Chapter 295 Ho (1/2)

The h the portal, his Sense was hit with an overwhel with shock

At first, he thought it had been an attack — so in wait behind the portal, ready to aht into the trap, taken by surprise and knocked senseless before he even knehat hit hian to realize that this was no attack The blinding pain wasn't an enemy's ambush, but the Essence of his oorld

After countless years in the Shadow Realnition In a world that held only deathly silence, he had learned to hear a whisper from a thousand miles away

Yet he had returned to his oorld And here, Essence was ever-present — so much of it that his Sense was completely overwhelmed

For several days, all he could do was to lie on the ground and endure the ceaseless assault, hoping that his Sense would not take too long in adjusting to this new environment

He was confident that it would adjust, however The situation wasn't so different from the one in Uvar, where his Sense had been battered by the unbound Essence of a past battle

Here, the onslaught wasn't nearly as chaotic What he Sensed wasn't an onslaught of unbound Essence, but the brightness of a world that hadn't been stripped of all life And as the days passed, he gradually grew accustomed to his oorld once h to stand up and move around While his Sense was mostly useless — it was still too sensitive for this world — the torrent of sensation was no longer so blindingly intense it co he did was exas As expected, he had returned to the spherical chamber with its starmetal walls And at the center of the chamber lay the shadowy vortex — the portal to the Shadow Realh when he saw the mass of darkness Within the Shadow Realm, years would have passed already And yet, Karanos had not succeeded in closing the tear in reality

The sight was disheartening, but Arran knew there was nothing he could do

It would take hieons, and until then, he would keep watch over the portal Perhaps Karanos would succeed in closing it yet, or perhaps thehis task Either way, Arran would be there to witness it

There was another possibility, of course — that soe from the portal And if that happened, Arran wasn't confident in his ability to handle it But the Essence of his oorld ive Arran a chance of defeating it

He didn't consider leaving i here until he knew there was no direct threat to Amydon was the least he could do

Instead, he sat down in the spherical cha He had work to do

First, he retrieved a s, curious to see what years in the Shadow Real and unpleasant — he was gaunt and pale, with traces of gray in his roughly cut hair and beard His face held traces of age, too If someone who didn't know hied , but Arran merely looked at it with ns of age would mostly fade away Perhaps a few years would be added to his appearance when his recovery was complete, but no more than that

Yet another surprise awaited him, and one far more unpleasant than his appearance

Numerous years had passed while he was in the Shadow Real that had been affected The vast trove of dragonhad almost completely withered away, the Natural Essence within it all but gone

Arran cursed in frustration at the discovery His body needed Natural Essence to recover, and he had thought the dragon meat would provide him with theand difficult one