To anyone else, the Body Tempering Elixir was a strengthening potion, but to Soren, it was now the key to his radical transformation.
He now understood why his skin had been itching and drying up like husk ever since he arrived in the Wastelands.
Apparently, the "Tranquil Poison" wasn't just killing him; its high-energy toxicity was acting as a High-Pressure Internal Environment" while his mysterious father's blood was using the Wastelands as a "High-Pressure External Environment" to trigger a Natural Structural Tempering that perhaps only He knew of.
The realization hit him like a physical blow; His enemies hadn't just been poisoning him; they had been accidentally fueling his evolution.
He wasn't dying. He was molting, and now he didn't just want to "plate" himself, he wanted to see how far he could push his ongoing evolution.
He felt the maddening itch of his skin again, the way it was slowly cracking and drying up, flaking into husks that looked like discarded parchment.
The Ignis Tribe had sent him here as a "Karmic Sinkhole," believing the poison would eventually consolidate into a harvestable essence.
They hadn't realized that by sending him into the Wastelands with a body full of venom, they had accidentally provided the exact conditions for perhaps the most dangerous form of body tempering in existence.
"They wanted to kill a child," Soren said, tucking both scrolls into the waterproof pouch next to his heart. "But they have inadvertently built a monster."
He looked toward the mouth of the cave. The sunrise was beginning to bleed over the horizon, painting the jagged stone pillars of the Forgotten Forest in shades of bruised purple and gold.
He knew the Matron would probably be preparing to send out search parties by now, in fact, they might as well be out there already, tracking the trail of the supply wagon.
"These people are looking for a corpse to harvest, but they are about to find a predator they had spent seven years accidentally perfecting."
Soren didn't dilly-dally; instantly, he began to pack his meager belongings with a sense of grim, mechanical purpose.
He ate the last strips of the salted Shadow-Cat meat he had preserved, providing his muscles with the flimsy energy they needed to move.
Every movement was a chore, his body feeling heavier as the "heat" from the Shadow-Cat blood finally flickered out, leaving him once again at the mercy of the thirty venoms.
The poison was growing hungry. It was beginning to "sense" the golden energy inside the jade vial through Soren's palm, its black threads twitching with an almost erotic greed.
It wanted the Fifth-Grade fuel. It wanted to see if it could break the Golden Sun just as easily as it had broken the High Shaman's seal.
Soren stood at the mouth of the cave. The morning rain had turned into a cold, biting sleet that hissed against the limestone. His ash-gray hair was whipped about his face, and his violet eyes were fixed on the northern horizon.
He looked at the map one last time, memorizing the jagged red-rock spires that marked the path to the Brine-Pit.
He knew he was walking into a grave, but for the first time in his life, it was a grave of his own choosing.
"I am the filter," he whispered into the wind, the words a promise of vengeance. "And I am going to make you drink every drop of what I've collected."
He stepped out of the cave and began the three-kilometer trek through the "Forbidden Zone" toward the pit; toward the Golden Grave, and toward a mutation that would rewrite the laws of the House of Ignis in blood and black ichor.
He was seven years old, he was dying, and now he was about to become the most dangerous thing in the Forest of No Return.
-------
The descent from the Hunter's Perch was no longer a struggle of the weak; it was the calculated movement of a phantom.
Soren moved through the pre-dawn grayness of the Forest of No Return not as a trespasser, but as a silent extension of its thorns and shadows; for he was now a part of it.
His movements were being guided by the violet-tinted map of energy pulsing in his vision.
The thick hide of the Alpha Shadow-Cat sat heavy on his shoulders, it acted as a shield against the biting wind, but more importantly, its wild, musky smell acted like a natural camouflage that masked his human smell and heat, hiding his presence from other creatures.
In his right hand, he gripped the heavy metal skinning tool he'd found, its matte-black surface pulsing with the violet-black grease of his poisoned blood.
In his left, the jade vial of Fifth-Grade Golden Body Elixir sat like a captured sun, its warmth vibrating against his palm with a rhythmic, tyrannical pulse.
With the Inner Guard's map in his mind, and his vision relaying a 3D Energy Flow view of the map, it was safe to say Soren knew the hierarchy of the Wastelands.
The 3D Energy Flow view detailed more than just landmarks.
Soren could see that while the Forest of No Return was a place of damp decay and suffocating vines, the path toward the Brine-Pit was about a distance of nearly ten kilometers Northward, tucked within a tectonic scar where the earth's acidic marrow bled to the surface.
Also, he already realized that to reach it, he had to navigate the "Red-Rock Spires," a series of jagged, hematite-rich formations that stood like rusted teeth against the horizon.
As he moved, his "vision" provided a high-definition map of the forest's lethality. He saw the "pressure points" in the air and the places where the wind swirled into dangerous traps.
He stayed away from the "Dead-Zones" where the purple energy of the earth turned a sickly white; areas where the soil was so toxic even the rot-trees refused to grow.
