Unfortunately for them, this wasn’t the end of the bad news either.

Red looked up at the New Moon in the night sky. “… There’s something else.”

“What happened?” Aurelia asked in a resigned tone.

“The thing in the Moon still hasn’t recovered.”

Although he was discussing the events with Aurelia, he was still keeping an eye on the situation up above. Up until now, however, the being in the Moon showed no signs of movement, and there was also no trace of the usual pressure of its gaze on his mind. Either it had fallen asleep or it was completely dead.

Whatever the case, its ever present influence couldn’t be felt any longer.

The woman was silent for a while. “… Isn’t that good for you? Now you don’t need to worry about dying every month when you don’t have enough Moonstone Energy to provide.”

Red sighed. “You know where I come from, right?”

“… How would I know? You have never spoken about it with anyone, and the only thing you have to indicate your origins was that old paper you keep in your room.”

“Yet you have your own guesses, right? You saw the entrance to that place yourself.”

Although the woman said that, it was obvious she was keeping her true thoughts to herself.

Aurelia snorted. “I can guess this is an underground cavern system, and it is a place that either I never heard about or didn’t exist while I was still alive. Other than that, I can only assume it is a place abundant with these things you call Moonstones, which must be made up of the same energy of this core I am imprisoned in.”

“You are correct, but there is more to it than that… The demonic energy inside my body comes from that place, and it is not the only terrible thing in there.”

“You…” The woman seemed ready to snap at him, but she held back. “What other kind of horrible things are in there? Other demons?”

“Do you really want to know?” Red asked.

“No! Gods no!” she cut him off. “Just tell me why that is something we should worry about. If they are in there, then it must be because they have no way of coming out, right?”

“I think so too. However, the thing keeping them in there might be the same thing that was haunting me the entire time on the surface.”

“… You mean the curse?” Aurelia seemed to have a realization.

“Yes. However, now the main proponent of the curse is no longer doing its job, and this might mean some of these things might be free to travel to the surface, just like me.”

“I understand why you’re concerned.” Aurelia said. “Still, do you really think a Blood Moon is enough to kill a primordial being like the one on the Moon? I mean, who knows how long that thing has been there, or how many Blood Moons it has gone through while being bombarded by demonic influence? It would surprise me if it didn’t eventually recover, at which point it will continue absorbing energy as it always did.”

Red had to admit that her words made sense.

She continued. “Besides, who’s to say the entrance to those places is not guarded? And even if they do manage to get out, you don’t really need to concern yourself with it. It’s not like any of those demons will come looking for you, right?”

The youth didn’t respond, evidently thinking about how to answer her question. It seemed, however, that his silence was more than enough to leave Aurelia dumbfounded.

“… There is someone, isn’t there?” she asked.

“There is.” Red didn’t deny it.

“… How dangerous?”

The youth remembered the offer that eldritch being had made to him back then.

“Enough to conquer the entire world.” he said.

The woman’s consciousness he was in contact with shook, as if to indicate her dismay.

“Why in the hell would it come looking for you?!” she snapped at him.

“It has no reason to.” Red said. “However, I can’t claim to understand its thought process. If it got free, for however brief of time it may be, it most likely will come looking for me.”

“To do what, exactly? Kill you?”

Red hesitated. “… It wants something from me. Something I can’t give to it.”

Aurelia let out a laugh of frustration. “Great! I must have truly insulted my ancestors to end up stuck with someone like you!”

“This is just all speculation.” the youth said. “There are probably other factors that keep it from leaving the underground, but the curse must have been one of them.”

Red still remembered what that thing told him, the being he refused to refer to or imagine directly since learning it could detect when people thought about it. It violated the laws of their world when it forcefully tried to enter this plane and was pursued by a golden and a blue-skinned being into the underground, where it was able to hide but ultimately became trapped in. If what it said was true, it would probably still have plenty of concerns other than the curse once it tried to leave that place.

Aurelia grunted. “I hope you are right. Honestly, I have a hard time telling if you’re the luckiest or the unluckiest person in the world. To be surrounded by so many beings more powerful than you and yet still just manage to eke out some kind of functional life out of it… You are pretty smart for a mortal, but achieving that is not something skill alone would be capable of.”

Red hesitated. “… I don’t want to rely on luck.”

She snorted. “You don’t have a choice.”

The woman was probably right. Simply being born a mortal without backing in this world was already enough to put your life at the whims of others. A measure of luck would be necessary for you to grow up to even have the opportunity to cultivate and take control of your own destiny. For Red, this was doubly so, with him being surrounded by individuals and organizations much more powerful than him.

Yet luck wasn’t reliable. It was impossible to control, and it swung both ways all the time. One would find as many bouts of good luck as they would find bouts of bad luck in their life, and it just so happened that all it took was a single instance of particularly foul luck for Red to die without knowing what hit him.

