Ethereal Ascendance: A Journey of Transformation

I had a dream where I turned into Monkey King, flying around in the sky, dodging the palm of the Buddha. No matter how I tried, I couldn't escape him. Eventually, he slapped my wings off with his palm...

"Buddha, you cheated! Monkeys don't have wings!" I yelled as I spiraled down from the sky.

But he completely ignored me. I kept falling and falling, as if I would never reach the ground.

I woke up with a start, sitting up from the ground.

"Ahhhhh!"

An intense tearing pain shot through my right back, piercing my heart. Because of the pain, I collapsed back onto the ground. For a moment, I thought my nightmare had come true and the Buddha really slapped my wings off. But when I turned my head right, I saw...

It was Selene. She was lying curled up on my wing, clutching a large feather in her mouth, drooling all over it.

"So soft...smells so nice..." she mumbled.

Too outrageous! She had drooled all over half my wing! I pushed her off forcefully to rescue my wing from the devil's clutches.

Oww... My whole right-wing felt numb from her sleeping on it! And now all wet, it was so much heavier, putting more pressure on my back.

"Ugh..." At the sight of strings of shiny saliva slowly dripping from the feather tips, I couldn't help but retch a few times. I didn't dare move my wings now for fear that her spit would spray everywhere.

"Mm..." Pushed aside, Selene quickly sat up groggily, blinking as she looked around before realizing what happened.

"Why was I sleeping on the ground?"

"And you still dare ask! You used my wing as a mattress!" She had made me so mad. I rubbed my wing vigorously against the rocky ground, trying to wipe off some of the drool.

"And you just had to coat it with a layer of your spit too!"

"Oh, your feathers... Pfft--" She finally saw the sorry state of my wings and understood what happened. But she actually laughed instead of apologizing!

"Serves you right! It's your fault for falling asleep so fast last night!" Apparently she was blaming this on me instead of showing any remorse.

"What about your promise to help clean me up?" Her words suddenly reminded me of our earlier agreement.

Oh no, I lost my chance at gold coins...

"I'm so sorry, I was just too tired and couldn't stay awake any longer..." As I started apologizing, I noticed her face and body looked quite clean already, with barely any traces left of the green ghoulfly goo from yesterday night.

"Huh? How did you get cleaned up?"

"With water, of course!" Selene nonchalantly made a basin appear from thin air. She tossed a water ball spell into it and had a basin of clear water ready in seconds.

"Hard to clean up properly by myself in the dark with no one to help. Took me forever to wash up."

"So the spare clothes too?" I saw she was wearing something new instead of yesterday's outfit. Now I understood.

"Yup! The storage ring is so convenient!" Selene beamed at me. Then she squatted by the basin and started splashing water on her face. Afterwards, she even took out a comb and mirror to check her appearance before putting them away, satisfied that she looked fine.

"..."

The rich really can get away with anything, huh? Money lets you do whatever you want?

After she finished freshening up, I couldn't stand it anymore and rinsed my wings with the water too. While waiting for them to dry, I took the chance to examine our surroundings again.

Although it was daytime now, the hateful darkness aura had diminished quite a bit. But the cloud cover overhead was still extremely thick. It made the daylight very dim, like a rainstorm could pour down any minute even though the clouds just remained still and oppressive.

The gloomy sight didn't stop me from scanning the horizon though.

I had already noticed upon first waking that we were in a desolate, rocky wasteland, confirming my judgement last night. But because my pinned wing was distracting me earlier, I didn't scrutinize the view properly then.

Only now did I notice that besides the wasteland, there were also some barren, rocky mountain ranges in the far distance without a hint of greenery.

Strangely enough, thick black smoke was billowing up behind one of the ranges, though I couldn't tell what was causing it.

I decided to fly up for a closer look after telling Selene, "I'm going up there to check things out. You stay put here and don't wander off."

I kept ascending until I almost reached the cloud layer. Only then did I realize to my shock that the smoke was coming from actively erupting volcanoes! I could even vaguely make out red lava flowing down their slopes.

