48 hours after she fell into a slumber Kristen finally started to wake.
The room she was in had small rays of sunlight illuminating it, the entire space all but empty besides a small table in the middle that supported the weight of a rather large black bird and a birdcage matching it.
Slowly opening her eyes the vision was blurry yet her memory was clear, she had passed out when trying to fly away.
Pulling herself together she stood up with care, unsure if there would be a repeat of what happened before.
Looking around the room and making sure that there was no one there, Kristen embarrassingly wiped the tear streaks off her face and checked on the status of her body.
[Level 7]
[Status:Very Hungry]
Exp:45/225
Name:Kristen
Race:Carrion Raven
Beast cores: 0
Evolution:Criteria not met
Lineage:None
Martial Arts:None
Divine Abilities:None
Star Energy: 75
[Stats]
HEALTH:40/40
STRENGTH: 5 (Weakened)
STAMINA:20/50
TOUGHNESS:27
[Titles]
Kin killer - Extra 10% damage when attacking family
Star Eater - Gain the option to choose the star evolution path
[Skills]
Stab:lvl 3
Scratch:lvl 3
Flight:lvl 1
Pain tolerance:5 - Requires 1 skill point to turn into Pain adaptation
Appraisal:lvl 1
[Skill Points:1]
[Stat Points:0]
At the words in front of her, the skin on her face went an even darker shade of red than before, although no one could see it as it was covered in feathers.
'...'
Now that I thought of it my stomach was rather empty
Shaking myself out of the humiliating stupor I tested the muscles in the two wings and found that they were perfectly fine.
I observed the room I was in and saw that it seemed like there were no other restrictions placed to keep me here.
'FINALLY some good news'
Hope sprouted in my chest at this observation. Cheerfully hopping up and down on my sharp claws I looked like a cute loli in animal form, calming down from the high I made a move to jump off the table and fly towards the slightly ajar door.
'...huh?'
But, then again, when has anything in her life ever been that easy?
As I went through the door I found myself in a hallway that seemed to go on forever. Literally.
With a hard wooden floor below and rooms on each side it was a discouraging scene to overcome.
The depression from the previous bawling-her-eyes-out-session threatened to pull her under, stopping herself at the last minute to at least try and figure out a solution.
Going up into the air she flew through the hallways and nothing changed, she had made no progress whatsoever.
Opening some of the rooms didn't help at all either as they were all empty or led nowhere.
Deciding to take a different approach she instead landed on the ground and expanded her senses to the max, trying to feel a way out. The hard ground around her, the ceiling on top of her, the walls around her. All of it had a reason for being there, all of it containing a clue she could exploit.
She worked tirelessly for over 5 hours without realising and only then managed to catch a whiff of the Qi that was powering this illusion.
'fuckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk how long is this gonna go on for?'
Like the dedicated worker she absolutely was, going on for the next 5 hours as well was just as easy as the first.
Complaining in her heart about the circumstances she managed to properly catch onto the scent of the Qi again and tried to pull it towards her, unexpectedly instead of grabbing it like a rope it flowed straight into her body.
She unknowingly started to gain exp at a rapid pace.
+50 exp.
+50 exp.
+50 exp.
'What type of shit is this?'
She thought as confusion turned into glee.
This continued until she gained about 500 exp just from pulling on a trace of Qi. The reason she was able to do this was because of the title [Star Eater] secret ability.
'GREAT. You broke it, dumbass.'
A small part of her consciousness whispered.
Snapping out of the daze she reached out and tried to feel what she did before, failing to do so she let out a scream in frustration at the world, failing to notice the reason that it stopped was because she drained the array dry.
The illusion slowly dispersed in front of her eyes and she rubbed her eyes in response.
Spirits rising, she pondered over it internally.
'It...it was that easy?'
..
.
.
If not for her EXTREMELY rare and unique skill then she would have most likely been stuck there until Xue Jie found her, then, who knows what punishment he would dish out. So no, it was not easy.
.
.
..
A staircase appeared in front of her eyes.
Moving as quick as lightning so as not to miss this opportunity she flapped her wings as fast as birdly possible and shot down it, not giving anyone in the lower levels of the building a chance to see her.
It was basically pitch black outside aside from the lanterns faintly lighting up the roads in the city.
Deciding to fly upwards she escaped and flew towards a random building, laying on its roof to recover.
Observing her surroundings she took a proper look at the city.
It was quite a large place, about half the size of the city on earth, Paris.
If she were to try and leave now she would likely get exhausted and drop out of the sky. Not willing to take this chance she chose to instead rest for the night and leave first thing in the morning.
Grabbing a few pieces of cloth from the ground beside her she made herself a bed, sure it was cold, ugly and dirty but it was better sleeping on the concrete of the roof.
..
.
.
Meanwhile back at the building that Kristen had just escaped a few hours before, Xue Jie was currently sleeping off the repercussions that the "night of fun" had brought him.
Clothes were messily sprawled around the room with liquor bottles around them.
If you didn't guess it yet this sect leader was actually a horrible alcoholic and almost always spent his nights wasting away when there wasn't something important on the next day.
But, he had reached the golden core stage so none of his subjects could rebel against him.
Totally unaware that his prized trophy which all of his plans centred around had just escaped into the dark of the night he slept peacefully despite the impending disaster that was approaching him.
This impending disaster arrived in the form of his closest advisor who kicked open the door and immediately started screaming at his trashy excuse of a leader.
"HOW COULD YOU BE SO CARELESS"
"DO YOU EVEN KNOW THE EXPANSE OF YOUR ACTIONS"
He ruthlessly bombarded his master with insults, who was currently drearily opening his eyes.
"eerrhhhhhhhh whalttt"
Xue Jie slurred in response.
SMACK!
SMACK!
Infuriated by this gesture the subordinate angrily slapped Xue Jie across the face as hard as he could.
Seeing that the light in his masters eyes was slowly returning he did it again to speed the process up, however, this time his hand was caught midair.
Rising with fury in his eyes Xue Jie snapped the bones of the hand in his grasp into small bits in a second.
AHHH!
A muffled shout came from the underlings mouth, earning himself another squeeze.
"What do you think you are doing? Never lay your filthy hands on me again you idiot."
Letting go with one more press he started to get dressed while the other man wailed on the ground, no sound coming out of his mouth because of his fear to the master.
"Anyway, why are you here in the first place?"
Passing the time with conversation Xue Jie asked why one of his advisors had ran into his room so early in the morning.
"Because the heir of the Black Evil Bird has escaped"
The advisor croaked out like a dying fish.
At these words Xue Jie froze, his eyes darting towards the only other person in the room, blaming them for something that was clearly his own fault.
Taking a split second to glare at the irritating advisor before rushing out of his chambers and towards the room where the birdcage.
Reaching in less than 10 seconds he saw that it was empty and stood dumbfounded in the doorway, finding himself walking forwards he came out of the daze and looked around the room and found nothing besides a broken cage and a small puddle beside it.
It felt so barren here like there was something missing, besides the bird. He quickly reached out with his divine sense and discovered that the illusion that was set up on this floor was missing
'Oh hells.'
He thought when he realised that it was gone.
'Wait a minute. Isn't my meeting with the king scheduled this afternoon?'
Dread filled him as he knew that he couldn't skip the meeting to go chase after the bird. Steeling his mind he tried to reassure himself that it would be fine, thinking that he could just beat up his advisors to get rid of the butterflies in his stomach.