The monster's skin was too resistant.

After a full hour of fighting, evading, and taunting, Daniel and the rest had only managed to keep the monster's attention on themselves, but hadn't been able to cause any sort damage with their own power.

The only damages they had managed to cause, were the numerous severe burns caused by the low level life spheres, which after getting in contact with the monster's body, caused its skin to melt.

Unfortunately, the spheres would be corrupted after a single use, and would fall apart in a matter of seconds after coming in contact with the monster's death-like essence.

At first, the life spheres mounted into the main chains which blocked the double doors shut, were a hundred.. But after an hour of failed attempts, only ten had remained.

Jerigh, thanks to his impressive movement speed, was able to stay between the legs of the large monster and hit the junction of his body hard enough to make him stagger, and fall a few times.

The monster kept furiously trying to catch its opponents, but it was truly too slow to manage to touch any of them.

Following the long hour of unfruitful fighting, Roley looked at Daniel and shouted "Dan! His nose!"

Daniel immediately understood what Roley meant. He then shouted "Everyone! Block his movements for as long as possible!"

After hearing Daniel's words, all the spiritual cultivators present started to use all the spiritual essence they had left to hold the monster still.

Out of the blue, layers of metal, rock, and ice appeared around the monster's legs and arms.

A few cracks appeared on the construct's surfaces, but they were rapidly repaired by the owners of the spiritual essence.

Daniel used this chance to take the ten life spheres left, and after encasing them into ten different gusts of winds under his control, he sent them directly into the large nostrils of the monster, and into its skull.

*GGRRRRRROOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRR*

The powerful roar almost broke their eardrums, causing them to fall on their and cover their ears with their hands.

The monster had gone into a frenzy.

The large veins in its body bulged, and the spikes on his back straightened. The cracks in the layers of metal, ice, and rock were formed faster than they were being repaired, until finally, they shattered in thousand of pieces which dissipated in the air right away.

After this outburst of strength, the monster appeared to be fazed, and was staggering in place.

Suddenly, the monster started to emit a hideous screech, which once again, forced the cultivators present to cover their ears in pain.

The few of them were lying on the ground in pain, and it was only when Daniel felt the monster's unique essence leave its body and merge into a spot in the air, that he opened his eyes in order to take a look.

What he saw, shocked him.

The monster was opening a portal into a different dimension.

This portal was similar to the one a spiritual cultivator would open with spiritual essence, and showed the other side clearly.

On the other side of this portal, Daniel saw a wasteland. In the scenery of this wasteland, Daniel could see dead trees, infertile soil, quiet winds.. And dark skies.

"EVERYONE IN THE POCKET DIMENSION!! NOW!!" He shouted immediately before using all of his spiritual essence left to teleport the cultivators to his position, and force them into his pocket dimension.

From the portal, an immense pulling force was generated.

This pulling force was so powerful that it was able to lift the monster off the floor, and pull it into the wasteland.

Daniel tried to brace himself by grabbing the columns in the room, or creating a spatial platform on which he could stand on.. Unfortunately, the insides of the room were starting to fall to pieces, and whenever he pushed his spiritual essence out of his body, he would instantly lose control over it, and it would be sucked into the portal.

Unable to find any way to prevent it, he was pulled into the portal as well.

-----

Daniel was pushed out of the other side of the portal just as fast as he had been pulled in. He was currently flying in the air, just behind the injured monster.

The portal closed right after they went through it.

The two of them flew for a few kilometers, then, they landed heavily against the grey soil, lifting a huge cloud of grey dust.

Daniel immediately got up and looked at the monster, which was back on its feet as well.

Its injuries were healing, and its movements, now that it was into this wasteland world, seemed to be much more agile.

The speed of healing was impressive, and Daniel was considering if he should leave before the monster could manage to get back to its full forces, but before he could decide.. He heard tens of roars and shrill screams coming from just as many different directions.

He immediately created a cover for his body with his last wisps of earth essence, and observed quietly.

The monster which was recovering until now started to look around in panic. Then, it tried to dash in the distance.

Unfortunately, before he could go fast, a lightning fast four legged monster had reached it from behind, and had pinned it on the ground.

From the sky, another monster that resembled an extremely large bird dived on the injured monster's body and started pecking at its neck, tearing away a large portion of greyish flash with every peck.

A few more four legged monsters arrived right after, and along with the bird-like monster, they started to devour the beast altogether.

Daniel, hidden into his construct of earth essence, was trembling in fear. He was fully aware of how durable the injured monster was, and yet, it was the weakest amongst these few types of monsters.. Which could rip its durable skin in shreds in a matter of moments.

