The hug lasted only a second before Giovanni was sent rolling backward.
Shelly shoved Giovanni away harshly. Eric quickly stood up, scanning their surroundings and shifting into a defensive stance.
So this is the taste of rejection…
Maybe the incense had affected him more than he realized. Giovanni rubbed his arms, feeling a new source of pain spreading through his body.
"What the hell happened?!"
Shelly summoned the black knife, scanning the cave as if it were a prison. The giant, though less expressive, stood just as tense, waiting for answers.
From his Soul Sea, Eric invoked a memory in the shape of an iron cage, filled with countless firefly-like beings. The cave was completely illuminated, revealing that there were no threats nearby.
"Easy! Easy! Let me explain. We reached the ruins, remember? Old woman, castle in the sky, the whole package."
Eric focused on the last images he recalled before everything went dark. The crater dimming, the melody echoing… and then nothing.
"The crater went dark," he said slowly. "That melody… and then nothing."
He looked back at Giovanni.
"So how did we end up here?"
"You both just passed out." Giovanni gestured vaguely at the stone around them. "Gaius and I dragged you to this safe spot."
The girl gave a glance at her echo, which stood motionless against one of the walls, then took a deep breath to steady herself.
That stupid golem really had been quite the find.
"That still doesn't explain why you were the only one left standing," Shelly muttered.
"I'm not sure," he admitted. "One of my attributes might blunt mental attacks. Even then, I blacked out… just not as hard as you did."
Silence settled over them, heavy and uncomfortable. Invading the citadel, killing its guardian, and escaping felt farther away than ever.
"I still intend to follow the plan. We need to regroup with Sofia." Giovanni said at last.
Shelly let out a sharp breath.
"And how exactly are we supposed to do that? Everywhere is doomed."
"I know! But we don't need to expose ourselves that much. There are alternatives."
Eric understood Giovanni's intentions. "You're talking about going around," he said. "Along the inner wall."
The delicate young man pointed to himself and the golem.
"Exactly. We carve a path along the crater's inner wall and keep circling it until we reach the manor's plateau."
Eric frowned, thinking about how long something like that would take.
"That path would be far longer than a straight line. No supplies. No water. No food. We'd die long before reaching it."
Giovanni winced. Damn it, of course they'd starve!
His thoughts turned back to finding a solution… when something rather obvious came to mind.
Is the water Giovanni creates through transmutation drinkable? Turning earth into water might leave microorganisms intact, just reshaped. Drinking it blindly wasn't the smartest choice.
But there was something else much closer to water and, consequently, less costly to transform.
The air itself.
Until now, Giovanni had limited himself to modifying only objects and tangible forms. Air was also constantly in contact with his body.
They breathed it every moment, so it had to be pure enough for consumption.
"Let me try something…"
Giovanni brought his hands together, forming a cup. Activating his aspect, his mind focused on the surrounding atmosphere.
There was no tangible sensation for him to anchor himself to, so it was like trying to draw with his eyes closed.
He could feel the pen tracing lines across the paper, but he couldn't be sure of the result until he opened his eyes, in his case, until the transformation was complete.
A wet sensation filled his hands.
The air, forced out of its natural balance between states, was fully transformed into clean water.
Drops slipped through Giovanni's fingers, splashing onto the cave floor. His eyes shone with excitement.
He did it!
It was incredible… and it opened the door to so many ideas, so many improvements. He could almost physically feel what that discovery concealed.
A promise of infinite potential.
Shelly and Eric stared in disbelief as the young man created water out of nothing, at least from their perspective.
"You could have done this the whole time, and you still made me eat that disgusting crap?! Don't tell me you could've summoned a damn steak too!"
Memories of the vile, unseasoned, foul-smelling meat from the creatures in the Ivory Forest resurfaced.
"I-I hadn't tested this yet! And creating meat is too much, it's completely impossible for me!"
Shelly didn't seem to be listening to his protest, shaking him violently. Eric took a moment to react, invoking a small memory. It was a simple canteen.
The practical, utilitarian appearance of most of the giant's equipment stood in stark contrast to the bizarre, exotic objects obtained from monsters. Were they created instead of acquired?
Giovanni didn't dwell on it. He freed himself from the violent girl, took the canteen, and with some effort filled it to the brim with water.
"We're going to have to endure hunger, but we won't die. So, what do you think? Can you handle it?"
The two looked at him, weighing the situation. Between staying out here and at least having a base to rest, the manor was the better option.
"I just want a bed to lie my back on. Sleeping on dirt is awful."
"Yes, I do."
