Red sighed and shook his head. “I don’t think you are a traitor, but I’ll never be fully at ease with you again.”

Domeron laughed. “Were you ever fully at ease with anyone before?”

This was a good point. Red supposed the people he trusted the most in the past were individuals like Narcha, Eiwin, Rog, Goulth, and Allen. People who were easy to read and who didn’t bother hiding their true thoughts to begin with. The youth didn’t fully trust them due to their kind nature, but rather because he knew they would never stab him in the back.

People like Rog, Domeron, and Hector, however, were practiced liars. That is to say, they were just like the youth in a lot of aspects. Even if they were well-intentioned, how could Red put his full trust in them?

‘Then again, I suppose I’m already far beyond that point.’

Right now, he knew that displaying his cautious nature would just hinder their chances of getting through this alive. It was why Red was willing to let the matter of the mass-murderer spirit go. That, and because he saw himself reflected in Domeron right now as a man who might have once threaded a similar path to his own.

“Here, get up.” Domeron approached him and extended his hand for Red to get up.

The youth hesitated for a second, but he still accepted the help. Despite the healing pills, his own body wouldn’t immediately recover its vigor, so Red wouldn’t deny any help.

“Are you insane?!” Aurelia’s indignant voice reached his ears. “Do you even know the kind of person you’re choosing to trust right now?! This is not just some shady individual! He is a mass murderer that gave birth to a spirit of slaughter! I can count on my hands how many cases of that happened while I was alive, and they were all absolute maniacs without exception!”

Red frowned and stared at Domeron, still no more than a few meters away from him.

“Are you an evil person?” he asked.

“Probably.” Domeron shrugged. “But so are you, right?”

Red frowned. “I never thought of myself as evil, but then again, I suppose I’m not a good person either.”

Domeron nodded. “Then we see eye to eye. In the world of cultivation, it is hard for things ever to be so absolute. For my own part, I don’t see my own actions in the past as good in nature, but I have never regretted killing who I killed. I don’t know if that small amount of self-reflection absolves me of my actions, but it has always been enough for my consciousness.”

Red paused, reflecting on those words. The youth himself shared the same thoughts, but he never killed too many people in the past. If he was responsible, instead, for killing hundreds, maybe even thousands of people with his own hands, could he hold steady to that resolve? How would that change him? What worth would human life be in his eyes at that point?

These were questions he hadn’t considered in the past.

“We can leave this discussion for later.” Domeron looked around. “We have more important matters at hand.”

Red also snapped out of his thoughtful silence, looking down at the ground where he dug into.

Domeron looked at the same spot with interest. “How did you stop the skeletons?”

“They were powered by a formation.” Red said. “I just destroyed the core.”

The swordsman seemed surprised. “How did you find the core?”

“Intuition.” Red said.

The youth crouched down and started to drag the remains of the animal skeletons from the spot, revealing the hole he had dug into the ground. He once more put his hand in there before dragging out what looked to be the remains of a beast’s bone.

It was partially shattered, but he could still see plenty of arcane runes carved onto its surface. Many of these runes Red could recognize himself, while others he had never seen before. He assumed those were the ones that powered the necromantic arts.

“Why was there a formation here?” Domeron asked with a confused expression.

“It might have been a trap.” Red said. “Perhaps the necromancer knew someone was following them and set this up here, in a location where we were more likely to follow.”

“And the ghoul?”

“It was probably there to guard the core of the formation.”

Domeron frowned. “But if this was a trap, wouldn’t putting a ghoul there make us avoid it?”

Red looked over at him. “Did we avoid it?”

The swordsman sighed. “I suppose not.”

The duo tried to ambush the ghoul and kill it at once, since they wanted to weaken the necromancer and they wouldn’t like having a Lesser Ring Realm undead at their back as they moved on. In the end, this was all probably a gamble by the necromancer to slow down their pursuers, and it paid off well enough.

“There are still some things that confuse me.” Domeron said. “For one, I’m sure the ghoul wasn’t being controlled.”

“Why do you say that?” Red asked.

“It was too easily distracted. If it was there to guard the core of the formation, it would have never chased after me and left it defenseless.”

