2 The Boy and the Girl Meet 1

The Land of Monsters, in a foggy forest, at the foot of a giant ancient tree.

Rose, who is wearing a white t-shirt and black jacket-pants, sits in a lotus position with her eyes closed.

She has been like this for almost two days. Actually, if the person doing this weren't her but instead some other with her same strength, that person would have already died thousands of times under the attack of the monsters.

Rose is different because she has a Special Awakened Skill; and by using it, she can completely hide her smell, her body heat, and the sounds. This lets others with only two ways to detect her: The first one is of course by sight, however, the dense mist and the trees of this forest turn this way to detect her almost useless; the second one is by the First Level Initial Awaken aura that she releases, but, the monsters can't feel her aura since they use another type of energy to cultivate. The monsters use an energy called Mystical Energy, whereas the civilized races use Complex Energy.

On the other hand; Rose is very sensitive to sounds, this allows her to immediately discover if some monster gets too close, and so to her is an easy task to avoid them.

In short, the monsters from this place will not be able to detect Rose unless an unexpected accident happens; and it is precisely because of this that she had the guts to enter The Land of Monsters, where there is no Complex Energy but only Mystical Energy.

"*Sigh*..." Rose lets out a long, heavy sigh as she slowly opens her eyes with an expression full of sadness and disappointment.

(... It didn't work...) she says reluctantly in her head.

Even though, before coming to attempt to make a breakthrough in this dangerous place, Rose knew that the chances of success in breakthrough the First Level Initial Awaken to reach the Second Level Initial Awaken were almost nil, she could not help but keep in her heart the hope of achieving it. Now that she has failed with this method, she has run out of ideas of how she could breakthrough. It has been twenty years since the last time she had a breakthrough and now she is already thirty years old; so it's understandable why a woman as strong as Rose, who would not change her expression even if she is stabbed in the stomach, has such a sad and depressing face at this moment.

But in the end, Rose is still an exceptionally strong woman, so, after a few minutes, her face turns solemn again.

(I have to get out of here before my Complex Energy runs out.)

Once she thought about this, Rose stands up, picks up her backpack, observes for an instant the shapes and details of the surrounding trees, then begins to walk following the same path she used to reach this place.

She had not entered too deep into The Land of Monsters, so she quickly reaches the zone where Mystical Energy coexists with Complex Energy. At this point, Rose drastically increases her speed, and after a few hours, she manages to leave the forest.

The landscape that appears in front of Rose is that of a green meadow, in the east there is a vast river and in the distance, there is the silhouette of the Lurep Village's walls.

Lurep Village forms part of the territory of Stormy Cloud City that belongs to The Broken Earth Kingdom, and the latter is one of the five kingdoms that make up The Continent of Civilized Races.

When Rose arrives at the entrance of Lurep Village the sky was already dark, but her thoughts had already cleared up: (Since I need to find another way to make a breakthrough, early tomorrow, I'll go to the library to find a clue, but for now, I'll go eat and rest.)

Once this is decided, Rose enters the village and goes to her inn.

The inn that Rose had chosen is neither luxurious nor humble, it is something in between but it has everything that she needs. Upon arrival, she goes to the dining room and asks for a light meal. Once she is done killing her hunger, she goes up to the room she had rented for fifteen days and still has eleven days of time to use.

In the room, Rose begins to undress, showing little by little her smooth and soft white skin akin to a newborn's. The perfection of her skin has been maintained until now because she always had at her disposal the best medicines, if not for this, her skin would be able to scare even the bravest man of the Mercenary's Guild. This is not an exaggeration. Due to the extreme training that Rose imposed on herself, every square inch of her skin has been torn apart at least a thousand times.

Being completely naked, Rose enters the bathroom and then turns on the shower. After finishing bathing, she washes her clothes and hangs them to dry. Having done all that she had to do, Rose lies on the bed and falls asleep very quickly, obviously she is really exhausted.

Early in the morning, Rose is in front of the entrance of Lurep Village's Library.

