Chapter 348: Arctic Embrace

As Luna watched Violet’s eyes go unfocused she saw etherial strands of nothingness weave themselves around her body, they steadily enveloped her, covering her from the world and encasing her in the abcense of reality.

A faint shiver ran through her upon witnessing that fact, although she knew that Violet would never harm her in any way, shape or form and she trusted her companion absolutely. She still could not escape the faint feeling of unease when she witnessed the void.

Something about it was just wrong to her senses. Intellectually she understood what it was, the void was the abcense of reality and as a being rooted in that reality she felt a natural aversion towards it.

Shaking her head to clear her straying thoughts, Luna refocused on her own advancement.

She willed the system to initiate the process and felt her body drift off as her soul was brought someplace else.

Luna awoke from her momentary stupor to a world of white.

She stood, no stood was wrong as she had no true body here. She simply was, she existed in an ephemeral form that she instinctively understood be her soul itself.

All around her was an endless expanse of snow and ice, the silhouettes of trees could be seen in a abstract distance, snow and ice entirely enveloping their form.

She was on a plain of some kind, flat and featureless save for those sparse trees dotted around the blank canvas of this world.

Yet this world, or realm was not still, a fierce wind blew across the landscape, snow billowing around as miniature tornadoes of snow and ice flung their payload across the ground.

Then their was the cold. It was all encompassing, she felt it penetrate her etherial soul.

Luna was accustomed to the cold, she thrived within it, yet this cold was absolute, all encompassing and she felt it try to claim her very being and sublimate her into this frozen relm.

The cold was not malicious, it simply was. This was the Arctic put into its purest form, a cold that sapped one’s very mind and soul, snow and ice as far as one can see.

It was a bleak world, yet it was beautiful all the same.

Luna simply floated there, hovering above the ground as she simply existed within the cold, she embraced the cold and the cold embraced her back with its tendrils of utter chill.

At first she was unsure what she needed to do here, simply observing the unending arctic landscape, then her mind refocused and she began to think.

This was a trial to form a domain. Luna obviously intended to create a domain that aligned with the Arctic. Yet, whilst this landscape was bcjillingly beautify, it was not hers.

This realm was too brutal in its intensity.

It could support no life, it was cold for the simple reason of being cold. Brutal simply because it was.

Yet that was not what Luna wanted, she desired the power to fight yes, but she also desired to protect with her powers.

So she activated one of the skills she felt aligned with her desires best, the Arctic Blessing.

It was a simple skill, it blessed someone with the Arctic, it granted a bonus towards enduring biting cold and other extreme temperatures whilst providing a minor physical barrier against actual attacks.

As was said, it was a simple skill with very limited use. But, Luna did not want her domain to be limited to fighting against foes, she desired for it to be more than that, she wanted it to have some benefits to her allies aswell,

This blessing ticked all of the right boxes in that regard.

So when she felt the skill activate she felt something stir depp within her, like a puzzle piece falling into place. Like what she had just done was right, on a fundamental level.

Yet the puzzle was not yet complete, a couple of pieces were still missing and Luna knew exactly what the next piece to slot in should be.

Her next skill activated, Arctic Manifestation. It was a staple skill, one she had for a long time now, one that she used in every battle she took part in.

It was her pseudo domain skill after all and she had been practicing with it since before she even knew what a domain even was.

As such she didn’t even have to think about it before the skill slotted into place on this unknowable puzzle. The barren wasteland around her stilled, the whipping winds calmed and the snow drifts solidified.

Order was brought upon this realm, an order as dictated by the nature of the skill.

However, as luna looked around herself she felt like something was still missing, she didn’t quite understand what, yet she knew, instinctively that she needed to do something else or she feared failing this unknowable test.

It was then that Luna reached out, not with a hand or any other limb, for she had no limbs in this strange realm. No, she reached out with her very being.

Invisible tendrils of her icy will extended out into the calmed environment surrounding her.

It was then that she finally understood what was missing from her puzzle, for despite the environment surrounding her being calmed by her skills. It was ownerless.

No one had clamed this area, no one had exerted their will over the space that she had decided to influence.

So, Luna decided that she would claim it for herself.

Her will surged in symphony with her activated skills. The landscape began to fall under her control.

Yet despite this arctic landscape having no owner, no intelligent mind behind it, it still held its own intractable will.

As her icy tendrils of will extended she felt the relm around her push back. Her will frosted and shattered against the biting cold, the raging winds shredding her control.

But Luna did not back down, her skills surged, the blessing wrapped her tendrils of will. Protecting them from the bitter cold and tearing winds.

Her manifestation building basic structures to protect her nacent domain from the environment itself.

Slowly her control extended, like tree roots growing outwards as they claimed the natural resources around them. Luna’s soul food as the trunk in the center, her will snaking out as the roots whilst the protective umbrella of her skills acted as the branches above, protecting her domain from the environment.

Each aspect of her being worked together in harmony, expanding and reinforcing.

Slowly a unified structure took place. Walls erected themselves around at the boundary of her domain. Within its center, directly surrounding her soul the beginnings of a castle were taking place.

In the center of this nascent castle resided her soul, ruling this domain of one as the soul occupant and claimant.

When the wall finished forming she felt something ephemeral slot into place. Her claim over this section of this relm solidifying, her soul surged with potency, trembling with delight as she experienced dominion over the space she claimed.

As she witnessed everything within her domain she was both proud and contemplative. The structures were shoddy at best, the walls were slanted and the castle not even half done.

Yet it was hers. And her had an entire tier to refine and perfect it.

Then, as she oversaw her domain, a force pulled at her soul, it took her away from her domain, away from the frozen hellscape that was this realm.

Yet as her soul was ejected from that space, she still felt connected to it, like an unbreakable bond, she was inextricably linked to her domain on a level she didn’t truly understand at this moment in time.

Eventually however, Luna felt her soul once again land back into her body, yet that was no longer entirely true. For the two were not separate concepts any more.

Her body was her soul and her soul was her body.

Luna smiled at that realisation, her smile only grew when the system presented her with a new screen for her to observe.

[Congratulations, you have successfully claimed a domain.

Your Domain: Arctic Embrace. Has fused your body and soul.

Your Evolution is successful.

Welcome Luna, Arctic Leopard of the Frozen Wilds and Scion of the Arctic. To Sovereignty, may your reign be eternal and your will be unbreakable. ]

**

As the two companions underwent their trials to attain sovereignty, their 4 friends watched the entire process from outside.

They watched as their two bodies were slowly encased in ephemeral and beautiful threads of their respective elements. The pitch black nothingness of the void with incandescent purple illumination for Violet.

Then stark white threads with iridescent shimmers of dazzling blue for Luna.

The shells slowly encased them over the course of several hours. These shells vastly outsized their current bodies, but they were made to fit their evolved bodies post advancement.

It was almost an entire day before the last thread of the shell wove itself into the whole, both girls finishing at almost the exact same point in time.

Once complete, a shockwave of power rippled out from them. It carried both a biting chill that paradoxically soothed their bodies and soul. And at the same time a feeling of absolute nothingness, not the deprecation of sight and sound, but the absence of reality itself.

Yet the two forces blended together so absolutely that it was near impossible to distinguish one from the other.

That feeling vanished almost as soon as it arrived. Yet when it left Vithrax spoke in a solem yet clarly elated tone.

"They have both successfully formed their domain. They are both now sovereigns. Long may their reign last."

End of Volume 4 - A Sovereigns Will