Chapter 58: Finding The Primordial Cave?
Chapter 58: Finding The Primordial Cave?
The acrid, medicinal scent of burning herbs filled the small clearing as dawn broke over the Secret Realm. Loki hovered over his portable furnace, carefully stabilizing the volatile energies of a Life Core. He was putting the finishing touches on a batch of six high-grade Healing Pills—treasures so rare and difficult to concoct that he would never dream of selling them. They were reserved strictly for himself, his summons, and the women he loved.
Across from him, Lana sat in a perfect meditative posture. Her breath was slow and rhythmic, her slender fingers wrapped around a 7th Circle Lightning Core that was rapidly losing its translucent glow.
Loki watched her, his mind wandering to the bizarre nature of their world. As superhumans, their bodies only required two to four hours of rest, leaving the remaining hours of the night to be split between study, physical training, and intimacy. But looking at Lana—a half-elf royal princess cultivating magic inside a hidden pocket dimension—he couldn't help but feel a sense of profound displacement. Myst was a patchwork quilt of mismatched mythologies. Lana could summon Norse Storm Giants, while he, a westerner, commanded beasts pulled straight from ancient Asian lore.
Yet somehow, this chaotic blending of Earth's disparate legends melded together seamlessly here. It was a puzzle that didn't quite fit, yet worked perfectly.
A sudden shift in the ambient mana broke his train of thought. Lana’s long eyelashes fluttered open, her deep blue eyes instantly locking onto his.
Feeling the weight of his intense gaze, a soft blush crept up her neck.
"Lana, I love you," Loki said, letting a warm, unforced smile soften his features.
Her expression softened with happiness, though she arched a playful eyebrow. "What brought that on so suddenly?"
"Silly girl, it’s morning," Loki chuckled. "Didn't I promise I would say it to you every single morning?"
Lana giggled, stretching her limbs fluidly. "Oh, I just assumed it was another one of your shameless sexual innuendos."
Well, she wasn't entirely wrong, Loki thought, though he wisely kept that admission to himself. Instead, he reached for his bow, tapping the vibrant green leaf resting against the upper riser. "The tug on my leaf is getting stronger. The fire is close. I think we’ll finally find it today."
Lana stood up, smoothing the wrinkles of her dress. She leaned over, pressing a warm, lingering kiss to his lips before stepping back with a trace of anxiety in her eyes. "So, what happens after we find it? What can a primordial fire even do for you? Your soul is already incredibly strong."
"Honestly? I don't know," Loki admitted, packing away the furnace, the freshly minted pills, and his remaining ingredients into his storage ring. "I don't know what it will do to me, or how long the integration will take. I could break through to a new realm of power, I could change fundamentally... or I could die in the process. It’s a complete gamble, Lana."
Lana winced at the mention of death, though she quickly tried to brush the worry aside. The fire was destined for him, after all; surely the universe wouldn't be cruel enough to let it consume its rightful master.
"And after the integration?" she asked softly.
"Then we find a place to bury ourselves until this realm is about to close," Loki said, stepping up to gently cup her cheek. "We’ll enjoy our own private honeymoon before we have to dive back into royal politics. And, of course, deal with my brother."
Lana placed her hand over his, her gaze fierce and unwavering. "Thorin isn't my fiancé, Loki. He’s not my husband, and he’s certainly not my lover. I was only invested in his political future before I met you. It’s Loki Sky I fell in love with, not him. If he actually cares about my happiness, he’ll give us his blessings."
Loki sighed, staring into the dense foliage. Lana was right, of course. But Thorin was still his brother—from a different mother, but blood nonetheless.
He genuinely wanted the guy to find his own happiness, just far away from them.
By midday, the romantic atmosphere had entirely evaporated, replaced by the grim, bloody reality of survival.
"Loki, this is absolutely repulsive. Can't you just do it for me?" Lana complained, her face twisted in profound disgust. She was staring down at the fresh corpse of an Orc, a jagged dagger held loosely in her trembling hand.
"No," Loki said callously, wiping the green blood off his own blade. "You need to learn how to extract magic cores properly."
"But I’m way too cute and adorable to be doing manual butchery!" she protested, puffing out her cheeks.
"Still no."
Lana narrowed her eyes, a wicked, feline grin suddenly tugging at the corners of her lips. "What if I promise to try that specific thing we talked about at night... the one involving teacher Lisa joining us?"
