Chapter 43

The sheer magnitude of the meteors was astounding. There was a rain of pebbles that were constantly landing on the terrain.

“Are those real meteors? How is it possible?” Rydel asked with surprise.

“We don’t exactly know, although we have some theories. There is a chasm in the center of the Cemetery and a good portion of the meteors fall through there.” Shael replied.

“A chasm? Where does it lead to?”

“It’s a place of death, nobody who had tried exploring its depths had come out. This includes some Ascended who were running out of lifespan and took the last gamble.” Shael said.

This whole place had now taken a sinister vibe in Rydel’s vision. Like a trap luring its unsuspected victims.

“Is it known if this place is a man-made formation? Or if it is natural?”

“There isn’t any evidence that it’s man-made, even when examined by formation masters. However, we can’t entirely discard that possibility either, as the purpose of the formation is unknown.” Shael denied.

“We only know that this place has been here since time immemorial. Even the oldest manuscripts that we have in Osserion speak of the chasm with dread.” Shael added.

The Afrein Peninsula was bigger than the Earth, and it had the shape of an uneven square. It was surrounded by the ocean in all parts except in the south, the Mountain of Desolations separated the rest of the continent from us.

The Elphyra’s Clan territory was in the northwest, near the coast. As they were traveling in the flying vessel, they had avoided almost every elven settlement on their way. And for those that they did encounter, they went through too fast to even notice them.

This wasn’t rare, as the number of settlements wasn’t very elevated to begin with, probably just a couple of hundreds in total.

The diversity of elven races depended on this, as every race adapted to its specific climate. There was a limit though, it didn’t matter the type of the forest, the clan living there would become forest elves in the end.

That’s why normal baseline elves were so rare outside of Osserion, as only places like a city that didn’t have any particular feature that stimulated their bloodline adaptability could produce them.

Of course, there were exceptions of certain groups of elves that wanted to remain close to their root and refused to mutate from the base elf.

Even though Rydel had an education that covered almost every topic, it was impossible to know about everything. Maybe Galather deemed the Cemetery of Comets too dangerous and decided that it was best if their clanmates didn’t know about it.

That’s why Rydel was clueless about this zone until now. It was a pity that Galather didn’t know about his race, if not he’d have probably told him.

Because for others, this was a place that was better to avoid, but not for Rydel and Naveena.

Naveena had already jumped from the cabin and was watching the meteors with greed. They would be the perfect material for finally creating a moon with her cultivation method, although they would need to be modified a bit for Rydel’s use.

“Is it dangerous to descend?”

“Not really, unless we go near the chasm, where you never knew what could happen. Beasts tend to avoid this whole area for unknown reasons.” Shael said. “We’ll stop the boat for a day, I’ll stay here so that nobody disturbs Lady Allyna.”

“Thank you, I’ll owe you one.” Rydel gazed at Shael before summoning his wings.

“Let’s go Neena!” Rydel said before taking her.

***

Rydel and Naveena were next to one of the giant meteors, the boat wasn’t visible anymore as they had gotten quite far away.

The meteors didn’t specifically contain energy attributed to the moon. But it didn’t matter, they were still great materials.

Rydel took out his sword and slashed at the meteor. A clink resounded and only some minuscule chips broke down.

‘Well, it couldn’t be that easy.’ Naveena wryly said.

‘How much do you need?’

‘The more, the better.’

In their actual zone, there were only giant meteors encrusted on the lands, the only zone where meteors were falling down was near the chasm. They couldn’t go near it, at least not with their actual strength.

The problem was that these meteors had gathered the elevated spiritual energy from their surroundings for countless years. The meteors hadn’t become life stones, as with their size it’d be almost impossible, but instead, their hardness had reached an unfathomable level.

‘I could just try with stronger attacks, but I don’t know if it’d be enough.’ Rydel said. ‘If it was possible, someone would have already taken them away.’

‘Let me try.’

Naveena went next to the meteor and raised her three tails. Her tails became slightly translucent and passed through the rock, transforming where they touched into translucent too. She made a motion of grabbing with her tails and took off a chunk of the meteor.

“T-that w-as e-easy.” She sprawled on the ground and panted.

‘You are a bag full of tricks, you surprise me every time.’

‘Hmph, m-my r-oyal self is awesome.’

Rydel looked at her and decided to not comment on her state.

‘Do you need my help with creating your artifact?’

‘Yes, t-the formation that I’m going to use requires the assistance of two people.’ Naveena had regained a bit of her breath and started taking things out of her pendant.