The youth frowned. “It still turned back once I got close enough.”

“Necromancers don’t need to exert direct control over their thralls all the time. Ghouls are smart enough to follow simple commands on their own, but they aren’t much smarter than a common animal, so they can also be distracted.” Domeron said.

“I’m not sure how he knows this, but he is right.” Aurelia said. “That being said, from experience, we both know this necromancer can control its undead from at least five kilometers away, so there was no need to leave this ghoul alone. The only explanation for this is that either they are dead, occupied with something else, or far from this place.”

‘This whole dead forest is not much wider than five kilometers.’

Red raised the same points to Domeron.

“It is indeed strange.” Domeron nodded. “Maybe they knew they couldn’t control the ghoul where they were going and left it here. The mercenary’s body might have served as a distraction to keep the ghoul still for as long as they needed.”

“Or maybe the ghoul went out of control and killed the mercenary itself.” Red raised another possibility.

“It could be. What matters is that the necromancer knew someone was after them, or at least was cautious enough to set up obstacles against such an occasion, which means we probably aren’t going to catch them by surprise.”

Red hesitated. “… Can you kill a Lesser Ring Realm cultivator with that spirit of yours?”

“I can.” Domeron nodded. “However, I do not like to rely on it, if possible. It still feeds off of Spiritual Energy, and the only reason I can control it is because it is sealed. Every time I use it, though, the spirit gets stronger, and the seal becomes weaker.”

“I thought you could control it in the past.” Red was confused.

“I didn’t control it.” Domeron shook his head. “It’s more appropriate to say I worked alongside it to kill others, including people far more powerful than me. When I was captured and had my Spiritual Sea removed, I lost my will to fight and, in turn, I also lost the spirit’s cooperation.”

Red frowned. “How did you seal it?”

Domeron seemed hesitant. “… The spirit went berserk once I lost my will to fight. It killed my captors and was only sealed with Hector’s help. It would have killed him too if he didn’t have the Deep Sea Sword to help him.”

The youth was finally starting to understand the fearsomeness of this spirit. Hector was a Peak Lesser Ring Realm cultivator, and even he wasn’t able to subjugate the spirit without the help of a consummate treasure of his sect. What surprised him the most, though, was that Domeron was able to cultivate such a strong weapon without even opening his Spiritual Sea.

This revelation made Red reevaluate his understanding of the cultivation world.

“So, as you can now understand, I wouldn’t like to rely on the spirit if at all possible.” Domeron said. “It might be that we don’t have a choice, but every time I use it, I get a step closer to causing a disaster that could affect this whole region, and I would like to avoid that.”

‘And I was worried my own personal issues could bring about a calamity upon the sect.’

The fact Hector harbored this huge calamity in his sect explained his stance towards Red’s own strangenesses in retrospect. After all, the youth’s possible demonic powers and the troubles it could bring seemed rather trivial compared to the danger this spirit of Domeron’s represented, and the elder seemed willing to take more than a few risks if it could bring about a benefit to his sect. Of course, maybe if he knew the origins of Red’s own demonic powers, he would be more hesitant about making this decision.

Although the youth was curious about the inner workings of this spirit of Domeron’s, he knew this was not the place to discuss it.

In the end, he just nodded. “I understand.”

“Good.” Domeron seemed satisfied. “Let’s look around the place a bit more. Maybe there are some clues the necromancer left behind.”

They went about searching the area near the center of the bone sea, including the mercenary and the ghoul’s body. To none of their surprises, though, they found nothing of interest.

“Nothing.” Domeron shook his head with a sigh. “And I don’t see any tracks the necromancer left behind to indicate where he was going.”

“There’s no need for tracks.” Red shook his head. “I know where he is going.”

“You do?” Domeron looked surprised.

Red nodded. “If he is still in this dead forest, there is only one other place he could be at.”

In the end, seven years later, Red’s own journey was about to bring him back to a place he swore he would never visit again. The entrance to the world below, where insect monsters, Moonstones, and other dark and incomprehensible entities lived in.

The underground. The Moonstone Mines.

Red only hoped he wouldn’t need to go much farther than the entrance.