Chapter 361: Whiteout

Luna found herself in a blizzard, visibility was next to none existent, all that she could see was snow being whipped around in powerful winds.

The temperature was frigid, yet to Luna it felt quite pleasant. It was a strange thing, her only true experience with Arctic environments was back in the elemental valley. Yet that was naught but a pale imitation of what she found herself within currently.

Her white fur with ephemeral blue spots allowed her to blend almost perfectly in with her surroundings, even with her large size the equally massive snow drifts that constantly shifted with the blizzard allowed her to effortlessly camouflage herself.

It was strange, she felt so comfortable here, like returning home after so long away.

The sensation of the howling wind and buffeting snow caused her to almost not realise one significant issue.

Violet.

Luna’s eyes opened wide as she suddenly realised that Violet was not besides her, she turned around, her senses expanding to their limits as she desperately looked for her beloved companion.

Yet she found no trace of her regardless of how she looked.

Then she turned to her bond, initially she felt relieved that it still held, yet it was faint, as if a great distance separated the two of them.

Luna could vaugely sense which direction Violet was in, yet the vast distance between them caused their normally solid bond to feel more like a thin thread ready to snap.

Just imagining that caused Luna to shiver, she shook her head, unwilling to allow such thoughts to settle.

Her eyes hardened then as she gazed in the exact direction that the faint tug of their bond directed her towards. "I will find you, just make sure to stay alive."

It was strange for Luna to be separated from Violet like this. For as long as they had known each other they had never been separated like this, always they had been side by side.

Violet’s comforting presence always nearby, always besides her, always supporting her. Only now that they had been separated did Luna truly realise exactly how dependant on Violet she had become.

Still she shook herself, refusing to allow herself to be bogged down with worrying thoughts.

Luna thought back to the map that was shown in that strange white room, of the various zones that dotted the massive island she found herself on.

Based on how far away Violet felt, Luna guessed that they had been placed in near opposite sides of the island from each other.

That was quite annoying, yet their wasn’t much that she could do about it other than push on.

She briefly contemplated rushing around the exterior of the island to find her, yet swiftly dismissed that ideas.

No, she would instead head inland, she meet back up with Violet in the middle of the island.

Luna did worry for her companion and her safety, yet she also implicitly trusted her companion to be able to survive and push through. She knew, perhaps better than even Violet herself how powerful the dragon truly was. So she was not afraid of her being bested in a direct confrontation.

No she was just worried that Violet would get distracted with some strange treasure or tasty meal and end up missing her chance to reach the middle.

"Surely she won’t get distracted so easily, right?" Luna whispered to herself, yet she was unable to banish that worrying thought from her head.

Eventually however she forced herself to focus back on her own surroundings. Whilst Luna had not identified any nearby lifeforms with her previous scan with her presence and domain, that did not mean that she should allow her attention to wander so easily.

She was in a serious competition, a deadly competition where death was but a few steps away at any given point.

Focusing back on her surroundings she allowed her domain to expand outwards. Whilst her presence allowed her to easily identify living beings, it didn’t do so well with mapping out the terrain.

Her domain on the other hand, that allowed her to intrinsically understand the landscape around her, for when her domain passed over that land, it became hers. Thus once the land became hers, Luna was able to know what that land looked like.

More than that, with the landscape around her so perfectly matching her own domain, she found that she was able to expand her domain further than ever before, to encompass more of this Arctic environment.

However, as her domain rapidly expanded she also felt that something was off.

The shear scope of her domain was beyond anything that she had ever experienced. As if the world around her was welcoming her claim in the blizzard around her.

It was both liberating to expand her claim so far, yet also worrying about how easy the task felt. Almost as if something was assuring her domain spread, yet regardless of her senses she was unable to identify anything in particular that could be the cause of this phenomenon.

So after carefully studying her domain and the landscape within it she simply shook her head and moved on to identify where she should go first.

With no sign of life nearby it only made sense for her to move forwards, Luna did not move overly fast, instead content to move at a slow but steady pace so as to allow other beasts to get ahead of her so that she wouldn’t be forced to wait around further ahead for others to catch up.

As she moved she blended seamlessly with both her domain and environment. As she had experienced with the memory shared to her by Violet of the water dragon that dove into the ocean.

Luna tried to cause her domain to become one with the environment around her, to mask her presence completely and cause it to become one with all around it.

The wind howled, the snow flew erratically and visiblity still remained next to nothing.

At first she failed, unable to truly blend her domain in with her surroundings, yet she slowly began to feet a subtle shift in her domain.

She felt the edges begin to blur, as if her domain had no definite ending. It was a minor change but a welcome one as it showed that Luna was on the right track.

Still she knew instinctively that this would not be a simple process, or a fast one. No, this ability to completely blend her domain into the environment around her would be a slow process, something she would have to practice constantly.

Thankfully she had become quite adapt at practicing utilising her domain as of late. The king had truly put her control through the test, bringing out all of her latent talent for learning and adapting.

With her mindset still in the training mood Luna smiled. She would continue to practice with this ability, it was rare for them to be in such an environment so she had no desire to waist this opportunity.

Plus Luna found the activity both challenging and satisfying as she experienced each minute improvement.

So it was that Luna moved through the Arctic environment, her domain fully spread and slowly but surely blending into something that could become indistinguishable from the world around her.