they would believe me if I said I came from a clan of inquisitors serving the mirror of the night sky?
"I hail from a land far away, you wouldn't recognize the name." I spoke truthfully
Their stance shifted to attack, "Leave now, outsider of Hua."
I smiled, "Now, now don't be disheartened. I may be an outsider, but only an outsider can supply these." I said, showing them two broken golden stopwatches with embedded star backgrounds.
"What are those?" The leftmost guard asked.
"Cultivation tools designed to be used by mortals and aid the transition into a cultivator." I said.
I'm actually not lying, those tools are designed to make sorcerers out of mortals. I find it good to not lie to anyone. There's too many lie detection sorceries out there, you'll never know what lie will come to bite you in the ass.
"Can you prove to us it works?" They asked me.
I tapped the middle of the stopwatches and they began to glow blue and sparkle.
Their eyes widened, "So you're from a newly established Hua sect named Calypses, huh." They said to me.
"Yes, it's not very known so I can understand the confusion." I said to them.
"Right, right." They said, moving the way to welcome me into the village.