Damien sent Xue’er back to the Sanctuary after giving her a short explanation and some homework, transferring her to Elvira for further training.

The only gripe was that he had to promise to bring her back out when he saw Xiao Yue. Evidently, her rivalry with the girl had formed in full in the few minutes they’d interacted.

He also separated from Elena again. Since she wanted to continue their original plan, he also decided to go along with it.

They compiled the treasures they’d gotten until this point, which weren’t many considering how Elena had been spending her time, and went in opposite directions to once again plunder the realm.

Because this time, they would hold an absolute advantage against any and everyone!

When daylight struck, the realm began to change as well.

As of now, only the atmosphere was being affected, but both Damien and Elena were well aware.

By the time the day was over, no one would be safe from the force.

At the moment, Damien stood above the realm, looking down on it without expression,

‘What do I do now?’

Actually, his strange mood from last night was only partially caused by the ambient aura.

The true reason was more complex.

To put it simply…Damien didn’t know what to do with himself,

He’d reached a level where he couldn’t really identify with the younger generation, because 99% of them could be killed with a single movement of his finger.

He’d been fighting against the older generation, those monsters who’d lived for thousands of years, for so long that he’d forgotten what it meant to be young.

He was only 30, yet his peers were 10,000.

With this kind of disconnect, it was natural to become confused,

‘I didn’t think about it much before because I didn’t have such a visceral comparison presented to me like now. Just when did I go from being the arrogant young genius to the old master that taught him?’

The switch into a teacher mentality happened mainly due to Astoria’s existence, but it came so naturally that Damien didn’t even notice how prominent it’d become.

‘I’m not a damn old man yet. I want to be reckless!’

Frankly, he was pissing himself off with the pure inability to do anything.

He’d become addicted to the constant movement he’d been doing for years now. It wasn’t tiring, it was fulfilling.

He couldn’t just sit still and teach people anymore, acting as a background character in the universe.

That wasn’t what he wanted at all!

‘My true stage is the conference that’ll happen in a month, but I don’t want to just idle here for another month. I thought they’d close the realm down and create new challenges after reassessing our strength, but instead, they just increased the difficulty of the realm itself.’

Now, the only two who didn’t really have a place on Holy Light Star were Damien and Su Ren.

‘Should I go find him…?’

His senses suddenly tingled. His head snapped in a certain direction, where he saw a group of five geniuses traversing the realm.

‘Holy Land geniuses?’ He thought to himself as he felt their aura and peered through their treasures.

‘Maybe I should have some fun…’

Damien still had several goals to accomplish on Holy Light Star, so he couldn’t just leave, but acting normally would just bore him to death!

Was it Xue’er’s influence? Or did that peaceful night have a more profound effect than he expected?

“I feel like I’ve been having mood swings or something. This feeling isn’t fun.”

Despite what he said, Damien felt the playful spirit of his past reawakening.

‘Well, it doesn’t hurt to try, right? Let’s see how they react.’

He threw on a disguise with Void Mana just in case, and—

Bang!

An explosion blanketed the air.

“Keuk…!”

Damien coughed a mouthful of blood as his body shot out of the explosive cloud.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Three more explosions rang out, throwing him around the air like a rag doll before finally slamming him towards the ground below.

BOOOOOOOM!

His body crashed into the earth and blew a massive crater into its surface.

And coincidentally enough, the crater wasn’t too far from the group he observed earlier.

***

“Hm? Senior sister, something seems to have landed over there,” a woman said.

“I noticed. I don’t care, but if you want to go check it, you can,” her Senior Sister responded.

“Senior sister, you’re always so cold!”

“Just go already, don’t whine here.”

“Hmph, fine.”

The woman approached the edge of the crater, her eyes slightly widening once she saw its contents.

“It’s actually…a person?”

“Senior sister, there’s a corpse over here!” She yelled back towards the group.

“Just a corpse? Leave it and let’s move on. We have much to do,” the senior sister said without much interest at all,

However, just as the first woman shrugged and stood up to return…

“It moved!”

…the unknown corpse twitched.

“Senior sister, come over here!” She exclaimed, motioning the whole group to come over.

“Look at this man’s wounds. Isn’t it surprising that the mystic realm didn’t expel him?” She said as her sisters approached.

The one at their head was a woman named Pandora, the same woman referred to as “senior sister” by the rest.

She looked at the body, her cold eyes containing the slightest glimmer of interest.

“The mystic realm expels anyone who takes fatal damage, but that also varies according to what is truly fatal for the genius in question. Since this man is still here, and breathing at that, it is clear that he isn’t some minor character,” she muttered.

“What should we do with him?” One of the women asked.

“What else? Let’s just leave him here and move on,” another one chimed in.

“Senior sister, what’s your opinion?” The first woman, the youngest of the group, asked.

Pandora furrowed her brow in thought.

Finally, she made a decision.

“Save him.”

Their goals this time didn’t have anything to do with Holy Light Star, but rather a few of the people on it.

Now that the endless killing had concluded, what they needed most was information.

And who better to provide it than this man, who had obviously been through hell and back?

Damien’s body was lifted into the air with mana and transported to a shelter only a few kilometers away that was built by this group.

The explosions that hit him were powerful. He made sure to leave countless lacerations and internal injuries on his body that couldn’t be healed with normal means, and now that he’d met these women that obviously came from an extremely powerful force, he was curious.

Would they save him or abandon him?

However, much to his surprise, he soon felt a pill entering his mouth and spreading its nourishing energy through his body.

‘This pill…is far above the level of any medicine I’ve seen before.’ He thought to himself.

He had to say…

His first impression of the Prismatic Sun Holy Land was an incredibly positive one.

The only question was: how would they act from this point forth?