It was quiet.

Sean pushed his eyes open, yet, he saw nothing. He knew this place, but something inside his head didn’t click. He could move but it felt as if he wasn’t moving. It felt like he was falling down but going nowhere, as if locked in time and space in the middle of nowhere.

He imagined Magic Circle for a Mana Ball —something that had become too natural for him over the past three weeks, so much so that he felt like it was as simple as blinking or walking.

Yet… nothing happened.

The Magic Circle that he so easily imagined turned into a scrambled mess and he failed to even imagine it.

It always felt so natural to create the Magic Circle in his mind. The gray outline that first appeared was almost nigh instantaneous, but now, it wasn’t. It was like thinking ten times as hard for one tenth the result. It just didn’t budge.

Before, it was like drawing a circle on a sheet of paper in his mind. But now, it was like he was trying to draw a sign on a metal plate with a feather. The shape didn’t form and it dissipated within his head, and for the first time in far too long of a time, Sean was… vulnerable.

He opened his mouth, as if to say something, yet nothing came out. The sound was snuffed out before it even left his vocal cords. The darkness wasn’t one that he’d come to know —it couldn’t be. His Mindscape was a place for safety and escape, but this… this place felt fundamentally terrifying.

There was the feeling of something watching him from somewhere close. As if the hot breath of something was close to his neck, ready to lunge for it.

“Come to me,” spoke a disembodied voice. It was a mellow and pleasant one. This wasn’t like the whispers inside his head. This didn’t come from the inside, but from the outside, and that was a fundamentally wrong feeling.

The whispers of the voices inside his head felt like a part of him, something that he didn’t have to fear. He could get angry at them, he could suppress them, but that didn’t exist for this alien voice in the darkness, as pleasant as it was.

And that… was terrifying.

“Come to me,” spoke the voice again. This time, Sean noticed something else —it wasn’t a whisper. It was told in a confident manner, as if a queen ordering her subject. This voice was far too familiar.

His thoughts were muddled and he couldn’t focus on one thing. The moment he started to think of something, it slipped away out of his grasp. Then, he had to conceive it again.

“Come to me,” said the voice. It was like a mantra, repeating every few seconds. Every time the voice repeated itself, it became louder.

After ten repetitions, it was too loud.

The world seemed to quiver and it made his body shudder. Despite the volume and its effects on the world and his body, it felt… pleasant, as if it was meant to do that —as if it was supposed to do that and he was supposed to let it do as it pleased.

It was as if his entire body was encased in wool whenever he heard the voice. It was fluffy, and his mind and body relaxed whenever he was touched by it. His eyelids became heavier and he started to prowl ever closer to sleep.

“Come to me.”

An inexplicable feeling of submission took over his mind and Sean felt himself fall to his knees, even despite the sensation of falling. That was pushed to the back of his mind.

He forced his eyes open despite the drowsiness that sought to take over. He didn’t know what made him do that. Maybe it was the fact that he hated being in inescapable situations. Maybe it was the fact that the last time he was somewhere dark with something else, he died in the most painful manner possible.

Or maybe, it was a part of him that was afraid of losing the Mindscape that was his escape to something he didn’t even know. As pleasant as it was, it was company —he didn’t want company. Not here. Not in his Mindscape.

“Submit,” said the voice.

It didn’t beckon him anymore, as if realizing that he was still conscious. He forced himself to stay awake, and that was difficult. Road trips that lasted a week with two hours of sleep were something that Sean was used to. And even that wasn’t as tiring as this.

This time, it was overbearing and it felt as if a boulder was placed on him. His body felt like it was being crushed under the weight. He couldn’t breathe at all, the air unable to pass through his nose. If this was his physical body, it may have broken apart, but it wasn’t.

This was inside his Mindscape.

He couldn’t go any further and all his efforts to stay conscious seemed to be snuffed out like a candle in a raging sea after one simple word. His consciousness started to fade and his eyes closed.

“Come to me.”

The voice once again beckoned for him to come. It was sure of itself —arrogant. It thought that he fell, and that was true. Sean felt himself fall down to an abyss that he couldn’t escape from. He almost did, and would have. But there came a heartbeat. It was quiet, almost inaudible.

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But it was quiet here in the darkness. There was no sound other than the commands. So quiet that you could hear a pin drop —and the heartbeat was just that loud. It could barely be heard, but it was there.

Then it started to beat harder and faster.

And then the voices came —the ones that were inside his head.

“There’s no turning back once you’ve made the choice,” it said.

That was his father.

It felt as if the sensation of falling just… stopped.

He stopped falling and simply hovered there in the middle of nowhere, as if in an environment without gravity, like an astronaut out in space. There was nothing to hold him down or up.

It was getting redundant now. He almost knew whatever they were saying by heart, or was it the other way around? Were the voices repeating the things he knew by heart?

He didn’t know, and he didn’t care. Not now. He had bigger fish to fry.

