The air was silent as Damien fell. There was no whoosh. No howl. Nothing. Only silence... And the mist. It saturated everywhere, wrapping around him like a cocoon as he continued to fall. It also blocked out his vision, which made it hard to see where he was falling.

  Damien didn't worry, though; he could always fly back up. He'd been reluctant to try that given the atmosphere and the strange feeling it gave him, but risk had to be taken if he wished to get back up there to his brother. To the monster that had thrown him down here.

  Damien's will wrapped around his body, engulfing him in a second layer of protection. With that, he willed himself upward... and only had a moment of wide-eyed surprise before he crashed back down, harder than before.

  His vision blacked out for a second as he felt the backlash of something rejecting his command over reality.

  By the time the pain in his mind finally vanished, Damien was already on the ground.

  He crashed down with such force that the air in his lungs rushed out in an oomph sound. There was a crack and another sharp blinding pain, which fortunately saw his previously dislocated shoulder reattach itself. Though the burning pain in his arm still remained.

  Damien gritted his teeth as he simply lay there on the rocky ground. He wanted to get back his breath before he rose to deal with whatever it was that was responsible for his unfortunate setback, because what in the celestial's balls was that?!

  Damien had passed through this location right before they stepped into the curtain of mist, and he was very certain that there hadn't been a cliff anywhere around.

  The first answer that cropped up in his mind was that the phenomenon had been the working of a Space affinity creature, but Damien soon discarded that thought. He would have detected it had a working as tricky as teleportation been carried out anywhere in his vicinity.

  But would I? He frowned.

  Looking around, the atmosphere was still saturated with the strange mist which still had the unfortunate effect of restricting his senses. Because of this, Damien reckoned that it probably wouldn't be strange if he had failed to grasp any working being carried out close to him.

  With that thought, he heightened his wariness. If there was a space affinity monster around, who knew what else was lurking in the surroundings? An ambush like the one carried out by the second centipede, but this time with more than one of the creepy monsters could easily see him suffering a gruesome injury.

  Though I've still got an issue to deal with at the moment, he thought as he brought up his burning arm to his face, grimacing at the long gash on it and, more alarmingly, the webs of black lines spreading from it.

  Venom, Damien recognized.

  Thankfully, it was from a monster a tier below him, else he wouldn't be this calm. The effects of this one wouldn't result in anything too serious, though the pain was something he'd have to find a solution for, else it became a huge detriment for when he came across more powerful monsters. Because there was no doubt about that.

  There were other ways to deal with poisons if one didn't have a healing wielder nearby. Unfortunately, it only worked against poisons from weak opponents, which luckily, the centipede that had inflicted him had been.

  Damien didn't have a wide area to heal, which made it all the more better. The feeling he got from that stuff always made him... uncomfortable.

  Destruction energy roared within him, and Damien directed it at the injured arm. The essence of destruction clashed with the essence the venom was composed of, and Damien gnashed his teeth together as an intense chill settled over him, followed by an intense heat the next instant. Unsurprisingly, his element won, and Damien breathed out a sigh of relief.

  Don't slack off, Damien, he cautioned himself. Not all monsters would be as weak as that one. You don't want to suffer through the agony of having to deal with a poison from a mid-tier monster, which would be worse since there's no healer nearby to save you from any fatal effects.

  With all that taken care of, it was time to find his way back.

  Damien moved to the right since that was where the cliff was. If he couldn't fly, then climbing would have to do.

  Except when Damien approached where he was certain the cliff had been a second ago, there was nothing. He felt nothing.

  Damien stretched his hands, expecting to feel rocks or something, but he felt nothing, so instead he used his spear, grimacing when it yielded the same result.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  When I find whoever is responsible for this, I'm going to flay them alive and use their hide as a cape against the mist.

  Honestly, Damien would have loved to panic. Panic was good. But he knew how unhelpful it would be. Keilan was going to be fine. He wasn't as helpless as he looked.

  With that, Damien turned around to the left... And promptly fell with a plomp into a body of water.

  A brief spike of Panic lanced through his mind before he got himself under control. With tightly held calmness, Damien leveled his head out of the water and then used his spear for direction. A quick turn around with his spear leading the way saw him scratching against something hard and uneven, so Damien moved towards it.

  It took a few seconds, but Damien managed to reach the shore, and then, shifting his spear to the left, he brought his right hand up to—

  "Oh, no you don't," Damien said just as something clamped down on his knee. He raised his other foot to slam down but was jostled and a second later, dragged under.

  Damien let go of the rock that he'd been holding, shifted his spear back to his right hand, and prepared to do an underwater battle.

