I remained still for a long time, listening to the sacred grounds.
The battle was over, but my body refused to believe it.
Every distant crack of stone made my muscles tense.
Every faint movement in the darkness sounded like another monster crawling toward me.
I slowly turned my head, scanning the sanctuary walls, the broken crystals, and the deep shadows between the ancient stones.
Nothing moved.
There were no scavengers waiting to tear apart what remained of me.
No hidden beasts creeping closer to steal the rewards of my battle.
Only the cold silence of the sanctuary remained.
At last, I released a heavy, ragged sigh.
The breath shook on its way out of my chest.
My entire body felt broken.
My ribs throbbed with every movement, my legs were barely strong enough to support me, and the burned remains of my left hand hung uselessly at my side.
Pain had become something larger than pain.
It had become the only thing I could feel.
And yet, somewhere deep inside me, a tiny spark of hope continued to burn.
I was alive.
That single thought was enough to keep me moving.
Two massive corpses lay across the sanctuary floor.
The ruby boar’s body had been torn apart by the explosion, its crystal-covered hide cracked and split in several places.
The platinum golem had suffered even worse damage.
Most of its metallic body had been vaporized, leaving only scattered chunks of silver-colored debris among the sacred stones.
I dragged myself toward the boar first.
The journey of only a few steps felt like a march across a battlefield.
My knees scraped against the stone, and each time I tried to stand, dizziness clouded my vision.
Still, I forced myself forward.
The ruby boar’s body might contain something valuable, and I could not afford to leave anything behind.
I placed one trembling hand against its cold, blood-covered hide.
The beast was enormous.
Even after death, it looked powerful enough to crush an entire group of hunters beneath its hooves.
Jagged red crystals covered most of its body, especially around its chest and stomach.
They glittered under the faint glow of the sanctuary, making the corpse look almost beautiful.
Almost.
I pulled out one of my daggers and began cutting through the remains.
The crystal armor made the work painfully slow.
Every strike sent a sharp vibration through my arm.
The blade slipped several times, and once it nearly cut into my fingers.
My vision blurred from exhaustion, but I continued.
I had not survived the fight just to collapse before collecting its rewards.
“Mammon,” I muttered.
“Help me with the golem.” The dark entity stirred inside my mind.
A moment later, the scattered metallic fragments began to tremble.
They rose slowly from the ground, gathering together as though pulled by invisible strings.
The pieces twisted and folded into one another, forming a small, dense object.
The platinum golem core.
It was far smaller than I had expected.
The golem’s entire body had almost disappeared, but its core had survived the destruction.
It hovered in the air for a moment before floating gently toward me.
I caught it with my remaining hand.
The core was cold, but a strange pressure pulsed inside it.
It felt as if a great amount of power had been compressed into a space no larger than a child’s fist.
I placed it carefully beside me and returned to the boar.
After several minutes, I finally managed to cut through its stomach.
Then I froze.
The inside of the beast was completely unlike anything I had expected.
The organs, flesh, and blood had not simply been destroyed by the explosion.
They had fused together into a single crystal formation.
Even the burned remnants of my own hand, which the beast had swallowed earlier, had become part of it.
The crystal rested inside the empty stomach like a jewel hidden inside a treasure chest.
It was beautiful.
Its surface shimmered with deep crimson and violet light.
Thin waves of energy moved beneath it, rising and fading like trapped lightning.
The light was so hypnotic that I forgot my exhaustion for a moment.
I reached inside and lifted it carefully from the corpse.
The instant it touched my palm, the sanctuary seemed to grow quieter.
I stared at it.
“If I remember correctly,” I whispered, “the ruby boar is supposed to devour anything that moves.” The creature had chased everything in its path.
It had swallowed living creatures, broken stones, falling debris, and even my severed hand.
It did not seem to care what it ate, as long as it was moving.
But the crystal in my hand remained completely still.
There was no vibration.
No shifting light.
No sign of movement at all.
My eyes narrowed.
“Why isn’t it moving?” For a moment, suspicion rose inside me.
Had Mammon lied to me?
Before I could finish the thought, a deep laugh echoed inside my mind.
