I flew, silent and swift, weaving between the trees. At first glance, the forest was no different from the ones back home, the same dark green canopy stretching wide, the same mountains rising in the distance.
If I had ignored the fact that I traveled through a space channel, I could have believed I was still in my own world.
But then my eyes caught what truly set this place apart. The sky.
Three moons hung above me. Even though it was daytime and the sun still burned, the moons were clear, silver-white discs that seemed almost too close.
Each one nearly the same size, each sitting in opposition to the others, forming a triangle in the heavens. It was unnatural, and yet... mesmerizing. Since Vaythos had only a single moon.
I dropped lower, slowing, and soon reached the place where I had sensed the humans earlier. With a small push of will, I suppressed my aura and slid silently into the branches of a tall tree. The bark creaked faintly beneath me, but none of the people below turned.
I studied them. All of them wore armor made of some kind of grey metal. Each human had a set of their own and it looked customised as well. And yet, there was one detail they all shared: an emblem on their chests.
A full moon. A half moon. A dark, empty circle.
Three designs, split among them.
I frowned. Factions? Orders? Whatever they were, the symbolism was too deliberate to be coincidence.
In the clearing, the group marked by the full moon, four of them, clashed with a towering abomination. The beast was twisted, vaguely reptilian with blackened scales, snarling as it lashed at them. Their movements were sharp, trained, coordinated. Steel clashed against claw, and Essence flared with every strike.
But the other two groups, the half moons and the dark moons, stood idle. They watched from the sidelines, weapons sheathed.
From time to time they did make taunting comments on the group fighting the Abomination.
All of them were well under the Master rank.
I leaned against the branch, my fingers absently tapping the wood. Something was off. Why would they just watch while one group fought alone?
My eyes locked onto a man standing with the half-moon faction. He was the strongest here, he carried himself with authority, and his presence pressed faintly against the others around him.
[Borsalino Yellow – Level 173]
He looked to be middle-aged, his face weathered but sharp, wearing a grim expression that didn’t waver even as the battle raged in front of him. Something about his calmness in watching others fight told me he wasn’t just a random soldier.
"That will do. You’ll be the one."
I raised my hand and snapped my fingers.
A sound like a subtle ripple spread through the air. It wasn’t loud, not even noticeable to those around. The wave washed through the abomination, through the humans fighting, and through the ones watching.
In the blink of an eye, their bodies stiffened, their eyes rolled, and one by one, they dropped like puppets whose strings had been cut.
Law of Resonance.
A law that let me match the invisible hum of frequencies running through everything matter, energy, Essence, even thought. And once I matched it, I could twist it. Break it. Disrupt it. All I did was nudge their resonance at the point where their Essence touched their minds, and the result was instant: unconsciousness.
I stepped down lightly from the branch I had been perched on and landed beside the man.
He lay sprawled on the ground, his chest rising and falling slowly. Without wasting time, I grabbed him by the collar and shot into the sky.
The higher I went, the faster I pushed, until the wind screamed past my ears and the clouds tore apart before me. The world below shrank—forest, rivers, mountains, all swallowed by distance. Then the truth of the zone came into view.
The abomination field wasn’t endless. It was contained. Vast walls of stone and steel circled the land like a prison, locking the forest and mountains inside.
I spotted watchtowers on the edges and even a small fort stationed outside the single entry point. This wasn’t wild land. It was controlled, monitored.
I stopped once I had a clear view and formed a wide platform of ice beneath me.
My boots crunched against it as I dropped the unconscious man onto the frozen surface. A flick of my fingers, another snap and his eyes fluttered open.
The man’s body twitched as consciousness returned. His eyes opened slowly, adjusting to the blinding white of the clouds all around him. Then his gaze darted down, and his breath caught.
There was nothing beneath him. Nothing but open sky and the endless fall waiting below. The ground was so far that even the massive forests and mountains looked like children’s toys scattered on a map. His hands trembled as he scrambled to steady himself on the slick ice platform.
"What—what is this... where am I?!" His voice cracked with panic.
I stood in front of him, my boots resting firmly against the melting frost. The ice hissed softly as thin streams of water dripped from the edges, breaking away and vanishing into the void below.
His eyes locked on me then, narrowing as he searched for something. For a long moment, he simply stared, and then his jaw dropped.
"Who... who are you?" His tone shifted from fear to disbelief. "I can’t... I can’t see it. Your level, it’s not there. A Grandmaster."
I tilted my head, letting the silence stretch between us until the sound of water steaming off the platform filled it.
"I don’t have the patience for long games," I said calmly. "There are answers I could dig up myself if I wandered around long enough. But I’m waiting, and I’m in a hurry. The faster you answer, the faster I can save you."
He blinked rapidly, confusion flashing across his face. "Save me...?"
I gestured to the platform beneath him. The cracks spread wider along its surface, hissing louder as another crack formed. "Because if you don’t finish before this melts, you’ll drop. Simple enough, isn’t it?"
His face drained of color. His legs buckled slightly, and he forced himself to crouch, clinging to the frozen surface like it would vanish any second.
"Wha, what do you want to know?"
"First question," I said, folding my arms. "Those emblems on your armor. What do they mean?"
The man’s eyes darted down to his own chest instinctively, where the sigil was etched into the plates. He swallowed hard.