Hearing Karl's tone soften, no longer directly refusing, the nymph's eyes seemed to light up.
She quickly replied: "Thank you for your kindness, envoy. We... have about four months left."
"Although the seal at the bottom of the lake weakens day by day, relying on the power of the lake, I can still maintain it for a while."
"Naturally, it would be better to resolve it sooner, because as time passes, I will need to expend more power to maintain the seal."
"I'm afraid that then... the power of the blessing I can apply to you to withstand the spiritual corrosion of that being will also be correspondingly weakened."
Karl nodded and noted the timeframe—four months, a long or short time.
"I understand. I will start working on it as soon as possible." He said in a deep voice.
"But before that, I need some time to prepare."
"Whether it's improving my own strength or seeking possible methods and weapons."
"Of course, envoy. Your caution is wise. I will be here, waiting for your return." The nymph bowed slightly.
Then Karl said nothing more, turned to bid farewell to the nymph, and left the forest.
After meeting up with Dalton's group, who had been standing guard on the outskirts, no one lingered further, and they raced towards Terra.
...
The next morning, as the rising sun sprinkled the first rays of golden light over the land of Terra,
Karl's figure had already appeared hundreds of meters above the ground.
He hovered there, quietly enjoying the increasingly warm sun.
He carefully pondered, thinking about the fragment of the Sun God he had absorbed yesterday.
Were there any deeper changes in his body that he himself hadn't fully realized?
He closed his eyes, concentrated, mobilized his clairvoyance, and began to scan from head to toe.
From skin to bones, from blood flow to neural pathways, he scanned his body in meticulous detail.
His cells were indeed more active than before, full of life energy, like a dry sponge meeting water, efficiently absorbing the sun's energy.
He felt that with every passing minute and second, his strength grew faintly but continuously.
However, apart from this intuitive increase in energy absorption efficiency and cell activity,
he scanned it several times but found nothing more.
There was no additional energy core, no mysterious runes appeared, and there was no significant change in his body's structure.
He smiled wryly and shook his head, thinking: "It seems I'm overthinking it. After all, this was just a tiny fragment of a divine being, broken into I don't know how many pieces."
"How could absorbing it instantly make me a god?"
"It's already an unexpected joy to significantly increase the efficiency of sunlight absorption and even gain a trace of divinity."
Letting go of this unrealistic expectation, Karl's mind became clear again.
He looked at the sun—the giant star above him that gave him endless power, radiating light and heat.
An irresistible urge to test his limits surged in his heart.
He had never tried to fly high before; his abilities hadn't been fully awakened.
And now, after absorbing the divine fragment, his physical condition had reached an unprecedented peak, and he wanted to test his limits.
With a thought, he was no longer content to hover. His body slightly changed its angle, and suddenly—WHOOSH!
He was like a shooting star heading backward, instantly beginning to soar upwards, towards the boundless sky.
At first, the altitude increased quickly and smoothly, but as it increased, the environment began to change dramatically.
The temperature first rose, becoming unbearably hot. If it were an ordinary person, they would be roasted to dehydration or even burned.
But Karl's expression didn't change; this level of heat had no effect on him, and he continued to soar upwards.
The buildings on the ground, the winding mountains, and the mirror-like lakes began to shrink rapidly, becoming models on a sand table, and then blurred.
The surrounding clouds grew thicker, and their color changed from white to dark.
The wind began to howl, churning the thick clouds.
From time to time, dazzling lightning flashed in the distance, tearing through the sky within the clouds and emitting dull thunder.
The temperature began to drop sharply—from the previous scorching heat, it quickly turned to cold.
This layer of the atmosphere is extremely rich in water vapor, which not only condenses into cold rainwater
but, at extremely low temperatures, instantly freezes into fine frost and hailstones of various sizes.
They "crackled" and shattered against the invisible bio-field around him, spraying tiny ice crystals.
At the same time, Karl felt the gravitational pull of the planet beneath his feet constantly dragging at his body, trying to pull him back to the ground.
What made him frown even more was that as the altitude increased, the air became extremely thin.
His brain began to feel slightly dizzy due to lack of oxygen—a feeling he had never experienced before.
But he didn't panic. He closed his eyes, concentrated, and tried to adjust his body's internal functions.
After a few seconds, the rise and fall of his chest gradually stopped, his breathing completely halted.
When he opened his eyes again, the slight dizziness had disappeared, and a clear smile even appeared on his face.
Indeed, he should have thought that in a solar energy environment, there is no need to rely on breathing to survive.
It was only because he had lived as an ordinary person for so long that he had formed a mindset and subconsciously thought he needed to breathe.
This first breakthrough of the atmosphere, the discomfort and psychological signals, had led to the brief dizziness.
Free from the dependence on breathing, Karl's figure trembled, and the energy in his body surged against the strong gravity and harsh environment, accelerating upwards again.
He was like a golden arrow, piercing through the thick, dark, turbulent, thunderous peak of the troposphere.
His eyes suddenly opened. Here, the sun shone, the view was clear, below was an endless sea of clouds, and above was a deep, gradient blue sky.
No humid water vapor, no dark clouds, no piercing cold wind, only a gentle flow of air, like a breeze.
The warm sunlight shone directly on him without obstruction, purer and warmer than what he felt on the ground, bringing a deep sense of pleasure and satisfaction to his body.
"The stratosphere..." The term flashed through Karl's mind.
The environment here was like paradise compared to the troposphere below, which was like hell.
However, at this level, he discovered that the planet's gravitational pull was actually significantly lower than below.
This was the first time he had flown to such an altitude; he had never known this before.
He wanted to see how high he could fly.
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