Loki paused, his hand freezing over an Orc's chest cavity. He turned to her, his expression instantly shifting into one of profound, doting concern. "My dear, you look absolutely exhausted. Please, sit down and rest. Let me finish this tedious work for you."
"Pervert!" Lana laughed, pointing an accusing finger at him.
"Hey, get your own cores out then!"
"No, no... I mean, I must be a pervert too, because I'm definitely considering it," she teased, her laughter echoing through the trees.
Loki smiled, shaking his head. He knew exactly what she was doing. Lana loved these playful back-and-forth word games, but underneath the teasing, she was mostly looking to recruit some backup in the bedroom so she could finally catch her breath. It was a fascinating dynamic. Lana viewed Lisa more like an older sister, completely bypassing the century of age difference between them because of their shared lightning affinity. Conversely, she referred to Ayala as 'Aunt.' The fierce, unyielding mindset of an Amazon woman was something a royal elven princess simply couldn't relate to, creating a natural, though amicable, emotional distance.
As they worked, Lana casually mentioned, "You know, I knew it was Lisa in your bed that day you and Thorin had your falling out."
Loki blinked, genuinely caught off guard. "How? I thought I masked everything."
"The electricity mana," Lana explained with a smug grin. "A mage can always sense their own element with far greater sensitivity than anyone else."
Loki nodded, conceding the point. It was an absolute rule of their magic system. As someone with affinities for Air and Life, he could detect those elements at twice the distance and sensitivity of an ordinary mage. A fire mage could tell if a flame was sparked naturally, through aura, or via raw mana, whereas a layman would only notice the residual heat.
A sudden rustle in the brush interrupted them. Blitz, Lana's massive storm summon, materialized from the shadows, sending a brief mental tug to his master.
"Master," the giant brute rumbled, his voice low to avoid carrying through the forest. "I have successfully led Sir Thorin and his two companions far to the east. I took them right into the mountainous rock valley where tracking is a nightmare. I used the fake footwear your husband gave me to leave a perfect trail of your prints leading into the gorge. They are currently hunting ghosts in the mountains."
Lana beamed, patting the summon’s massive arm before dismissing him back to his pocket dimension. She carefully unstrapped the sticks holding her backup shoes and secured them in her storage ring, while Loki did the same with his fake boot apparatus.
"You are terrifyingly sneaky, Loki," Lana noted, watching him lock away the evidence.
"It wouldn't fool a master tracker," Loki replied, adjusting his gear. "But Thorin is lazy, short-tempered, and not thinking rationally right now. He’s just blindly following Blitz’s tail. He doesn't know how to look for water-pacing or trail-splitting; he only looks at the mud right in front of his feet. This will buy us all the time we need."
By sunset, the leaf mounted on Loki’s bow wasn't just pulling; it was vibrating so violently the wood was humming.
Yet, they were at a total dead end. Loki stood at the base of a massive, sheer vertical rock face, staring up in absolute frustration. They had climbed to the plateau above twice, searched the perimeter, and found absolutely nothing.
"I don't get it," Loki muttered, running a hand through his hair. "The energy is centered right here, but it's just solid stone. Is it buried deep underground?"
Lana walked up beside him, studying the smooth, ancient rock. "Loki... what if it’s hidden the same way you hide us? What if there's a concealment barrier?"
Loki stiffened. Of course. Yggi wouldn't just leave a treasure of this magnitude sitting out in the open for any wandering beast to stumble upon.
His eyes scanned the rock face with renewed intensity. He stepped forward, running his hands over the cold stone, searching for an anomaly in the mana flow. His fingers brushed against a deep, jagged, three-pronged claw mark gouged into the wall.
Twang!
The leaf on his bow suddenly snapped from its bindings. It shot upward twenty feet into the air like a bullet, dissolving straight into the solid rock face.
"Damn it, no wonder it felt impossible to find!" Loki shouted, a grin breaking across his face. "The entrance is a spatial illusion. Even if you're tall enough to reach the trigger point, you'd never think to walk into a solid wall. Some massive 3rd Circle beast must have sensed a leak centuries ago and clawed at the barrier, leaving that mark."
Calling Blitz back out for a brief moment, the giant easily hoisted the two of them up twenty feet, depositing them cleanly through the illusionary stone and into a five-by-five-foot opening. Once they were inside, Loki ordered Blitz to melt into the surrounding forest below and keep a strict watch on the perimeter.
The passage inside was narrow and sloped gently upward, forcing them to crouch low as they navigated the damp, winding tunnel. But after a few dozen yards, the tight stone walls suddenly gave way to a breathtaking expanse.