Inside him, the Tranquil Poison was currently in a state of predatory agitation. It had tasted the Alpha's blood and felt a source of life-force from the Elixir in the vial, and now it was hungry for more.
The black threads beneath his skin were no longer just veins; were vibrating, acting they were sensors, picking up the seismic echoes, smell, and even heat signature of every scuttling insect and distant predator.
'I am the filter,' Soren thought, the words from the Shaman's scroll echoing in the hollow of his mind like a funeral bell.
'I am the vessel for their immortality. But they forgot one thing: a vessel can choose what it pours.'
By the time the sun climbed higher, casting long, red shadows over the rocks, the air changed.
The atmosphere had lost the damp, rot-heavy smell of the deep woods. Instead, it was becoming sharp and clinical, carrying the stinging aroma of sulfur, concentrated salts, and chalky scent of ancient minerals.
The shift was almost violent. The higher he climbed the more the "vision" in his eyes flickered.
The violet lines of energy were no longer flowing like a river; they were morphing into varying colors, shapes and sizes, adjusting and updating in real-time as Soren ghosted his way through the lands.
He was learning that the Wastelands were not a single ecosystem, but a series of lethal layers, each home to predators that viewed the Shadow-Cat as nothing more than a noisy scavenger.
Three kilometers in, near a series of sun-scorched pillars, Soren encountered the first obstacle; the ground turned from mud to a crunchy, white-and-orange crust that sounded like breaking glass under his boots.
The smell of cedar and dirt was replaced by a sharp, stinging scent of sulfur and salt.
Now, he couldn't move without making some sort of noise and was standing at a forked road with a predator both to his right and left.
Despite being more than 40 yards from the predators, Soren could already estimate their threat level.
Just the size, the heat intensity, and the level of shift to the vibrational and chemical levels of each path was enough to tell him which road to pick.
He had interpreted that big size, strong scent and deep red heat intensity means more dangerous predator, and as such, he glided left towards the weaker, dimmer and less pungent figure in his mind.
A single minute later, Soren encountered the predator, or prey, as it was a creature the tribe's ancestral scrolls only have the image of, but little to no information on its nature.
Nevertheless, this creature was labelled a true denizen of the High Wastelands: a Brine-veil Gnat.
It was basically an oversized gnat, with long suckers that looks like a pin had expanded to the size of a lance.
Its colors was a perfect camouflage into its surroundings, and it carried a nigh-identical smell to the atmosphere, even releasing spores that seem like mere vapors in the air.
Soren had observed that much between the time taken to reach here from the forked road, which was much more than the tribe scrolls detailed.
However, Soren wasn't happy at all, and that was because while his vision and senses told him this was the lesser threat, the creature gave him a more lethal vibe now that he was in its presence.
He couldn't tell why, but his instincts were blaring numerous alarms all across his body. From a sudden spike in the chill in the atmosphere, to the hairs on his body rising and the sudden appearance of goosebumps on his skin.
Nevertheless, Soren knew that now that he was here, there is no evading a fight, not when the creature had noticed him and was now hovering in place, flapping its silk-like wings that didn't move rapidly and yet seem to suspend its body easily.
Also, between a threat the size of a Ford F150 Truck, and one the size of just one its doors, it only made sense for one to try their luck with the smaller threat.
Soren decided to take the initiative and as such, dashed towards the creature as fast as he could move, however, the moment he saw the creature retaliate, he knew the duel was going to be quick and easy.
True to his suspicions, the battle was indeed quick and easy, it only ended in Soren's resounding defeat, flawless defeat even.
The moment Soren moved, the creature simply flapped its silky wings once, releasing some spores like a moth, and then on the second flap, a draft of wind spread the spores all over the area, covering about a 30-yard radius with them at its center.
Soren's 3D vision and wriggling veins were swiftly defeated as these spores carried chemical properties almost 90% similar to that of the environment.
Also, the chemical reaction between the spores and atmosphere generated a level of heat 90% similar to that of the environment.
As a result, Soren's prized 3D Energy Flow view and wiggling vein now relayed images that looked like he was using heat sensor cameras to observe a room, and then the temperature was suddenly turned on to match that of the people within it.
He swiftly lost the sight, smell and presence of the beast he was about to fight, and the next thing he felt was a slap of the wings that covered his entire face, jerking his head so bad, that he got disoriented.
However, it was the next thing that happened that horrified Soren the most.
The creature calmly hovered over his blurred vision and stabbed its lance of a sucker straight into his chest.
But instead of a physical pain, Soren felt the sucker phase past his body and penetrate unhindered through him.
Soren felt a new kind of pain he had never thought existed, and it was so intense that it made him crave the Tranquil Poison's rebellion very much.
The Tranquil Poison had no solution for this because while it stole the life force within one's blood essence, it was useless before the Brine-veil Gnat which fed on one's soul.
Gulp after gulp from the creature left Soren's consciousness dimming at breakneck speed, and moments later Soren lost consciousness.
But that was when it happened.