|Ding! You have entered a special mana-rich area!|
|Ding! Death State has ended!|
|Ding! Body has reformed!|
|Ding! Effective Age has reset!|
|Ding! Your Innate Skill [True Immortal’s Ambient Mana Absorption (I-60)] has activated!|
|Ding! Your Innate Skill [True Immortal’s Regeneration (I-60)] has activated!|
|Ding! Your Innate Skill [True Immortal’s Adaptation (I-60)] has activated!|
‘It’s cold…’
It was the first thing that he noticed—aside from the notifications, of course. But the cold here wasn’t anything he’d ever felt before. It wasn’t like the winter chill back home. Nor was it the cold from one of his friend’s freezing potions. No, this was something else entirely.
‘Why is it so—AHHHHHHHHHHH’
In reflex, he tried to open his mouth and scream out loud to match his thoughts. But no sound came out. He flailed wildly, trying, and trying, and trying, to grab ahold of something—anything, but there was nothing here.
Then he noticed it—or rather, the absence of it. There was no air here. And worse? There was no gravity.
Elias persistently struggled against the unbearable emptiness, his limbs thrashed about in all directions, but no matter how hard he fought, it was useless.
The cold sank into his very bones, freezing his newly formed body, reaching deeper and freezing his thoughts along with it.
His healing made things worse. Forcing him feel the destruction and reconstruction of his cells—prolonging his suffering under the unforgiving laws of the void.
Inevitably, he ceased his futile struggles and curled himself up into a ball, trying his best to manage the pain.
He didn’t know how long it lasted exactly. All he could think about was the pain—the pain of every cell in his body caught in a constant cycle of freezing to death and forceful healing. The repeated damage to his brain from the lack of oxygen, not to mention the constant suffocation. It was torture.
At some point, he’d even tried to open his eyes, but when he did, he found that they didn’t work. He could feel them continually swelling and popping, then healing, over and over again. It was unending.
The pain was excruciating, to say the least, and soul-shattering, to say the most.
‘…No, it’s more than that… wait… I can think?!’
Unbeknownst to him, the pain had somehow… lessened. It wasn’t gone, no; it was still there, just dulled.
|Ding! You have adapted!|
|Ding! Temporary buff [Stellar Endurance I] gained!|
‘Ah! That’s why…’
He didn’t really know how to feel about it. On one hand, he was glad that he was now able to think. On the other, he wished that the skill would have just gotten rid of the pain completely.
‘Whatever.’ He thought.
And now, with the space to actually think, he endeavored to figure out what happened. To find out how he ended up in the void of space, of all places.
|Ding! You have activated your Innate Skill [True Immortal’s Perfect Memory (I-60)]
Memories flashed rapidly in his mind. From the first moment that he’d awakened to the moment just before he ‘died’.
‘No. NO! NO!!!’
He attempted to scream again, to rage against what he’d seen in his mind, but frustration and helplessness were the only thing that formed.
‘WHY?! Why am I alive when everyone is… is FUCKING DEAD?!!!’ He asked, and yet, the only thing he heard was the rapid beating of his heart.
His memories kept on replaying in his mind.
He saw his mother practicing magic when she thought no one was watching. His father carefully shaping and sculpting a massive block of Water-aspect obsidian. His best friend Ben, hammering away at a piece of red-hot steel. And Anna…
‘My love…’
His memories shifted to show all he had of Anna. From the time when they were still young and just friends, to the time they finally got together a few years into their apprenticeships.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
He remembered her smile, the way her hair flowed, her green eyes that he could just get lost in, the dimples that hinted at her love for mischief. But most of all, he remembered the look she gave him. THE look. It never failed to make his heart skip a beat.
But now, his memory of her was forever tainted.
She’d been with him on that fateful day when it all went wrong. She was watching him sculpt after she had just finished tending to her garden. When he suddenly received those notifications.
|Ding! WARNING! Your Innate skill [True Immortal’s Concealment (I-60)] has detected an Omni-directional Scrying Skill scanning attempt!|
|Ding! Scanning skill determined to be Innate skill [Anathema’s Prying Eyes (VI-5521)]|
|Ding! WARNING! Scanning attempt has focused on YOU!|
|Ding! WARNING! ALL DEFENSES HAVE BEEN PIERCED!|
At the time, he immediately picked Anna up, headed for his parents’ house, and told them about what happened. He thought he had had enough time to fetch Ben too… but he was wrong.
‘It had only been a few minutes…’ He lamented.
He remembered the moment when Ben came out of his smithy to greet him, only to look up into the sky. A truly enormous tear in space had come into being. There was no sound, no warning.
