Red tried to get up. His muscles gave out beneath him, though, weakened to an extreme degree after the entire ordeal with the snake. He noticed his companions were running down the ramp towards him.

Eiwin was the first to reach him. “Red, are you alright?!”

She crouched beside him and helped him sit up.

Red nodded. “I should be fine. I’m just tired.”

He guessed this was the result of being under so much pressure from the snake monster that he started to sweat blood, as well as the side-effects of the empowerment pill. The boy was completely exhausted.

Narcha, who was following behind Eiwin, also let out a sigh of relief once she noticed he was still alive. Still, her expression changed into a fearful one as she stared at him.

“What happened, kid?” the woman asked.

Red hesitated. “… I tried to use a trick to pass through. Things went out of control after that.”

“A trick?!” Narcha frowned in disbelief. “What kind of trick can cause a monster like that to go into a rage?! Not only that, but how did you come alive out of it?!”

The boy shook his head. “I don’t know.”

He was being sincere. The monster had avoided attacking him during its rage, but even then, just the after-effects of its hissing should have killed him on the spot. Yet Red came out of it unharmed. He assumed this might have been the work of the crimson aura, but he wasn’t entirely certain about it. Not to mention, there were still the strange actions of the monster right before it left.

There were too many odd matters with this situation, but Red looked at the bright side of things. He was expecting to die, and yet came out alive from the challenge.

His response didn’t seem to satisfy Narcha, her expression changing between suspicion and resignation as she shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s just get out of here before that thing returns.”

“Can you get up, Red?” Eiwin asked.

The boy frowned. “I might need help.”

The younger woman didn’t hesitate to provide him with assistance. She held Red up as they made their way back up the incline. In the meantime, he tried to get some semblance of strength back to his muscles, but he didn’t recover nearly enough to stay on his feet by himself.

When they arrived near the top of the ramp, Reinhart was waiting for them with his arms crossed.

He stared at Red. “You lived.”

The boy nodded. “I did.”

“How?”

Red shrugged and didn’t respond.

Reinhart grunted. “Can’t you walk on your own?”

“I took the empowerment pill.” Red said.

“That explains it, I suppose.” the knight nodded. “I don’t think it was meant to be consumed by kids, or anyone who has yet to open their twelve Spiritual Veins. Even I feel spent after using it.”

Although he said that, there were no signs of any side-effects on the man’s body.

“Either way, we can’t take you with us like this.” Reinhart said.

“No one asked for your opinion, you bastard!” Narcha glared at him.

The knight shrugged. “I’m just being realistic. The kid is very useful, so it pains me to leave him behind, but there’s no way we can take dead weight with us. We would definitely die.”

“Then we wait for him to recover!”

“And how long would that take? Hours? Days? By then the trial will be over.”

Red, who was hearing this conversation, couldn’t help but frown at his words. He hadn’t died in the snake’s hand, yet now he was not much more useful than a corpse.

Eiwin interjected. “You need not worry about him, Mister Reinhart. We will take him with us whether or not he’s wounded.”

The man frowned. “That’s a stupid idea.”

“If you wish to, you can go on by yourself. No one is holding you here.”

Reinhart sighed. “Fine. Just remember that hunter is still waiting for you to save him out there.”

These words didn’t seem to faze Eiwin. “I know.” she fetched something in her bag and handed it over to Red. “Here, take this.”

The boy examined the item. It was a vial containing a dark, viscous liquid. In fact, the boy recognized it. It was the same medicine Goulth had given him to heal his shoulder when he arrived at the sect.

He looked back at Eiwin. “Isn’t this a waste?”

This medicine could heal serious injuries, such as his broken shoulder. Red thought it was a waste to use it to heal his injured muscles.

Eiwin smiled. “Not at all. We need your help if we plan on making it further in this trial. Isn’t that right, Narcha?”

Narcha looked at Eiwin with some hesitation, but it soon disappeared. She stared at Red and nodded with resolution. “That power of yours is really useful. We might need it.”

After his two companions expressed their approval, the boy didn’t hesitate any longer. He uncorked the vial and downed its contents - the horrible taste and smell assaulting his senses.

A few seconds later, an uncomfortable feeling spread from the pit of his stomach to the rest of his body, reaching every corner of his frame. The process didn’t last for longer than fifteen seconds, though, and soon the sensation disappeared.

Red felt the terrible ache disappear from his body and he was able to stand on his own two feet again.

Reinhart, who was observing this from the side, seemed annoyed at the sight. “If you planned on giving him the medicine, why bother threatening me?”

Eiwin glared at the man. “My words from earlier still stand, Mister Reinhart. If this were to happen again in the future, we won’t leave any of our injured companions behind, no matter how much they may delay us. This includes you too, to some extent, since we are now cooperating. I hope you don’t forget that moving forward.”

The knight frowned, but didn’t respond to her words. He looked back towards the ramp. “Let’s move. We don’t have time to waste.”

