Aimless Ascension

A pained expression appeared on Saarya\'s face as she regarded him. "Yes, there are other ways," she said, "but none of them showed even a glimmer of hope for success. Although you had your head in the right place, you lacked the much-needed drive to rise to the challenge."

"So you decided to play dead after saving me?" Gale glowered at her.

"Yes," Saarya admitted, pain showing through her expression.

"I hope your scheme worked," Gale shouted at her, turning his face, "even if it broke me."

"It did," Saarya said, appearing before him. She touched his cheek with her palm, drawing his head to look at her. "If not for the Thunderfiend, you would have already reached the point where I needed you."

Gale still glowered at her, even though he knew fairly well that he couldn\'t stay angry at her for much longer.

"During the battle with the Thunderfiend," Gale asked, remembering, "you were there with me, right?"

"I am always with you," Saarya answered, her right palm reaching for his left palm. She drew his left palm up, showing the spiral fate mark that reached his elbow. "So long you have this mark."

The surroundings changed again, and this time it was a cramped up lab inside the hot mine.

"I was with you from the beginning, moulded you, prepared you for what you bear and what is to come," Saarya said as Gale recognised the memory of this room.

This is where he was killed for the first time.

"I was with you when you had to kill for the first time," Saarya said.

In the middle of the room, younger Gale fought with the elderly Theodore. In his early novice days, he hadn\'t noticed how he defeated the Oldman, who was clearly a Silver ranker, but now he saw.

He saw how invisible energy kept the Oldman in place, leaving him completely open for his attack.

"This wasn\'t a dream," Saarya said, "and you know it. But this was as much I could have done for you with my limited ability in the real world."

"All the sneeze, goosebumps or other alert of danger that I dismissed as my superlative intuition," Gale said, understanding blossoming in his mind. "All those were you?"

"You can say that," Saarya said.

The scene changed yet again, showing a different portrayal of the fights Gale had to overcome in the mine. In all those times, she helped him without his notice. Sometimes she merely alerted him; sometimes she slowed down his opponent that was about to deal critical damage, sometimes...

The scene changed to the time when she sacrificed her life for him.

Gale was chased out by over a dozen guards, beaten and battered. Being a copper ranker, he had no chance of making it against even one of them in a fair fight.

That was when Saarya\'s figure appeared in the middle out of nowhere.

"Live!" That was the only word she uttered at that time, before she shoved him into a portal of her creation. She combusted dozens of Fire crystal bombs after that to kill herself along with the dozen guards.

Teen Gale watched it all from the other side of the portal as it closed with Saarya\'s body crumbling into the explosive fire.

Gale saw the truth now. In reality, Saarya didn\'t really have a physical body for her figure to incinerate in the explosion. Her body was completely spiritual, and was living linked to his body, to the mark on his left wrist.

"I\'m sorry for what I did," Saarya said, clasping his palm. "At that time, I deemed all this necessary."

"All my life," Gale cried, "All this time, I have been living a lie."

Saarya hugged him, she had no other words to relieve him of the pain he was feeling now.

"I never lied to you, Gale,\'\' she said after a while. "I hid the truth from you because you weren\'t ready, but I never lied to you."

That did little to relieve the pain of betrayal.

"You simply didn\'t hide the truth," Gale said, "you made my life difficult too, knowingly or unknowingly."

"I know, I\'m sorry for all the wrong I did to you."

"And you\'re still not giving me the complete truth," Gale said.

"I wish I could," Saarya said, "but you weren\'t ready for it. Not until you make the Void Lock completely yours."

Gale glowered at her, exiting from her embrace. "You are lying again."

"I am not," Saarya said, her expression hurt.

"You most likely think it isn\'t right for me to listen, not because you can\'t tell me."

"You don\'t understand," Saarya said. "The pain and torture I\'m going through, you won\'t understand without seeing it, without. . ."

"Show me then,"

"I can\'t."