Often, the youth found himself wondering if he would have preferred a clean slate, free of all the advantages and disadvantages granted to him throughout his life. An opportunity to cultivate in peace without any of his baggage. Yet, soon enough, he would throw those ideas aside.

‘A true cultivator creates opportunity out of adversity… There is nothing in this world they can’t solve.’

These were the words the hawk spirit spoke to him - the words his own master offered to him as the most important piece of wisdom he could give. Red couldn’t have guessed back how much they would help him in moments like these.

Aurelia interrupted his thoughts. “What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing.” Red said. “Keep an eye out on anything strange, please.”

She scoffed. “It would have been much easier if you hadn’t absorbed all the energy in the-”

The youth took his hand off the core, cutting their conversation short.

“I can still talk to you this way, you bastard!” Aurelia’s voice reached his ears.

Unfortunately for him, he had yet to find a way to block his ears from her voice.

…

The journey over the next couple of days was uneventful. The duo continued to take a very roundabout route towards the town, trying their best to avoid any routes while sneaking through the thicker parts of the forest. It seemed, however, that there were no imperial ambush parties waiting for them, and they managed to make their way closer to town without any issues.

To Red’s relief, there was no sudden rift opening in the sky from which demons poured out of, but the crimson mist in his body remained unresponsive, and there were no signs of recovery from the being in the Moon, with the pressure of its gaze still absent. On top of that, the monsters in the forest were much more aggressive than he was used to, and they were forced to kill quite a few beasts that threw themselves at them without any regard for their lives.

Even the snake on his shoulder was agitated and jumping at opportunities to kill anything that got close to them. Thankfully, it was able to identify that Domeron wasn’t an enemy, or at the very least, it wasn’t interested in human flesh.

Aurelia told him this was a side-effect of the Blood Moon, and that it might last for a few weeks. Red was rather worried about this, and so he decided against bringing the serpent into town to try to train it. Instead, he decided to release it far before they even got close to the settlement, and the serpent was all too eager at the opportunity to go off and hunt on its own.

“Aren’t you worried about it?” Domeron asked.

Red shook his head. “It’s a monster, an infant one at that. It can only grow by hunting and eating other monsters. Besides, I don’t think it can be detected by anything in this forest.”

The serpent would probably feast on the other monsters in this forest, and even if it couldn’t kill everything it came across, it would probably be safe with its disguising skills. If something were to happen to it, the youth would feel some disappointment, but he knew it would just be nature taking its course. The two of them both needed to grow in their own ways, and Red just couldn’t provide what the snake needed to develop, so it would need to look for it on its own for now.

He would only come looking for it again later.

With this matter settled, the duo continued to approach the town. It wasn’t until the next morning that they finally saw it on the horizon. At this point, the two of them felt rather comfortable walking on the road.

Domeron sighed in relief. “It’s not on fire, so it means no demons have struck us yet.”

Red nodded. “There doesn’t seem to be much movement in or out of town.”

“Where would they even go?” the swordsman shook his head. “They all came running to this town for protection against the Empire. Now they can only hope it also holds up against a demon invasion.”

The youth hadn’t told him about what happened back then or the information he learned from Aurelia, so the swordsman was still under the assumption of the worst. In any case, this kind of information was probably something Hector knew about, so he would leave the explanation up to the elder.

They continued to approach the town until they spotted something weird.

“There are too many guards at the entrance.” Domeron said with a frown. “Something must have happened.”

Indeed, there were at least ten guards setting up some kind of barricaded checkpoint at the town’s entrance, as well as six mounted guards that seemed to be scouting the perimeter of the settlement, galloping around the fields. One of those was quick to spot the duo’s approach.

He trotted over to them, his stance showing a lot of nervousness, which was further reinforced by what the youth felt in his fluctuation. This was clearly a man on edge.

The soldier stopped his horse some five meters away from them and put his hand on the hilt of his sheathed sword. “Identify yourselves!”

Domeron seemed surprised. “Huh? Oh, of course!”

In most situations, the visage of the members of the Water Dragon Sect would be easily identified, but they had lost most of their travel supplies during this trip, and they had barely stopped to sleep or clean themselves. There was plenty of grime and dust in their clothes at the moment.

“It’s Domeron from the Water Dragon Sect.” the swordsman said and pointed to Red. “That is Red.”

The soldier squinted, staring at them with suspicion. Domeron looked over at the youth and nodded, as if to give him a signal.

Red sighed and pulled back his hoodie, revealing his head of dirty but still recognizable crimson hair.

At that moment, the soldier visibly relaxed. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t recognize you at first.”

“Is all of this because of the Blood Moon?” Domeron asked, pointing at the soldiers moving about.

The guard seemed to shudder but managed to retain his calm. “No… well, maybe. I can’t say for sure if this is all connected.”

The swordsman frowned. “Connected? What do you mean?”

The soldier’s expression seemed to twist into a mix of grief and anger. “It’s our Captain… We found Captain Orvin’s dead body this morning.”

Both Domeron and Red were at a loss for words.