With those words, Reinhart started walking up.

Narcha scoffed at him and looked over at Eiwin. “Are we really supposed to save him?”

Eiwin nodded. “We agreed to be allies, didn’t we? Allies look out for each other, so we need to protect him if it comes down to it.”

Narcha frowned. “Would he do the same for us, though?”

The younger woman shook her head. “I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter, and you should know this better than anyone, Miss Valt. We don’t weigh the value of our actions using others’ standards.”

Her words gave the warrior some pause. A few seconds later, Narcha sighed. “Fine! But if he tries to backstab us, I hope you won’t try to hold me back.”

With that conversation settled, the three of them followed behind Reinhart up the ramp. They found the man waiting with his back to them at the top of it, seemingly focused on looking at something in the distance. He didn’t even react to their approach.

Narcha frowned at this. “Hey! What are you looking at…”

She trailed off as the group crested over the ramp. What they saw immediately put them in a quiet state of shock.

What awaited them at the top of this ramp was an endless plain. The flatland stretched as far as the eye could see - nothing but desolate rocky ground in whatever direction they looked, illuminated by the constant lightning from above. And yet, this wasn’t what captured their attention.

In the distance, enormous dust tornadoes travelled through the plain, barely moving in their relative field of vision, but most certainly travelling at incredible speeds. Red counted at least a dozen of them, but every time he focused in a different direction in the distance, his eyes spotted even more of them, merging into the dark and stormy clouds up above.

The sight of these gigantic monstrosities mesmerized the boy.

“What is that?” he asked.

“It’s a tornado.” Eiwin said. “It’s a natural phenomenon that sometimes occurs when warm, humid air clashes with cold, dry air... It’s very dangerous.”

“So, this is all natural?”

Eiwin shook her head. “I don’t believe anything in this place is natural.”

“Look, there’s something in the distance!” Narcha pointed out.

All of them looked in that direction. Red saw it, a shadowy shape incredibly far away that even his dark vision had a hard time spotting, highlighted by the constant lightning strikes from up above.

“It looks like a mountain.” Reinhart said.

Narcha grunted. “That must be where we have to go, right?”

The knight shrugged. “I don’t see anything else.”

Unfortunately for them, it seemed that even after exiting the canyon they weren’t provided with any additional sense of direction.

Reinhart looked over at Red. “Do you still see their tracks?”

Red shook his head. “It’s all been blown away.”

The winds here were too strong, so any signs of Rickard and the imperials’ footsteps were wiped away.

The knight sighed. “Well, at least this time, our objective seems pretty straightforward. Shouldn’t be a problem to navigate our way around these tornadoes.”

Indeed, although there were a lot of these twisters, they were all relatively far apart. However, no one seemed convinced by the man’s words.

Red frowned. “Do you really think it will be that easy?”

Reinhart smiled. “Of course I don’t. Doesn’t hurt to hope, though, does it?”

The boy didn’t respond, looking back behind the way they had come from. At this height, he could see the canyon stretching behind him, solid ground broken up by large trenches and fissures, as endless as the plains waiting for them ahead. Yet, something confused him.

“We haven’t been struck by lightning.” Red said.

Narcha seemed confused. “What do you mean by that?”

“We’re at the same height as the canyon walls, but no lightning has struck us.”

One of the reasons they hadn’t climbed the canyon walls earlier was because they were afraid of being struck by lightning. This worry was also corroborated by the bandit from earlier. Yet now they were at the same height as the top of the canyon, and no lightning had struck them.

Reinhart laughed. “Is there even any point in trying to make sense of this place, kid? This isn’t the real world, after all… Unless you want to try to climb the canyon wall and see what happens.”

Narcha snorted. “Bah! Stop talking and start moving!”

The knight didn’t protest at her words, and they were soon travelling forward again. Curiously, it didn’t take long for Red to notice some changes in the environment.

The rocky ground here wasn’t smooth. It was cracked, countless small fissures littering the plains they were walking through. Although, now Red felt it more apt to call it a desert.

Five minutes passed during their walk. Even then, the figure of the distant mountain didn’t seem to get any closer, something that pointed out how massive and distant the peak really was. Still, the group wasn’t dissuaded, and they had yet to find any other clues, so they kept walking forward.

That was when, suddenly, the ground beneath them started to rumble.

"Is it that snake again?!” Narcha asked in alarm.

Reinhart looked back in the direction they came from and shook his head. “There’s nothing there!”

Eiwin called out to them. “Stay close to the ground, it’s getting stronger!”

Red did as the woman instructed. The earthquake continued to intensify until suddenly they heard the extremely loud sound of the ground breaking apart in the distance.

A ground of dust and detritus spewed out from that direction, and the rest of the group had to cover their faces. When the dust had cleared up, they noticed the shape of something coming out from the ground.

It was a colossal monster.

“Not again…” Narcha grumbled to herself.