The tip of my blade pierces the black veil of darkness. The crimson eyes and dripping white fangs of the Demonic Wolf lunge toward me while my blade points right back.

It cuts clean through like butter.

Not only the blackness of the abyss but the wolf creature in front of me as well.

With little to no resistance at all, my dagger strikes the incoming wolf head on and it's cleaved in two before I even make another step.

Plumes of dark energy seep from my blade as it tears through the monster's flesh, killing it instantly.

As impressive as my destructive feat may be, my attention is much more focused on the darkness around me that I delved into unannounced.

With a thud, the two halves of the wolf land at my sides and my gaze locks onto the reflection of my glowing white eyes in the base of the glossy blade. I look around, and my vision isn't filled with pure darkness as expected...

It looks as if I'm just wearing dark purple sunglasses inside. Dark, but still more than visible enough to move around undisturbed. My vision is equal to that of a day that has turned to dusk. The rolling sandy hills are visible for hundreds of meters ahead of me, unlike moments ago when staring into the black void I could hardly make out the wolf's outline at 10 meters.

"This isn't right..."

I remember Chester's words well.

He mentioned he could enter the Abyss unharmed, but couldn't make it more than a few meters without the darkness becoming unbearable.

I'm having a much different experience.

Activating my manipulation skill, I absorb the energy from the fallen wolf. It brings my core back up to full and my vision lightens even further. My visibility reaches nearly half a kilometer.

Although the outside of the Abyss looks like a thick black cloud of fog, the air quality actually has no difference. It may be a bit thicker, but the amount is minuscule. My movements and breathing aren't affected at all. If anything, I feel even more energetic and ready for a fight than before.

As the two remaining halves of the wolf monster dissolve, the tiny black gemstone is left behind on the sandy floor. As I pick it up, the purple glimmer and glossy reflective surfaces shine in the light of my eyes again.

I throw it in my back pocket, not wanting to find out what would happen if I were to activate my spatial magic in here.

Wisps of energy still leak from my blade. After replenishing my stores from the world, there are just under 45 units in my core and a little over 4 in my dagger.

Turning my head to the edge of the Abyss behind me, the bright open desert is visible just slightly through a distorted white veil. It's the polar opposite of what the Abyss looks like from the outside. Impossible to miss from a distance, but with no way of tracking where I am in here other than my positioning compared to monsters, my plan is to keep close the the outer edge.

Or, at least within a visual range.

"It looks like I have some work to do."

With a grin, I move forward deeper into the purple-tinted realm without another thought. Tightly gripping my blade and scanning the area for dense pockets of raw Demonic Energy, I start my trek.

I continue making my way east, and slightly north walking deeper into this unknown. It feels eerily silent, but then again so is the entire desert...

About 20 minutes pass before a grouping of 4 wolves come charging my way with glowing eyes and no fear or hesitation in their movements. I sensed them coming from a distance, but their travel trajectory hints toward the fact that they could sense me too.

Plus, there are many of them traveling together now. Not just the scouts at the border.

I run forward to meet the small pack head-on while channeling more energy into my blade to make up for the lost charge.

Two wolves jump out in front, and with a wide slash from right to left, I cut them down. The creatures' heads roll to the floor behind me while I prepare to attack their backup.

Just like mindless dungeon monsters, these beasts show no fear. They only run straight ahead attacking me with the intent to kill, nothing else.

The black and purple wisps around my knife start to grow as I continuously channel more energy into the blade to prepare for a second strike. In doing so, the second my legs hit the ground I feel a surge of power.

My next step is considerably faster than the previous attack and I lunge forward with blinding speed and precision. All of my perception senses increase for a moment as well.

The wolves don't have any time to howl for backup, they're defeated before they even know what hit them.

I smirk and turn around as all 4 fallen enemies stop moving and begin to dissolve.

Similar to my blade, black and purple wisps of energy evaporate from my arms and shoulders, adding to the refined energy of the Abyss. Once it leaves my body, it is lost from my control.

It stops flowing the moment my heart rate slows and my quick movements cease while absorbing all the raw energy from the wolves.

There is some leftover that I can't absorb, it just floats slowly into the air as the remains of the monsters' bodies dissolve.

I collect the 4 black gems and continue my walk making a mental note of the energy surge I just felt. It was like a temporary speed, strength, and perception buff, but with such weak opponents, it's hard to tell by how much.

It activates when my blade gets fully saturated with Demonic Energy and the output I'm channeling through my pathways has nowhere else to go. The power slowly seeps through my muscles and invigorates my body.

Afterward, I don't feel tired or fatigued at all.

"I need to conduct a few more tests..."

Over the next few hours, I run into more small wolf packs of 2 to 6 monsters per grouping every kilometer I travel.

My newest power-up is useful to take the wolves out quickly, but I'm only able to activate it when my blade is full. Even while battling 6 demonic beasts at once, I hardly have more than a second to produce any results. The phenomenon's true capabilities are still an unsolved mystery to me, I curiously continue to probe the void for something stronger.

Eventually, as I travel further east than I did yesterday, and nearly half a kilometer north into the Abyss, the remnants of an abandoned town come into my field of view. It's much deeper in than I'd initially planned on diving, but something interesting catches my eye...

I'd brush it off as just another evacuated settlement if it wasn't for the odd light purple, almost white, aura hovering over the vacant houses.

There aren't more than 20 houses in total, and most are made of wood and leftover scrap metal.

Squinting from this range the outer glow of the oddity is visible, but the only way to see what it really is is to walk over and check it out for myself.

The closer I get, the brighter the aura becomes. Once less than 20 paces away, the aura turns out to not be what I expected at all...

White and purple fire burns bright, flickering slowly and scattered in small patches along the sandy streets and even crackling atop a few small huts and houses.

It looks like it was thrown about by an angry fire wielder randomly. The fact that the flames are here isn't the odd part, it's that they don't show any signs of growing larger or flickering out. They just burn in place, giving off the light glow that drew me in.

Every step closer I take, the more it doesn't make any sense at all.

The moment I make my first step into the vicinity of the village onto a well-traveled path, I feel the sand shudder and vibrate beneath my feet. It stops for a moment as my eyes dart back and forth, then a loud fearsome roar followed by a metal clang rings out from even deeper within the Abyss.

Tightening my gaze on the direction it came from and letting my energy sensors search for power, I pick up on the essence of a monster with nearly the same amount of raw energy in its core as me...

This isn't a wolf. It's my chance to face a Demonic Monster with real power.