Ethereal Life, Chapter 44: Scarlet Moon Rune

For him to feel the heat and the existence of his body. "It can only mean that I was transported here with my physical body."

A miracle, "Teleportation? Perhaps I entered a portal. A dimensional gate isn't a bad guess either."

No matter what it was, he was safe for now. The only problem afterwards was, "What should I do here?"

"Can I return?" He looked around silently.

This is a quiet,  eerie place that Nai would definitely not dare trek upon. But since he was already here, fate must have something for him waiting around.

"Let me survey the place first." And so he checked the soil and even brought some with him in one of his empty leather bags.

There he saw some interesting ores and rocks too. Such as pale white crystals and some black things around the whole place.

"It smells like gunpowder." If it can be used to make something dangerous. Nai prefers to make one that would only scare the others but not take lives.

So he scooped some of them up too and placed them in a bag. After a while of walking, he found himself with a bulging bag filled with nothing but ores, soil, and those black things.

"That should be enough." Since he had just arrived at the place. Taking everything with no way to make it immediately would just waste his energy and time.

He might be stuck here forever, which is "Please don't be. "That would be too much of a pity for me."

While Nai was looking around, he was also muttering some incoherent words only he would understand.

A dim red shadow suddenly appeared under the cover of the pale white fog, not far away.

"Hmm? What's that?" Instead of running away in fear. He remained rooted to the ground, not letting out sounds afterwards, as he continued to observe what it was without alerting it.

In his eyes, some kind of dim red glow was jumping around and sometimes stopping for a bit before rolling in another direction.

It feels a bit like, "Is it playing? Is that even a creature? "This is?" 

Just as he was making an inner monologue in his heart to his guess. That dim red glow suddenly came running in his direction with no sounds and then with a pop.

It came out of the fog. Nai didn't know how to describe what he was feeling right now.

Should he run? The small fear he had been holding in his heart immediately vanished. What replaced it was nervousness.

Looking at the shape and its form. There's no mistake about it. It was a glowing symbol!

"Rune?! Just like in those RPG games?PG games?" How could this be real? No more like this should it be!

Surprise, happiness, excitement, and nervousness about the unknown.

A rune! It was a rune that was said to be imbued with different effects based on its symbols, according to the game knowledge he has from earth.

But a game is a game, and this is reality. When the red rune flew out of the fog. It rolled like a ball towards him before it suddenly turned around and would bounce from time to time.

"There's no wind, so how could it move like it was being pushed around?" Nai clearly felt that there was no wind around.

And the rune wasn't alive, nor was it a creature, which made him sigh in relief.

"Since it isn't alive, there should be no danger if I catch it, right?" Nai didn't wait for his mind to make decisions; he directed his body and intercepted the flying red rune.

Pah!

With his two hands clapping upon each other, the red rune in the air was caught up with a puff sound.

With the red rune in hand, his skin started giving out signals about how it felt to his brain. Nai didn't immediately open his hand, afraid that it would suddenly flash away.

"It looked like it was light a while ago and seems to be an object, but why do I feel like there's nothing in my hand at all?" He opened his hand carefully and saw the red rune flashing with a dim glow.

After pinching it, he only felt like he was holding an invisible object, and it has no weight, which can be considered as, "What kind of object is this?".

From a closer look, the symbol looked like that of a blood-red moon, which consisted of countless red and pale white tiny ants like texts that were constantly moving from one place after another.

Giving the whole rune the feeling that it was alive. The text looked like scribbles mixed with some other words he could only associate with the moon language he had taken a glimpse of in the past.

"As expected, am I in the moon right now?" Nai was feeling something indescribable in his heart right now. No matter how he thought about it.

The place he was in looked like the moon he had been seeing on TV, reels, and other social media back on earth.

"Is this the earth's moon? Or another moon of this world? There can't be the same moon, right?" Nai thought, but soon shook his head.

He returned his attention to the rune in his hand that was flat like glass; the countless tiny texts around it seemed to turn into wavy patterns surging around like ripples.

The dim red glow around it blazed like some kind of burning mist that was spreading outward like the sun would have.

"Scarlet Moon Rune, thou shalt be thy name from now on." He was just casually naming it as such, but who would have thought that something else would happen?

A red glow flashed and consumed his vision. The next thing that happened was that he found himself floating under the sea.

A familiar eight-long-finned shark that looked like it was flying instead of swimming underwater.

He can breathe, but he can't speak.

Talking about this monster in front of him, he says it is both hideous and has a strange beauty around it. Unfortunately, he didn't like it coming near him at all.

So he promptly gathered his strength in his arms and fist. Even if there's no footing around, he still has the feeling that only by confronting it can it be killed.

There's no need to hesitate. Since gaining this extraordinary strength, Nai had been unleashing his hidden side to let loose from time to time.

With wooshing sound, the fist was pushed forward and connected to the shark's eyes. There's no such thing as a shockwave or overly dramatic special effects.

Just the sound of something hitting a hard object rang out, and the shark broke into countless pieces of gore.

Disgusted, he tried to swim away, but the water that he thought was water around him seemed to show no sighs or trait of being water.

He remained floating in his place, and soon he could only helplessly bathe himself in the monster's blood.

What was that cracking sound just now?

The moon's blessing on his neck shone with dim, scarlet-colored light amidst the red blood around him as the symbol of a blood-red moon that was oozing out red air around it like a sun soon slowly appeared on it like an imprint but was glowing like it was set ablaze alive.

...

"Ugh— huh? I'm back?" Nai opened his eyes, feeling somewhat heavy on his eyelids. It looked like he had just woken up from a nap.

"I seem to remember I was in a strange place just now." Recalling everything that has transpired just now.

He was amazed to know that he remembered everything except after the blood-red light from the scarlet moon rune consumed his vision just now.

"Though I seem to know that there's something next to it, I can't remember what it was." Nai frowned as he looked around him.

He stood up as he looked at the afternoon sun that was beginning to set. "At most an hour, huh?" "At almost the same time, I stayed back there."

Throwing the sacks full of soils, ores, and that black dirt powder just now to the side.

"I was indeed transported to that place, but I still lean like this. It was as though I never left or moved at all, but miraculously, those things I took there were with me in the way I remember I stored them."

So mysterious, Nai thought in his heart. He can only guess in his heart that it might have something like an entanglement-like thing from science he heard of.

"In any case, I'm back. Nothing has changed within me, I think. I'll try it out next time, and for now, have a change and have some food."

Nai stretched out for a bit before climbing down the scaffolding.

Down below, he saw his wife Acacia waving at him in the pond's direction. He saw smoke coming from the bonfire that had just been started.

Just in time, I'm feeling hungry.

"Coming!"