  Keilan grunted, stabbing his spear once again into the centipede below him. It released a weak screech, a far cry from the massive, headache-induced ones it had released earlier at the start of the fight, and then it went slack, dead, like its brethren before it.

  He jumped down from the corpse, grunting from the fatigue of it all. Fighting a monster with nothing but his will and a spear was already taking its toll on him.

  Unlike the first one, this one had been a massive pain, and he was glad Damien hadn't been there to see it. The amount of times Keilan had had himself flung into the sky was too embarrassing.

  By now all the open parts of his body were filled with cuts and bruises, and it would have been worse had he not been wearing armor.

  The personal armory of Vanis was a thing to behold, and Keilan was thankful for its existence.

  With a sigh, he staggered down the monster's corpse, using its sides to keep himself from falling.

  Reaching the back, he approached the twin, six-foot tall piece of destruction that was its back legs. The ones from the previous monster hadn't given him much to be admirable of. But this one? Yeahh, he was taking those things.

  Keilan stabbed his spear into the tiny piece of flesh connecting the back leg to the hardened body. That was the only part that required less effort.

  A few seconds of grunting saw the first bladed legs collapse with a loud thud to the ground, and a few seconds later saw the second follow behind.

  Thankfully, Keilan didn't have to carry it around. With how weakened he was at the moment, it was a wonder how he was able to lift his spear.

  With a sharp grunt, Keilan lifted the sharpened end of the appendage and then pressed it to the belt. There was no fanfare. No light show. One minute, the leg was in his hands; the next, it was gone. Poof.

  Keilan did the same for the second and then stood up, taking in his surroundings once more. If the fight with the first centipede had been loud, then this one had put it to shame.

  He took a second to rest, or maybe a minute and more. Keilan sat back down on the brittle grass, ignoring the feel as it crumbled underneath him. With a great sigh of satisfaction, he rested his back on the body of the dead centipede.

  He would have preferred a more fleshy hide to rest on, but beggars couldn't be choosers, so he decided he'd have to make do.

  While he rested, he thought about his brother. The first target of the centipede had been Damien, and again, Keilan had watched his brother flung into the air like a toy to come crashing down a few meters from him. The sight would have been funny had Damien not vanished after.

  Keilan's last view of his brother had been of Damien's face, wracked with a grimace, and then he'd been gone.

  Keilan would dearly have loved to simply barge into the mist where his brother had last been seen, but he knew how unwise that was. Damien would have come running back out by now had he been able to, and the fact that Keilan hadn't sensed nor heard the sound of fighting meant that his brother wasn't occupied by another monster.

  The other option would be to wait and see if Damien eventually made it back to this location, but that would also mean sitting ducks for the next monster to come find him. And who knew how powerful the next one would be?

  Damien would be fine, Keilan assured himself, even though a greater part of him thought otherwise. The only thing that stopped him from panicking was that his brother, unlike him, had his full abilities to work with. Short of a Spirit King, no monster should be able to take down Damien, especially with his astral image called.

  With that little bit of consolation, Keilan stood back up, regretting a little bit that he couldn't simply lay down here and sleep for the next nine hours.

  Rest can come later, he thought to himself. But for now, he had to survive this place.

  Thankfully, he'd had a few minutes of rest, and although it wasn't as long as he would have liked, it was still something. It left him with more strength to deal with what he soon detected as a pack of monsters. What kind of monsters they were, though, he didn't know.

  Keilan's grip on his spear tightened when orbs of crimson began appearing all around him, multiplying from a few couple to more than a dozen in seconds.

  "Well, at least I know it isn't another centipede," he muttered just as the wind gathered around him, riding on the command of his will.

  Keilan wouldn't say he was surprised when he saw what those crimson orbs belonged to, after all, this was a Space primarily filled with insects.

  The sight of a scorpion, one with a great deal of height on him—thirty feet? Thirty five?—didn't fill Keilan with as much confidence as he was normally accustomed to.

  He was still injured after all.

  Behind the first monster came more of them, emerging through the mist like wraiths. Their huge, deadly looking claws clamped down repeatedly in what Keilan recognized as an intimidation tactic. And their stingers...

  Keilan's head rose slowly as he traced the smooth onyx carapace up to the twelve feet of terror-inducing launcher pointed down at him.

  At least now he could see the resemblance with their centipede cousins.

  Keilan looked around at the six monsters surrounding him in an inverted crescent shape, and with a shrug, he tried for diplomacy.

  "Is there any way we could settle this amicably?" He hedged. "Like civilized adults."

  He didn't get a worded response, but seeing as instead of retreating as he'd hoped for, they crept forward with their crittering legs digging up deep furrows into the earth.

  Keilan sighed. Well, at least I tried.