Star Line challenges were also called Legacy Battles. Children like Dimitri completed their first challenges in known Legacy Battles. They weren't supposed to challenge an unknown one.
'Whatever…' Dimitri shrugged his shoulders. Whining was never going to help him. What he had to do now was find a way to complete this challenge.
Every Legacy Battle had a fixed time period. If he failed to finish this challenge within that time, he would fail the challenge. If failure only meant death, he wouldn't have been worried.
But failing a Legacy Battle didn't only mean death as punishment. His father told him about a man named Modrich. He was a famous professor at Adlandir Academy, renowned for his studies in wilderness survival and the principles of deck.
However, he failed in a challenge, making him a vessel to a Mirage creature. Dimitri wasn't sure if his punishment for failure would be like this, or if his alignment could help him escape such punishments at all.
So, whatever the reason, he had to win this challenge. Precaution was better than cure after all. Dimitri looked up at the sky. The sky above the Endlands never changed.
It wasn't cloudy or clear. It wasn't night or day. Instead, it resembled a static smear of pale violet—like bruised flesh stretched across the heavens.
Like veins of leaves. Dimitri cautiously squatted beside a brittle bush. The surface of the plant was dry, but not in a way that suggested aging.
'Is it because of over drinking?'
That may be the case. Seeing his attempts to get any hint meeting an unbreakable bottleneck, he started to get anxious. He tried to recall every possible detail about a Legacy Battle, and that's when he remembered his father's drunken words.
'You can end a Legacy by merely finding its destination. These destinations are protected by their nature. So, to reach them, you have to find a path through this nature…'
'For a warrior, his destination is victory… so the path to the destination is by victory…'
"The path to the destination is victory… Then… victory from what?"
A cold breeze passed by him. It carried a sickly dampness and something odd. Dimitri sniffed again. Sure, the air smelled sharp—herbal, almost medicinal.
Like he was surrounded by a herbal garden. It's just there wasn't a single tree in sight.
Wait… nature. His attention sharpened. Every destination would be protected by the nature surrounding it. So, to find it… first, he had to find this nature.
'A dried-out river with water stored underground… dried patches of bushes… bloodthirsty blades attacking from nowhere…'
Each of these details wasn't helping him at all. Rather, they were confusing him. Like someone was blocking every possible path… intentionally, by leading him to random conclusions.
'It's too confusing…'
He walked through the endless expanse for hours. Studying the surroundings as best he could. Occasionally escaping from the attacks of sudden traps and Feral monsters.
He had obtained another ten pieces of Mirage nodes. Despite not finding any useful clues, the day wasn't bad either.
He had found a hidden use of simultaneously using his two cards—Viscous Maw and Sanguine Liquefaction.
He could swallow the blood of monsters killed with his Viscous Maw card and could convert this blood to his own using Sanguine Liquefaction.
He couldn't accurately measure the limit of his body to store this blood. However, he had a guess it was almost ten times his body mass.
The increase in blood helped him improve the power output he had using the cards. Now he could sense danger up to fifteen meters around him.
"Huf…"
Dimitri panted, swiping the sweat off his forehead. He frowned at the surroundings.
"Everywhere looks the same…"
The surroundings—from the bushes to the stones—looked identical. It was like he wasn't moving at all… rather, the surroundings were moving, scamming him into thinking he was the one walking. Or the surroundings moved with him, at the same speed and direction.
"Impossible…"
Right?
[Congratulations. You have found the nature…]
[The challenge of Thronemarrow now begins…]
The world around him stirred, then shifted. His body fell before he could even scream. Falling down, the world looked different, like he was watching through a film of blood.
Tree roots twisted like snakes, coiled overhead. Many of them pulsed like veins. At the root of each vein, he saw something that made his blood completely turn cold.
Humans. Cocooned like butterflies… humans. He emerged near the edge of a large clearing sunken deep in the earth.
And there it stood.
A twisted statue carved from bark and bone, taller than any building he'd ever seen. It looked like a tree, but it breathed. Long, thorn laced tendrils hung from its many roots, twitching faintly in the stagnant air.
A voice entered his mind. Not through ears, but directly into his skull.
"The Roots remember…"
"What?"
[Legacy commenced successfully…]
[Total number of participants: 1600]
[Defeat the death…]
[Hint: What you thought as death isn't death at all…]
Then Dimitri found himself in the middle of an empty courtyard. The buildings surrounding it had collapsed, large green bushes invading the broken walls.
His head suddenly yanked to the side narrowly escaping a sharp object that came towards his direction.
"Oh, a sharp one indeed…" he heard a surprised voice of a teenager, followed by muffled groans.
Dimitri sidestepped again, this time deflecting a wooden spear that came his way. His senses sharpened, and that's when he sensed three presences behind the bushes.
Two boys and a girl. All thirteen or fourteen.
One of the boys was being choked by the girl, while the other boy looked at him, mouth agape, staring down at his hands… then at the spear lying broken in front.
"The Mirage this time is stronger. Eris, you guys leave and call Brother Chen. I'll try to hold it back till then," the now spear-less boy roared in self-sacrifice, before rushing out of his hiding position.
He froze on seeing Dimitri, trembling as he slowly walked toward him. Dimitri watched the chubby guy stop at his broken spear and gaze at him again.
"C-Can I…?"
Dimitri furrowed his brows. His narrowed golden pupils almost made the chubby kid piss himself.
"Can I take it?" the chubby stammered, pointing at his broken spear. Dimitri looked at the spear, then at the chubby.
"…Why can't you?"