Her breathing was irregular. Despite not having walked for a long time, her body seemed to be struggling a bit more than she had expected upon entering this place.
"Are you tired already?" Alana asked with a mocking expression.
Ducanor's expression remained unchanged despite those words as he whispered, "The air is heavier than outside."
"The concentration of spiritual energy in this place is one hundred and eighty percent greater than outside, and we are in the outermost areas. In the denser zones, the density is over three hundred percent."
"Thanks for the tip," Ducanor said through gritted teeth while feeling like his body was about to collapse due to the damn saturation of spiritual energy.
"Well, I can help you with that; after all, it's one of the reasons I'm here," she replied while gesturing with her finger for him to come closer.
Suddenly Alana's finger struck his forehead, making his eyes widen in disbelief. Stunned, he realized he could see his own body, or rather, his own organs. He could see everything, from his watermelon-sized heart pulsing heavily, to his four lungs pumping oxygen to his brain.
"What is this?" he asked, still stunned.
"It is known as Inner Vision. It's a useful skill for meditating and focusing, setting aside the outside world to concentrate only on yourself."
Despite not being able to see Alana in this state, he could still hear her clearly.
"Each Geas you form with a True Spirit will cause a change in your Dantian. This change is known as the Seal of Destiny, which is the bidirectional connection you have with the True Spirit in question, in your case obviously with Voltia. But to form it completely you have to forge the seal, turning your Spiritual Spark into a Spiritual Flame and then into a Spiritual Forge."
Suddenly he saw what Alana referred to with those words. To his surprise, the spiritual spark was burning and began to absorb spiritual energy at a considerably faster and fiercer rate, while the spark showed signs of becoming embers, the first step to being a Spiritual Flame.
And the most obvious effect of that was that his body began to strengthen, just like his dharmic runes.
Then he smiled and said, "Incredible, so this is the power of a Warden."
And then a smile materialized on his face when suddenly an Infernal Wolf Sidhe emerged from nowhere. It was a creature similar to an ordinary wolf, but unlike its bestial peers of little more than a meter and a half in height, this one easily exceeded two meters and had fangs like daggers covered in fire.
Ducanor reacted at an absurd speed: while his fist became a blur in the air, he pierced directly through the Sidhe's skull through its own throat. While it was dying, its claws tried to go for Ducanor's throat with the ferocity of a dying beast.
But Ducanor's Techno-sword had already been wielded by his left hand. As if it were a saw, it cleanly pierced the belly of the wolf-like beast, totally opening its stomach and spreading its organs, similar to their mortal equivalent, on the ground.
"Ah... aha... aha..." gasping for air while observing the beast's corpse covered in crimson blood, he suddenly realized he wasn't alone.
From nowhere, dozens of beasts with the same appearance as the one he had killed emerged, and thus the slaughter began.
It wasn't until Ducanor had decapitated the last beast that he would realize that, at an unknown moment in the course of these events, Alana had disappeared.
...
Blood bloomed in the sky, as if it were a crimson flower opening to the sun's rays.
Curiously, the blood of True Spirits was red, which in itself was rare for many Fey who were accustomed to colors of the inverse spectrum: violet and blue were the most common colors of living beings' blood, at least in the East Continent.
Astrologer Zhao's hand fell to the ground in a bloody mess, while a scream of pain surged from his mouth as if it were thunder.
"Damn it! Who dares to injure the great Zhao Tang?" he growled with an anger that manifested in a sound wave that made the girl called Aurora squeal in pain, while even the Kirin mounted by the spiritual knights reared up.
Emerging from the very empty air where the Black Astrologer was before, there was a new figure with black hair and glasses, carrying in her hand a spear emitting a stream of purple lightning.
This figure was, obviously, Alana.
"A Fey... How dare you, barbarians, interfere in the Hegemony's affairs flaunting your presence?" growled Zhao Tang with anger, while the book that was previously in his hand now floated in front of him.
"Is it a Hegemony mission to capture a defenseless girl?" Alana growled.
"The word of an officer of the Corsair King is law in these lands, and remember: this is not your place, bitch," the astrologer growled while giving the signal to the rest of the cavalry, which moved in a blink.
But despite everything, Alana was still faster.
Alana was an Official Warden; she didn't have one Seal of Destiny, she had three, each fused with her three Dantians. Carnia was her third True Spirit and the youngest, but her first True Spirit manipulated lightning.
In an instant they had disappeared and, to Astrologer Zhao's further fury, she had also taken the girl.
