The tree they rested under was dead. Its green bark was blackened and split, its roots twisting through the cracked earth like skeletal fingers. The battle through the rural forest and fields had been relentless—hours upon hours of blood, sweat, and endless slaughter. The corpses of monsters lay behind them in piles, their flesh already decaying, sinking back into the diseased land that had birthed them.
Dasha leaned against the tree, his arms and legs crossed, his wounds closing with eerie precision. Internal Healing. His body was already regenerating, the Qi pathways within him restoring torn muscle, knitting bone, sealing ruptured flesh. He felt the energy flow through him, warm and cold, yin and yang.
Sun-young, however, was not so fortunate.
She sat opposite him, her Templar armor battered, torn in places where monster claws had cut through. A deep gash ran across her left thigh, the exposed skin marred with bruises. She was breathing steadily, her expression impassive, but even Dasha could tell she was pushing past pain.
He reached into his sleeve, retrieving a small vial filled with translucent blue liquid. A high-grade healing potion. Without a word, he tossed it to her.
Sun-young barely glanced at it. She caught it and she hurled it back at him. Dasha caught it.
"I don’t need it."
’No, it’s not that you don’t need it, you simply can’t take it. Anti-magic corruption.’
For all her power, there was a price.
Sun-young’s War Class—the Anti-Magic Swordsman—was a force that defied logic. It erased enchantnts, devoured spells, nullified sorcery in its entirety. It made her a nightmare against anybody with mana or Qi. Even Dasha himself.
But it also ant that magic could not aid her.
Dasha’s mind clicked through the implications instantly. ’Healing potions won’t work. Recovery spells will fail. The stronger her anti-magic becos, the harder it will be to heal her.’
In other words, the only person who could heal Sun-young...
...was soone vastly stronger than her.
Anyone weaker or equal to her in strength would find their magic nullified on contact. A brutal drawback.
Sun-young slowly stood, rolling her shoulders. The way she moved was telling—controlled, deliberate, masking the fact that she was still in pain. Dasha noted it, but he did not comnt. If she could fight, that was all that mattered.
He pushed off the tree. The cult’s base was near.
The forest around them gained colour, no longer the black twisted wasteland of before. Here, leaves possessed so greenery and the dirt paths were authentic. When they started walking, Dasha’s eyes darted left and right, up and down. Checking, checking, checking.
"Stop."
Sun-young imdiately did. She was two steps ahead and looked over her shoulder. Dasha had crouched, examining the ground.
Footprints.
Small ones.
Children.
But layered on top of them, larger prints—adults.
Dasha’s eyes narrowed.
"The cult kidnapped them," he murmured to himself. "But they didn’t carry them."
No drag marks, no signs of resistance.
That ant only one thing.
"They walked willingly."
A soft exhale escaped him. Hypnosis.
He traced his fingers along the dust, committing every detail to mory.
Sun-young stood beside him, her gaze unreadable. "What do you an?"
"The cult cast hypnosis on the giants to get through the Great Wall," Dasha said. "They did the sa to children and to local witness’, I suspect."
"Is that possible? Is it one man alone acting on this or multiple?"
"It could be one, it could be more. Hard to say. Nobody was able to catch the kidnappers and if his abilities are great enough, it is possible for him to go from area to area in record ti."
A more reckless warrior might have assud the cult had used force. But no—the footprints were too even, too orderly. The children had not struggled. Dasha slowly rose.
The Serpent Cult was close. Sun-young adjusted the grip on her wooden sword. There were no words exchanged. There was no need. They moved west. With the passing minutes, the footprints grew denser more and more.
Dasha’s sharp eyes traced the patterns in the dirt. More children. More adults. The paths intertwined, forming a web of direction, all converging at a single point.
The shack.
It stood at the edge of a ruined square, surrounded by the skeletal remains of old buildings. The structure itself was deceptively simple—aged wooden planks, a slanted roof with missing shingles, a crude door with no visible lock. It looked no different from the other crumbling hos of the rural Slums. Far apart and abandoned. In the midst of dark green forestry and dirt.
But Dasha knew better.
This was it.
