Laurelai grabbed onto the back of Dante’s collar and pulled, but the current was too strong to move him. He eventually shook her off and began swimming to the egg by himself with a dull look in his eyes, not even reacting to her presence anymore.

She yelled in his ear, hit him over the head, and even drowned him for a second to shock him awake. Nothing worked. The egg had some kind of hold over him, but that wasn’t too unusual. Many creatures in the multiverse used other beasts for their own purposes, whether that be as food for their babies or as a host body for a parasite to use.

Laurelai could do nothing when Dante laid his hands on the egg. His body went stiff as he touched its shell, followed by a portion of the ritual starting to fill with energy. It hadn’t activated yet, but it would soon enough. The inscriptions were filling with glowing energy the colour of blood, and once it reached capacity, the ritual would activate in force.

Laurelai examined the script to determine what the ritual was doing, but the inscriptions were far too advanced. The runic letters that made up the inscriptions were more ancient than anything she had ever seen. They were so overcomplicated that she could spend days breaking down a single one, but that wouldn’t help her when thousands were activated right now.

Laurelai stopped examining the ritual when she felt the aura in the cavern tremble for a moment. It was thicker than the aura on her homeworld by several times, a true haven for anyone to practise in. Even the elders of her clan would fight to the death for ownership of a place like this. To say that it was thick and dense would be an understatement.

The aura pulsed again, and then a second time and a third as it pulsed in tune to a beat that she couldn’t hear. The thumping was subtle at first, almost unnoticeable to her senses, but now it was like the rumble of an earthquake. Once the beating reached a crescendo, a heart-stopping will pressed down on everything inside the cavern.

The aura froze, and so did the rest of the world.

The whirlpool stopped, flattening out into a serene lake. The mist drifting around the floating island stilled into a wall of iridescent clouds. And even Laurelai was forced to land on the edge of the pool, her limbs turning numb as she stood in place, unmoving. There were only two things that didn’t stop in her senses. The first was her heart, which was pumping liquid fear around her body. She wanted to flee, to run from the cavern before whatever was slumbering awakened, but her body refused to move no matter how she begged it to.

The second thing that didn’t stop moving was the creature inside the egg. Laurelai could feel its heart beginning to beat, sending thick streams of life essence around its body. Extending her perception, she watched in horror as its little tail flicked around the amniotic fluid with curiosity.

It was coming alive.

Whatever this creature was, it had enough life essence to live for a thousand years. Just a drop of the stuff would extend her life by a decade, and it had oceans locked away inside its body.

Then everything returned to normal as its will retreated back inside the egg. The mist continued to swirl as though nothing had ever happened, and Laurelai began to calm down, her breaths coming in ragged pants as she mastered herself. The only change in the room was what happened to the aura. It was flooding towards the egg, disappearing into its shell-like it really was a portal to another dimension.

Laurelai was about to turn back to the ritual when she heard a blood-curdling screech. The egg was pressed against Dante’s chest, but he wasn’t holding it there. His hands were tearing at his head as he thrashed in the pool.

Laurelai flew over to help get the egg away, but as she reached out to touch it, that terrifying will returned before she was shoved away by the aura flooding past her. She tried two more times, only for the retaliation to get so bad that she was eventually thrown deep into the mists.

When she found her way back, Dante was being consumed by the egg. It had started sinking into his chest, sending streams of pure life essence into his body. But instead of it nourishing him, extending his life and strengthening him on a fundamental level, it began to overwhelm his flesh so that his body started to break down.

Laurelai watched with confusion as Dante clawed at his chest, trying to rip the egg away. He was screaming under the water, but no sound came out since his lungs were filled with blood, drowning him slowly. She could only see his legs thrashing beneath the surface, sending splashes of blood everywhere.

She thought he was going to die until the aura stilled. It no longer streamed towards the egg, and it seemed the culprit was the ritual itself. A continuous, linked ring of inscriptions had activated, glowing the colour of fresh blood.

And yet, it still wasn’t enough.

