The paper is made of wood, with the help of water.
Flieday analyzed as she sniffed the paper
I do not recognize this glue, so it must be something related to a grad- I should say Requim beast.
"This is most probably from the elders of the moon tribe, one of less authority on the order of an older elder."
The scrawny kid raised an eyebrow and asked, "how do you know that?"
Ah it's the new kid, Frany
"Well first of all, paper is really expensive because the Pai tribe has a monopoly over it. An old elder would not risk using his handwriting. Even if there was a rich xenophobic group with a lot of money they would not waste it on paper. The elders are usually the only ones who know how to write while people like us only know carving.
I believe they want us to know that an elder wrote it anyways."
Dawn nodded, "That's obvious."
Flieday nodded, "That is not all, Dawn, can you give me a sample of Inky's ink?"
Dawn nodded as a tentacle rose from the ground. The tentacle tore a small leaf from the tent and squeezed a bit of ink on it.
Flieday brought the leaf to her nose and whiffed it before smudging it to a clean part of the paper.
"It is written with sea ink or the ink of a graded beast." Flieday gave Dawn a glance before smirking.
"No matter, we should speed up our journey now.
This is just a baseless threat."
"Are you-" An old man with a hunched back said before getting cut off by Flieday's glare.
…
The grey cloud rolled out of the horizon in a slow pace, leaving behind a trail of red light. The Dawnlays were over and the starlay had arrived. It doesn't matter whether you call it the first Sunlay or Starlay but the 921st day had began.
It was also the day Flieday would come in contact with the moon tribe. It was also the Sunlay she would create her first tribe.
She stretched in her grass bed and stretched. The voice stayed quiet as it summoned the magical covering over her bare body. Flieday had a lot of work to do today, thus she walked out of the tent without relaxing. She walked around the maze of tents and walked into the middle of her group.
There, a simple bonfire was covered in snow. Flieday raised her hand as a bluebird flew out of her palm. It flew around the bonfire before letting out a shrill cry.
The snow on the wood melted into water and water evaporated into the air as the wood bursted into flames.
Flieday took a deep breath and told the bird to spread its wings. The bird nodded before spreading its wings for metres. Its whole body increased while its wings expanded exponentially, covering multiple tents.
Flieday sat on its back and told it to fly north, where the moon tribe resided,
…
A lay before, a man with a long flowing beard stood on top of a tower. Below him stood various ponds with a blueish white liquid. Unlike the essence ponds, this pond was made up of moon water, said to have flown from the moon 300 days ago.
The water had various graded beasts in it, living in a simple ecosystem as an ivory white fish jumped out of the pond. Its body shuddered as two huge wings appeared on its back. The wings flapped as the fish flew towards the man.
The man smiled as he combed his white beard, he used to love the colour of white, it had two sides to him. One side was of purity and beauty, something untouched and dirty, the other was impure and attractive, something with an inherent dirty nature.
But now, it felt boring, everything felt boring to be honest.
When he was a kid everything felt so unique, so new and magical. But the Chinen brain had the tendency of forming patterns. Once a pattern is made, it loses all of its excitement,
Once you kill someone, killing someone else becomes easier, if you kill someone for long enough it becomes a routine. Once something becomes a routine all the emotions regarding it dies.
Re moon had felt that he was in such a routine ever since he was 20 days old. Now that he was going to be 59 days old, he felt as if he had wasted his life.
But he had a duty, a task without it his life would fall apart. It is better to be boring than to be in agony.
The fish entered his ears as he heard a message.
The group of other tribes was extremely near their tribe and can come in contact any second now.
Re moon sighed as he looked onto the red sun.
***
Before Elias went to the competition, he had hundreds of questions about the world around them, thus he went to Haoki to talk.
First, he talked to the 'manager' about some of these questions but the answer he got was along the lines of
"That? A true treasury said it was a cell of a mistress while another treasury called them the result of kings fighting...
...thus we do not know the real answere."
Thus he wanted a clear explanation.
The first question he asked was how the 'ponds' work. He knew what the ponds were — magical ponds formed naturally with extraordinary powers, working on one who submerged in it.
But he never understood them clearly.
