Mystical Journey

The black and white dragon figures crashed and tangled with each other, forming a large whirlwind of black and white, surrounding the two of them in the center.

Baroom!!!

The area both of them were standing at exploded abruptly, a grey mushroom cloud shooting in the air, the cloud vapor spreading across the ground madly, covering the lake and fields that were previously there.

The ground was shaking and splitting around them, revealing so many terrifying cracks, each pitch-black and seemingly bottomless.

Barroom!!

There was another intense explosion from the center. A white shadow shot out like lightning, crashing hard into the red mountain peak, and after that intense collision, half of the mountain top split off and crashed down loudly, bringing up a cloud of smoke and dust.

Nadia flew out of the dust cloud, a scarlet red flame in her hands, there was a huge golden dragon eye opening slowly in the middle of the flames, ferocious and terrifying.

"Burn!!" she yelled.

The flames in her hand expanded fiercely, forming a cloud of flames that shot up high. Led by the dragon eye, it shot towards Garen at the mountain peak like an arrow.

Roar!!

A tremendous dragon roar rose into the sky, the red clouds of flame extended to several hundred meters and then rapidly condensing, actually trying to form a huge red One-Eyed Dagon.

Just as the dragon’s form was about to solidify, Nadia’s expression froze abruptly.

Her body began to fade, starting with her feet.

"Too bad…" Underneath the mask, her eyes seemed to smile, "I got carried away, and forgot that this is merely a projection."

On the mountain peak, Garen was embedded into the stone, covered in blood. He opened his eyes with difficulty, staring at Nadia in the distance.

The red dragon’s terrifying aura turned into a material power, pressing down hard on his body, rendering him immobile.

"The next time we meet, you will die." Nadia’s voice came from the distance.

Roar!!

The One-Eyed Dragon spanning several hundred meters long in the sky roared at him once, and erupted into a red cloud, dissipating rapidly.

His vision went dark abruptly, and when Garen opened his eyes, he found himself sitting cross-legged in the pitch-black silent room, his body bleeding profusely but soundlessly, tinging the whole room with the smell of blood.

‘You got hurt again.’ Black Sethe instantly noticed something amiss.

"Cough cough…" Garen covered his mouth, abruptly coughing out thick blood. "Just a bit more, hahaha…"

This time, the power of Nadia’s projection was at least above thirty points when fully erupted, even with the Seven Star Life's Secret Point strengthening him, he was still overwhelmingly defeated. That last hit, especially, was completely overpowering, he could not even put up a fight, that heavy pressure made all the blood qi in his body freeze completely, unable to flow.

‘You can still laugh about it…’

Bang bang bang!!

Instantly, there were more eruptions of bloody mists around Garen’s body, this was the terrifying after-effect of activating the fourth star.

He resisted the pain, and quickly added his potential points to his Vitality.

Bang bang!! The blood sprayed everywhere again.

The after-effects and his injuries kept acting up, the wounds all over his body were stuck in the middle of healing and exploding, as his potential points were added to his Vitality one by one.

Garen also quickly took out the Void Nucleus he obtained from before, putting it aside, this thing could help heal him as well.

Black Sethe kept quiet the whole time, watching Garen fight against his injuries silently, until half an hour later, when the explosions on Garen’s body finally stopped.

The silent room was filled with a choking smell of blood, and there was blood all over the floor and walls as well.

‘Nadia grows ever closer, and her powers grow stronger as well, how do you plan to solve this?’ Black Sethe spoke.

"Phew… Do you have a plan?" Garen lay on his back, ignoring the blood on the floor, his entire body exhausted as he panted for breath.

‘Rather than a plan, I might have a way to delay her.’ Black Sethe said quietly, ‘If the experiment proves successful, I might be able to temporarily reduce her approaching speed, this way her projections will not grow so much stronger so quickly either, and you might have time to think about other methods.’

Garen knew that he could not continue like this, Nadia’s power grew stronger with every passing day, and almost every few days, she would challenge him. Such strong battles burned away his potential points, but even more troublesome was how they took up his time and energy, plus he had no idea when she would show up, if she suddenly appeared while he was fighting an enemy…

Garen calmed down.

"Tell me, then, since you’ve already mentioned it, there must be a better way to stall her."

‘Void Creatures are not like us, and Nadia is a classic traitor, so I can’t completely guarantee that this method is correct either, it still requires a little experimenting.’ Black Sethe quickly darted out of Garen’s body, countless wisps of black smoke forming a red-eyed human figure.

‘Recently I discovered an interesting phenomenon, the power left on those masks of yours seems to have so effect on that coin, I’m not sure if it’s a good or bad effect, but after I observed it carefully, I noticed something.’

"What is it?"

‘The Sleepless Face masks seem to have some isolating effect on the vector ability emitted from the coin.’ Black Sethe explained, ‘The Sleepless Faces are mysterious masks that emit a force field so that you don’t need to sleep, and the vector emitted by the coin needs to reach the dark territory that we cannot usually touch, yet this emission will sometimes be twisted and cut off by the effect of the Sleepless Faces.’

