Despite being unable to use my cultivation abilities from the fear of messing up with Eve"s state due to our dual spirituality, I was still able to traverse the scorched land with a speed unimaginable for your everyday humans.
But no matter how fast I was, when I got to run through the endless expanses of the empty, dust-covered ground, my mind quickly become bored of this mundane task. While I could use some of my explosions or even flight spell to considerably shorten the time required for me to reach the green area of this land, I didn"t dare to use them with my chaos magic still being a big question mark instead of known territory.
Using the free time that I had on trying to figure out the whole entropy thingy didn"t bore any fruit either, as my constant movement made me unable to observe anything closely.
After almost an hour of travel, I was finally able to reach the line of the forest, ditching the idea of exploring my new possibilities for later. Looking at the state of the continuous crumbling of the vegetation under the slow advance of the mana tendrils extending here all the way from the tower, I preferred to focus on the task at hand instead of trying to figure out something I knew literally nothing about.
And there was a lot for me to understand, looking from the constantly falling trees and bushes, unable to reach the ground before bursting into a pile of thick dust that dispersed itself into the air before it even had the chance to settle down.
What I initially took for the area unaffected by the parasitic core, was just a frontline between life and the sucking properties of the mana tendrils, that was clearly s.h.i.+fting to the parasitic core side.
No matter where I looked, the sight was the same.
The trees that looked old enough to be surrounded with a fence and guarded day and night as the witness of the time past on earth, were falling down under the relentless a.s.sault of the energy-sucking tentacles, that didn"t even bother to show up as they killed more and more of flora.
No matter how apocalyptic this sight looked like to me, there was no point in lingering here for longer than it took me to a.s.sess the situation.
The core was expanding its area of influence? That was good news for me! Even if watching the dying forest brought a sense of humility and guilt, it was nothing when compared with the importance of saving Eve!
Pa.s.sing the line of the war between life and the death, I didn"t feel anything special, except for the fact that for the first time in what felt like ages for me, I was surrounded with life instead of an empty plot of unfertile land.
Even if my previous battle resulted in most of the beasts from this forest going extinct, without any knowledge how was this piece of land was, I wasn"t going to take any chances.
Casting the barrier for as long as it took me to get my vision slightly blurred, I finally proceeded forward.
But it was nothing that I expect it to be.
Even if I was able to find some of the weak beasts rather quickly, seeing how frightened those animals were of my presence, I didn"t even pursue them. I could get by without any food for quite a long time, so there was no point in pointlessly killing them just for the sake of indulging in the joy of eating meat, and the amount of experience that they would give me would be most likely, pitiful.
Moving past what looked like deserted lairs of various beasts, it didn"t take me long to reach a d.a.m.ned beach!
Even when taking into account how fast I was, I had to account for the fact that moving through the thick vegetation slowed me down considerably, making the distance that I travelled rather short.
Since going in a straight line would only bring me to the other entrance of the sea, I moved to the sands on the sh.o.r.e and trodded on the beach while making a rough guess where the sealine that I saw before would be located compared with my current position.
Sadly, it appeared that I either miscalculated or was wrong about my location in the first place. After only an hour of a calm jog through the sands, I could already see the line at which the forest ended and gave way to the familiar expanses of the death.
Just for the sake of confirming, I hastened my steps toward the line only to recognise the familiar pattern of events at the very front of the vegetation.
Closing my heart for the emotions invoked by the continuous and constant death of plant life, I turned around and speed up.
There was no point lingering on the route I already took for any longer than necessary. The only difference with my approach was the fact that I extended my spiritual sense as far as I could, hoping to find some medicinal plants that I could harvest before the entirety of this forest would be gobbled up by my parasitic core.
But there was no such thing as a free meal in this world. I could only guess that all the possibly valuable materials were in the deep part of the forest, that was already subjected to the fate of becoming my core nourishment.
As I jogged forward, I realised that I already pa.s.sed the point where I started moving on the beach quite a while ago. Slowing down my speed, I intended to extend my perception area even further to make sure I wouldn"t miss anything now that I was heading towards the deeper part of the land I found myself in, but I was met with an unpleasant surprise instead.
It took me only a few more minutes to reach the small hill, behind which only the land of the dead extended!
Summing things up, I was on a d.a.m.n island!
The only good point about this situation was the fact that I could spot at least three more landma.s.ses in the distance, but considering what kind of monster visited this land from the sea, I was quite worried about intruding the dominium of the aquatic kingdom!
Seeing that all my travels, fighting and experiments lasted for the entire day already, I moved back to the tower, to get some rest before deciding what to do next. With how bare this island was, it was certain that I had to venture somewhere else in order to grow stronger.
Even if there was a way to a.s.similate all the energy from the parasitic core to force the evolution of my system and breakthrough my current limits, it would mean risking the fate of Eve, which I wasn"t ready to bet on.
I guess I will have to consider using the teleportation once again!