Chapter Fifteen: First Night in the Forest
When I opened my eyes, the book was gone.
Not dropped. Not placed somewhere nearby. Gone — as though it had never existed in my hands at all. I turned my palms over slowly, finding nothing. No weight. No residual warmth from the old binding.
I felt nothing when it happened.
▶ Special Skill Acquired ◀
▶ Inner Domain — Learned ◀
「 You may store any object you touch directly into your Inner Domain. Your domain expands to accommodate anything placed within it — no fixed capacity exists. 」
I looked up at Yama.
Something had arrived on her face without her permission — I could see the exact moment she noticed it was there, and the fraction of a second it took her to decide whether to remove it. She left it. Just barely.
The corner of her mouth had moved upward.
She was smiling. Not the sharp, tactical version she deployed as a weapon. Something quieter. Something that looked, in the brief window before her composure reasserted itself, almost like genuine satisfaction.
(Well done. You learned that considerably faster than I expected.)
The first time this infuriating girl has ever praised me.
I let the words arrive and felt nothing particular in response. Praise has surrounded me for most of my life — men who feared me performing admiration to protect themselves, lieutenants manufacturing approval because the alternative was dangerous. I learned long ago that praise from frightened people is just fear wearing a polite face.
This was different. She had no reason to flatter me.
But I still didn't particularly care.
"How do I get things back out?"
(Think of its shape. Feel it already in your hand.)
I thought of the blue cover. The faded title pressed into old material. The particular weight of it.
It appeared in my palm.
▶ Object Retrieved from Inner Domain ◀
I held it for a moment, then extended it toward her.
Then — quietly, in the space between one breath and the next, visible to no one but me:
▶ Inner Domain — New Prompt ◀
「 Would you like to memorize the contents of this book? 」
Yes.
The knowledge arrived all at once — the way water fills whatever shape contains it, instantly and completely. Every page. Every paragraph. Every line of The Epic of the First Demon King settled into perfect recall with the completeness of something read a thousand times rather than absorbed in a single breath.
I handed the book back to Yama without changing my expression.
She noticed nothing.
Good.
The book told the story of the first ruler of the Demon race. How he emerged from the fractured warring tribes of the western territories and forced them into unity through a combination of overwhelming power and the specific kind of authority that only truly dangerous people carry naturally. How he led a war against the Human eastern territories on a scale that hadn't been attempted since. How he accumulated treasures across that campaign — artifacts, weapons, relics of incalculable value — and concealed them in a location no living being has since been able to identify.
And embedded within the text, in a cipher subtle enough to pass entirely unnoticed without perfect recall of every preceding page —
A code. Pointing to where the treasure is hidden.
In my previous life I had the worst luck of anyone I have ever known.
In this life, I am starting to believe something decided to compensate.
I said nothing about any of this to Yama.
I don't trust her. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.
Information is the only currency that never loses value.
I told her I wanted the book.
She refused without hesitation — the flat, conclusive refusal of someone stating established fact. Only existing copy. Important to her. Two statements, no elaboration, no apology.
I never ask twice.
I am a gentleman, after all.
Hehehehe.
The book already lived in me with perfect fidelity. Every word. Every hidden cipher. She could keep the object.
(Back to the training schedule.)
Ten more days.
In the courtyard I trained until the sessions blurred together — the Cheater Sword becoming less an adversary and more an extension, Athena's Blade responding to my Qi with increasing immediacy, my magic response compressing from deliberate thought into something approaching reflex. Yama nearly killed me twice more. I got up both times.
And in the library, while performing a convincing imitation of someone simply reading, I moved through the shelves with quiet purpose — touching volumes, drawing them into the Inner Domain, absorbing their contents in a single breath, returning them to their exact positions before she could notice the pattern.
A Warrior Path skill requiring Realm levels far beyond my current standing. A Mage Path skill with the same requirement. Long-term investments.
And one more, filed under a section most people apparently chose not to open:
▶ Forbidden Skill Acquired — Beast Tamer Path ◀
▶ Consciousness Transfer — Learned ◀
「 Transfer your consciousness into any beast under your taming. You will experience everything the beast experiences. If the beast dies while your consciousness inhabits it, you will feel the complete pain of that death. 」
I read the final line twice.
Very interesting.
On the last day of the month, Yama found me in the library.
Seven months alone in the forest. No guidance. No instruction. Only my own strength against whatever the environment decided to produce. She needed five gems extracted from white tigers, three from Night Wolves, one from something called an Ark, one from a Black Lion.
I refused immediately — on principle, because she'd delivered it as an order.
Then she told me it would advance both my Shapeshifter Path and my Beast Tamer Path simultaneously.
"Fine. Let's go."
The walk to the forest was long.
We talked for most of the journey about elemental magic. Fire, water, earth, air — the four that most cultivators spend entire lifetimes learning to channel with any real precision. And then the two rare ones.
Darkness. Light.
Elements that only a handful of beings across all of recorded history had touched, and only then with Mythic-grade weapons as intermediaries.
What would it feel like to hold Darkness?
What would Light do to hands like mine?
I filed both questions in the part of my mind reserved for things worth returning to.
We were almost at the treeline when Yama stopped.
She turned. Her face had done something I hadn't seen it do before — the composure present but something beneath it shifted, the way a foundation moves before the surface shows any sign. Her yellow eyes were steadier than usual, which paradoxically made them look more uncertain. Her tail had gone completely still behind her.