It was sly and mocking, filled with amusement.
“Ha… ha ha ha!” My face darkened.
“What?” “You truly are naive,” Mammon said.
“Even after seeing the answer with your own eyes, you still fail to understand.” “Then explain it.” “Look inside the stomach again.” I glanced back at the boar’s corpse.
“There’s nothing left.” “Exactly.” I stared into the hollow gut.
The stomach was empty.
There was no blood, no half-digested meat, no slime, and no trace of the filthy remains the beast had consumed only moments earlier.
That made no sense.
“At first,” Mammon continued, his voice echoing through my thoughts, “its stomach was crammed with disgusting pieces of flesh and bone, wasn’t it?” “Yes.” “Then tell me where they went.” I said nothing.
“So how did all that trash suddenly become something so pure?” The answer struck me like lightning.
The ruby boar had never been hunting ordinary food.
It had been hunting movement.
It devoured kinetic energy—the force created by motion.
Every moving object it swallowed had contained energy.
The beast absorbed that force, refined it, and compressed it into a single core.
The blood, the flesh, the stones, and even the broken pieces of my body had been reduced to pure energy.
A kinetic crystal gem.
My fingers tightened around the crystal.
“So that’s what you meant,” I whispered.
Mammon gave another quiet laugh.
“At last, you understand.” A strange calm spread through me.
For the first time since the battle began, I allowed myself to breathe properly.
The fight had been brutal.
It had pushed me beyond every limit I thought I possessed.
I had fought until my blood ran dry, until my bones felt ready to break, and until even standing had become an impossible task.
Nothing in my previous training had prepared me for that kind of battle.
Training taught me how to attack.
It taught me how to defend myself, how to observe an enemy, and how to use my weapons.
But none of it had taught me how to continue moving when my body was begging me to stop.
That lesson could only be learned through suffering.
I looked down at my remaining hand.
A ten-year-old child should not have to fight monsters in a place like this.
A ten-year-old child should not know the smell of burned flesh or the sound of bones breaking.
But I was still alive.
That mattered more than what should have happened.
I gathered my amethyst daggers one by one.
Their surfaces were scratched and stained with blood, but they had remained intact throughout the battle.
Those daggers had given me a chance to survive.
Without them, I would have died inside the sanctuary.
I packed them carefully into my small pouch.
Then I placed the platinum core beside the newly harvested kinetic gem.
The pouch felt heavier than before.
Not because of the weight of the items, but because of what they represented.
Power.
Proof.
And the price I had paid to obtain them.
When I finally stood, my legs shook violently.
I nearly fell, but I caught myself against the sanctuary wall.
For a moment, I rested there, pressing my forehead against the cold stone.
Then I began walking toward the exit.
Each step left a faint trail of blood behind me.
The sanctuary seemed larger on the way out.
The shadows stretched across the floor, and the broken remains of the battle surrounded me like silent witnesses.
I had entered this place as a frightened child searching for a way to grow stronger.
I was leaving as something different.
Not strong.
Not yet.
I knew the truth.
I had survived because of careful planning, Mammon’s guidance, my weapons, and more than a little luck.
If even one part of my plan had failed, I would have become another corpse beneath the crystals.
Still, luck did not erase the fact that I had endured.
I had fallen, risen, bled, and continued forward.
For a ten-year-old child, this was not simply a successful hunt.
It was a journey carved from pain, sacrifice, and willpower.
At the threshold of the hallowed depths, I stopped.
Behind me lay the pitch-black heart of the sanctuary.
Its darkness seemed almost alive, as if it were watching me leave.
The walls had offered no mercy.
The monsters had offered no forgiveness.
Every reward had been paid for with blood.
I looked back one last time.
“One day,” I said quietly, “this place will belong to me.” The sanctuary did not answer.
It did not need to.
Its silence had already taught me the truth: power was never given freely.
If I wanted to rule this place, I would have to return stronger than before and pay an even greater price.
Then I turned away.
The walk back was long and quiet.
For several thousand steps, neither Mammon nor I spoke.
The forest around us had become calm again, but I could not relax completely.
The darkness between the trees seemed deeper than before.