To Complex Energy cultivators, knowledge is essential. This is because the limit of how high the cultivation of a Complex Energy cultivator could become is determined by how deep is that cultivator's understanding of the nature of existence. Thus, the libraries, to the civilized races, are of utmost importance. This becomes evident when someone sees the library of a village as small as Lurep Village, it is huge: Ten stories high, and it is the largest building in Lurep Village.

Rose doesn't have much hope of finding a realistic way that could help her to breakthrough; after all, even though she is only thirty years old, she already had read more than one hundred and fifty thousand books, the one hundred and fifty thousand best books that her kingdom has to offer, however, she has not found what she needed the most: A method to breakthrough that works on her.

(If, here, I don't find the information that I'm looking for, I'll go to another library! I can't just give up on this, after all, if I don't have enough strength, accomplish my dreams will be impossible!) Rose's eyes gleam with determination as she enters into Lurep Village's Library.

The librarian who attends Rose is an elderly gargoyle, he is dressing in a white librarian uniform, and he releases a Sixth Level Intermediate Awaken aura.

Rose pays a gold coin as a fee of entry, this fee is enough to authorize anyone to read any book in the library for a day, and she then says to the gargoyle librarian: "I'm looking for books on how to make a breakthrough when you come across a bottleneck. But not the conventional ones because I have tried all their methods, and they haven't worked on me."

The gargoyle librarian looks with curiosity at this peculiar customer whose face he had not seen before, and who have a demeanor of someone of extraordinary background but the cultivation of a commoner. He says calmly, with his old voice: "Well, we have a whole section of exotic methods to breakthrough while being stuck in a bottleneck. However, I warn you, young lady, that such books are full of bullshit."

"There is no problem. I understand that. I'm just going to try my luck." Rose replies, and she then asks tilting her head: "Where is that section?"

"Follow me." The gargoyle librarian responds as he stands erect and begins to lead the way to a deep region of the library.

Rose follows him closely. For a moment, within Rose's precious eyes, there is a trace of envy as they reflect the wings of the gargoyle librarian. She knows very well how happy it would be to have a pair of wings and with them be able to ride the skies.

Moments later, his old voice rings again in Rose's ears saying: "It's there, all the books in that room are the kind of books that you're looking for."

Rose looks at the room that the gargoyle librarian is pointing at, nods and enters that room.

Seeing this, he informs her: "If you need any help I will be where you found me." Then he retires to his assigned post.

The books in the room were neatly arranged, and Rose could easily see several titles she had already read. Without wasting more time, she grabs a book among those she had not seen before, and begins to read it without stopping for more than two seconds on the same page and without missing anything, this ability to read so quickly and so thoroughly could only be developed by a genius with monstrous capabilities, such as Rose.

Time passes, the sky turns dark, and Rose is already finishing reading the hundred and thirteenth book when suddenly she sees, with a sideways glance, a book that has written on its spine: - The Mountain of Rose -, by: Lin the Lonely Adventurer. This left Rose breathless for an entire second because even though she is a fan of Lin the Lonely Adventurer, she did not know that that book exists. Rose grabs - The Mountain of Rose - impatiently and begins to read it carefully.

The book describes a mountain, which the author named The Mountain of Rose and which was located in The Land of Monsters, in a place not too far from Lurep Village. The author affirms that she had never seen such a strange thing before, it happens that the land of the region that surrounds that mountain is reddish, being the closest ground to the mountain of a deeper reddish color. And if it were possible to see this region from above, which is not due to the dense fog, then you would see a piece of reddish earth with a circular shape and whose center is this mountain, with boundaries akin to a rose flower's edges. It is precisely because of this that she named it: The Mountain of Rose. The author analyzed this strange earth and discovered, to her surprise, that it had healing properties similar to the healing properties of low-level medicine. All that land region of a radius of about two kilometers had healing properties! Of course such a situation deserved further investigation, but in the end, the author couldn't find the source of this phenomenon, but even so, the author explained that she came to the conclusion: The only thing with such power could only be one of those legendary plants that are capable of increasing the level of cultivation without restrictions.