(Joker — what would you do if the entire world stood against you?)
"I'd stand against it."
(You think you could defeat everyone? Alone?)
"I'd die trying," I said. "But I wouldn't kneel for anyone."
A silence.
(I never tried,) she said. Her voice came through the telepathic channel quieter than usual, stripped of its habitual precision. (I gave up.)
She said nothing after that. She turned and walked back toward the castle — spine straight, footsteps steady, red hair catching the dim bioluminescent light until the distance swallowed her entirely.
I stood at the edge of the forest and looked at the space where she had been.
I am genuinely getting used to having that girl nearby.
I turned toward the trees.
"How long have you been in this prison?" I called after her.
She stopped without turning around. Her shoulders went very still.
(Two years.)
Two years.
Alone.
The word landed differently than I expected it to. I looked at her back — the absolute straightness of it, the complete absence of any request for recognition in her posture — and felt something move through me that I didn't have a clean name for.
She is genuinely strong.
"I'll see you in eight months," I said. "Goodbye."
The forest opened around me and closed behind me.
Ancient trees — trunks wider than buildings, bark black and deeply grooved, roots erupting from the dark earth in great arching curves that created a cathedral of twisted wood at ground level. The canopy above so dense the already-dim prison light became something closer to genuine dark. The undergrowth alive with sounds that paused when I moved and resumed when I went still.
I killed several Fire Cats on the way in without breaking stride. Found a tree with roots large enough to support my back comfortably. Sat down. Closed my eyes.
Danger Domain woke me before sleep fully arrived.
That cold pressure at the edge of awareness — something close, something with intent — and I was standing with Athena's Blade already in my hand, retrieved from the Inner Domain in the same motion as rising.
"Fire Burst."
Flame wrapped the blade. Its light fell across five white tigers in a loose semicircle — pale coats turned amber by the fire, glacier-blue eyes catching and holding the light with the patient certainty of creatures that have never needed to hurry.
I distributed my available points — Strength, Magic, Endurance only, exactly as the situation required:
┌─────────────────────────────┐
│ JOKER — STATUS │
├─────────────────────────────┤
│ Level : 22 │
│ HP : 100 / 100 │
├─────────────────────────────┤
│ STR : 38 INT : 60 │
│ END : 31 LCK : 43 │
│ CHA : 20 MAG : 34 │
├─────────────────────────────┤
│ Points Available : 0 │
└─────────────────────────────┘
Level 25 beasts. Five of them. A month ago the first one nearly killed me.
A month ago was a long time ago.
I channeled Qi into Athena's Blade — felt the sword's stored energy rise immediately to meet mine — and the black Aura Manifestation erupted along the steel, layering over the Fire Burst, the two energies combining into something that made the air shimmer with contained violence.
"Warrior's Cry."
▶ Warrior's Cry — Activated ◀
「 Raises Endurance by 10% for the duration of combat. 」
The warmth settled through my bones like armor fastened from the inside.
The nearest tiger shifted its weight forward.
"Shadow Steps."
I was already in front of it. Sword already moving.
"Cleaving Strike."
One arc. White light. The first tiger's head left its shoulders before it registered I had moved.
The second came from behind — Danger Domain registered the intent before the body finished deciding — and I turned without retreating, drove the blade into the earth, spoke:
"Earth Serpent."
The ground fractured. A column of stone erupted upward — curved, pointed, moving like something alive — and drove through the second tiger's underbelly, lifting it entirely off the ground. One stroke across the neck.
The blood was everywhere. On my face, my hands, soaking through my clothes at the shoulders and chest, warm and immediate in the cold forest air.
More than a month without blood.
I hadn't realized how much I missed it.
Euphoria rising. I want more. More.
The third and fourth came together — flanking, coordinated, the intelligence of predators that have hunted in groups long enough to develop something resembling tactics. I let them come, planted the blade, spoke:
"Lightning Sword."
▶ Lightning Sword — Activated ◀
The Qi reshaped the blade's aura from black to crackling blue-white, electricity arcing between the inscriptions on the hilt. I drove it into the earth between the two approaching tigers and released everything simultaneously.
The ground lit up. A web of electrical discharge found both tigers at once — muscles seized, legs locked, the massive bodies frozen mid-stride with current running through them in visible pulses.
I picked up the sword.
Smiled at them.
"Shadow Steps."
"Flash Sword."
▶ Flash Sword — Activated ◀
Strikes too fast to track individually — white light trailing in arcs, finding the gaps in natural armor — and the blade found the neck of the first, then the second, both in the space between one breath and the next.
The fifth tiger ran.
Smart.
Not smart enough.
"Transform."
White fur. Four legs. The weight of a creature built for pursuit. I closed the distance in seconds.
I returned to my own form in the air above it.
Drove Athena's Blade through its skull on the way down.
I walked back to the tree.
Five bodies. Blood spreading dark and slow between the roots, steaming faintly in the cold air. The forest had gone completely silent around me — the genuine silence of things that have reassessed the situation and decided to be somewhere else entirely.
I sat with my back against the root again. The bark was still cold. Still solid.
I looked at the blood on my hands and felt the deep, uncomplicated satisfaction of someone who has returned to the thing they are actually built for.
I think I'm going to like this forest.