Shelly walked toward the sealed entrance. Eric readied his hammer and dissolved his other memories.
They would carve a path toward their distant final companion. Giovanni smiled in relief and stood as well.
Summoning [Dusty Diary] from his Soul Sea, he wrote:
"S-E-E, Y-O-U, S-O-O-N"
***
Rapid footsteps echoed side by side, pounding forward toward a distant goal etched into the horizon.
After completing the crossing into the crater's inner region, the group finally gained a full view of the land below.
From their elevated path along the ocean wall, the entire expanse lay exposed, bathed in the carmine glow.
Exotic forests had twisted into vast, sentient masses of vegetation.
Rivers, lakes, and waterfalls now flowed with blood, converging into a constant, pulsing network across the land.
Ruined cities sprawled beneath them, infested with monstrous hordes visible even from such a distance.
Only along the crater's threshold, where cliffs and plateaus stood, the land seemed to resist.
From above, a structure stood apart from the rest.
A massive manor rose atop one of the most secluded plateaus, distant from the ruined cities and the writhing forests below.
Once, it must have been a sanctuary, surrounded by smaller buildings that likely housed the workers who tended to it.
Reaching it without a reliable means of traversal would have been nearly impossible.
Without Giovanni's and Gaius control over terrain or the ability to fly, it was unlikely that the terrestrial creatures roaming the region had ever managed to migrate there.
That isolation made it invaluable.
It would be the perfect place to establish a base.
The Sleepers were no longer merely advancing. They were sprinting at full throttle.
Gaius and Giovanni shaped the path in real time, carving their way through the ocean wall.
They would need to circle nearly a quarter of the immense crater to reach their destination.
The supply problem had been partially solved, but other dangers remained just as lethal.
"More of them are coming!"
The skies were far less crowded than the surface, yet still teeming with creatures.
Several nightmare creatures with maritime features, consumed by the symphony, detected prey moving along the ocean wall.
To survive, they relied on a simple, effective formation.
Space warped near Eric's palm, forming a powerful gravitational pull.
A dolphin-like aberration, its body split into two halves forming a massive jaw, was dragged into range of his hammer and crushed like an insect.
The beast's corpse was seized by the earth and passed toward the back of the Sleeper formation until it reached the golem at the very end.
The construct hurriedly opened its body and devoured the Soul Shard.
If it took more than a second to locate it, or if the shard broke during the process, they discarded it and kept running.
Eric held the front line, facing most of the monsters and drawing them toward himself.
With a saturated Soul Core, his stamina was unparalleled, allowing him to maintain their pace even while absorbing the brunt of the impact.
Right behind him, Giovanni and Shelly were tasked with eliminating any monster that slipped past the giant, usually when slightly larger groups managed to detect them.
A second massive creature appeared. It had long tentacles, resembling an octopus made of acid. It propelled itself through the air and spat a corrosive jet instead of ink.
"I've got this!"
Facing aerial opponents was a nightmare for Giovanni.
His greatest advantage, immobilizing unsuspecting creatures, vanished entirely, and worse still, his inability to directly harm them made knocking them out of the air difficult.
The terrain was terrible, far too narrow to manipulate freely. On top of that, his attention had to be split between expanding the path and fighting.
That was why Giovanni had been eager to test his discovery.
His mind entered a state of absolute focus. Transmuting air was not natural for him, far from something viable in standard combat.
But here, the enemies could only come from one direction, making their attacks predictable.
Before the jet reached the group, an optical distortion formed, creating a vast, rippling, darkened layer where light scattered unnaturally.
Tentacles of acid slashed at the air, droplets sizzling as they met Giovanni's dense barrier, while shadows of flying aberrations danced against the carmine light.
'It worked!' He celebrated silently.
It was the very first idea that had struck him after realizing he could transmute air as well: Dense air barriers.
"Go fuck yourself, damn octopus." Shelly aimed and hurled the black knife with all her strength.
Her aspect accelerated the projectile, allowing the strike to pierce straight through the creature in a single lethal blow.
The toxic body plummeted into the crater along with the weapon, but the girl only needed to dismiss the memory and summon it again.
Further ahead, long, ravenous fish tore through the air toward Eric, shattering with each swing of his hammer, a storm of scales and teeth trailing behind them.
"I don't know what you did back there, but keep it up!" Shelly shouted encouragement in her own peculiar way.
The boy smiled back, deciding to continue the chain of praise. "And you're killing it, big guy!"
Eric glanced over his shoulder and snorted, his face and chest drenched in blood and viscera from the creatures that had exploded upon colliding head-on with his weapon.
