“Ugh…”
A dim blue light shone through Damien’s eyelids and forced his consciousness awake. Slowly but surely, his eyes managed to glitter open.
“Where am I?”
The last thing he remembered was trying to escape Acier with Feng Qing’er and Qing Tan, but now he was in a mysterious space that didn’t even look like it was part of the Trial World at all.
He was currently inside of a shimmering blue harrier shaped like a soccer ball. The space around him was completely dark, like a sea of emptiness. In the distance, he could see many floating islands that looked like broken chunks of earth floating in the void.
‘Did I die?’
It was the first thought that came to his head. He clearly remembered how his vitality left his body and how his mind was on the verge of collapse. It wouldn’t be too surprising if he had died.
‘No, that’s impossible. I refuse to accept it.’
His thoughts were still incredibly muddled, and he felt a splitting headache that wouldn’t go away ever since he woke up. The fact that he was in such bad condition made him feel that he had survived.
‘But that leads back to my first question, where the hell am I?’
Damien moved towards the edge of the barrier and reached out his hand to touch it. At that moment, he realized something odd about the current situation.
His entire body was incorporeal like a ghost, and it was shining in a similar blue light to that of the barrier around him. But despite his incorporeal state, when he touched the barrier, he could clearly feel the sensation of his hand touching a sturdy wall.
Damien furrowed his brows. ‘It seems my physical body isn’t in this strange world, but then what is this? My consciousness, a soul form? If it’s either of those two then it gives me a better grasp on where I might be right now.’
And once he slightly understood his location, he also understood the nature of the barrier currently surrounding him.
‘The Mind Prison.’
In his desperation to survive, his ego had taken shelter within the Mind Prison to wear the storms that were raging through his consciousness after he received the blow from the True Voice. He only had a vague recollection of that event, but after that, everything was blank.
‘Looking at the current situation, things seemed to have calmed down a bit.’
Although he didn’t know much about his mindspace, he knew it shouldn’t look like this. All those floating islands scattered through the void made him feel a sense of trepidation.
‘Sigh, if that’s a physical representation of my mind, then I’m screwed big time.’
From what he could see in his immediate line of sight, there were at least hundreds of islands. If he took into consideration the fact that he didn’t know the actual size of the space he was currently in, there could very well be thousands or even more.
His mind was truly shattered. Considering how many pieces it had been split into, it was a miracle he was even able to form conscious thought.
‘Something must be facilitating my recovery.’
As he slowly adapted to his current state, the hazy memories of his suffering the past few weeks came back to him in fragments. From what he could surmise about the state he was in before he completely lost consciousness, it was impossible for him to heal through his own efforts.
‘Sigh, if I could see my status window right now, things would be so much easier.’
Although the status window didn’t outline his condition, there were bound to be changes he could use to figure out some information. Also, he could see the backlog of system messages that could possibly alert him of what happened.
Perhaps his legend was enhanced, or the Primordial Undying Tree sent a message. Either way, there would be something for him to see.
Without understanding the situation, Damien didn’t want to rashly act. If he made some mistake by accident, it could very well spell his death.
With this thought in mind, he returned to the middle of the Mind Prison and sat down, adjusting his mental state and concentrating on the situation outside.
Time passed slowly.
‘I don’t know how long it’s been, but at least I’ve managed to gain some information.’
Firstly, the many islands that were scattered around the area were slowly moving. Their directions weren’t set, but after a long period of observation, Damien could understand that they were being drawn to each other.
If his guess as to what those islands represented was correct, then the fact that they were trying to reconnect symbolized the healing of his mind.
‘But it’s way too slow.’
There was no way for Damien to feel the flow of time in this space, but from a rough estimate, he felt that it’d take at least half a year for his mind to recuperate at its current speed. And that was even with the external help that he was being provided.
‘How do I make this process faster?’
He had many things to do in the outside world once he woke up. He couldn’t afford to be comatose until the Trial World finally closed.
The Apostle he had killed using Void Essence wasn’t simple at all. With what he experienced, he was sure that the old man was something akin to an Avatar.
Which meant that the voice that was able to harm him merely because he heard it belonged to the Demon God.
‘Things have become much more complicated.’
His original plan was to slowly assassinate the Apostles and then move on to the Demon Kings, completely cleaning up the Trial World before it came time to leave. But it seemed he was no longer able to do that.
The Demon God had started placing attention on him. If it was a 4th class that had done so, it would’ve been difficult but not impossible for him to continue his plans, but a Demigod was different.
If even his voice alone was able to cause such devastating damage, then a real move from him would wipe Damien out before he could even understand what happened.
Going to Acier again had become impossible, so targeting the Demon Kings was out of the question. But to lure the Apostles out of hiding should be somewhat simpler.
‘No matter. First I need to heal and wake up. Only after that will I be able to put anything into motion.’
Damien closed his eyes and began meditating. Since he was currently inside his own mindspace, he had an inexplicable connection to the surrounding environment.
Connecting with it should’ve been easy, but as he attempted to spread his awareness, he was met with a splitting headache.
“Argh!”
He groaned in pain, and soon noticed that the progress the floating islands were making towards reconnecting had been set back by a small margin.
‘I can’t act on the large scale right now. Trying to control my entire mind when it’s in pieces like this is like putting the cart before the horse.’
Realizing this, Damien changed his approach. Instead of spreading his awareness, he focused it into a single point and tried to connect to the floating island that was closest to him.
Whoosh!
A minor feeling of refreshment washed over his body. As the link slowly took shape, Damien felt that formulating his thoughts became much easier.
Finding the path forward seemed to have taken a short amount of time, but Damien knew better. He had to carefully word every thought of his and take time so that it didn’t exhaust the small amount of mental power he had.
Now that he had formed a connection with the island, the amount of mental power he had slightly increased, making it so he could focus on the task in front of him for longer periods of time.
But he knew he wasn’t anywhere close to finishing. His gaze soon moved to the second closest island to him.
His mental power activated and circulated like it was mana, and with his command, the island he was connected to slowly started moving in that direction.