Dante’s flesh was being broken down by the life essence flooding his veins, but now the ritual was healing him to counteract his death. The blood slowly drowning him now seeped into his body, reconstructing every part of his being. He was being burned away by the life essence and was then rebuilt by the healing ritual.

This went on for hours until Laurelai realised a problem. The level of blood in the pool was slowly decreasing as Dante absorbed it, but the egg showed no signs of slowing down. In fact, it was only becoming more alert as time went on, almost like it refused to back down from the challenge.

And that wasn’t even mentioning Dante’s condition. He still thrashed around in the pool, screaming through vocal cords that were strained hours before. An invasive image rose in Laurelai’s mind as the sound reminded her of something from her past. She crouched down next to someone as they lay still on the ground, listening as the air wheezed through the man’s punctured lung. There was noise all around her; people screaming as they fought a war for supremacy, explosions of fire and the upheaval of the very earth itself.

But that man’s last, wheezing breath cut through it all.

Laurelai bit her lip as she hesitated. Dante’s condition was slowly deteriorating, making his death inevitable if she didn’t step in. But if she did, it would be a gamble that might not pay off. She liked Dante, but she couldn’t sacrifice her growth out of sentiment. Other people were relying on her to become stronger, pushing her forward from behind.

Dante was a peak-grade talent, and despite the grief she gave him, he was still a cut above the rest of the chattel. In a decade or so, he might become strong enough to save both her and Azalea from their miserable fates, but if she was wrong…

Laurelai was pulled out of her focus by a gurgling rumble. She looked over and saw Dante lying half-submerged in the pool, whispering as bloody tears dripped from his eyes. She drifted closer, barely managing to hear his whispers as he choked on the blood in his lungs.

“You,” He gurgled, deliriously whispering to himself again and again and again, “will not defeat me.”

He wasn’t talking to her, she realised. He was unconsciously repeating that same line without stopping to reinforce his own belief. She didn’t know when he started, but it must have been hours ago. She couldn’t imagine what kind of torture he was going through, and yet his will remained firm.

That wasn’t possible.

Although Laurelai was born to commoners, her position now was higher than most. And she knew that regular people didn’t live after going through a tenth of what he had. No, they couldn’t survive after that. Every cell in his body was continuously burst and remade as foreign energy invaded his flesh, burning him away from the inside. Ordinary people died from shock after getting a minor stab wound.

There was a lot she didn’t know about him, whether it be the contents of the Heavenly Mandate or what exactly the purpose of this ritual was, but she did know one thing. The system didn’t leave dangerous prizes. Whatever this was, Dante was going to profit from it.

She just had to make sure he survived.

Laurelai bit her lip as she landed on Dante’s head. This would set her back decades, maybe even crippling her entirely. She would hurt her clan’s reputation and become an enemy of her race, but if the gamble paid off, she and Azalea would have a new land that they could call home.

As her life force ignited, Laurelai prayed to the goddess for success.

***

A wave of impressions battered Dante’s mind. There was mostly a sense of pain, sure, but he felt more than that. Squirrelled away beyond his reach, feelings of rage and violence bubbled and festered, followed by images of fangs and claws tearing flesh apart.

In this strange state, different scenes flashed past his mind, but they were all followed by satisfaction and… and something more profound. Dante burst through a barrier with a flex of his will, and something close to sadness flashed across his mind. Not regret for killing another living being, of course, but for the fact that the battle had ended.

Dante forced his way through several more walls, finding all sorts of strange feelings and memories.

And then he found the deepest impressions, the ones that were sealed beneath an impenetrable barrier that he could only peek into rather than destroy. Instead of the endless violence and gore he expected, Dante found a naïve curiosity. It made him want to see the world. Even something as insignificant as the sunset birthed a thousand questions. He wanted to run. To learn everything new, and play in the water, and fight wiith his motherand play withhissiblin gsandgovis itthestrangecreatures.

