Luna ran without stopping. Her pursuer also seemed reluctant because she still sensed its incredible bloodlust.

  Why did it even want her so badly? The damn thing had been observing her from the very start. Waiting for the right moment to strike. Had the coldness affected her awareness? Is that why didn't sense it until it was close enough?

  ‘If only I had a power.’ she cried to herself.

  The beast's gigantic silhouette was moving in the dark depths. Its tentacles moved with great force to add to its speed.

  Luna herself was incredibly fast, even in her poor state. But the creature was fast enough despite being the size of about five submarines.

  After all, it was moving in its natural element.

  Luna continued desperately running, relying on her qi sense to navigate the tough snowstorm. Her purser would attack sometimes, its dark tentacles tearing through both ice and wind and attempting to drag her into the water.

  She evaded many of the tentacles successfully by predicting their movements and jumping out of the way just before the ice broke.

  The issue was that there was still no sign of nd no matter how hard she looked. The world was still shrouded in the semi-darkness of twilight and the blizzard was only getting stronger. And to make it worse, Luna was starting to feel tired. Her legs were getting weak and she needed to catch some air.

  If Luna stopped one bit, the crazy was going to make her a meal. The cursed creature was hungry for her life essence. This is what most cursed creatures and infected creatures hunted for in mortals.

  ‘But I feel more dead than alive.’ She cried inwardly as she cut through the terrible storm.

  She was on the verge of losing hope when she finally caught sight of an odd frozen structure growing out of the iced water body. It resembled a leaning modern--building made completely out of frozen white coral. Part of it was submerged in water while the top remained untouched but completely covered in white ice.

  Luna felt an adrenaline rush and increased her pace as she got closer to the white structure. When she entered its vicinity, she felt ticklish as if she had crossed through a mystical barrier. She continued running to it and climbed up and climbed up the cold structure. The pain in her arm made it difficult but she made it to the highest balcony and fell on the frozen surface.

  The first she did was check on her pursuer. A weak smile appeared on her face when she noticed the creature hadn't bothered to get too close to the building.

  ‘The Building is protected.'

  An exhausted sigh escaped her lungs before she dropped to the frozen floor while breathing heavily. The sound of her heart beating wildly could be heard by her ears. Her chest was rising and falling rapidly as she slowly tried to make sense of the world around her.

  The first thing she noticed was that here, in the building made of coral, the blizzard wasn’t as powerful as it was around it. The winds were still strong and persistent. But not powerful enough to blow a human away as it was outside the building’s territory.

  When she felt rexed, she dismissed her helmet and crawled to the corner away from the balcony. She curled up and pced her head on her knees. Now that the adrenaline was gone, the dread finally kicked in.

  The thought of almost dying had left Luna trembling in absolute fear. She was so scared that tears started trickling down from her eyes. Luna could no longer hide the terror she felt at the moment. In just moments, this level of the tower had proven that it was worse than the desert.

  And to make it worse, this wasn't pnned for. While here, Luna was forced to navigate and learn about this level all by herself. She had no Shin to see acts coming or a powerful group of ascenders to fight by her side. “I had become too dependent on them.”

  That was very true. Luna had grown comfortable with her cohort and forgotten that she was alone in this world. And now, reality was making sure she remembered her loneliness.

  The good side of all of this is that she had noticed her own growth from battle to battle. Her overall skills were now sharper and better. Her use of qi sense was more impressive and she felt like her control over her physical strength had improved.

  ...So, it wasn’t as bad as one would think. Humans have faced worse things than this.

  ‘Alright.’ She sniffed and wiped away her tears. She had made it this far for gods’ sake.

  “Listen to me fates. I won’t die in this pce. Countless times I thought that death was the best thing for a failure like me. But…I am not the same idiotic depressed girl who bmed the world,” she squeezed into fists. The gods had already sent the world ruin. Accepting her situation would mean she had accepted the fate of her world. “I will kill that thing, find the teleportation circle, kill its guardian and whatever shit it's protecting and I will advance to the next floor, damn it!”

  Her voice could barely be heard in the wind. But she wasn’t trying to talk to anyone. She was shouting at herself or any entity out there that controlled her fate.

  The concept of having imaginary strings attached to every person always annoyed her. It's those imaginary strings that gave her this strength and gifts. Those imaginary strings made her a Feng.

  And yet, they banished her from the divinity that gave purpose to her people.

  It was her fate to lose her father at a young age…

  It was her fate to learn the secrets of their world…

  It was also her fate that she was here.

  Luna had never been a believer in things like destiny and fate. She always believed that people made those two concepts to give reason to their pathetic lives whether beautiful or filled with misfortune. Luna believed that logic was the answer to everything. The world before the fall was great because humans followed logic. They built empires with logic and developed incredible technology with logic.

  They changed the world with logic.

  However, as of now, no sort of logic could help expin what was happening to her. This was fate at py. Fate is what lead her to this damn tower. Fate is why she had inherited generational blood and became so good at whatever she was supposed to be good at.

  ‘The god of fate must be ughing at me from his grave.’

  Fate was the only expnation of her current situation. “I will kill that damn Kraken. It will know that I'm not to be messed with," she hissed as she stared at the frozen water with gritted teeth. The Giant Cursed Creature was still swimming around. Its gigantic body now glowed an ethereal silver hue to inform her that it was still around.

  It’s like it was daring her to come to it.

  “Huh…you want the Sea god’s pet?”

  Luna’s blood turned cold and her bracelet ‘beeped’ as the dispyed number dropped from 90% to 70% in a second. She didn’t hesitate to draw and swing Poison Sin at the being that had just appeared behind her.

  The building trembled when a simir weapon suddenly stopped Poison Sin but with a saw-like bde. With her strength, Luna was confident she could push back the owner of the saw-like bde with no difficulty…

  But, to her surprise, her opponent wasn’t even slightly pushed back even after she added some effort. A hood that wavered in the wind hid her opponent's face.

  “Pretty weak for a person using 30%” She heard a woman’s voice when Luna and her bde were pushed back easily. In the next moment, the figure moved at an incredible speed and struck her in the chest with its palm.

  Luna coughed and dropped her bde once she felt the air leave her lungs. She looked up and dodged another palm strike that was aimed at her face.

  “Quick. As expected of you.”

  “Who are you?” Luna asked weakly. Her voice was barely audible. On top of that, Luna was currently too weak.

  The figure scoffed. “Me?” it then gently removed the cloth over his head to reveal something that surprised Luna herself. “I am someone who has been patiently waiting for you, Lunaris Feng.”

  The strange figure’s most noticeable feature was her bright red eyes which stared at Luna with a strange familiarity. She had a slightly pale complexion and the face of a peaceful young woman in her te twenties.

  However, her presence made her question that assumption because it felt both ancient and powerful. Luna involuntarily stepped back as soon as she noticed that this person was leagues beyond her in terms of strength alone.

  Much as she looked human, there was nothing human about her presence.

  Who was this woman?