"Can we leave now?" Clara asked once Ning and Emma returned to the ground. Even without her sense, she still felt scared being on an island that was in fact a shell of a Divine beast.
Ning nodded. "Let us leave then," he said, grabbing Emma's and Clara's hands before they disappeared.
When they reappeared, Clara looked around with confusion clear on her face.
"Where… are we?" she asked.
The landscape was one of a slanted forest as if it was on the side of a mountain. The land was wet from a recent rainstorm and the sky was mostly dark with thick clouds as well.
The smell of rain still hung in the air, along with some other smell that Clara couldn't tell what it was.
She looked through the forest and saw nothing but trees far past the forest as well. There was not a place in the entire continent that had a place like this.
"Are we back home?" she asked.
"No," Ning said.
"Huh?" Clara turned around to look at him. "What do you mean no?"
"No," Ning said. "As in, we're not at your home, or anywhere near it.
Clara's eyes narrowed in confusion again. She had asked Ning to take her home, even if she didn't word it that way, but he didn't take her back at all.
Ning didn't seem to have any such plan at all. He did accept to leave, and yet… he brought her somewhere entirely different from where they were supposed to be.
"This is a mountain in a special region of the Springwind Continent known as the Beast's land. Hundreds of kilometers on all sides are full of Essence beasts, each of which is strong enough to be in the Essence Manifestation realm, if not in the Essence Soul realm."
"There are even 60 beasts with their own separate area in this place, all of which are in the Stellar Harmony realm."
"As for the Divine realm, there are 3 beasts of that rank in here, but they aren't close," Ning explained. "I'm going to let your Essence sense come back. Don't be afraid."
Clara nodded and Ning let her sense work again.
She cringed a bit, feeling the various essence all around her. The sky thundered, lighting the area in a bright light before leaving it in darkness again.
"Is this a rainforest, papa?" Emma asked. "Not having Divine sense is annoying."
"Haha, you'll get used to it," Ning said and looked at Clara. "Now that your senses are working, I'm sure you can sense it right?"
"Sense what?" Clara asked with a confused look on her face. Was she supposed to sense something?
"Hmm, maybe it doesn't leak as much and is hard for you to sense easily," Ning said. "Try it, you should be able to."
He walked past her, going up the slope while Emma followed behind her father, curious about the whole ordeal.
"Wait, what am I supposed to sense?" Clara asked and quickly ran behind the two so as to not get left behind. As she ran up to them, she realized that she did sense something.
It was vague at first, but when she moved up the mountain, it become stronger.
The air was filled with all sorts of Essences, and this one increased in concentration as she went up.
She arrived next to Emma and Ning who stood in front of an open cave. Arriving at the open cave herself, she could finally sense it so clearly that there was no doubt to her as to what was there.
"Shadow Essence!" she spoke in surprise. She hadn't expected to find Shadow Essence here at all.
Essence crystals by themselves were rare around the continent, and ones with elemental attributes were even rare.
On top of that, something like Shadow was simply too rare to even be found in most locations.
She tried to walk in but Ning blocked her with her arm.
"Your Shadow Essence allows you to hide yourself quite well, doesn't it?" Ning asked freely.
"Huh? Oh yes," Clara said. "It's a technique my father bought from the Springwind continent."
Emma chuckled a bit hearing about that. "He isn't talking to you," she said.
A black puma walked out of the cave with the ony parts of its body that had any sort of color being its purple eyes.
It stared at the three of them, of which it could sense one person as strong as it was. As for the other two, they weren't strong at all.
It could easily bea—
"Are you thinking that you can defeat us?" Emma asked, looking at the beast.
She walked up toward the puma which got ready to attack her. It growled, sending tendrils of shadows to attack her. However, when the attack did come for Emma, she simply flicked her finger, destroying all the tendrils at once.
The force of her flick even caused a thunderous boom that shook the entire mountain.
"Oh… oops," she quickly hid her mouth in embarrassment. "I didn't meant for it to be that strong. Sorry."
Clara's eyes were way too wide at this point. "How…" she whispered. She even wondered if all beings that came from the stars were that strong. Was it just her world that was weak perahps.
The puma shuddered took and tried to run away, but it found that it couldn't move.
Emma arrived right next to it and grinned, petting the beast a little. "What's your name?" she asked the fearing beast.
The Puma looked at her, surprised that it could understand her at all.
"I… I am a Shadow Puma," it answered in its own language. "I have no name."
"Wah! A female beast!" Emma looked happy when she heard its voice. "Papa, papa! Do you think I can keep her?"
"If she agrees, sure," Ning said.
Emma excitedly looked around at the puma and grinned. "Do you want to come with me?" she asked. "If you do, I'll give you a name and I will take you around the world to see the many places you might not have seen before."