With not even enough time to process the impossibility of what had happened, an equally gigantic warship emerged from its depths.
It was majestic. Completely covered in runes that he couldn’t even begin to understand. The ones that he did were beautifully arranged in the most intricate and perfect way he could imagine—all for the purpose of annihilation.
Desperation gripped him as he dashed madly toward Anna. But just when he neared and the house was in sight, he tripped. The ground had betrayed him. It shifted beneath his feet, sending him sprawling across the ground. Everything around him trembled violently.
It was as if the whole world was breaking apart.
He hurriedly picked himself up off the ground—not even noticing the small scrape on his knee that refused to heal. She was all he could think about.
Panic and adrenaline drove him as he bolted for the door.
His face brightened at the sight of the door opening on its own. Anna had walked out with his parents close behind. He pushed himself harder, harder than he’d ever pushed.
But it wasn’t enough.
The ground rapidly split in between them. A fracture in the earth itself formed in the blink of an eye.
‘I can make it!’ He’d thought as he eyeballed the expanding fissure.
But when he took a few steps back in preparation to leap across the gap. The world finally broke.
He watched as the love of his life, along with the people who raised him, were crushed by the immense force of the very earth they stood on, as it splintered and rocketed up into the void of space.
Inertia reared its ugly head and transformed their bodies into an insult to them, and to life itself, leaving only a mere smear on the earth that had once nourished them.
Not long after that, the memory replay stopped.
His mind was blank and his body frozen. Elias watched the calamity unfold in his mind’s eye. He didn’t know what to feel. Should he be upset? Probably. Cry? Probably. Angry?
‘Definitely.’ He thought, as fury threatened to overwhelm him.
But rationality won out in the end. After all, the unforgiving feeling of excruciating pain from every part of his body was a constant reminder of where he was.
|Ding! You have adapted!|
|Ding! Temporary buff [Stellar Endurance II] gained!|
‘Just in time.’
The pain eased a little more, fading into an intense itch all across his aching body, fought off by the familiar warmth of his regeneration. Thankfully, it was enough. He could finally feel his eyes stop its cycle of healing and popping.
He forced his eyes open and didn’t see the familiar sight of the pitch-black nothingness of space dotted by distant stars. No, instead, he saw a glowing and colorful sight.
Everywhere he looked was a mishmash of mostly red and pink hues, with a hint of blue and green thrown in. It all blended into one awe-inspiring colorful mist, lit up by nearby stars. And the stars themselves were mesmerizing on their ow—
|Ding! You have witnessed the miracle of stellar formation!|
|Ding! You have received the temporary buff [Glimpse into Creation]|
‘Incredible…’ He thought as he looked on, astonished at what he was seeing.
There was an uncountable number of stars as far as his eyes could see. Several of them were massive to the point that even though he couldn’t feel the heat from any of them, they were still at least bigger than the moon on his home planet.
Then there were the younger ones. Smaller, yes, but no less captivating. Each one was pulling in and absorbing the gases that surrounded them, forming glowing tendrils of light. Some of the stronger ones even formed colorful, breathtaking discs around them that made them look much bigger than they actually were.
Magic was something that he grew up with. It was a constant thing for practically everyone in the universe. But this?
‘This is true magic.’
Time passed again. Elias didn’t know exactly how long he drifted through the nebula. He was too immersed in the experience, in the spectacle, in the miracle of creation itself happening in front of his eyes.
Whole clusters of stars formed from mere specks of cosmic dust into what could only be called seeds. They were not just mere balls of fire and radiation that would burn and destroy everything they came across; these were primordial vessels of creation.
And in time, these vessels will sprout and bloom. Drifting apart from each other and spreading across the cosmos, eventually gathering cosmic dust of their own, forming planets around them—their own seeds. Ones that will one day give birth to life.
‘This… is creation.’
|Ding! You have attained enlightenment on the [Law of Creation]|
|Ding! You have comprehended a Shard of the [Law of Creation]|
The pair of notifications woke him up from his blissful stupor. But with it came pain that was much worse than what he’d felt before.
|Ding! WARNING! Your Existence is insufficient to contain a Law Shard!|
|Ding! WARNING! Your Soul is in danger of annihilation!|
|Ding! WARNING! Shutting down all functions except Innate Skills [True Immortal’s Ambient Mana Absorption (I-60)], [True Immortal’s Regeneration (I-60)], and [True Immortal’s Adaptation (I-60)]|
|Ding! WARNING! You are now entering a Death State!|
‘Shi—’