"Ah, so the ponds. Well basically they are liquified essence. My bad, you probably did not get the teachings of Tao Zhu, basically she said that everything was made up of small essence prints. When the essence prints mix and interact they form essence.
You must have heard the legend of the faceless boy, think of it as the earth interacting and reacting with itself.
The ponds are basically a complex chain of different essences in high density. No one knows how they are formed but give mystical abilities to someone by infusing them by essence.
Not all ponds give abilities, some heal you, some make you young but you get the point."
Elias felt deeply entranced by the flood of information as he nodded. After being dazed for a while he asked,
"So that is why their level drops when used."
Haoki nodded as Elias asked more,
"What about the grading of beasts?"
"Uhh, grade 1 beasts are Laity, and Grade 2 beasts can use Requim. That is the gust of it."
Elias nodded, he was a Laity himself so he understood,
"Are there any outliers?"
"Well, many millennials ago, cursers appeared in the middle of the first millennials and slowly faded out of existence. Right now these giant insects appeared and massacred many tribes, they started from Greal as the crimsons warned us.
They run towards places with a higher Chinen population, which is bad for us of course, after all we are chinen."
Elias nodded as he felt a bit enlightened.
Elias went back to his room and stared at the wall for a few hours before sleeping.
…
The face of a young woman stared at Elias, she was beautiful, with a charming face and alluring gaze.
Her face had an inherent cuteness to it, Elias was deeply affected by her mere face.
Slowly he saw her face getting pale, when he looked to his right he saw her full body. Her clothes had seemingly washed over as a blob of blood sat on her chest.
It has made a deep wound on right in the middle of her chest as it quietly absorbed blood from the young woman.
Elias's face turned into one of pure horror, before he could do anything though he saw white water brush by her. And brush by her again.
This time it covered her completely before inching backwards.
It consistently washed over her as her skin scrunched up. One huge wave took her eyes with it, leaving dead eye sockets.
Soon her skin was starting to deteriorate as her bloodless corpse remained still. Interestingly the blob spilled a drop of blood on her face.
Soon she was skinless, with only a patch of skin of her face.
Elias felt disgusted as he raised his arms.
He could not control himself as his hand caressed the woman… before ripping the fat off it.
Elias woke up from that horrifying dream. He felt the warm and uncomfortable sweat had completely covered him as he sat up.
He sighed before doing the stretching exercises he had made on that damned mountain. After an hour of stretching, he moved on to muscle training and practiced for a few more hours.
Soon Elias moved on to the set of offensive, defensive and other manoeuvring tasks making up his very own fighting style which he had proudly named 'Ivory Sovereign'
Soon the cloud rolled off as sunlight assaulted him. Elias sighed before making a firm decision.
He locked his memories of the corpse mountain!
After all, they were not helping him in any way, rather they were fucking up his mind.
After a bit of thinking he locked the Requim crystal and glass Requim collection memories of his tribe to prevent future nightmares.
Then wore his dark purple clothes and went to Haoki's last class for him.
Elias along with multiple other students followed Haoki into a cold room. The room was made of a smooth see through type of glass apparently called frozen air.
Of course it was neither frozen nor air, it was just that the people naming them were fools. It was a grade two material.
Essentially, a grade two material is equivalent to the effect of a grade one Requim. As clear as the frozen air was, it was not see-through, it had a hazy property in it making it effectively opaque.
Haoki led the group towards various doors, opening around thirty locks before he stopped. Haoki opened an white casket, revealing a frozen corpse.
"Only join deity's disciple if you are ready to die…"
Haoki softly touched the corpse's belly before… lifting his skin up!
The skin lifted up like paper revealing a myriad of dead worms in it.
"This is one of the tame dead bodies. His name was Erent and was a kind student." Haoki got a little emotional before he slowly walked out of the room.
"The deity's disciple is a brutal event, try to not die as much as possible. You must remember to train your Lights, the two techniques of using moonlight and starlight must be akin to breathing to you all.
Remember to specifically use solid objects to infuse them with moonlight or starlight.
Have humble goals, try to be in the top million students and be ready to die."
The group nodded; there were about three hundred of his students going in the competition today.