Just like in the game, the moment the primal beast died, its body shattered into countless particles. From those fading lights, multiple treasure chests appeared—bronze, silver, and gold scattered across the ground.
"Huh… I didn't expect it to still work the same way as in the game…" Rei murmured as he looked at the chests.
"Nice treasure chests! Let's see if we find something good!" Djeeta didn't really care about how the primal beast turned into treasure. Things like this were already normal in the Sky Realm. She immediately walked over and opened one of the chests.
"Let's see, let's see~ tokens, medals, rupies, more meat… oh, there are materials too, but it looks like they're just the normal ones you usually get from monsters."
Unfortunately, nothing rare or special appeared.
"Nothing good from these chests," Djeeta said, sounding a little disappointed, while Rei quietly stored everything inside his dimension.
"Well, Siero already said this depends on luck," Rei replied calmly. "So we probably need to keep doing this again."
"You mean we need to keep spawning that primal beast and kill it over and over again!?" Djeeta exclaimed.
"Yup," Rei answered casually, as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
"From the amount of meat we have—and since the primal beast also drops meat when it dies—plus how fast I can deal with it… we'll probably be here for about six hours," Rei said, giving her a thumbs up.
"Six hours!?!?"
Even with Djeeta complaining, they still spent several hours killing the same primal beast over and over again.
At first, Rei used them as punching bags to test his physical strength. But eventually, he got bored and decided to just use Axion to kill them instantly the moment they appeared.
Djeeta, who had been watching Rei fight at first, was now lying on the grass, staring up at the sky.
Normally, there shouldn't be any grass on a desolate island like this. The only reason it existed now was because Rei had restructured the area where they were fighting.
At the very least, it was a much better place for Djeeta to lie down instead of resting on hard ground.
"Axion."
Five lasers shot out from each of Rei's right fingers, flying straight toward the primal beast. Just like before, it died instantly the moment the attack hit.
That marked the 300th primal beast Rei had killed, and once again, multiple treasure chests appeared just like before.
"Are you not going to open them?" Rei asked, looking toward Djeeta, who was still lying down even as the chests appeared.
"No. It's probably just the usual stuff," Djeeta replied lazily, waving her hand at him. "Just put it in your storage like usual."
The excitement she had earlier had completely disappeared by now, sinking to the bottom of the sky. At this point, she just wanted everything to be over already.
"Alright."
The treasure chests vanished into his dimension, leaving only pieces of meat scattered across the ground.
But just as Rei was about to summon another primal beast, he suddenly sensed something approaching at an extremely high speed from a certain direction.
"Hm?"
Turning toward it, he saw something huge flying through the air toward him, accompanied by a loud scream.
"HEYYY, WATCH OUT!"
Instead of dodging, Rei calmly raised his left arm and activated Orbital Blackness. A black hole formed in front of him, instantly swallowing the incoming primal beast. It vanished completely, as if it had never existed in the first place.
Hearing the loud noise, Djeeta sat up from her position and looked toward the source of the sudden scream.
Rei also turned in that direction. His eyes immediately caught sight of a draph girl wearing a very familiar outfit—one identical to the one Djeeta owned. In her hand, she casually carried a massive greataxe, taller and larger than her own body, held effortlessly with one arm.
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"Threo?" Rei muttered, instantly recognizing her as one of the Ten Eternals—Threo, the wielder of the Three-Tiger Axe.
She was also the one he always brought along in the game when farming, her abilities being absurdly powerful and efficient.
"Woah, you made that primal beast disappear instantly? How did you do that?" Threo said as she arrived right in front of him, her eyes practically sparkling with curiosity.
"Rei." Djeeta followed after him, having noticed someone approach.
But the moment her gaze landed on the girl's outfit, she froze slightly—recognizing it immediately as the exact same one she had back on the Grandcypher.
It was the same outfit Djeeta had worn during her fight with Lucilius.
But she didn't recognize the girl wearing it at all.
Djeeta had no knowledge of the Eternal group. What she know was only the memory of how to fight using Boundary power that she got from her other self across different timelines. Beyond that, everything else was unfamiliar to her.
After that battle, she had rarely worn the outfit again. It was something she only used now during 'quiet' intimate moments with Rei at night.
"Good afternoon, you two. Are you also doing the event?" Threo asked cheerfully. "I've been here since morning trying to earn money, but it's been pretty boring—fighting the same thing over and over when it just dies in one hit."
She scratched the back of her head casually.
"Oh right, sorry for accidentally throwing the primal beast in your direction earlier," she added with a laugh. "I was getting bored, so I started trying new ways to kill it."
For Djeeta, though, the sight was… unsettling.
A small draph girl—a little over a meter tall—laughing so casually while holding a massive greataxe larger than her own body with just one hand was, honestly, pretty scary.
"Haha, that's fine. No one got injured from that—just be careful, alright?" Rei said.
Then he glanced toward Djeeta, subtly gesturing with his eyes.
'We need to leave now!' was what he was trying to tell her.
'Why?' Djeeta tilted her head slightly, clearly confused.
"By the way, my name is Threo. What about you two?" she asked.
"My name is Rei, and this is Djeeta," Rei replied calmly. "We're both skyfarers who came here for the same event too. But we've just finished and were about to head home."