Garen checked his wounds this time, his body was grievously injured and together with the after-effects, they took up four potential points to heal, no matter how many potential points he had, he could not waste them just like that. The fights were getting more and more frequent as well, their difficulty rising in tandem.

He liked to fight, but he was not in the habit of seeking death.

"The Sleepless Faces can cut off the coin’s vector emission?" Garen frowned, an item created in this world could affect something of the Nine-Headed Dragon King? He was highly doubtful.

‘Just try and you’ll know.’

Garen took the mask off his face, the coin and Demonic Book were taken out at the same time, and left inside this silent room.

He stood up, walked to the wall furthest inside the room, and lightly pulled out a secret box from the wall, the Dragon Head Coin was inside, his incomplete Demonic Book placed underneath the coin.

‘Try putting the mask on the coin.’ Black Sethe stood beside Garen and advised him.

Garen put the mask in his hand over the coin lightly.

Hiss…

There was a strange sucking noise, but it seemed almost like an illusion. Garen was shocked, even with his hearing ability, he could not tell where the sound was coming from.

All of a sudden, he seemed to see the mask’s mouth move slightly, and then everything went silent.

"This mask…" It was his first time properly appraising the mask he had been using as a potential points provider.

‘This mask must have quite the background, but we don’t need to look too deeply into it, it’s fine as long as it works.’ Black Sethe nodded, ‘Now the coin has been isolated, although I don’t it know how effective it actually is, it must have some effect. You still have another mask as a substitute, right.’

Garen frowned and did not say anything, just staring at the mask carefully as he seemed to think about something.

He turned around, returning to where he had been lying, and picked up a black purple Void Nucleus from the floor. This irregularly-shaped Void Nucleus was only as large as a fist, and looked like an unknown metallic mineral, it had coarse and irregular edges.

Garen took the Void Nucleus back to the mask, and took the mask off the coin again.

Bam!

He crushed the Void Nucleus in his hand, grinding it into a very fine powder, and then he poured it onto a clean patch of the floor, wiping it over the floor evenly.

Then he put the mask onto this mound of powder.

Black Sethe watched his movements, and seemed to understand what he was doing.

After a moment, Garen picked up the mask lightly.

"As I thought!" Garen’s expression lit up in understanding.

Under the influence of the mask, the powder had formed a strange image, although it was just very little of the powder on the top of the mound, with Garen’s eyesight and ability to discern things, he could still clearly see the tiniest changes.

‘This is the effect of the mask.’ Black Sethe saw it too, ‘The Void Nucleus and the coin exist at the same wavelength, they have countless connections and influences with that wavelength, since the mask can affect the powdered Void Nucleus, that means it can also affect the coin.’

‘I can sense that this effect will not be very strong, probably because this mask is only a forgery.’ Black Sethe continued, ‘Then what if you stack two masks? You can try it out.’

Garen nodded.

After more than ten minutes, Garen took the other mask from another secret location, and put both masks over the coin.

An unspeakable sensation immediately wafted from them.

‘Something seems to have changed…’ Garen frowned.

‘Looks like it has some effect.’

"Why don’t we just destroy the coin?" Garen asked something he had been meaning to ask for some time.

‘Destroy it? The material existence is unchanging, it just changes from one form to another, from gathered to scattered. Energy and material are often one and the same, the coin is still now a piece of gathered material used for tracking, but once we destroy it, the shards also have the same tracking effect, they will also be much harder to handle than the whole coin.’

"Can’t we chase it out of this world altogether?" Garen frowned deeply.

‘Unfortunately, we can’t.’ Black Sethe negated that idea. ‘Maybe a good way would be to find more Sleepless Faces.’

With that he turned into black mist and darted back into Garen’s body. When he spoke to Garen as a black figure, he was just controlling a substitute, in truth he never left Garen’s body.

‘More Sleepless Faces should be able to form a decent force field, that would have a certain effect, right now the effect is too weak.’

Garen nodded in understanding.

‘If you want to utterly isolate the vector with the Sleepless Faces, and avoid Nadia’s attacks or her tracking in this world, perhaps you need to find the true original mask of legends.’ Black Sethe went straight to the point.

"The Primal Masks, huh?" Garen understood.

****************

Several days later…

Garen sat in his study, looking at the two black boxes in front of him. Rod was sitting opposite him, looking rather pale and haggard, and quite exhausted.

The morning light shone in beside them, falling at Rod’s feet, reflecting off his black leather boots.

Two subordinates stood guard outside the door, one of them closing the door lightly.

"Here are two Sleepless Faces in exchange, we’re already handling Lotus Pearl’s side, we’ve already more or less figured out where she’s hiding and placed that area under lockdown, do you want to see it for yourself, sir?" Rod said quietly.

Garen picked up a box lightly, opening it and looking at the slightly black mask lying in a bed of black silk inside. He touched it lightly with his finger, feeling a cool air dart into his finger, before he put down this box, satisfied.

He picked up the other box, and opened it using the same steps, touching it with his finger. Suddenly, Garen frowned.

No energy flowed into his fingers.

"What’s the matter?"

Rod frowned as well.