“Yo, Primordial Undying Tree, send me off to the next trial!”
The second the words left his mouth, Damien felt space distort around him. Almost all of the notifications that hovered in front of his face disappeared, leaving only a single one.
[You have passed the Trial of Self.]
Trial of Self. It was a really good way to describe the previous trial.
Although in those final moments, he had been watching everything from the void, it wasn’t like that the entire time.
Unlike the one who set up the illusion trial in the Eternal Secret Realm, the Primordial Undying Tree was a being that had reached Godhood.
Damien’s All-Seeing Eyes had been thoroughly suppressed.
When he was crying in the corner on his second day in the dungeon. When he tried to kill himself on the third, when he humiliated himself on the fourth, when he went insane on the fifth, he had been there.
He had experienced it all again firsthand.
Not as an outsider looking in, but as the one going through those situations himself.
But even with his All-Seeing Eyes suppressed, he didn’t suddenly lose everything he had worked for over the years.
The spiritual intent that he had refined tirelessly while he was comatose was still fully present. And due to the strong mind he had now, he was able to watch those scenes without breaking.
But those two years were truly grueling.
It wasn’t an entirely good thing that Damien had unlocked his repressed memories. In the first place, those memories had been subconsciously suppressed to protect him.
From the moment he awakened his ego, he could feel a level of bloodlust he hadn’t felt in years churning inside of him.
But even then, he was glad to feel this bloodlust.
Because he had never controlled it properly before. It had been hidden in the recesses of his mind with the rest of his experiences in the dungeon.
Now that it was back, he could use his current strength to properly control and make it a part of himself.
He never wanted to abandon his bestial side entirely.
He never wanted to abandon his experiences in the dungeon.
Those experiences, that bestial instinct, it was all a core part of his personality. Abandoning them was actually more harmful to his sense of identity than it was good.
So controlling and integrating was the best course of action. To take his current self and evolve into something better. Wasn’t that the path he had walked so far?
There was no hesitation in his thoughts. In fact, they moved so fast that he had already finished pondering by the time his body finished transporting to the next area.
And when he felt the cool sensation of earth under his feet again, he immediately spread his awareness.
“Gotcha.”
He heavily stomped the ground, infusing vector control into his movements to increase the gravity around him. The earth cracked with a bang.
A pool of blood leaked from below. Although the beast never had a chance to surface, Damien had already seen its appearance.
It was a massive groundworm several kilometers in length. Its mouth was filled with razor-sharp teeth, and opened like the petals of a flower.
Now, its head had been thoroughly crushed under the pressure of Damien’s stomp. It was killed before it even had the opportunity to do anything.
“What else is around here?”
Damien ignored the groundworm and refocused his attention on the surroundings. All around him were sand dunes of varying sizes.
“A desert, huh. Come to think of it, I haven’t really been in a desert before.”
It was odd considering the number of different places he’d visited, but he really hadn’t seen a desert before in person. Most of the locations he visited were filled with lush greenery and vitality.
“Enough of that. What am I supposed to do here? There’s no trial description yet again…”
Actually, was that accurate? The Primordial Undying Tree had already told him what he had to do.
Reach the Primordial Undying Tree and claim its fruit. That was the objective of this trial.
“Haha, so rather than a trial, it’s more like this is the finale. If it’s like that, then I should be able to meet up with them soon, right?”
Instead of focusing on the outside, he sent his attention into his own body. There, within his heart, he could feel a second heartbeat that wasn’t his.
“I can’t feel her location…and with her heartbeat so chaotic, she should still be in the Trial of Self.”
Although Ruyue’s trauma wasn’t the same as his, she was still a person with a complicated past of her own.
But he wasn’t worried. Just like him, she had grown immensely ever since their first meeting. The trauma that would’ve broken her a few months ago wouldn’t be able to do the same now.
“Instead of worrying about her, I should figure out where to go from here. Even if I don’t find her now, she’ll definitely find me once she gets here.”
Thinking such, he began moving.
Even within his massive awareness range, he wasn’t able to sense anything besides the ever-expanding desert. The beasts within also weren’t worth much of his attention.
As he began to move, he noticed that the restrictions on his teleportation had been largely lifted. He could now freely move anywhere within a 100-kilometer range.
“How nice…though it’s nothing compared to my full range, it’s ten times more than even the distance I was able to teleport within the 3000 Beast Mountain Range.”
With such a speed, he shouldn’t take long to find a new environment. In his opinion, there was no way for the Primordial Undying Tree to be anywhere close to his current location.
Even if it was a Divine Tree that could live endlessly, he figured that it would still prefer an environment filled with vitality. And considering that this was a realm it designed personally, there was no way it’d just ignore those preferences.
But to find an oasis within the desert, that too the specific oasis that the Primordial Undying Tree was in, it was even more tiring that trying to find a needle in a haystack.
“If there was any change to the scenery at all, it’d be nice. Even if it wasn’t related to the oasis I’m looking for, at least it’d be related to something.”
His awareness was still fully spread. His vector shield was erected and constantly enforcing a gravity domain around him.
The earthworms that tunneled through the sand below had no chance of even getting near him.
He traveled like this for hours on end. In that time, he managed to find a single oasis, but it wasn’t anything special. There wasn’t even any treasure within.
And so, hours passed once more. He teleported through the seemingly endless desert without pause. Even when his mana ran low, he devoured the ambient mana to quickly replenish it.
And finally, he noticed an oddity.
“Hm? Isn’t that…?”
In the distance, his awareness locked onto a life aura. Although it wasn’t totally familiar, there were some traits he recognized.
He immediately flashed away in that direction. And upon arrival, he noticed a familiar face.
A cold beauty with light blue hair and eyes. The area around her was freezing even though the temperature in the atmosphere was the opposite.
“Lunaria Snow. I guess I have some fate with phoenixes.” Damien commented lightly.
Since she was someone with such a close relationship with Feng Qing’er, he had no reason not to trust her.
Therefore, he boldly revealed his presence.
“Miss Snow, fancy meeting you here!”