After was seemed like an hour, but was actually a single minute, the corpse of the injured monster had disappeared. Not even the blood was left, as Daniel had noticed numerous worms crawl from under the ground and absorb it from the drenched soil.

After the numerous monsters finished eating, they looked around. They could feel the presence of something else in the surroundings, but they couldn't physically see it. So, after a few minutes, they gave up and left the site.

Now alone, Daniel gave a careful look at the wasteland he was currently in. Immediately he found out two things that left him petrified.

The first one, was that there wasn't a trace of essence in the air. Space, time and sound still existed, but like water, which was black and looked toxic, the soil, which was infertile and made out of the most common minerals, and the air, which was breathable but heavy.. They did not contain the slightest amount of natural mana.

Instead, all these world components were formed by the same type of unique essence which the various monsters he had seen could use.

The second and scariest detail he had noticed, was the total and complete lack of connection to the spiritual plane.

More than once he tried to exchange ki with spiritual essence in order to recover it, but it was useless. His ki would be stirred within his body, but it would never be absorbed by his spirit, which showed no signs of life.

It didn't take long for Daniel to realize that he would not be able to use spiritual essence as long as he stayed within this wasteland world.

The lack of spiritual essence not only affected him, but also all the people within the pocket dimension, as spiritual essence was needed to enter the ring, and a connection to the spatial essence in the outside was needed to exit.

Unfortunately, the space of this wasteland world was not made out of natural spatial essence, but of the odd death-like ever present essence.

This meant that Daniel could not go in the pocket dimension, and that others could not come out. As long as Daniel was stuck in this wasteland world, the rest of his friends were trapped just like they would be if the ring was destroyed.

Just a small world of solidified space.. Cursed to roam in the infinity of space.

Daniel quickly took the ring out of his finger, and put it into another spatial ring. He didn't want to risk his friends being permanently stuck just because he had met with a monster he was not able to run away from.

He then put on a clean set of clothes, strapped his two strongest swords to his sides, picked a direction.. And started walking.

-----

After hours and hours of running, Daniel was still as clueless as he was in the beginning about this wasteland, and about the strange death-like essence which composed it.

He had traveled a long distance, and had changed more than once landscape.. And yet, the scenery never changed.

Everything was made out of death-like essence, and there was no trace of the natural mana he was so used to.

Daniel still had access to the food contained within his various spatial rings, which thanks to them not containing wind, water and time essence, were perfect to store food indefinitely.

From his calculations, the food he possessed would last him for at least three years.

He was not able to enter the greenhouse ring that the silver alchemist had given to him, but he could extract the food that he had planted, which would regrow at regular intervals.

He suddenly felt very happy about his decision of growing trees on which fruit grew seasonally, instead of planting herbs that could not be eaten, or vegetables that had to tended to, or replaced after being harvested once.

After a few days of travel, Daniel finally found signs of civilization.

His enthusiasm was quickly replaced by disappointment when he got close enough to notice the complete lack of inhabitants.

The place was the size of a city, and its buildings were extremely different from the ones Daniel was used to seeing in his original world.

The buildings were made out of reddish finely cut stones, and their exteriors were decorated with what looked like wood, unfortunately, they did not contain wood essence.

Surprisingly, the conditions of the city was in, was extremely good.. But due to the impressive amount of dust that covered the place, Daniel could guess that it had been abandoned no longer than a few years ago, or the wood would have started to rot.

Plus, each of the few monsters he had seen right after arriving in this wasteland, would be able to destroy this entire city in a matter of minutes.

After roaming around the abandoned city for a bit, Daniel was able to recognize which buildings were shops by the large names placed above their entrances. Unfortunately, these names were written in a language which he could not comprehend.

As he kept moving, he found himself in front of a large library.

He entered it, and walked directly towards one of the shelves on which thick books with yellow pages were orderly placed in metallic shelves.

He kept going through various books' pages, and stopped only after he found a few books with clear illustrations, and single words that indicated the name of things he knew.

Before starting to read, he decided to check on his profile, which appeared in his mind the next moment.

____________________________

Dan Hiel - Karmic system's wielder.

Age - 19

Rank

- Late rank 8 of Martial cultivation (Perfect Human)

- Late rank 8 of Spiritual cultivation (Perfect Synchronization)

Karma - 31,692,534

____________________________

Weapons Masteries (Details)

Martial Arts (Details)

Skills (Details)

Spells (Details)

____________________________

Reap What You've Sown

Time Is Precious Lv.10

Reduced Cost Lv.20

Bonus Points Lv.20

Second Chance (Upgraded) Lv.20

Karma X Luck

Karma Debt

Karmic Retribution

System Upgrades (Details)

____________________________

"The third level of system upgrades.." muttered Daniel to himself.