The Celestial Land

Chapter 11: Strange Thoughts

Damn, it hurts! Elleste cursed loudly as her body being thrown quite far from the bull. She was lucky that hee body had been strengthened a few times over, if not, with how weak hee previous body was, she would've turned into a pool of blood by now.

She inwardly cussed at the bull, but she cursed whoever named this world with the word 'illusion' more. If Elleste believed that this world was really an illusion, she should just throw her brain away.

"How devious," Elleste scowled.

She quickly got up from the ground with some of her skin slightly peeled off. It was hurt really badly, but Elleste knew that it was the best time to run away right now. Otherwise, if that beast really caught up to her, she, a complete newbie of first stage would be of no match for it at all.

Luckily, she was slammed quite far away from the bull's location. So, ignoring her own pain, she quickly got away.

Either the bull was too far for it to be able to catch up with her, or it was top confident that a puny human who seemed too weak like her would die right away from a mere slam of its body. Elleste didn't know if that were the bull's thoughts, but she didn't really care as long as she can perserve her own life.

As she slowly sat down under a huge tree, Elleste began to inspect her wounds. Some was quite deep as the blood kept on gushing out from them. She was lucky that there were only external wounds after all and no internal injury, or else it would be hard to recover.

"Is this world a real one?" Elleste was puzzled. The pain was too real to be fake. It definitely hurt a lot like hell as she felt that her entire body seemed like it was being skinned alive.

If they were so good at creating illusions that could be mistaken as reality the moment they entered the world, that meant they were too powerful to be able to create something like this. Thankfully, after the upgrading of her new body, she also recovered at much faster rate than a normal human.

However, Elleste still felt rather confused in her heart. It was as if something didn't sit well with her. She still remembered Leon's words. He said that those beasts used for training were just like the name of the world suggest; illusions, yet, what she experienced seemed to be a complete reality.

She still had some doubts in her heart about it. After all, she had just been in this world for around a year and she still hadn't known a lot of things. Did the implications of the word illusion in their dictionary was different from hers?

Whatever it was, Elleste knew that she shouldn't take a gamble. It was involving her life after all. One step wrong and her life would be the one being on line. She should just treated this as reality.

What she needed to do right now was to survive this trial. More importantly, she must recover herself first to return to her peak power. Although the power of first stage was nothing before higher stages, at least Elleste needed the strength to retreat when facing them; only then, there were the possibility of survival.

Ignoring the pain, Elleste tried to get up. She looked around to search for suitable place for healing. Elleste finally managed to find a tree trunk huge enough to support her whole body. The place was quite high as she'd make sure that those scary tall beings wouldn't be able to reach there at all.

As Elleste climbed up tree, her whole body trembling as she did so. Although she recover quite fast, it was still not enough to make her whole wounds being closed.

Gritting her teeth, Elleste tried to ignore the pain as she tried to reach the place. And right at this moment did she realized how cruel this world was. Perhaps, there would be more pain in the future if she continued to tread on this path.

This is a world where the strong are respected after all, and more importantly, they could survive.

There were only two choice for Elleste to make now. Either she struggled to stay alive or she should just completely disappear from here.

After enduring the pain for some time now; that it felt like centuries had passed despite being some mere minutes, Elleste finally arrived at the trunk she had aimed for.  Gasping for breath as she sank in a sitting position, Elleste tried to calm herself.

Slowly, the pain began to subside and Elleste suddenly felt numb. She knew that in this condition, and as a mere first stage, she couldn't even cast the healing spell; there was also a great chance at failing and receiving backlash if she didn't possess a calm temperament.

Elleste chose to focus on absorbing the nature energy instead. In this place, she could see that the nature energy was a lot more dense. She began to position her own body in a meditative state.

Days passed slowly as she sat there, unmoving. Elleste was immersed completely in a strange state, much stranger from when she experience the feeling of absorbing nature energy for the first time. It was as if she was in a completely different, yet the same world at the same time.

Elleste was in that state for quite some time until a week passed and most of her injuries had been recovered completely. Her eyes opened little by little. Now, she was calm as she gazed at her surroundings.

Elleste was a bit stunned by what she found. The surrounding looked more clear more than what she remembered last time. It seemed that her eyes or rather her body had undergone some kind of baptism.

She was about to check her body more throughoutly when suddenly her stomatch growled loudly that Elleste herself felt suprised. She was feeling so hungry right now. Sighing, Elleste looked around and then made a decision.

"I will just go catch some little animals then." Elleste muttered to herself. "If only that damned bull just suddenly drop dead in front of me would just have been better, so I can cook it to satisfy my hunger. But, that's impossible. Ah, I must be so hungry that I start going out of my mind."

She slowly climbed down from the tree, holding the staff in her hand rather tightly in case of something unexpected may came up and ambushed her. After confirming that it was safe, Elleste began to walk away.

She caught some birds along the way. They had beautiful colors; some like a peacock with colorful feathers and some just had one color in them, but no less beautiful. Looking at those birds, Elleste almost didn't want to hurt them, but she needed to do it to survive.

Elleste sat down, looking at the few birds that had their feet tied with troubled expression. However, after some time she just shook her had regretfully and began to lit the fire with the spell she had learned before.

The fire had just gotten bigger when suddenly Elleste senses a strange sound of commotion headed her way. She looked around with alarm and stood up with caution. But, what what happened after that just left her rather anxious.

The bull that had almost killed her was running crazily at her direction. Elleste almost lost her wits as she retreated to give it a way. The damned thing seemed to be scared by something that made it run so fast, faster than when it was chasing after her. This also increased Elleste's caution. After all, she couldn't even handle the bull, then no need to ask of whatever thing that could even make the bull felt threatened.

Just as Elleste about to run away, the bull's eyes; amidst its panic accidentally caught the sight of her. Elleste could almost see the shock that went through the bull's mind as it saw that Elleste still alive.

The thought of the bull wanting her dead just made her rather pissed that she wished the bull would just drop dead right away. Seeing that the bull was looking at her, Elleste glared back at it.

However, whar happened next was completely left her taken aback. The bull seemed to be distracted by her appearance that it didn't notice the long sword piercing through its throat, almost cutting it off. Then, it was dead. Completely drop dead in front of her just as Elleste had wished before that it rendered Elleste absolutely speechless.

"Holy crap," Elleste exclaimed loudly, still in the state of disbelief.

Despite its previous' arrogance, Elleste almost felt pity towards it, but she just quickly wiped that feeling off. She shouldn't feel pity to the beings that tried to kill her like this. If she had this mindset, she wasn't sure of her own survival in the future.

Elleste then remembered something and looked around vigilantly. She remembered that there was something more powerful than the bull chasing after it. Elleste didn't want to get tangled with that kind of being right now.

"Eh, Elleste Lunaria?" A familiar voice made her stop dead in her tracks, and Elleste turned around to face that familiar acquaintance.