What a hard man to please.
The crimson light never faded, only shifted in tone.
Sweat dried, returned, and mixed with blood.
The rhythm of running became thoughtless, broken only by brief pauses for water and breath.
Exhaustion crept in where rest should have followed, but neither of Giovanni's companions dared to sleep, fearing they would be claimed once more by the sinister symphony and never wake again.
Giovanni shared his tunic with them, slowing their fatigue.
At last, what they had been searching for finally seemed within reach.
Not far below, a plateau bearing a colossal manor, carved from sea stone and prismatic pearls, rose like an absolute monument to power.
Giovanni, soaked in blood and sweat, stared at the highest point of the residence, where a beautiful balcony lay in ruins.
'I've arrived, Sofia.'
***
Finally, they had reached the last part of the plan agreed upon before setting out.
The final stretch of this journey would be descending the cliff, climbing the plateau, and at last reuniting with Sofia.
Giovanni took a deep breath and invoked the runes of the final memory he had received:
Memory: [Membranous Glider]
Memory Rank: Awakened
Memory Type: Garment
Memory Description: [The heavens had always been the melody's greatest longing. Its unending hunger sought that which lay beyond the waters, the sky once promised.]
If his other companions were also vassals, it would have been simple to share the memory, letting them fly safely to the top of the manor one by one.
But Giovanni had no interest in forcing that upon them, and neither of them would have wanted such a thing.
So they would split up.
While Eric and Shelly would descend the cliff with Gaius's help, Giovanni would take flight for the very first time.
The region still held a fair number of creatures, but with the giant able to turn invisible and the girl being by far the fastest among them, there was little chance they would be caught.
"Are you sure that thing even works?" Shelly grumbled, eyeing the long black mantle that covered him, shaped like a pair of wings.
Eric showed no fear, but he kept his gaze fixed on the sky, trying to detect any threats that might cross Giovanni's path.
"I need to make a triumphant entrance… please, just make it there safely."
If Giovanni had to guess how long they had been out there, it had been at least a week. He took a quick look at his Soul Fragment count.
Soul Fragments: [183/1000]
"We will. Just do your part."
With one last foolish little smile, he took a step forward…
And began to fall, committing himself to a leap of faith.
The wind roared past his ears, tugging at his hair and tunic like invisible hands.
His mind drifted, replaying everything he had lived through in such a short span of time.
If someone had once told him he would dive into the depths of a cursed crater to invade a manor made of pearls and stone, he would have asked if that person was insane.
But now, living it all firsthand, only one certainty remained in his heart.
He hated the ocean floor!
His body stabilized in free fall as vast, black wings unfurled. He angled himself downward, no longer dropping, but diving.
The sudden resistance beneath him vibrated through his shoulders and fingers, and the air hissed as it met his wings, compressing against his skin.
The adrenaline of flying for the first time in such extreme circumstances surged through him, mixed with pride and exhilaration.
Cold air bit at his face and hands, leaving them numb, while sweat trickled down his back despite the chill.
He was almost there.
Giovanni shifted his posture, wings straining as he fought the momentum, forcing the air to push back harder, slowing him down inch by inch.
He really didn't want to break every bone on arrival.
But just as he was about to breach the chamber through the balcony…
***
Sofia waited for days, receiving very little information about when her companions would arrive or what they were doing.
Time seemed to stretch unnaturally in that place.
Anxiety gnawed at her relentlessly, and all she could do was sit in a dark corner, as far from the balcony as possible, to avoid being seen again.
Earlier, however, the diary had been updated with a fresh message, saying only that they had arrived.
Where would they come from? The manor's entrance? From above?
It was hard to communicate complex plans when every letter had to be carved with less-than-ideal tools.
'Where are you… I'm going to lose my mind. I need to see someone!'
So many days without any form of entertainment.
Spiritually, physically, and mentally exhausted, with neither food, drink, nor bathing for days.
She didn't need food to survive, but she missed it anyway!
The worst part was the complete isolation. No physical contact. No face-to-face conversations. Not even the distant sound of laughter.
Only that cursed melody, endlessly echoing through the world.
Before the Dream Realm, Sofia had considered herself isolated, but her days filled only with small talk were nothing compared to the present.
This was something else.
'It wouldn't hurt to take just a quick look…'
She took each step slowly and carefully, trying to get a clear view of the outside and, with some luck, catch sight of her companions.
That was when a large, black shadow with monstrous wings fell over her.
'Huh… am I having déjà vu?'
The figure collided with her, sending them both rolling across the chamber.