Kaya went in first. Dorian could decipher a few general things about the black miasma before him—he sensed auras all around; a few strikes marked places where fighting was fiercest—but the haze still swept over all. He could barely see his fingers and so he let her brave the minefield first. Tracking her aura, he followed.

The sounds were deafening and total. To stay in here, blinded, nose under an assault of acrid scents, ears ringing, guided only by qi intuition was a unique experience—like a blind man feeling his way up a mountain. It was uniquely disturbing for Kaya, no doubt. Still she forged bravely ahead, making a winding route for the places densest with treasure. The places where qi soaked the air like mist.

Qi flashed like a thunderbolt, painting the mists blue-white. In that slice of a second Dorian paused.

Ahead, where the auras overlapped thickest, a giant mass of bodies; claws, tails, teeth, scaly, many-eyed heads, clashed in fiery war.

But above them, and farther in, was where the qi attack had come from.

Two titans of aura towered above the rest; to his eyes, two shadows fell over all others. The aura aroused a primal instinct in him: a fear which stemmed from the depths of this mortal coil.

Dorian wrangled it down in an instant. You are nothing; you are a figment of biology, a shadow with no substance. I feel you. I know your nature. I spurn you at the gates of my self. He let it dissolve like a fire with nothing to burn.

Head cleared, he turned his eyes to the beasts before him.

Long, coiling necks, ending at heads distinctively draconian; one beast was larger than the other, its mouth opening like a flower with massive, jagged teeth for petals. Both dragon-variants, likely, more massive than anything he’d yet seen in this world.

[Profound] Realm beasts. No doubt about it.

Dorian breathed out slowly. Two in one spot? This might prove trickier than he’d expected…

Watching them come together was like seeing two mountain ranges collide. From his [Origin] level senses, all he felt was a great ocean of qi spread across the air before him, too vast for his body’s comprehension.

He took a split-second to marvel at it. It was a nice perk of reincarnation; as a Godking he never really felt awe. But when reduced to the size of an ant, even the mundane looked epic.

The closer they got, the more viscerally Dorian felt his surroundings. The death especially made an impression: where before he’d only seen a scattered few [Vigor] Realm beasts in this realm, now every step took him into the innards of one. There must’ve been tens crushed to death out here; left and right were Sphynxes bleeding out, massacres of sandwolves, scattered carapaces of Megapedes sticking like tombstones out of the bloodied sands.

Ahead, Kaya’s steps had turned hesitant, jerking with her nervousness. They were getting close to the epicenter now. They could both feel it. All around, lesser treasures lay; [Vigor] realm Beast cores on dead bodies, an assortment of valued parts, even scavenged rare herbs whose owners lay dying or dead were scattered across the battlefield. The rest of the beasts seemed content to contest these. They roared and warred, scrounging for cores, keeping clear of the carnage in the center where the two [Profound] Titans held sole dominion.

Then Kaya stopped dead. Dorian nearly bumped into her.

“What?” he shouted, trying to make himself heard over the bangs.

“That’s f-far enough!” The aura was growing more oppressive now. The Prime Bone’s aura especially—it weighed on the soul like old trauma. “Let’s snag a core and get back.”

“A little farther,” said Dorian, frowning. Of course he wouldn’t settle for a mere Core.

Whatever Kaya was about to say was drowned out by the flashbang of qi.

But it was a flashbang of a different color. Black, like the liquid in tar pits but blacker; blacker even than the sands. It made the dark fog and smoke seem light by contrast. It was a black that the light bent around, as though afraid to touch it.

And it was headed straight in their direction.

Ahead Kaya was frozen. Hissing, Dorian tackled her with all his strength and a boost of the [Cloud-Treading Steps]; they tumbled into the sands as the pitch qi whipped by. Where it touched the sands sublimed to acrid smoke, hissing violently.

[Profound] realm technique. And it hadn’t even been aimed at them; that was a splash back. The intended target reared back, crying out and clawing at itself. Dorian was close enough he could see it even without a qi attack’s illumination. Up this close, he could feel every gargantuan footstep shaking the sands.

They’d made it to a dead zone. Here, no [Vigor] beasts dared trespass; it was within splashing territory of the two [Profound] realm beasts. But the beasts themselves fought a few dozen feet closer in. So long as they evaded technique splash backs, they could hang here in an uneasy equilibrium. An unsafe haven, but as safe as it got in this mess.

Once he went farther in, there was no coming back—at least, coming back without hellfire raining down upon them. If there was ever a time to plan, it was now.

“We’re too c-close,” said Kaya. This time she wasn’t to keep her voice from trembling.

“We’re almost there,” said Dorian absently. In his mind he was charting the flow of the [Profound] beasts’ battle, searching for an opening, spinning up a plan.

“Almost there?”

Kaya’s eyes were saucers. “You want to get that?!”

She pointed to a spot between the two beasts where the Prime Bone hummed its quiet, ancient melody.

“Yes,” said Dorian, scrunching his brows. “Shush. I’m trying to think.”

“Think?!” Kaya’s voice was rising. She grabbed him by the shoulders. “A stray breath from one of those things could kill you! We almost just—“

She was stumbling on her words now. “Get a core and let’s get outta here,” she said at last. Her breaths were coming in quick spurts; nearby another explosion rocked the sands, and this time she couldn’t suppress a yelp. Her hands trembled uncontrollably. Every muscle on her body was tensed. The fear was getting to her.

“I have a plan,” snapped Dorian. The bare-bones outline of an idea had come to him. He wasn’t sure at all of its success. There wasn’t much time to think. The only thing he was sure of was that he wasn’t giving up that damned Bone. He was this close!