Every rustling leaf reminded me that danger was always nearby.
Eventually, I broke the silence.
“Hey, Mammon…” “What is it?” “What would our lives feel like if we knew, beyond any doubt, that we were all going to die someday?” The ancient spirit remained silent.
I looked toward him, but he did not respond.
His gaze remained fixed on the distant sanctuary, even though it was now far behind us.
Perhaps he was remembering something.
Perhaps he had already known the answer for thousands of years.
When death comes close enough to touch your throat, something changes inside you.
A desperate craving to truly live rises from the deepest part of your soul.
Ordinary things begin to look precious—the warmth of sunlight, the taste of food, the sound of water moving over stones.
I could feel that craving growing inside me.
It was still blurry.
I did not fully understand it.
But I knew that I wanted to live.
Not simply to avoid death.
I wanted to see what existed beyond this forest.
I wanted to become strong enough to protect what mattered to me.
I wanted to stand at the top of the world and look back at the road that had nearly killed me.
After a while, we reached a shallow river.
The clear water flowed gently over smooth stones.
I knelt beside it, but the moment I tried to move my left arm, a sharp numbness spread from my shoulder to my fingertips.
My arm was almost completely paralyzed.
I stared at it for several seconds.
It felt like it belonged to someone else.
“You should rest,” Mammon said.
“If I rest now, I might not get up again.” I stepped into the river.
The water reached my knees.
Every movement sent pain through my body, but I forced myself to remain still and watched the shadows beneath the surface.
A group of fish passed through the shallows.
I waited.
Then I thrust one of my daggers into the water.
The blade struck a fish.
It wriggled violently, splashing water across my face.
I caught it with my good hand and threw it onto the riverbank.
Then I waited again.
By the time I finished, nearly a dozen fish lay beside me.
My body was trembling, but I did not stop there.
I found a nearby wild tree and stripped it of its sweetest apples.
The fruit was small and uneven, but its crisp taste filled my mouth with surprising comfort.
By the time night arrived, I had gathered enough food to survive.
The moon rose slowly above the forest.
Distant bird calls faded one after another until only the soft sound of the river remained.
I built a small fire near the bank and roasted the fish over the flames.
The smell made my stomach twist with hunger.
For a while, I forgot the pain.
I ate until my stomach was full, then washed the dirt and blood from my face in the cool river water.
The water stung my wounds, but it also made me feel human again.
Afterward, I sat on the riverbank and watched the moon’s reflection ripple across the surface.
The day had lasted only twenty-four hours.
Yet I felt as if I had lived several lifetimes.
I thought about the battle, the sanctuary, and the moment I had believed I was about to die.
I thought about Mammon’s harsh lessons and the way he had thrown me into danger without hesitation.
He had never wasted my time with safe and comfortable lectures.
Instead, he had sent me straight into the fire.
Adapt or die.
That had been his lesson.
I should have hated him for it.
Perhaps a part of me still did.
But another part of me felt grateful.
If he had treated me like a helpless child, I would have remained helpless.
He had forced me to discover what I could become.
The night passed slowly.
I stayed awake until dawn, listening to the river and watching the fire turn into glowing embers.
Sleep tried to pull me under several times, but I resisted.
I was afraid that if I closed my eyes, I would wake up inside the sanctuary again.
Then the first rays of sunlight touched my face.
Warmth spread across my skin.
Without thinking, I smiled.
It was not a bitter smile or a forced expression meant to hide my fear.
It was genuine—quiet, natural, and completely unbroken.
For the first time in a very long while, I felt something close to happiness.
My childhood had been filled with misery, fear, and loneliness.
I had spent years believing that the world had nothing to offer me except pain.
But as the morning light rose over the forest, I realized something.
Perhaps life was not kind.
Perhaps it would continue to hurt me.
Perhaps I would have to suffer again and again before I reached the place I wanted to reach.
Even so, life was still worth holding on to.
I looked at the rising sun and closed my fingers around the pouch containing my hard-won treasures.
Then I stood.
My body was injured.
My arm was useless.
My future was uncertain.
But I was alive.
And for now, that was enough.