A wave of icy liquid splashed across his skin, forcing Dante to sit up out of instinct. He immediately regretted it. Everything ached inside of him like he had worked out for four hours then gotten the shit kicked out of him in the gym parking lot, and now that he woke up, he was caked in layers of dried blood. Not his blood, he was sure. If it was, then he would definitely be dead since he was literally soaked in the stuff.

He started scraping the dried blood off his eyes, only to feel another wave of coldness splash over him and the ground. It was water, he realised. Laurelai was splashing him with bucket loads of water, which was helping immensely in his efforts to clean off the blood. Both his mouth and eyes had been caked shut until now.

“You good?” Laurelai said, her voice exhausted and weary. “Don’t freak out, but something happened, okay?”

Dante sat up and wiped the bloody water off his face, most of the flakes still glued to his skin. He hadn’t managed to unclog his eyes yet, but he was close. “I fell in that pool of blood, right? Why would I freak out about that? It smells, but it’s not that bad.”

Laurelai gave a mirthless chuckle. “Just… deep breaths, okay? I know you’ve been a bit freaked since the first hawk attack, but this is a notch worse.”

Dante stopped scrubbing his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath as he focused on his body. Nothing felt wrong, but if he had lost a limb or become a paraplegic, he wouldn’t be feeling anything at all. With a bit of hesitation, he slowly wiggled his toes and flexed some muscles to see if he was missing anything…

“Phew, I thought I had lost a leg or something. Don’t scare me like that, Laurelai. It can’t be that bad if I’ve got all my limbs, right? It’s not like I grew a third leg or something.”

Dante gave a hearty chuckle, enjoying the warmth on his skin as he continued wiping his eyes. It almost felt like the sun, but that couldn’t be right. He was inside the cavern, probably next to that hole of magical water Laurelai called the Dream Well.

As Dante continued to laugh, Laurelai began to mutter. “Well, you see… You should just look by yourself.”

Dante cleaned his face a few seconds later, but he still didn’t see anything of concern. He was covered in dried blood, with most of it running off his body in coppery streams. However, he didn’t really focus on that. What he put most of his attention on were his surroundings.

Instead of a thousand crystals surrounding him, Dante was met with a forest of trees, a small lake, and a clear blue sky. The sun was shining down on him, forcing him to squint until he eventually closed his eyes and just sat there, basking in its magnificent warmth.

After a week of being stuck in a nearly lightless cavern, the undying sun above felt like a thousand gentle kisses on his exposed skin. Dante even laid back down as the sunshine warmed his very soul, but he was distracted by a rock under his torso.

Ignoring it, Dante focused on a refreshingly cool gust of wind as it swept over his wet body, ruffling the grass and crinkling the leaves as it passed by. He took in a deep breath as he felt two little feet land on his chest, but his mind was too exhausted to care. He had been on edge for a whole week, barely getting a decent night’s rest.

And now it all caught up with him. His shoulders fell as the tension practically melted away, and he felt himself drifting off when Laurelai spoke again.

“I don’t mean to ruin your good time, but it really is urgent,” Laurelai said, poking his eyelid with her tiny fingers. “You really should take a look at what you’re sitting on.”

Dante abruptly sat up, but instead of her falling off, Laurelai flapped her wings so that she drifted beside his head. He took a quick look around the place, finding real trees all around him. Behind and above the trees were enormous mountain peaks capped with pure white snow.

It looked like they were in the valley of a mountain range.

“How did we get here? What’s going on?” Dante yawned as he stretched, but his peace was ruined by a solid, wet slap that started at his lower back and ended at his head. “What the hell? Did you just hit me?”

Dante turned to look behind him, but Laurelai wasn’t there like he expected. Instead, a tail covered in gleaming black scales greeted him, waving around the air without purpose. His eyes followed the tapered end down its length, thickening as it went until he saw it disappearing into the small of his back.

Dante stared at his tail with wide eyes, focusing on the part where it ended and his spine began.

“You weren’t that far off when you said you grew a third leg,” Laurelai chuckled, enjoying his shock. “A prehensile tail is probably the next closest thing, you know.”