With today’s technology and the capabilities of S-rank healers, it’s very easy to heal a person to full health without leaving even the smallest scars on their body.
Your skin can be repaired to the point that it will seem like new!
If a scar is still present on someone’s body despite all these technologies available, that shows one of two things.
Either the person didn’t get healing on time, or they did not have the resources to hire a good enough healer or get treated by good hospitals.
Another reason could be that the scar serves as a ’representation’ of a past failure that the individual has intentionally chosen to keep.
With Ashtel’s level of strength and money, obviously he had enough resources to hire dozens of S-rank healers to help him in a moment of trouble.
He’s even friends with an SS-rank healer, the elf queen, which means he never had to worry about healing at all.
If there is still a scar on his body despite all this, that means the scar ’represents’ a past failure that Ashtel has purposely decided to keep.
Many awakeners either keep their scars to show their past achievements or to remember their own past failures.
All kinds of scars have a story behind them, and even in this modern age, many awakeners keep them occasionally.
...
"The spirit realm is not a peaceful place; the lush forests and happy spirits you are talking about, only lives in small secluded areas of the spirit realm..."
"The actual spirit realm is a massive place with no ends in sight..."
The spirit realm is a place that exists between reality and nothingness; it’s a realm that runs parallel to the material world.
The spirit realm is as big as the entire universe; every location or coordinate in the material world has a spirit realm equivalent of it.
If you know the coordinates of some location in the material world, you can use complex calculations to figure out the coordinates of the spirit realm of that location too, and vice versa.
The happy and peaceful spirits, in fact, only live in small secluded pockets of the spirit realm; the actual spirit realm is a massive existence that is spread all over the universe.
Ashtel looked at Rio and the others before saying in a solemn tone,
"You must have been taught about ’Sea of Endless Miasma’ in your classes, right? It’s an endless sea-like formation in the universe that is filled with endless miasma..."
"That thing has already covered 1/10th of the total area of this entire world! And it is still expanding outwards!"
Rio eyes narrowed after hearing the name ’The Sea Of Endless Miasma.’
"That massive formation, does not only affect the material world; even the Spirit Realm is also heavily affected by that thing..."
"In fact, the spirit realm is more vulnerable to its power, and most of it has been heavily corrupted with miasmic corruption; only some rare locations and secluded pockets are left safe and intact..."
Hearing Ashtel’s words, Rio asked,
"That means it’s possible that Liam’s soul fell in a place filled with miasmic corruption? Ellie is a shadow dragon and has been living in that place for a long long time; thus, she might be more resistant..."
"But Liam’s soul is fragile and he might get corrupted if he’s not rescued on time..."
Ashtel was taken aback by Rio’s quick thinking and nodded his head.
"Yeah... you really know miasma quite well... Oh! Yes! You can control miasma! Why didn’t I think of it before!"
Ashtel’s eyes shone brightly when he remembered that Rio was unaffected by miasma.
"Actually, I also wanted to ask this: why are you able to deal with miasma so easily?"
Seeing the curious look on Ashtel’s face, Rio shrugged his shoulders and replied honestly,
"Truthfully speaking, even I don’t know why I can do that. Ever since I reached rank A, I was able to do it for some reason..."
"In fact, with every increase in rank, I have been able to control new and rare elements... perhaps it’s related to my sword skill; it’s called ’Elemental Sword Art’..."
"It lets me control elements..."
Ashtel shook his head at Rio’s words and asked in a confused tone,
"No no, Miasma is not an element at all... light, darkness, fire, water, etc., are called elements. Mana and Miasma are not elements; they are ’Laws’ of the ’World’..."
"Becoming an ’Awakener’ means getting the qualification to control the ’law’ of ’mana’ to some extent and using it to strengthen your own self..."
"Miasma works completely opposite of that; it forcefully makes people ’qualified’ by forcing itself upon them and makes them go through Demonification to strengthen them..."
Ashtel looked at Rio from head to toe and asked in confusion,
"But you haven’t faced any demonification; you don’t even have any miasma in your body and even your aura is peaceful and calm... Then what the hell is even going on with you?"
Rio was also just as confused as Ashtel.
"Err... like I said, I have no idea about it..."
Ashtel shook his head at those words and stopped pestering Rio further.
"Well, make sure to keep your usage of that thing as low as possible. miasma is not something that can be controlled by anyone or anything; that thing is actively hostile to all things, living or non-living alike..."
"It’s almost like it hates the entire ’world’ itself and it trying its best to destroy the ’world’ from inside out... I don’t think such an evil power will just obediently be controlled by someone..."
Ashtel raised one of his eyebrows as he asked in an awkward tone,
"Err... tell me the truth... Could it be... you are an illegitimate child of the demon king or something like that?"
Hearing the same question that Raji had asked of him from Ashtel’s mouth, Rio sighed in defeat and started questioning his life choices.
’Ugh, all these evil people are questioning me over and over... I miss my cute cute waifu who’s always so good to me... sigh...’
Rio ignored Ashtel’s weird question and changed the topic.
"So, what you were saying is that to reach Liam’s soul, we need to cross the spirit realm infected with miasmic corruption first."
"Good, that’s the perfect task for me; I can do that easily..."
Hearing Rio’s declaration, everyone was surprised but could not find the words to retort his claims.
It was indeed a true and proven fact that Rio was able to control miasma, and he was not affected by its corruption, which means he’s indeed the most suitable person to go inside the spirit realm and save Liam.
"This... even if you deal with miasma, the danger of the spirit realm is nothing to scoff at; there are powerful SS-rank evil spirits wandering inside that place..."
"Also, that place is massive; maps and compass are useless there and the most important of them all..."
Ashtel looked into Rio’s eyes and spoke.
"To enter the spirit realm, you need to access a particular weak ’node,’ open a portal through it, and only then can you enter it. Of course, I can just smash a hole in the space-time fabric and enter easily though..."
"But that would mean entering a random location of the spirit realm; it’s easy to get lost unless you can calculate your precise location according to the starting coordinates with every single step you take..."
Rio narrowed his eyes at Ashtel’s words, and asked in a calm voice,
"Your words make it seem impossible to go through a random location... we don’t even know where Liam and Ellie will be; in fact, if the spirit realm is as massive as the universe itself..."
"Then looking for them blindly will be like looking for a needle in the vast universe; it’s near impossible to do something like that..."
Ashtel also nodded his head at Rio’s words, and the others also felt dispirited.
"It’s indeed difficult... but there is a way."
Thankfully, all hope was not lost; Ashtel still knew of one particular way to reach the spirit realm and search for Liam without getting lost.
"In the distant kingdom of Dwarves, there is an artifact that can help you search for anyone as long as you have it on you..."
"It’s an artifact that guides you to the location you need to reach according to your wishes. It’s a very powerful legendary artifact that was once created by a very powerful dwarf in the age of King Allen Von Reinhart..."
Hearing Ashtel’s words, Rio felt his heart palpitate a bit, his intuition flared up once again, and he could feel that something was leading him to the ’Dwarf Kingdom.’
’I have been aiming to go to the dwarf kingdom too, and now this matter has come along. how can there be such a coincidence?’
’Its as if something is telling me to go there; even back in the supreme tournament, I was only invited by one candidate to visit their homeland and that was a dwarf too...’
Rio could feel a weird sense of foreboding, as if something important was waiting for him in the dwarf kingdom and everything in the ’world’ was trying to lead him there.