Hidden behind a tree, he scanned the area for any obvious traps.
Sun-young remained still beside him, her battered white armor stained with monster blood, her wooden sword resting against her shoulder. She made no move to enter. She simply waited.
Dasha turned his head slightly toward her. "I’ll go in alone."
She didn’t react at first, simply watching the shack with those sharp, unreadable eyes.
"Alone?" Mada Sun-young finally repeated.
"I’ll use my invisibility cloak. Scout from inside," Dasha said. The fabric on his form shimred and the texture montarily blended seamlessly into the environnt.
Sun-young didn’t protest. She didn’t need to.
Dasha vanished.
Dasha moved like a shadow, his heartbeat silent, his breathing so controlled that it barely existed. No one could see or hear him. Not even the dust beneath his boots stirred.
But what he saw was...unexpected.
The shack was lively. The serpent cult as it was referred to was indeed a cult. Cultists—dozens of them—sat cross-legged around strangely ornate board gas. Circular boards, like spiraling coils of a great serpent.
hen.
This was an old, old ga, ant to symbolize the journey of the soul through the underworld. Moving the ’Ba’, the soul of a deceased, through the underworld via the body of the snake deity hen to be with Ra. Nothing serious but that was the lore and narrative implication: the sa way the goal of the snake was to traverse a dungeon in snakes and ladders. Advancent in the ga occurred by guessing the number of marbles in the other player’s fist.
The shack’s innards should have felt sinister. But there was sothing almost peaceful about the way they played. Orderly. Rhythmic. Like a ritual.
’It’s back.’
Now that he was far enough, his Qi Sense was back. It flared powerfully and he could observe them with his full might. The cult mbers themselves were nothing. ’Either or Mada Sun-young could kill these people. No, it’s not them...’
Sothing was beneath them.
His gaze sharpened. Magic circles.
The boards were positioned perfectly above them, covering intricate inscriptions etched into the very floor.
Dasha narrowed his eyes. ’These are not just symbols for any spell...’
This was Territory Creation. The ultimate magic. The magic of the gods. A pocket dinsion. A controlled space.
Dasha now understood. This shack was a gate. A portal. The cultists weren’t hiding the children here. They were moving them elsewhere.
He stepped backward, never making a sound.
He had seen enough.
Back outside, the Templar Knight known as Sun-young hadn’t moved. Dasha’s flickered back into existence.
Her dark eyes flickered toward him. "What did you see?"
"The children were not inside," Dasha said. "But I believe I know where they are."
Sun-young listened in silence as he explained.
"The cult mbers were inside. No threat to us. I suspect these people are simply believers. The ones that fetch food or spread their gospel. I doubt any of them kidnapped the children. What I found out was that the floor was marked with hidden magic circles beneath the ga boards. That ans this shack isn’t just a hideout. It’s a portal to a pocket dinsion. A Territory Creation. We may be dealing with a god, Mada Sun-young."
Sun-young’s fingers tightened slightly around her sword.
"Then I will eliminate it with my anti-magic—"
"Don’t."
She stopped.
Dasha’s voice was calm but firm. "If you collapse the Territory, everyone inside—including the children—will likely die."
Sun-young was quiet.
Dasha continued. "We can presu, however, that the kidnapped children hold a special function greater than the cultists. A role that is managed by their leader."
Sun-young exhaled. "And the leader is inside the Territory with the children? As well as being the hypnotizing abductor?"
Dasha nodded. "That’s the only logical conclusion." A pause. Dasha turned his head toward the shack, then back to her. "I believe I can figure out a way for us to get inside the Territory. All you need to do is draw their attention."
******
"Territory Creation: Alongside the Eternal Emperor, the Old Mage Tower nad and ’invented’ the theory of Territory Creation. Too many conditions are necessary for the skill and so not even the System can compute it. It is a theorem that was drawn up after observations of the gods who used their energy to establish their own territories.
Territory Creation began the broader, more common use of multiple magic circles and is among the earliest classifications of Supre Magic. A common myth states that it was in fact the Kingslayer who established the first player Territory Creation."
- A Lesson in the Mage Tower’s Old History, 166 HE
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