"Quick, find her! She can't be that far," he roared with anger while wielding his Grimoire with his only hand and beginning to review the pages with considerable anger. "If you want to die, then you will suffer an atrocious death!"
Suddenly his body swelled as a star seal injected itself into his flesh; this was the Star Seal of the Will-o'-the-wisp Specter.
His flesh swelled while black bone armor emerged from his skin, releasing flames from where there was flesh before while totally devouring his tunic, revealing for the first time his face, which was that of a decrepit old man, almost fleshless on his face and totally blind.
His size increased even more than before, bordering on three and a half meters, while he floated in the air and his gaze shifted hundreds of meters away.
"There!" he growled while observing the space in front of him coldly with a terrifying gaze.
The space before him melted as if reality itself was undoing, letting a hole weave itself, which he expanded with his own claws while growling: "You won't escape even if you go to the end of the world." Before disappearing sinisterly behind that rift that took a few seconds to repair itself before this clearing in the enormous forest fell silent again.
...
Ducanor's body was covered in blood, both his own and others'. His sword was now stuck in the corpse of a bear-like beast. Stunned, he realized he wasn't tired; his body welcomed fatigue with increasing enthusiasm while absorbing spiritual energy from the environment, and even the power supplied by the Seal of Destiny increased.
But now his thoughts were on other matters.
And that was obviously Alana, who had suddenly disappeared. "Damn it, is this part of the exam? Why haven't they explained anything to me yet?" he growled while continuing to advance at a steady pace through the forest in search of anything interesting or noteworthy that could signify part of the exam.
And at that precise instant, an enormous beast emerged, but it was different from the others, because it was nothing less than a mount for another creature.
A spear aimed at his chest, and he was able to repel it with difficulty, deflecting it to the side, although to his stupor he spat blood while being pushed to the ground. His strength, which was enough to subjugate ten Feysir warriors with one hand, was insignificant against that warrior.
Therefore, at this point he would use something other than his strength.
"Evocatio Voltia," he growled with difficulty recalling Alana's few teachings. "Karmic Illusion."
Suddenly, to the surprise of the rider mounted on the colossal beast, a figure materialized in front of him. It was a white figure with an agile body.
"Meow!" shouted the illusory figure while directly hitting the strange rider with a knee, a moment Ducanor took advantage of to, in an instant, activate his Techno-sword's motor.
Energy flooded every inch of the metal piece making it vibrate to the point it could split a titanium pillar in half with enough force.
The sword didn't aim at the armor protecting the beast's belly or its scales protecting its neck, but at the knees of its hind legs.
The impact severed both legs making the beast squeal in pain, while the confused rider tried to skewer him on his spear, but he was too close and in his blind spot, beneath him, and could only crash against the ground with the creature's full weight falling on him like an enormous rock.
"Kyuuso mos," began to shout the warrior who was buried under his dying mount, which continued to writhe.
But before he could continue, the agile female figure extended her sharp claws in the rider's direction and, with a cruel but effective cut, severed his head. While for the beast, after a few attempts, he managed to cut its head off finally ending its suffering.
And before he could see the female figure's face, she had simply dispersed in the air like an illusion.
Ignoring the feeling of déjà vu he felt again, he began to check his attackers and then, exhausted as well as excited in a certain way by the frenzy of having killed an existence much stronger than him, Ducanor couldn't help but let his body fall to the ground with a tired expression.
"Phew, as a wise man said: gravity always wins."
Really, taking advantage of the few seconds the confrontation had lasted to attack fatally had avoided prolonging the combat.
But before he could be happy with his small victory, suddenly several roars resonated around him.
Two, three, six of those beasts with their respective riders emerged from the distance, this time destroying everything around them like a tornado. Stopping with surprise upon seeing their companion's corpse.
But before these could challenge Ducanor in combat... blood splashed the earth again.
And then thunder.
Two of the riders saw their heads severed, while two others saw half of their bodies separated by a hole in their torso up to the shoulder, while the survivors could barely react by diverting their beasts.
Three riders had died, but their beasts were still alive.
Ducanor reacted quickly: in an instant he retreated while shooting a torrent of small raindrops at high speed, like needles, in the direction of the beasts' eyes. Two of them were unharmed, but others suffered blindness as a result of one of the needles piercing one of their eyeballs, blinding them with their own blood.
"Ducanor," resonated a familiar voice that made him realize it was help.
"Master Alana, what kind of exam is this?" he growled while observing the scene stunned.
"An exam of life or death," replied a familiar voice while Alana's tired and wound-covered figure emerged beside him.
And to his surprise, she wasn't alone.