From his interspatial ring he pulled out a Heart-Quickening Draught.

Kaya stared at it, incredulous. “What are you—“

“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” Then he winked at her; it was meant to be reassuring. She was rooted to the spot. It took her a second to process his words.

“W-wait!!”

But he’d already dashed into the fog. In a second he was gone.

***

He was true to his word. A mere two minutes of mad [Cloud Treading Steps]-boosted sprinting later, he’d went and come back. Kaya was on the brink of losing it.

“Don’t you dare do that again!” She hissed, blinking fast. Her eyes were bloodshot. “Do you know how—“

“No time,” he breathed, still panting hard. “Here.”

With a tap of his interspatial ring, he brought out an assortment of pills. He pressed a few to her palms. “Swallow.”

“Huh?”

“It’ll boost your qi generation for a little while,” he said. He took the pills to his lips and downed them in a gulp. “Long enough for me to get in and out.”

She looked at him like she’d never seen him before. A dozen feet away, a Wyrm shrieked as a [Technique] brought it down in a shower of blood.

“Chief would be happy we got even a regular core outta this! Why—“

“Look, sis,” said Dorian. He stared her in the eyes imploringly. “I’m not getting out of here without it. We’re this close. The battle’s winding down. We don’t have time to argue. Do you trust me?”

The answer should be no. To you or anyone, I should be in way over my head. But I have a feeling I know what you’ll say.

She hesitated. Then, gulping, she nodded wordlessly.

“Good,” said Dorian with a grin. “Here’s what I need you to do.”

He glanced up to the fight. It seemed it’d reached a turning point; one [Profound] Beast had latched onto the other and was raining down heavy, scything Techniques. The other roared lustily, returning fire, but it was a fading effort.

“Keep the path clear,” he said. “I’ll be in-and-out. When I come back we’ll escape to the skies. Before then I’ll run back on a set route. You’ll feel it coming. If anything gets in my way, blast it; get it out the way.”

He held her gaze. “Got it?”

She nodded again, eyes narrowed. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” she said.

“I hope so too.”

Then he dashed into the storm without another word.

There were too many variables to plan for. Too many attacks that, if gone slightly astray, would mean the end of him. He didn’t cycle or use any [Technique] in this first part; emitting no aura, he let himself go undetected in the fog. It was all a role of the dice. This close, if a stray attack caught him it’d mean the end.

As though on cue, a tongue of splattering acid shunted out in a great black wall in front of him. Heart thumping he pivoted on a dime and somersaulted into a roll; the brunt of the attack bypassed him. A few flecks, not even droplets, caught him on the back as he rolled.

The pain was instant, a constellation of fire-edged knives digging into his back. He hissed as he ran. He could already imagine the skin on his back turning necrotic, flaking off, burned through like rotting wood. His heart hammering, veins slicked with adrenaline, he kept up the mad dash.

He was intoxicated. The Prime Bone’s aura called out to him like a honeyed scent. As he ran he felt himself becoming lighter, felt the blood rushing to his head. It was like he was entering a different world; this close the constraints of gravity bound him only loosely. He was breathing rare air. Even a mere few breaths around that Bone boosted his cultivation. As he closed the distance farther, still wheeling out of the way of fatal attacks, the air was so thick with qi that breathing felt like sipping pudding through a straw. It must’ve been a property of the Bone. Whatever bloodline it belonged to, its qi was shockingly dense.

At twenty feet his limbs felt like they’d been turned to liquid mercury. Still he forged on, closer and closer…

A screech. Clear, loud, furious. His blood froze. His breaths caught.

He whirled around to see the swollen corpus of a Wyrm bearing down upon him. Peak Vigor Realm. It’d burst out of nowhere—a literal hole in the ground; it must’ve burrowed here in total silence, somehow skirting every battle. Its body, plated in impenetrable brown and black scales, rose up in a loaded coil. Beady eyes the color of rust glared down at him. When it opened its mouth, rows upon rows of jagged teeth, stretching down an endless throat, greeted him in a glinting array. It screeched again, its body flaring with qi.

Shit.

Clearly he wasn’t the only one with the idea to snatch the Bone under the [Profound] Beasts’ noses.

But he’d made very certain to be discreet; he’d learned his lesson from the legion of corpses littering the sands.

This creature, caught in a primal bloodlust, took no such heed.

As of right now he was no condition to fight such a beast. It must’ve been at least mid-Vigor Realm. His mind fired a thousand thoughts a second. Could he outrun it?

Meanwhile the bone, mere feet away, called out to him in siren’s song. He was caught between six plans, none of them any good. But there was no time; the Wyrm reared up, a blast of qi lodged in its throat, eyes locked onto him, promising sheer and sudden violence. He had to choose.

Then circumstances chose for him.

One moment the Wyrm stood over him, certain death charged between its teeth, cloaked in crystal-hard scales.

The next, it was a blasted in a rogue wave of toxic black, blacker than tar, and Dorian stilled. The poor thing didn’t even have the chance to scream. It whirled and flailed about, smothered in the oily black; it clung to the Wyrm, molding to every inch of its body like a cocoon. The only sound he heard was the strident hiss of acid, so loud and so endless it seemed like the forlorn cries of a dying beast.

In mere seconds the figure of the Wyrm dissolved like an ice sculpture in a furnace, melting to nothing. A [Vigor] Realm beast reduced to slag. Just like that.

Dorian swallowed, his heart sinking, and glanced up.

He stared into slitted, yellow eyes cold and pitiless as the moon.