‘Since when was your pendant enchanted with spatial enchantment?’ Rydel was surprised.

‘From the very beginning, of course, my mother gifted it to me as a faraway gift.’ Neena looked at her pendant with tenderness.

‘See? I’ve told you, she’s always watching for you.’ Rydel gently patted her.

Contrary to expectations, he didn’t feel betrayed by her keeping this a secret from him. In fact, he felt relieved.

This meant that he wasn’t taking advantage of Naveena from the beginning, and she was forced to accept his terms trying to seek any semblance of protection.

She was able to hide things from him that were only revealed after feeling comfortable enough. She had always been a brat full of mischief, but this demonstrated that she could also be calculative when needed.

Different types of resources were taken out one by one. Some of them appeared really valuable; a silver gem that was crystal clear, like a diamond; the eye of a beast that had three triangular pupils interlaced; those were just some of the more bizarre ones.

‘If you had all of these, why did you need the meteor?’ Rydel was confused, he only knew the basic method to create the artifact, which was with life stones and moon-attributed energy.

‘I need the meteors as base material. These materials are only to upgrade the quality of the final result.’ Naveena explained. ‘Go on with your things, I’ll need a while to get a satisfactory quantity of meteors.’

After being shooed away, Rydel thought about his own problems.

The white pebble on his soul space had barely seen any growth. It had constantly been bathed by his spiritual energy, but the pebble only took a minuscule part of his energy every time that his cultivation technique rotated.

He suspected that it was the pebble only taking the purest part of his spirit. He’d normally appreciate this, as the quality of his moon artifact would eventually become incredible.

Just that he didn’t have the time to wait so much. There was a real risk for the moon artifact to become useless if the growth wasn't able to keep up with his regeneration. As he was constantly transforming his normal spiritual energy into one with the moonlight affinity.

It was still quite far away from this point, but now that he had the opportunity, then he’ll make use of it.

As his artifact was in his soul space, he couldn’t quite just take a chunk as Naveena and shove it through his head. Well, he could, but he preferred not to.

It would have to be in the old-fashioned way. Rydel sat next to the meteor and sat down to meditate.

He had learned how to absorb a life stone from Galather, even though it was something reserved only for the Ascended. It’d be quite a waste for a mortal to cultivate with life stones, as their bodies weren’t able to process much of its energy, making the result lackluster for such an expensive resource.

Rydel extended his spirit in the shape of tendrils and mentally willed them to absorb the energy inside of the meteor.

At first, nothing happened. It had the same result as licking a rock. Rydel willed even more for his spirit to absorb what was hiding from him, and with time and perseverance, he was rewarded.

Rydel now understood why Galather had said that about life stones. The purity of the energy that he just absorbed was low, the haze of energy that entered his body was murky.

This didn’t discourage Rydel. The energy inside had a spatial affinity that fulfilled the requirements of one of his skills, Space Dweller. This skill allowed him to survive in space by absorbing the energy of the special type of energy found in the vacuum of space.

The meteor was filled with this type of energy. It was a succulent treat for Rydel, and he was probably the only elf that was able to absorb this energy.

Removing the affinity from the meteors would cost so much that it wouldn’t be worth it for the mortal elf. And for the Ascended, the life stones were much better options.

He redirected the energy to his head, where it immediately entered his soul space. The pebble was like a ravenous beast eating for the first time, it attracted the spatial energy, making its size increase just a little.

The growth of the pebble didn’t satisfy Rydel. He would only be here for a day, and he still needed to help Naveena with her formation.

He unleashed the full force of his spirit, making hundreds of tendrils that sucked the meteor for all it was worth. The murky energy kept entering his body, and after a full circulation entered his soul space to be devoured.

The moon artifact tripled its size in no time and kept growing without showing any signs of stopping anytime soon. Rydel immersed himself in the sensation and didn’t take notice of the time.

‘Ryd, Ryd, Ryd!’ Someone shouted at him from a distance, before flicking his forehead.

“Ouch.”

‘That happened for ignoring me for the last hour. I was waiting for you to regain your senses for yourself, but it seemed that you’d have kept immersed for a couple of months more if you could.’

“How much time has passed?”

‘You’ve been meditating for half a day.’ She responded. ‘Come, I need your help with this.’

Naveena went to the fully formed formation that was next to them. It was big, with countless circles that had inside the materials that she had taken out before. In the center, there was a pile of meteors half his size in height.

Rydel wasn’t able to infer much about the formation, as it was honestly quite advanced, and used techniques that were different from the ones that he was used to.

One thing was for certain, the end result would be astonishing.