After extracting a significant amount of Rhydian's blood, Mira distributed it to her companions. However, even after draining Rhydian of quite a bit of blood, she still didn't wake up! Not only that, but she seemed perfectly fine even after she lost all that blood.
Mira truly started wondering how it was possible to have such a lazy pet that can still sleep even when her life is being threatened. Or was her life really threatened since she looks fine?
Regardless, Mira retrieved her blood and now they can begin their search for the Core.
After Mira handed out Rhydian's blood to Maria, Celaine, and Elenei, she started walking in a random direction.
"Let's get moving. We don't have any time to waste. Let's start off by doing this for 12 hours before meeting back here. Remember to keep track of the marks that YOU made, not the marks that the illusions want you to think you made. Also, if you get teleported, just keep an eye out for any marks and follow them until you either reach someone or are able to retrace your steps."
"Sounds like a plan!"
"Alright."
"Ugh… What a pain."
Her three companions responded and started walking in their respective directions. Every 10 meters or so, they would mark the area with Rhydian's blood then continue on their merry way. It didn't take long for them to get the hang of it and so they were able to speed up, but unfortunately, things wouldn't go that smoothly for them.
Mira, unsurprisingly, was the first of the 4 to experience something that she would have really liked for it not to happen so early.
She was jogging at a decent speed, leaving a marker every few seconds, but then all of a sudden her next step disoriented her, teleported her, and put her right in the middle of a bunch of markers that looked exactly the same as the ones she just placed.
Mira felt like she was thrown into a mirror room except she couldn't just take out her scythe and start slashing. This is also when Mira experienced the full terror of this Natural Formation! She could sense the aura coming from those marks was highly similar to the aura left by Rhydian's blood. Although she knew they weren't the same, spotting the real ones in this situation is anything but easy. Who knows if there is even a real tracking marker within all of these illusory ones! She might be surrounded by a bunch of fakes when in reality she is kilometers away from any marker.
Although this was infuriating, it wasn't enough to discourage Mira. So, she began searching for any tracking markers that might be real, but when Mira took her first step, she saw that the illusions kept adding similar-looking tracking markers within her field of vision.
Mira already expected something like that so she wasn't all that surprised, even though she found it slightly annoying.
From that point on, Mira spent the next few hours running in various directions, trying to spot something real. One might think she would have to take it slow, but she knew that she's sensitive enough that as long as a real marker is within her vicinity, she'll be able to spot it. Also, Rhydian is her contracted beast, how can she not tell the real versus the fake?
If Maira or Celaine were in this situation, they might have a bit harder time, but even if they did, they would still be able to spot the real thing as long as they're near it. That's just how powerful and unique Rhydian's blood is. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that it's the only one of its kind! How can a mere Mortal Natural Formation perfectly replicate such a thing?
As for Elenei, well, she's not only much stronger than the three of them combined, but she's also a Phoenix. She probably wouldn't even need to be near Rhydian's blood to know which one is real. Honestly, it's probably a simple matter for her to find that as Elenei's bloodline most likely feels a bit of suppression from Rhydian's blood.
So, really, being teleported around and shown these illusions is nothing more than an annoyance to Mira's group. As long as they kept trying, making markers, and exploring this damn Natural Formation, they would eventually make it out of this place. It would probably take them around a month or so to do that, but that's a relatively short amount of time considering the level of Natural Formation they are currently in.
Getting out of here isn't exactly the problem at this point, it's the 2-week time limit. According to Mira's calculations, just finding the damn center of this place will take at least a few days under perfect conditions. That means no illusions, random teleports, or any of that nonsense. The main reason for that is they don't know how big this place really is. It could span only a few kilometers in diameter or hundreds! If it's the latter, then forget about getting out of this place in 2 weeks. It'll take at least that amount of time just to find the general area of where the center is supposed to be.
Then it'll take some time to find the Core and also the treasures. That doesn't even account for trying to actually leave this place. Mira doesn't even know how long that'll take! In that case, they might be stuck in here for at least a month, probably 2.
But if this Natural Formation isn't that big, they could probably cut this time down, but to make it out of here in 2 weeks? That's still pushing it.
Again, this is also considering the fact that nothing too out of the ordinary happens. As you can see, that's nothing but wishful thinking as it hasn't even been half a day yet and Mira was already teleported and forced to spend hours and hours searching this damn place trying to retrace her steps!
As for how the others are doing? Well, let's just say Elenei is the only one that's doing somewhat fine since she's much stronger, faster, and more sensitive than her human companions.
***
Maria started off like the rest of them and was actually much luckier than them as well. She was able to keep going in a straight line for hours and was actually able to travel several kilometers before something happened.
Well, this wasn't too shocking considering Maria does have a reputation of having high luck and is also incredible at detecting dangers. Though it would be nearly impossible for her to sense any dangers coming towards her, even if she knew something was about to happen, what? Could she dodge it? Would she even know where it's coming from? Probably not.
Unfortunately, Maria's luck didn't hold out for long as soon she was teleported away, but instead of her being sent to a place similar to where Mira was thrown to, Maria actually ended up underground!
