At the start of my fourth mind prison loop I didn’t bother examining the blank space of my mind I seemed to be trapped in. I searched all of it during the last recursions. Instead, I walked straight to the wall before me and started punching.

I was a level nine cultivator. I ranked above the average cultivator and was considered a squire—a professional. Technique honed my strength, and the blood of my orc ancestors gave me power.

I whipped my fist through the air and smashed it into the wall with all my strength. A punch capable of cracking boulders smashed the wall in silence. No sound echoed from the impact, not even a hollow thud. Pain didn’t register in my fist, nor did any reverberation in my bones or arm. My fist struck the wall, but it felt like I punched nothing. I punched again and again. I didn’t know what else to do or how to escape my mindscape, so I punched into nothing. When I died and returned to the blank space of my mind prison, I picked a different wall and punched some more.

It wasn’t my proudest moment. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to escape my prison. The unfeeling wall stood before me, so it became the target of all I no longer wanted to feel.

Perhaps this hollow space frustrated me because it was no longer obtainable. I tried. For years, I sought emptiness. Then, a ray of sun entered my life, and I discovered warmth. I tried to avoid it at first, crawling into a hole to hide away. The sun shined anyway and found me in the darkest pits.

I smothered that light when I led us into this infernal forest where monsters fought. We were ants among giants. Each time life brought me back, I watched my friends die until the details stained my memory. First, it was Sasha who suffered the same earth impalement as me. Rocky obliterated into a puff of mana. Flint froze and shattered. Flames engulfed Lana—a sight not even closed eyes spared me from witnessing. As she burned, the world darkened.

The harrowing scene repeated over a hundred times for me. Each life, I tried to grow indifferent. I reached for numbness, finding solace only in death. Calluses grew with each iteration, but the pain was always prevalent. Even in my darkest hours, the sun continued to shine. I hated the light for its lasting embrace, and I hated myself for not being able to embrace it back.

How could I embrace the light? I didn’t deserve it.

Time slipped away in the room of empty light. I cursed the emptiness. If I couldn’t be numb like it, the room would endure my wrath until my anger tempered.

If this was a test, I had truly failed. I didn’t care. I kept punching—wall after wall, life after death.

The only solace I found in the prison of my mind was my recursion no longer started on the pike. When I died, a black abyss swallowed me, and I’d wake up in this damned state. I either ran out of walls to punch or reasons. My fists no longer formed. I surrendered to the solitude and wept.

Time worked a number on one’s soul if one allowed it. In this room, time unraveled mine. I collected the broken parts only for them to slip from inadequate hands. Still, I tried to catch every part of myself that fell to the floor.

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In the struggle to piece myself together, I learned I wasn’t angry at the space for its hollowness nor that it was unattainable. Despite the pain embedded in my soul, I feared the emptiness consuming me. It was so easy to exist in a hollow state. Peaceful. Safe. However, swallowed in the black abyss, a sliver of light still burned within my heart, battling despair. I could feel Lana’s warmth as long as I kept that ember alive. As long as the warmth remained, I’d never be empty.

In the silent solitude, my anger faded, sadness dissipated, and fear melted. I clutched onto hope.

If I survived, so could they. I found new solace in the thought and dedicated myself to a fool’s hope. Death claimed my friends, but life preserved me. ‘Live for them;’ became my mantra. I would escape from this prison and then save my friends. Whatever Tents did to me, he’d given me a chance. That was all I needed.

I walked to one wall, turned my back, and sat. My apathetic enemy became my support as I dived into meditation. I had no answers for this mindscape. All I could do was reflect. I replayed the disastrous day in my thoughts. With no success, I delved even deeper. Countless thoughts focused on Tenty and everything he said to me. I recalled our conversation over and over.

Stop resisting me with your mind… If you do not relax, I can not begin. Take a deep breath and calm down… Ease your mind. Allow yourself to be open to new ideas. Stop putting up walls. Doubt, hesitation, fear… push them aside. You are safe. Your mind is safe. I will guide you to enlightenment… Prepare yourself for the fullness of my glory.

The conversation wasn’t helpful. I turned my focus further inward and examined the pathways of my mind, hoping to find an answer there. These paths were essential for mind cultivation. Survival was the mind’s inherent need to live. Intelligence was the mind’s purpose. Wisdom was the mind’s armor.

To reach the rank of squire, I had cultivated the paths of survival and wisdom, gaining three levels in survival and two in wisdom. I already had one level of intelligence. Every three levels cultivated added another layer to the soul, allowing the mana bound inside to expand.

I expected to see three layers of my soul—three levels of body and six levels of mind. My soul, indeed, had three layers filled with water mana. However, a new layer wrapped my core as well.

The fourth layer doubled the size of my soul. It was massive. When did I gain three more levels? In all of my deaths, there had never been enough time to train, and I’d done nothing for my progression in the prison of my mind. There was no denying my core had expanded, and if I cultivated in a mana-rich environment, I’d break through to the rank of knight, becoming an apex lancer. However, there was no mana in this cage. Reaching the rank of knight didn’t matter at the moment. I’d gained three new levels without realizing it.

The closer I inspected my mind, the clearer it became. Each of my mental pathways—wisdom, intelligence, and survival—had three levels. How? When? Squids must’ve tampered with my mind somehow.

I dived deeper into the depths of my mind, exploring every crack, cavity, and expanse—living through memories and experiencing love, joy, sadness, fear, and pain. I wanted to stop several times. The moments became real again. It hurt. Damn, it hurt. I pushed through the pain anyway and kept searching. The answer was somewhere in my mindscape

Somewhere, somehow, I’d find a way to escape this abyss. I just had to keep looking.

For an unknown amount of time, I waded through light. When I reached the end of the light, I crawled through endless darkness. In the deep void of my mind, I found what I was looking for.

I crawled in the darkness toward a distant white box.