Bright hours poured a radiant glow across the plains and valleys, illuminating the trees and grasses, their elongated shadows casting an ethereal dance. With this light came a symphony—a humming crescendo of life as creatures of every kind—beasts, birds, and insects—joined in a vibrant rush. It would have been a beautiful spectacle, were it not for the underlying horror of this place—a death zone teeming with vile creatures and festering corruption.
Well, that's what he thinks anyway.
El's grey eyes stared vacantly at the cerulean sky above,from the cave he has been staying ,his mind adrift in the murky waters of time. He had been here a week? Months? Years? He had long since lost track. In the beginning, the act of counting had provided a comforting structure, but shifting into this different time zone had distorted his sense of reality.
Unpredictable weather swirled around him; visions blurred with an almost unbearable lack of clarity.
For someone like him, who has an ability extended into realms of heightened perception, the sensation felt all the more disorienting.
'If this can happen to me,' he pondered grimly, 'what of the others?'
Shaking off his depressive thoughts, he refocused his attention, willing his 'interface' into existence.
---+---
RUNE OF SELF
[Name]: Azazel
[Rank]: Mundane
[Bloodline]: king's eye
-----
[Runes]:-
[Artifacts] :
[Titles]:-
[Affiliation]:-
[Quests]:1
{Transverse straight through the time plate zones to reach the temple of time}.
[Binding Seals]: - 1
---+---
The RUNE OF SELF came to him, earned after he bested a grotesque creature in a life-or-death clash. Though he killed it eventually and emerged victorious, he did not come out unhurt; quite the opposite, the victory was bittersweet. He bore a horrific injury to the side of his stomach where his organs threatened to spill out, a cruel testament to the ferocity of their encounter. A deep gash, stretching from the palm of his hand to his shoulder, marred his body, and the life-giving essence of blood ebbed away with each passing moment.
Yet, as if Lady Fate had entwined her will with his own, a series of ethereal texts floated before his fading vision, illuminating his dangling sight:
--+--
[You have slain a dread beast.]
[You have been bestowed access to a rune.]
[THE RUNE OF SELF]
[WILL it to bring forth insight of your existence]
[You have received an Artifact and a Runestone].
---+---
These words ignited a fragile flame of hope within him, prompting him to draw upon the guttural remnants of his dying will to decipher the details of his newfound artifact.
---+---
NAME: [Tear of a Sacred Forest]
RANK: [Initiate]
TYPE: [Tool]
GRADE: [One]
DESCRIPTION:
[They battled a relentless terror, each moment dragging them deeper into despair. But in a display of unwavering tenacity, they summoned their final reserves of essence, the very essence of the sacred woods, infusing their sacrifice with hope and determination. performing an act of defiance that could very well be their last act of survival. But the malicious terror, refusing to relent or allow such an act, attacked with even greater ferocity and the forest, already exhausted from their last act, could not protect itself for long and eventually succumbed to the terror's vile consumption but not without releasing the result of their sacrifices, a sap of pure essence of healing properties, the final act of defiance not to save themselves, as they are beyond saving, but to help someone else who would stumble upon it if, fate allowed it... and the sacred forest, an existence that had witnessed the beginning of the second eon, the start of ascension itself, an existence who had lived for tens of thousands of years ... finally came to a bitter end].
ENCHANTMENT:
* [It can heal any wound, even near-fatal ones, provided the necessary resource is available (the user's own blood).]
BINDING SEAL:
*[The deeper or more severe the wound, the greater the amount of blood required."]
---+---
Subconsciously ignoring the lecture, invoking the sap to heal his wounds.
[Your artifact has been destroyed].
'A one-time use,ah'.
However, the gain came at a cost; 50% of his blood was lost in an instant as his wounds healed, leaving only a few scars, but he felt it.
With his blood draining, he was dying faster than he was recovering. Because of his already weakened body and amount of zero essence energy;which made him utterly Mundane in ascension sense.
His organs were failing him; his kidney responsible for blood pressure was low, and his brain was fighting to go unconscious, but the sap was also healing him; however, because the payment for the healing was blood,he would remain this way until he lost all of his blood and died.
Yet, as he had mentioned before, Lady Fate seemed to be favoring him this time. With the symbol representing binding seals, he managed to harness the runestone he had obtained, crafting a self-imposed binding seal whose stipulations were as follows:
A somewhat loophole seal, which, to be honest, is intentional, but he had no idea who made it, but he was forced to learn; actually, it was instilled in him by his teachers when he was a child as a result of the book of prophecy, 'The Prophecy'. He stopped the thought from continuing.
That was how he survived;using the essence stored in the runestone crystal , he was able to boost his blood potency, which in turn healed all his injuries.
-----
Looking through the slim entrance of the cave—barely wide enough for a grown man to pass—he zoned out to listened to and been able to hear the faint of things;a drop of water falling from a tree's leaf,the sensation of wind over the grasses ,even the very exact temperature of the air.
Sensing that It only been a few hours into the morning.
He had been able to do this ever since his access to essence had increased his ability dramatically compared to the mana he once used back home. His vision was clearer than ever, his senses stretching farther than before. The downside was the worsening headaches; the flood of information left him dizzy and prone to sharp pain. The one thing he still hadn't mastered was a true understanding of essence energy itself. Which would grant him perfect essence control and efficiency. But it was harder than it seemed—essence was naturally far more denser and more potent than mana. He had to rest often just to cope with the constant influx.
It's not time yet, El thought.
Now that he reflected on it, the description of the Tear of the Sacred Forest truly was captivating. This was one of the reasons he had always wanted to become a writer: to capture beauty in all things—even, or perhaps especially, in violence.
I can still become a writer, though, El told himself.
In fact, I will become a writer.
He continued the thought: the event was a battle between an ancient forest and a vile terror. He didn't know what the terror truly was—perhaps a phenomenon, perhaps a creature far beyond anything he could face.
It was a clash of protection versus destruction, a battle of WILL: the Sacred Forest's resolute WILL to protect against the terror's malevolent WILL to consume. And the stronger WILL had prevailed. Which In this case, was the terror.
Is everything a battle of will? El wondered as he slowly rose to his feet.
Yes, it was. Everything boiled down to a contest of will—from the tiniest encounters to the grandest confrontations. Two brilliant minds facing off to prove who was smarter: their wills clashed to determine supremacy. On a cosmic scale, deities clashed with abhorrent creatures, their wills colliding in cataclysmic fury. Even the birth of the cosmos itself had been the result of such a clash. The truth had been woven into the very fabric of existence, yet only a rare few could truly perceive it.
Sadly, El was not one of them… just yet.
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Hi, guys🖐️ it me again, I just wanted to say sorry 😔 if the description of the tear of sacred forest was too long🥲 ,I actually had a few shorted version but after seeing the stories of the sacred forest 🥹 I had to give it a description that befit it status and we will get to see few things about the sacred forest later on it, the stories are going to be peak by the way.