Inertia: Beneath The Starlit Veil Chapter 28: Chapter 28

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Chapter 28 (Cyrus POV) It took me two full days to recover from the wounds I received from the queen of the aurora moths. During those days, all I could do was meditate and force cosmic energy to accelerate my healing. I created a makeshift shelter where I could rest while entering my nexus. After absorbing the remaining cores, including the one from the queen, I was able to increase the size of my core once again. When I went inside my nexus, I managed to push the maximum distance of my ability to fifteen meters, allowing me to reach the second spot on the resonance trial. This meant my new limit allowed me to activate my ability up to eight times. However, I was still relatively far from completing the resonance trial. The next target was thirty meters away, meaning I would need to double the size of my core once again. That meant I needed to continue hunting. Having a deeper pool of cosmic energy now made the task of hunting astral behemoths less daunting, but after taking out that colony, the number of astral behemoths roaming the forest was few and far between. Hunting in the wild was no longer a viable option. I either had to find another rift that had recently opened or enter the grade-two rift and hope I could kill whatever I came across. It didn't take much pondering; I knew there wasn't another rift nearby. I had to enter the rift in the forest. "It's really just my luck, I swear. Nothing has been going my way at all," I muttered to myself. "If only I could fully absorb this battery, I'd feel better about this situation. I guess I'm just gonna have to make do with what I got," I continued, grabbing a spear fashioned from the wood of a nearby tree. Starving because I hadn't eaten in the past few days, I scoured the river in search of fish before starting my next task. After an hour, I managed to find several large fish in the area. The hard part was figuring out how to cook them. I normally relied on my father for that, for obvious reasons. It nearly took me longer to find the correct materials in the forest to make a fire than it did to catch the fish. But I was resourceful, and finally able to satisfy my hunger. With my belly and celestial core full, there was nothing else for me to do. I knew time was of the essence. I had to defeat that rift in order to save my father. I didn't know what to expect—I had never entered a rift that wasn't already cleared. Honestly, I had only entered a rift a few times before this moment. Fear and anxiety boiled up inside me as I realized this might be something I wouldn't come back from. "Get it together, Cy," I said, slapping my face with both hands, trying to get rid of the nerves. Forcing myself to take several deep breaths to calm my heart rate, my father's words resurfaced in my head: *You are capable of much more than your fears say.* He often said that while training me over the past several years on the run. The image of his golden eyes engraved in my memory encouraging me through all my hardships, led me to finally steel my fortitude and take this challenge head-on. With my body, mind, and spirit finally aligned I entered a state of deep meditation and began my astral projection. Now in my astral form, I could see my body as it sat in a ditch-like shelter covered with moss, branches, and leaves—something resembling what a beaver or woodchuck would make. I had to take extra precautions since no one was around to watch over my body. Taking one last glance, I made my way to the astral rift. Now in my astral form, I could see the rift more clearly as I got closer to the cosmic phenomenon. The rift resembled the portal to the nexus, except its spiraling energy was more like a raging whirlpool in the ocean rather than a calm rotation. The vortex's turbulent flow of cosmic energy felt similar to that of an astral behemoth, exuding a pressure akin to something of the voidborn rank. Without hesitation, I placed my hand on the rift and let my astral body get pulled in. The sensation