Gale snorted. "You said you never lied to me," he said as he walked to the familiar terrains. "What about the time you told me you took six steps into spiritual arts, all the manipulation you did, including the spatial teleportation, all that isn\'t possible for a jade ranker."

"That\'s because I\'m not a jade ranker."

Gale glowered at her, turning his head.

Saarya laughed ruefully. "I only told you I took six steps on the path," she said. "That doesn\'t necessarily entail Jade rank. I was born Gold, and I took six steps after that, rendering me to stand just below the Primordial Gods."

There were twelve steps to absolute divinity, from copper to the Axiom of divinity. And Saarya already reached the tenth step, which brought a chilling thought to his mind: Who left her as an incomplete spirit like this?

"I was betrayed," Saarya said, figuring out his intention, "that is as far as I can tell you."

"What about the names then?" Gale asked, "Saarya, Sumei, Aariama. Are there any more you used to hurt me that I\'m not aware of."

A clear pained expression appeared on her face at his jab of accusation. But Saarya collected herself quickly.

"I\'m ancient, lived for over ten thousand years," she said, leading him to swallow. "In those thousands of years, I have over a thousand names and titles people used to address me as."

"What are your true name then?"

"All of them are my true name."

"You know what I\'m asking," Gale growled. "Have I heard or read your name in any historical papers?"

"You might have," Saarya answered.

"Might?"

"I\'m not as omniscient about you as you think," she answered. "But I guess there\'s no harm in telling you my true name. Ariha."

"Hmm?"

"Ariha was the name my father picked for me. It means Remedy."

"Ariha of the Sun?" Gale muttered. "That is you?"

Saarya nodded.

"The History depicted you as dead."

"I wish I was dead," Ariha, the lady of the Sun, mumbled and shook her head.

Gale recalled the titbits of information he read about her. Supposedly, Ariha had been born with tremendous potential for celestial radiance. However, she forsook all those and cultivate the power of healing, as she found nothing greater than the smile and gratitude people showered on her after she healed them.

She was supposed to have died in the war that erased the gods from this realm.

But apparently, that wasn\'t the case. She was alive, but Gale couldn\'t say anything about being well.

She was only in spiritual form, a hollow shell of her original self. Only an echo of her lost power.

"Time has been changing," Saarya said, "you can\'t give up after you came this far."

"What do I have to do?" Gale asked, curious to no end. He wanted to know why she played this cruel game with him, but he feared even after knowing that things wouldn\'t go back to the ways it were once before.

"First you have to advance to Gemheart," Saarya—no, she wasn\'t Saarya, but the ancient divinity Ariha—said. "Although this is a bit early, you can solve all that with the opportunity you are presented with."

"What are you talking about?"

"You\'ll know once you wake up from this dream," Ariha said. "Remember, you have to unlock the second release of Void Lock and advance to Gemheart, if you want to save the people who came for you. You have to, if you want to save me."

Gale narrowed his eyes. "What about the corruption? Wouldn\'t it consume more of my spirit when I open myself up for advancement?" Then a glint appeared in his eyes, remembering Ariha was the best of the healers of ancient times when spirit arts had no bounds. "Can it be cured?"

Ariha shook her head in sorrow. "I really wish it was possible," she said. "But there\'s no cure to the corruption, you have to live, keeping it suppressed always."

Finding his excitement collapsing, Ariha continued, "But trust me, it will get easier after you advance. And there are ways to stop it from advancing more into your spirit.

Gale nodded, having no other thought.

"Now it is time for you to wake up," Ariha said. "You spent too many hours in the dream, your women are getting worried."

Gale shot her in the glare.

"Did you dull my senses last night when I mistook Wang Li for Linlin?" Gale asked, his voice filled with accusation.

Ariha didn\'t answer his question, but collapsed the dream.

"Remember, your left hand holds the power to make everything right. You must master that power."

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If you want, you can go back and read all the foreshowings I left behind in previous chapters.

The first volume is supposed to end here, but I pulled over 50k words of content from volume one, I think this feels incomplete as if I didn\'t end what I started.