Now, Sean was lucid. His mind was clear, as if he could actually think. The Magic Circle that he couldn’t imagine no matter what formed instantly and he shot a Mana Ball out of his palm.

The light lit up the darkness.

No, the darkness was the space around him. Instead, it simply pulled off the cover of darkness away from everything hiding inside his Mindscape, very much like a blacklight revealing what has happened in a hotel room.

Floating in the middle of nowhere was a mass of black tendrils. It writhed and shrieked in a high-pitched tone that could only be described as disturbing. It was darker than the darkness itself, and that allowed Sean to see it.

His first instinct was, obviously, to destroy it.

He shot an Explosive Mana Ball at it and he saw it explode. It was clearly visible despite the darkness, or rather, because of the darkness magnifying any light to seem blindingly bright.

The creature didn’t even move and let the attack go straight through it, as if it was made of liquid. It instantly reformed and lunged toward Sean. Its size was tremendous and its tendrils moved quickly.

Casting two spells at the same time was something impossible for him at the moment. The best he could manage was shooting two in quick succession, and that, he did. This time, he shot two Mana Discs at it, hoping that they’d somehow cut through it.

It did, but it reformed far too easily.

Its tendrils latched onto his limbs and spread them apart, holding him up. Then before he even realized it, it stabbed through his abdomen. That wasn’t painful, however. Instead, Sean felt his mind almost melt. It was difficult to even resist it and his eyes rolled upward.

That wasn’t the only stab.

It had too many tendrils to count and all of them stabbed at him ceaselessly and with each successive strike, Sean felt his mind start to slip. Whatever let him stay lucid and conscious was getting depleted with a speed that couldn’t be matched.

Skill ‘Presence’ has been activated!

Skill ‘Charm’ has been overpowered.

Status Effect ‘Fear’ has been inflicted upon target.

Sean’s eyes widened and he gasped for breath, finally back in control. Without even thinking, he launched spell after spell at the creature. He was sure he used more than twenty. He just kept shooting them out until he felt the mental cue for when he was almost out of Mana set in. Somehow, the headache was kept away.

Psychic Defense (Untempered)

You have learned the basics of Psychic Warfare and have fended off an assault from a foreign source. You are able to resist the effects of abilities that influence the psyche and halt it by engaging in combat with them within your Mindscape. Time does not pass during Psychic Defense.

Skill Rank: D

Skill Mastery: 2%

Psychic Defense?

Now lucid, Sean could finally connect the dots instead of perceiving everything without making conjectures and hypotheses. There was only a single foreign voice that had any business being inside his Mindscape…

He was breathing hard —something he didn’t know he could do in the Mindscape. But for now, he had enough of this darkness. Sean wasn’t alone in here, and the sense of safety was compromised.

That meant he had to change it, and he knew what the second best thing after a dark void was —a white void. There, nothing would be able to hide. He would be able to see everything, just like before the Calibration.

The world didn’t transition. The moment he decided to change it, it was white. There was no delay whatsoever.

In the white void, he could finally see his body. He was wearing what he was wearing in real life —a green jacket he got from Uncle Jeremy and jeans. This was the attire he’d been wearing ever since he came to the manor.

Lying on the ‘ground’ was the creature. It looked as if it was made out of a luscious black liquid that glistened in the light of the now-white void. It had more than twenty tendrils, most of them cut and on the ground. Some liquid that looked like black blood oozed out of the places that had their tendrils cut off. With no eyes or anything that made it seem like a living being, it looked bizarre.

Sean activated Appraisal.

Skill ‘Appraisal’ has been activated!

Name: Mind Worm

What part of that was a worm?

Sean scrunched his nose and looked at it. That looked disgusting.

No sooner than he’d thought of that, Sean’s head started to ache as if it was about to rupture. This headache was something far too familiar for him —low mana. And slowly, he felt himself get dragged back to his body.

The sensation for the transition was peculiar. He wasn’t being moved but it felt like he was refocusing on something far in the distance.

His eyes snapped open in the real world and Sean found himself staring at the ceiling. The peculiar sensation of being dragged back to his body only happened when someone touched his body in the real world, but now, he was all alone in the library, lying on the couch.

It was already morning, but then again, he’d went to sleep at almost dawn. The light was bleeding in through the gaps in the curtains and Sean held his head with both hands. It hurt like hell and he didn’t have any medicine to make it go away —waiting for about ten minutes would make it go away, as he’d get some Mana back that way.

Did he come out because he was out of Mana?

That was his best guess.

Sean realized he was breathing heavily now, just like in the Mindscape. Did the physical effects in the Mindscape carry over to his actual body?

The jacket wasn’t zipped so Sean pushed up his T-shirt and there, he saw black marks where the creature had stabbed him, his entire torso almost filled with them. His wrists, too, had the marks.

He pushed the T-shirt down, covering his abdomen.

What the hell was this?