I was completely dumbfounded as I took out my compass. The volcanoes were situated right to the south, which was the direction we had flown towards last night. And faintly visible to my north was the beastman city we had passed earlier.

What in the world? Since when did the royal capital turn into volcanoes?

Did we get our original direction wrong after all?

It made no sense that after just two hours of flight from the lush green kingdom of Astralrealm, we would end up in such a barren land. Just what exactly happened here?

After I landed and recounted what I saw to Selene, she also reacted with utter confusion.

"Volcanoes? Are you sure you saw them?"

She seemed skeptical about what I described, so I had no choice but to tie her to me again for another flight up to the clouds.

"Believe me now?"

I felt her trembling non-stop in my grasp, though I wasn't sure if it was from fright or the cold winds. Sensing her great unease, I quickly descended back to the ground.

"What should we do now..." The moment I untied the ropes, Selene grabbed my hand in agitation. "How could this happen? Where's the royal capital?"

I could see the glint of tears in her eyes from fear.

"Well..."

I understood her immense pressure after somehow ending up in a completely foreign environment, surrounded by dangerous magical beasts. But with the capital apparently turned into volcanoes now, I was also at a loss.

We clearly flew south the entire time, so how could this be happening? I didn't even dare to confirm if the Norvale was truly gone or if we had somehow gone the wrong way.

"Why don't we...fly back?" I suggested after calming my thoughts for a bit.

"Back? You mean the beastman city? Why would you go there?" Selene gave me a confused look, not following my idea.

"No, I don't mean going there. I'm suggesting we retrace our original route back and see if we can return to Tethys Town eventually."

I elaborated on my thinking. At this point, I had regained clarity from the initial shock and increasingly felt that getting lost like this was highly unnatural. Perhaps normal logic couldn't explain what happened.

"That makes sense too. We have nowhere else left to go now. Heading south no longer works, so we can only return to our original starting point to hopefully figure things out."

Understanding my reasoning, Selene agreed that it was likely our only feasible option now. At least it seemed to alleviate some of her earlier panic.

"But we were above the clouds at night. Can we really find our way back accurately?"

Her doubt here still held some validity. With no land references while airborne, what if going back led us astray too?

"I'll be careful to stay low enough to keep ground in sight..."

Clutching the compass in my palm again, last night's mishap taught me not to boast confidently about navigating anymore.

Since the plan was decided, we set off right away without further delay.

The return trip so far went rather smoothly. In order to avoid the beastman city later on, I hid above the clouds when passing over it and only descended much farther away.

"The clouds are so thick and keep covering us, yet it doesn't rain and they won't scatter either." Selene frowned slightly while peering overhead.

"It feels like...there are traces of magic within them..."

"Magic?" Hearing her remark made me glance up too. It truly felt unnatural, this bleak looming layer above the land, seeming more formed than naturally accumulated.

Flying north for a while longer, there was still no trace of vegetation on the barren ground that I could see. Probably just more of the same desolate landscape.

I had an inkling we likely weren't in the Astralrealm Kingdom anymore. Verifying that hunch was simple - if we couldn't make it back to Tethys Town eventually, then we had very likely crossed over to another world at some point during our journey here.

But when exactly, and how? I tried to recall the previous night's flight path for anything exceptional but came up empty. It felt like an invisible hand had abruptly transported me and Selene without any warning signs, so strange.

Then again, looking at it as a transmigration, many details still didn't make sense if that's what happened...

"Selene, how did you recognize the beastman city and those ghoulflies from before?"

I suddenly realized this was a pivotal question, the crux of whether we were even still in the same world.

"The Archbishop once took part in the campaign against the Dark Territories so he described what the beastman cities looked like to me before. What we saw earlier matched his account with the skeletal heads and all that. And Face Flies are common soldiers there too."

If that was her basis for identification, then perhaps this didn't involve crossing worlds after all.

In that case, could it be our spatial location drastically shifted without leaving this world? I considered other possibilities now.