"Let the flesh heal, wound close, blood flow once again. Sanguine commands: heal."
He watched as the flesh on his hand slowly flowed back into a healthy state. It hurt, but it was amazing how quickly one can raise their pain tolerance. When it was done, the messy part started. He knew, thanks to his first kill, that somewhere inside the body was a monster core. The last time, the meat and organs of the corpse had been eaten by the red moss, leaving the core on the ground. He tried to remember exactly where, in comparison to the monster's body, he had found that crystal. He was sure it was somewhere in the front half of the skeleton.
The first obvious pick was the brain. Sanguine smashed the skull and spilled the brain on the floor, but his prize wasn't located there. He managed to land his next guess: it was in the heart.
Well, it was—now it hovered safely above his hand. Even though it had been inside an organ used to pump blood, it was surprisingly clear. Sanguine wasn't as scared of the core as he had been before, but he still didn't know what to expect. This core had one circle but no knots. It had to have something to do with the strength of the monster; he was much stronger now, and he could feel that this wolf had been killed far too easily compared to the first one. He lowered his head, looked into the core, and let himself be pulled inside.
He expected to see the horrible place he had seen before—and he did—but something was different. In front of him now stood the pure white stone, currently as big as his own body, orbited by one circle with two knots. The horrible black fog seemed to be pushed back by the radiance of his Wisdom Core. He didn't feel any terror, and he didn't hear any existential, harrowing screams. It felt safe here. His Wisdom Core protected him. What was more, he still held the purple "Terror Core"—as he now called it—in his hand.
The Terror Core slowly increased in brightness and then crumbled into dust, blown away by an unseen wind. What remained was the elastic, ethereal ring that had been around the core. It slowly levitated toward his own core and began to weave itself into it. At the end of the process, a new knot was orbiting his Wisdom Core on the trajectory mapped by the purple circle. There were three now.
"So that's what they do! There are circles and knots. The number of circles symbolizes your power on the path of ascension, and the knots symbolize your progression within a certain level. Can I ascend to the second circle by absorbing the Terror Core of a monster with a second circle, or do I have to obtain a certain number of knots to be able to form a second ring?"
Sanguine felt as if everything was slowly taking shape. The situation was becoming clearer every day.
Willing himself to leave the four-dimensional space, he found himself back in the room. Another thought entered his mind, one he wanted to experiment with. Sitting down, he concentrated on himself and his core. He willed himself to go deeper and deeper. He gazed into the Wisdom Core itself, then chose to enter it.
He found himself back near the core in the Terror Dimension.
"So my theory was correct. This is my safe place, and I can return here whenever I want."
He willed himself to leave again. When he found himself sitting on the firm ground, he stood up and repeated the process. Once he gazed upon the core again, just before entering, he let himself relax and began to fall.
He was looking at his Wisdom Core again, flew around it a few times, decided it was enough, and left.
He found himself in the air, and the smirk on his face was wiped away only by the impact of his head against the ground.
"Ouch. But hey, I was right. When I entered the Terror Dimension, I was falling, and when I left, I was still falling. So time doesn't flow when I am inside. It probably functions the same even during the process of forming a new circle. If I am ever in a hurry, I can still allow myself to enter the Terror Dimension. At least it didn't hurt after the ring formed. Let's hope it stays like that."
He stretched his arms with a song on his lips, turned toward the window and froze. In the distance, he saw something that made his heart race. Approximately 600 meters away, in a building near the broken walls, he saw smoke slowly rising into the air. It could be a fire monster, or perhaps a large-scale flame, but as Sanguine sprinted out of the building toward the smoke, he hoped for one thing and one thing only.
People. Other people.