Chapter 523: The Mist
Chapter 523: The Mist
The Dark Mamba spasmed violently, then collapsed, its five-meter body going limp across the rocks.
[You have killed the 3-Star Level 50 Dark Mamba] [You have gained 200 Lives]
Moon stared the corpse for a moment, then his eyes drifted to the notification.
Two hundred lives from killing a level 50, it was decent, but lower than he might have expected from a Level 50 beast given that his own level sat significantly below it.
But, the reason was clear. Lives didn’t operate purely on level difference. They never had. Strength differential mattered just as much, often more. The Dark Mamba was a high level, but its actual combat power, its filled acupoints and spiritual density, wasn’t as far above Moon’s as the level gap suggested. And in the Second Sanctuary, where spiritual energy was one of the biggest defining measure of power, this principle became even more pronounced.
A Level 50 beast with weak spiritual foundations gave fewer lives than its level implied. A Level 50 beast with dense, powerful foundations would give far more. Level was a rough indicator. Star level, or rank was the true measure.
Moon had understood this since the beginning. The system rewarded killing things that were genuinely dangerous to you, not things that merely had a higher number attached to their name.
He dismounted briefly to harvest the snake’s core, storing it in his ring along with its more valuable materials. As he worked, a thought drifted through his mind.
’I wonder what Supreme Rank beasts are like in the Second Sanctuary.’
The question had been on his mind for some time. He had killed two Supreme creatures, in the S-Rank gate of the First Order. The Three-Tailed Illusion Fox. And, the fast Turtle that he had gotten the Supreme Rank egg from. But that had been in the First Sanctuary’s domain, where the overall power level was lower.
A Supreme creature native to the Second Sanctuary would be something else entirely.
’What level would it be? How many acupoints would it have filled? How much of the River of Paths would it have touched?’
The questions were many, and the answers were far and few. If a Supreme creature in the First Sanctuary had been powerful enough to nearly kill his entire team and grant him super lives, then a Supreme creature in the Second Sanctuary would operate on a tier Moon couldn’t even properly imagine yet.
The questions couldn’t be answered now. He simply wasn’t strong enough to seek one out and survive the encounter.
But one day, he would be.
Moon remounted Mirage and continued the hunt.
Moon spent the next thirty minutes searching for stronger prey from atop Mirage. He no longer bothered with weaker beasts. The lives they offered weren’t worth the time it took to track and kill them.
To maximize his efficiency, he had summoned the Fire and Nature spirit and sent it scouting in a different direction with orders to kill any weaker beasts it found along the way. Through their bond, the spirit’s kills fed lives and spiritual energy back to Moon passively, letting him farm two areas at once. The spirit handled the small game while Moon hunted for something worthy of his own attention.
The Hydra and the Fire Hound roamed nearby, sweeping the surrounding terrain in case anything large emerged.
Eventually, Moon’s path led him into a thick bank of fog.
The mist here was different from the rest of the island. It clung to everything, muffling sound and swallowing light. Moon’s vision, sharp enough to track movement across vast distances, couldn’t penetrate more than ten meters in any direction.
Beyond that, the world dissolved into an impenetrable white veil.
His expression darkened.
Then, almost immediately, a smile formed on his lips.
This was exactly what he had been looking for.
Fog this thick, this resistant to his perception, didn’t form by accident. It was the kind of place where powerful creatures made their homes, using the mist as both shield and hunting ground. The Mistwell Lake had been similar, and that had given him the Hydra. Whatever lived in this fog, if anything lived here at all, would be worth the effort.
Moon advanced into the white, his senses stretched to their absolute limit, every nerve alert for the slightest disturbance.
The fog swallowed him whole.
Before pushing any deeper, Moon stopped and turned to his two Second Star beasts. He issued a clear command through the cursed bond.
’Stay here. Don’t move. No matter what happens.’
The Three-Headed Hydra settled its massive body at the edge of the fog bank, all three heads lowering to a resting position. The Fire Hound planted itself beside it.
Both beasts went still, anchored to the spot by Moon’s order. They wouldn’t budge until he released them.
It was a precaution. The fog was thick enough that losing his sense of direction was a risk. In a place where his vision failed beyond ten meters and sound was muffled into near silence, it would be easy to wander in circles, to lose track of where he had entered, to become hopelessly disoriented.
But with the Hydra and the Fire Hound standing as fixed points, Moon had a permanent reference. Through the cursed bond, he could always sense the rough direction of his anchored beasts even when his physical senses failed. They were his checkpoint.
Smart preparation for an unknown environment.
Moon nudged Mirage forward.
The white steed advanced cautiously, his hooves striking the ground with each step. The fog seemed to absorb it, swallowing the sharp clop of hooves on the floor, leaving only a dull, distant echo that felt like it belonged to another place entirely.
The deeper they went, the heavier the silence became.
The mist pressed against Moon’s skin like a damp cloth. The grey overcast sky above completely hidden now, replaced by an endless white that surrounded him on all sides.
Moon kept his sword ready.
Something was most likely here...