They waited for over an hour as Red observed Reinhart. The knight, however, showed no symptoms or side-effects from having consumed the fruit, and his dark-vision remained active. Even then, the boy still wasn’t completely confident.

He believed in Reinhart’s intentions. After all, the man had eaten the fruit himself, so he had taken the first step of faith and all the risk associated with it. What worried the boy was that there might be hidden side-effects that wouldn’t appear even after hours or maybe even days. This wasn’t unheard of, even when Red lived underground.

“We can just leave, you know.” Reinhart shrugged, noticing his hesitation. “You don’t need to eat it.”

Red frowned.

‘That’s right. I could have just refused to eat the fruit and we could have just left… So why didn’t I?’

The boy was quick to find the reason. He was obviously tempted by this power Reinhart had acquired. Seeing in pitch black darkness would give Red such an enormous advantage that it was hard to ignore it, much more so in this trial.

In the end, he also recognized that it didn’t matter how long he spent observing Reinhart - the possibility of a hidden side-effect of the fruit consumption would always be there. So the simple question was, is eating the fruit worth the risk or not?

Red arrived at an answer.

“I’ll eat it.” he said.

Reinhart smiled. “Great.”

Without his prompting, the knight stepped away to the other side of the chamber and gave Red some space. The boy didn’t hesitate any longer, either. He walked towards the one remaining fruit on the tree, feeling the tingling of his skin increase under the rich Spiritual Energy.

Red pulled down the branch with some effort and examined the blue plum. It was as Reinhart said - tender to the touch and bursting with Spiritual Energy. After making sure there was nothing more to discover, Red finally took a bite out of the fruit.

It was delicious. In fact, it was probably the most delicious food Red had ever eaten. However, he didn’t have time to savor its taste. The fruit had already begun to dissipate after his first bite, and the boy had to hurry to finish it.

A few seconds later, Red had completely devoured it. At first, he felt nothing. But then, a warmth appeared in the pit of his stomach. The boy recognized it.

It was Spiritual Energy.

Red sat down cross-legged and focused on this feeling. These strands of energy were substantial, distending his Spiritual Veins in the process of entering them and causing an aching pain in the boy’s body. Still, they didn’t cause any damage to his channels.

Red tried to force the energy in a specific direction, to no avail. The strands rose through his body, right up to his last Spinal Acupoint. There they met a blockade, since Red had yet to open any of the veins in his head. However, to the boy’s surprise, he suddenly felt an acupoint give way and a sharp pain attacked his senses.

Red couldn’t help but let out a groan of pain.

The energy continued to rise. The boy felt it clash against another blocked acupoint, and just like before, the obstacle also gave way, causing Red no small amount of pain.

A moment later, the boy felt something burn in his eyes. Then, just as it happened with Reinhart, a light shot out of his eyes.

Reinhart whistled in surprise. “Woah, you weren’t kidding!”

Red didn’t hear him. He was still busy dealing with the pain and aftereffects of the sudden opening of two of his acupoints.

For a second, the boy couldn’t see anything and feared he had gone blind. However, his vision eventually adapted, and Red could see the chamber surrounding him again.

The motes of light were completely gone. The room, however, seemed just as bright in Red’s eyes, and the Spiritual Tree at the center of it continued to glow.

“See? I wasn’t lying.” Reinhart said.

The boy looked over at him with a frown. “You didn’t tell me that it opened an acupoint in your head.”

The knight shrugged with a grin. “I thought that was obvious. It gave my eyes some special powers, so it evidently opened a hidden acupoint in my Five Senses Vein.”

Red was in a sour mood. “I’ve barely opened the three first veins. Now, I’ve skipped six of them and went straight to the tenth vein. How am I supposed to cultivate properly now?”

There was a reason as to why there was an established order to opening Spiritual Veins. Some veins were harder to open than others, much more so for humans who couldn’t fully control Spiritual Energy without opening their Spiritual Sea. However, each opened vein granted the cultivator some minute degree of control over this energy that helped them open even more veins in the future. For this reason, it was common knowledge that cultivators should open their veins from easiest to hardest, since they would have an easier time against the tougher acupoints in this manner.

Red had skipped six steps and went straight towards the third hardest Spiritual Vein, though, which would become exponentially more difficult to open now. If he tried to complete the previous veins without finishing his Five Senses Vein first, though, his Spiritual Energy would be split between different incomplete veins within his body and his cultivation speed would slow down to a crawl.

Red found himself in a difficult situation.

Reinhart, however, seemed unconcerned. “Opportunities to open hidden acupoints are rare. Even if it makes your cultivation journey a bit harder, it’s still worth it at the end of the day.”

Red didn’t disagree with the man. However, he would have liked to make the decision himself, and not to be tricked into it.

The knight continued to smile. “Besides, you’re a smart kid. I’m sure you can use this new skill of yours to steal some more pills or something to help with your cultivation.”