"Rei? Hmm… feels like I've heard that name before," Threo said, her brows knitting together as she tried to recall where she had heard it.
Rei caught that hesitation and immediately planned to leave while she was still thinking—but unfortunately for him, Threo's memory clicked in just a few seconds.
"Ohhh, that Rei!"
Before he could react, she stepped closer and suddenly leaned in, sniffing him.
"What are you doing?" Djeeta asked, her voice laced with confusion as her eyes followed Threo's strange behavior.
Threo didn't answer. She continued sniffing, moving closer and closer, circling him slightly before finally stopping and taking a step back.
"Yeah, I get it now. You smell really dangerous. I've never smelled someone like you before—not even back when I still lived in that forest."
"Understand? What are you talking about?" Rei asked, clearly caught off guard.
"Hehe, you remember Tweyen, right? During one of our monthly group meetings, she mentioned a man named Rei. She said there was something very dangerous inside him—so dangerous that she almost attacked him on instinct the moment she saw him."
"Tweyen… I see. So it was her. We only met once a few months ago, but she still remembers me," Rei said, letting out a quiet breath.
"She said you're not actually dangerous and that you're kind. She told us how you saved her village and her best friend, and that she's been searching for you," Threo continued, laughing lightly as if the story amused her.
"But who would've thought I'd be the one to find you first? Hahaha."
Thud. Thud.
Djeeta suddenly elbowed Rei in the side, her expression tightening as she processed what she had just heard—especially the name Tweyen.
Another girl she didn't know. And hearing Rei say they met a few months ago meant it was before she and Rei were together.
Rei could only offer a nervous smile. He had never explained what happened after the sudden teleportation caused by future Lyria, and now it was coming back to haunt him.
"Even I almost attacked you instinctively after sniffing you—if Tweyen hadn't told us not to," Threo added casually.
Rei was genuinely glad he had met Tweyen a few months ago. If he hadn't, then every Eternal he ran into in the future would probably attack him on sight without hesitation.
"Well, I should say thanks to Tweyen for vouching for me when I meet her again," Rei said, his tone calm but firm. "But for now, we need to go."
He reached out, grabbed Djeeta's hand, and started to pull her along, already turning away.
"Wait!"
Before either of them could take another step, Threo moved.
There was no warning—one moment she was behind them, and the next she was suddenly standing right in front of Rei, close enough that he had to stop short.
"You're strong," Threo said, looking straight at him. Her usual cheerful grin was still there, but her eyes were sharp. "Like, top of the food chain strong. I thought I was already at the top… but then I see someone like you."
She let out a short breath, almost like a laugh.
"And because of that—"
Her atmosphere changed instantly. The playful tone vanished, and even the way she stood shifted, her grip on the greataxe tightening.
"I'm top dog around here. I know that for a fact. But seeing someone like you makes my blood pump—just like that time I fought fifty dragons at the same time for stealing their eggs."
"Fifty eggs…?" Djeeta murmured under her breath, stunned.
Threo raised her greataxe and pointed it straight at Rei. Because of its length, the blade stopped just short of his face, close enough that Djeeta instinctively tensed.
"Two people can't be on top of the food chain," Threo said flatly. "One of us has to go, Rei. It's you or me."
"Wait—wait, why did this suddenly turn into that?" Djeeta finally snapped out of her daze, stepping forward as she spoke. "We just met you, and you're already asking him to fight?"
Everything had escalated far too quickly. They had come here just to gather materials—and now a strange draph girl was challenging Rei out of nowhere.
"You too, Djeeta," Threo said, turning her gaze toward her, eyes gleaming with excitement. "You're strong. I can feel it. So after him, I'm going to fight you too—so be ready!"
"Me too?!"
With no other choice left, Rei accepted Threo's challenge. The two of them moved apart, creating distance between each other as the tension in the air slowly thickened.
Rei had known this would happen—that was exactly why he had tried to get Djeeta to leave before Threo could challenge him to a fight.
This had happened in the game's story too, after Djeeta awakened the power of the Three-Tiger Axe.
But this time, things were different.
This time, he was the one being challenged—because Djeeta didn't have the axe yet.
"Aren't you going to use anything?" Threo shouted from a distance, clearly irritated as she saw Rei standing there without preparing a weapon, simply staring back at her.
"Right…" Rei muttered.
Not using a weapon against Threo was a really bad idea. Among the Eternals, she was known as pure brute force—the kind that crushed everything head-on.
And she was nothing like the opponents Rei usually fought.
Most of the enemies he had faced were massive—primal beasts or monsters far larger than himself. Lucilius didn't really count, since technically that wasn't him fighting.
This time, his opponent was a person.
Well—if an Eternal could even be called normal.
Rei raised his right arm.
The air around it cracked, space itself fracturing as something was forcibly summoned into existence.
Silver light mixed with a purple hue of lightning descended from above, shaping itself as it fell—metal forming, power condensing, the outline of a sword becoming clear.
Threo's expression sharpened instantly.
She could feel it.
Whatever Rei had summoned was dangerous—even to her.
A moment later, the weapon fully materialized in his hand.
The Sword of Repudiation.