They stepped out into a colossal subterranean cavern. The ceiling soared twenty feet above them, stalactites and stalagmites glistening like jagged teeth across a hundred-foot-wide floor. But it wasn't the geology that stole their breath—it was the blinding, overwhelming convergence of cosmic power.
Before them lay the rarest treasures in the twelve planes: seven Primordial Elements, existing in a state of impossible, fragile equilibrium.
In the center, a Primordial Flame hovered directly over a pool of bubbling magma, resting on a bed of cooled, black stone. To the back left, a vibrant sphere of Primordial Life pulsated with pure energy, causing hyper-evolved moss, glowing grasses, and exotic insects to swarm around it in a frenzied ecosystem. At the absolute furthest point from the fire sat a shard of Primordial Ice; the air around it was so utterly devoid of kinetic energy it felt like absolute zero, freezing the very light that touched it.
To the back right, a sphere of Primordial Lightning crackled violently, sending arcs of blue and violet electricity snapping through the air, ionizing the floating dust particles into shimmering, magnetic orbits. Directly beneath the central fire, a dense mass of Primordial Earth hummed, perfectly supporting the magma pool while remaining entirely separate from the heat. To the left, a basin of Primordial Water pooled in a crystalline depression, so pure and devoid of impurities that it looked like liquid glass. And to the right, a completely invisible vortex of Primordial Air whipped a silent, perpetual breeze through the cavern—imperceptible to the eyes, but loud to anyone listening to the frequencies of the wind.
Loki scanned the room, his analytical mind working rapidly despite the awe threatening to paralyze him. Dark, Death, Light, Gravity, and Time-Space are missing, he realized. It made sense. Those esoteric concepts rarely manifested in the primary twelve planes, usually relegated to adjacent pocket worlds. Furthermore, opposing concepts could never coexist; a Life-affinity realm would violently reject a Death Core or a Death Monster before it could ever form.
Lana took a step forward, completely entranced, her eyes locked onto the crackling lightning sphere. She looked like a sleepwalker drawn to a flame.
"Lana! Stop right there and listen to me very carefully," Loki barked, his voice sharp enough to snap her out of her daze.
She flinched, looking back at him.
"The only thing in this room you can touch without dying an instant, agonizing death is that lightning," Loki warned, his expression deadly serious. "If your body comes into contact with any other element here, it will instantly consume you. The fire will turn you to ash before you can scream. The earth will petrify your blood and turn you to stone. The water will bloat your cells until you literally dissolve into a puddle."
He pointed to the vibrant green light on the left. "Even the Life energy is fatal. It will force your cells into hyper-division, causing your body to erupt into catastrophic tumors until the mutations kill you. The ice will shatter you like glass, and the air will expand inside your lungs until you are torn into microscopic pieces and blown away."
Lana went pale, taking a hasty step back. "Next time, just say 'don't touch anything!' You don't need to give me a graphic horror story. It makes me want to drag you out of this cave right now."
Loki softened his tone, giving her a reassuring nod. "Just stay calm. Walk into the perimeter of the lightning, sit down, and meditate. Draw it in exactly how you would absorb a magic core. I’d love to bring Taki Tsuki or Shehuang out to absorb the rest of this bounty, but their raw power would cause this entire pocket realm to implode."
He placed a hand on her shoulder. "This is the purest element in existence. Do not rush it, or you'll shatter your own magic core. Take it slow."
With a deep, steadying breath, Lana stepped into the crackling radius of the Primordial Lightning. The moment her boots crossed the threshold, the entire sphere flared. She dropped into a cross-legged position, her eyes closing as the raw, unadulterated lightning began pouring into her pores. Her skin radiated brilliant, snapping sparks, and though her brow furrowed in a grimace of intense pain, her mana remained stable. She was taming it.
Ensuring she was safe, Loki turned his back on the rest of the elements, ignoring the pull of Air and Life. His eyes locked onto the central magma pool.
He unbuttoned his shirt, casting it aside to expose his bare torso to the oppressive, suffocating heat. He wore only his lightweight night pants, preparing his body for the incoming crucible. Avoiding the petrifying touch of the Primordial Earth beneath, he sat at the very edge of the magma basin, closing his eyes.
He reached deep within his consciousness, tapping into his magic core, and extended his mana outward like a bridge.
The Primordial Fire answered. A wave of unimaginable heat crashed into his senses, and Loki braced himself as the ancient, Yang flame began its slow, burning descent into his soul.
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