Red sighed. “Let’s just leave.”

…

After examining the chamber one more time and confirming they couldn’t take any parts of the tree with them, the duo made their way out of the tunnel. Red could see the walls of the once pitch-black passage as clear as day, as if they were being illuminated by a clear white light. They didn’t even use a torch as they made their way to the exit.

They eventually arrived at the entrance of the tunnel, and Reinhart peered over the ledge.

“There are a few monsters down there.” the knight said. “Looks like a pack of dog monsters. Seven of them. They’re eating the lizard bodies.”

“That’s to be expected. We spent a long time in there.” Red nodded. “Can we make our way past them?”

Reinhart shrugged. “I guess we will find out.”

The man was the first one to climb down the canyon wall. Red stood at the ready over the ledge with his bow and the arrows he had managed to recover from the lizards’ corpses. He examined the monsters.

The creatures looked like large, wild dogs. Spotted furs, big round upright ears, and a protruding muzzle. The only thing that would make them stand out from normal animals was their enormous size and muscled bodies. They were bigger than an average adult human.

Almost as soon as Reinhart touched the ground, the monstrous dogs looked over at him. One of them, which Red assumed was the alpha, growled at the man. Some of its companions also joined their leader, but they seemed unwilling to abandon their food to go after the human.

Reinhart looked up at Red. “They don’t want to fight. Come down quick and let’s get out of here.”

The boy nodded and started climbing down. Soon he reached the ground, and the dogs’ growling intensified by the appearance of another potential competitor. However, they still didn’t attack. Once Red and Reinhart started to move away, the growling diminished until the dogs went back to their food one by one.

The duo moved out as quickly as they could, not keen on starting a pointless fight with the monsters. Soon enough, they were once more back on the endless canyon path. This time, though, they weren’t wandering in the dark anymore.

“Look at the lightning.” Reinhart pointed up. “It doesn’t even affect my vision anymore.”

Red had also noticed this. He had been worried at first that this dark vision of his would somehow make what was already bright even brighter. However, he had underestimated the power of this hidden acupoint.

It seemed to filter the light entering his eyes and always kept it at a clear and tolerable level. Red could look straight at the flashes of lightning in the sky, and his vision wouldn’t be overwhelmed by it. In fact, this made the blue flashes even more distinct and beautiful.

The boy truly didn’t regret his decision.

Suddenly, Red notices the lightning in the sky intensify, shocking him out of his daze.

This change didn’t go unnoticed by Reinhart, either. “What the hell is going-”

Before the man could finish his words, the thunder came. It was loud, rumbling, and made Red’s body shiver. It wasn’t just one either. The noises came one after the other, and Red tried to block his ears in a futile attempt to keep the noise out.

Reinhart was also affected, even with his superior hearing. The man tried to muffle his ears too, but judging by his expression of pain, that did not work.

Red felt a rumble beneath his feet. He looked down and noticed the stones were all shaking. At first, he thought that this was caused by the thunder, but as the sound subsided, he noticed the rumbling from the earth had yet to stop.

His expression changed. He looked over at Reinhart, and their gazes met. The man had also noticed it.

They exchanged no words before turning tail and running. Red tried to hurry back to the closest hiding spot he had found, but the rumbling beneath his feet only intensified. Reinhart also noticed this, and his running speed increased, almost leaving the boy behind. It was to no avail, though, as in a matter of seconds the rumbling seemed to reach its crescendo.

Then, Red felt it. A fluctuation.

It wasn’t just any fluctuation, though. It was so strong that the boy stumbled over, holding onto his head in pain.

The presence was beyond anything Red had felt. It was hundreds of times stronger than even Hector’s fluctuation, but that wasn’t just it. There was something different about it, but under this pressure, the boy couldn’t spare any of his focus to examine. The only thing he could tell was where it was coming from.

It was from above.

Red looked up and saw it. The scaled underside of a body, over 20 meters wide, crossing from one side of the trenches to the other right above their heads. He tried to inspect it, but the creature was running too fast.

‘No, that’s not right.’

It wasn’t running. It was slithering.

‘A serpent.’

The body of this monster seemed to be endless, and yet, by the rate at which the scales were flashing through Red’s eyes, it was moving at an absurd speed. Finally, some ten seconds later, the body of the serpent started to thin out, until the beast’s tail appeared and disappeared from his view in a split second to the other side of the canyon.

A few moments later, Red also felt the creature’s fluctuation disappear, and he finally let out the breath he had been holding this entire time. The boy tried to take a step forward, only to notice his body was trembling. He stumbled and sat on the ground to collect himself.

Reinhart wasn’t doing much better. The man was supporting himself against a wall of the gorge, drawing long and heavy breaths as he tried to recover. His hands were also shaking.

Reinhart looked over at Red with a forced smile. “I… I guess this place is really quite dangerous, huh?”