Kim cultivated in wait for the next monster to appear, focusing both on listening to the world around her. Wind whistled as it flew through the silver canopy, moving oddly through the forest. The pain in her eye receded alongside the odd soreness left behind in her arms.

She thought back to the fight, reflecting on it. She had seen Rain do similar things with his Qi, but the damaging effects didn’t seem as extreme. Or was it just that he totally ignored the pain? Kim sat and focused, cultivating. She also stretched her perception to her limit, which allowed her to sense the monster’s approach before she heard it.

It was like an ethereal flame in a sixth sense. Much, much brighter than most monsters she had fought, it flickered somehow silver in her senses, reminding her of her own cultivation path.

And it was the ticket out of here. Something it was doing right now was letting it walk through that hole in the world. She observed carefully as it walked towards her, standing but saying nothing as the fox-man monster stepped up to her.

Instead of an axe, this one rested its hand on a sheathed saber tied around its waist with tattered leather. It wore a stitched together tunic and wide flowing pants.

Kim stabbed its arm. She activated her skill, spinning Qi and Mana to cripple the monster.

Its arm flew off with a yelp. She almost hesitated again, but instead she stabbed again into its other arm, stabbing and thrusting upwards before pulling back and kicking the monster to the ground. Blood pooled from the damaged arm.

She had little time. She forced the monster onto its stomach, using the spear to force its arm behind its back. It was yowling; an absolutely horrible noise, sounding like a wounded puppy. She forced it to its feet, using the spear like a lever, and dug her fingers into its arm, forcing it down the path.

This would work. It would have to.

She nearly ran as she forced the monster world, watching as the world bent around her as she neared the end of the path. It was like reality moved through a concave mirror, inverting — and the monster disappeared. The spear seemed to abruptly end, ceasing to exist in midair. She could still follow it, but she was developing a headache just watching reality bend. Then everything was right again, and she stood on the other side of the magical wall.

The road ended in a little town of squat stone huts. A small village spread out before her, unoccupied.

The wolf had slowly stopped yowling, only letting out occasional whimpers as she forced it down the road. She didn’t stop to check the well or the houses.

“Hello?” she yelled. But there was no one there. So she continued forward. She moved left along the road, following it.

Minutes later, she arrived at another empty encampment. Then another. She walked down the next road for double as long before realizing she was going nowhere. Her hostage had passed out. She shook it, trying to wake it up, before realizing it had actually bled out completely. It was dead. She dropped the monster, lowering her spear to the ground and carving a path that she traced, only to find that she was once again looping around and around.

With a sigh, she headed back to the last town she had crossed, sitting down once more, wondering how long until another monster would appear. Kim fished into her bag, pulling out a granola bar and eating it.

She kept her energy up, knowing she could be trapped here for a very long time. That was when she felt more monsters approaching. And not just one, but three, moving together towards her down the opposite path.

“Fuck.” Kim whispered, dropping the granola bar. She brushed her hands off on her pants, lifting the spear. She had no chance against three of these things. One on one, she was confident in taking every fight. 2 on 1? She would take an injury or two.

3 on 1? She was dead.

They weren’t just walking this time, either. They were sprinting towards her. Could she jump one and catch them off guard? She calculated. They were close enough to hear now.

If she failed, she would die. Plain and simple.

She couldn’t walk down the path and farther ahead. Maybe she could use one building as a choke point and fight 1 on 1. Knowing her luck, though, one of these would be the boss, and would just carve through the stone like it wasn’t there.

Kim did the only thing she could do.

She ran, bolting into the woods.

Kim wasn’t sure if her ability to detect monster’s locations was increasing with the time she spent here, or if the monsters behind her were just particularly strong, glowing light bright lights in her senses. It would be bad news if they were particularly strong.

Because they were following her.

The forest whipped by me, the moon in the sky growing bigger as I approached whatever was at the center of the formation. This compressed space must have been miles long in reality. I was worried about what I would find at its center. If I was lucky, this was just a sigil to extract a natural source of Qi from the world and spread it to the wells.

And if it wasn’t, it was draining the Qi from something else. Maybe it was dying, which would explain the already drained wells. A spirit beast breaking free from a sealing formation could also explain that. Or maybe it was just a vein of spirit stones. I could hope so.

The closer I got, the lower the moon seemed to hang in the sky, the light reflecting off the ring that hung around the planet casting the forest in blades of silver that cut through the openings in the tree.

And then the tree line broke. The moon was big enough that it obscured half the sky, pitted and shattered and broken. It looked like it was going to fall out of the sky at any moment, bearing down with an intolerable claustrophobia, pushing me towards the earth. Directly below the moon was a lake, so still it had clearly gone untouched for hours, though I knew in my mind it had really gone untouched for decades or centuries. A perfect reflection of the sky painted the still and perfectly flat surface of the lake below.

It looked like silver fireflies filled the air, motes of Qi so dense and pure they were visible filling the air above the lake.

This was it — whatever they sealed was in here. The Qi radiating off the lake alone was enough to make me cycle on reflex. My pores were on fire as Qi danced around me, turning into silver light and spilling downwards. I stepped forward, and the silver light disturbed the edge of the lake. The water rippled.

I grimaced.

There was no way to kill this thing. It was going to escape, break to the other side of the gate, and murder everyone in range until a higher level Awakened killed it.

Gigantic chains of pure silver looped around the body of a demon a dozen feet fall, an exoskeleton of ivory white looping around dark, weathered flesh, separating at the joints. The chains wrapped around each other in a giant knot ball at the bottom of the lake, like a weight holding it to the bottom. Broken pieces of chain littered the lake, falling away from the ones that were more intact.

Motes of silver light flecked away from the chains, taking tiny pieces of the binding with them as the seal dissipated.

The monster shifted, struggling to look towards me. Its hands and legs were bound and restrained. A mask of shining white bound its face, leather strips wrapped tightly around it and bound to its flesh with nails. Its eyes widened.

Another chain broke at that moment. Instead of fading away, it snapped, the noise audible through the clearing. The monster thrashed, testing the limits of the remaining chains for a moment before stilling. Bit by bit, the bindings of silver light dissolved into silver light.