As his hand touched the double doors, Cain felt his palm turn cold. The coldness assaulted his body and spread through his arms, trying to reach the rest.

'Strange...' Using his power as the owner of the dream, the coldness melted. Cain then added his other hand into the mix and began to push.

"This is sturdy as hell. Is this how hard it's supposed to be? The door was already opened by that zombie bastard before I got to it, he was the one who broke the seal..."

The door inched farther and farther apart as Cain exhausted himself, but his stamina rose with a mere thought. By the time he had opened the doors, he already recovered.

"What now? This is different too."

The entrance didn't lead to a carved tunnel but the abyss, a glass walkway in front of Cain waiting for him.

"Might as well." He began his descent, walking on thin transparent glass that cracked with every step. As he went farther, the glass would crack more and more. Eventually, as expected, they shattered.

Crck!

"Shit!"

All the steps broke, and the one walking on them fell into the darkness below.

"Not this again!"

The last thing Cain wanted was to fall into the abyss, he'd done so once before. It was not a fun time.

Suddenly, he hit something, Cain impacted with the ground and his head slammed into the floor. Thankfully, he was in a dream, nothing happened and he felt fine. Double checking, he confirmed he wasn't hurt and stood up.

"Why the hell am I in this place?!"

A forest to his back, Cain glared intently at the estate in front of him. It was a place he burned into his memory, due to it holding importance to his past, the past of Cain.

"I may be a split personality of sorts, but I don't consider this important besides the fact it's in a Middle Zone Territory. Why the hell did my dream bring me here? For that matter, why has this entire dream been me going through my past..."

Nevertheless, Cain swallowed his concern and let his curiosity rule him. He studied the fields as he entered the grounds of his family. Each step helped him vividly recall memories that were blocked long ago. He remembered his mother and father, the servants, and the manor. But now, it was empty, the sky was dark, and he was at the bottom of the void.

Entering the foyer, his nostrils sucked in air and Cain noticed something wrong.

"I smell smoke..."

Looking behind him, the fields outside the estate were ablaze. The flames were spreading quickly and were spreading towards the manor. Cain didn't utter a word and went deeper inside, looking for whatever his dream was trying to tell him.

He followed where his father took him, heading down some stairs. However, the stairway led to a different path, a long hallway of stone. On the walls were sculptures carved out of the wall.

As he walked, he noticed the walls were detailed with roots, they were spreading and heading to where he was going. after that, depictions of skeletons lined the walls, but a little more walking and humans replaced the skeletons. However, the humans were in the same positions as the skeletons.

"Is the change trying to show the humans were resurrected? Reborn?"

He continued to walk, the next carvings being lines, they were too small to be roots. At set intervals, there were cuts along the wall, severing the lines.

"Strings? Being cut?"

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Finally, at the last stretch, the hallway was filled with eyes. Somehow as stone, they felt as if they were always looking at him. This gave Cain a feeling many would understand.

The strong were nothing before it, and they would try to remove it from their lives. To no avail, they would ultimately die to it as well.

"Fate..."

The tunnel stopped, and Cain was suddenly in a hall illuminated by different colored fires. In front of him was the altar of a giant bird spreading its wings.

"It's a raven...." He inched closer, reaching out his hand to touch the statue.

As his fingernail brushed its surface, Cain's view changed again. This time, he understood where he had gone, below him was a small world, a little way to the right, there was another such world. Looking around, he saw a total of 5 other worlds.

"So, did I conquer my dream or something? The subconscious still has too much to do with this place. Luckily, my subconscious is developed, I know what I desire and the mysticism at work helps me get those wants. It seems I was led by it to see a vision before it finally let me get on what I wanted to do. Will my subconscious become like the mist, alive? If that happens I might die."

Cain pondered.

Even saying so, he wasn't too perturbed, it was his subconscious after all. The worst-case scenario would be it becoming conscious, in that case, it would have to be put down.

Yet doing that would go against its nature, it was his subconscious, it wouldn't forgo that, just like the mist won't forgo its best interest to stay with Cain for the most food. But it wasn't like it could leave either, it was attached to Netherane's Core.

"I can feel my dream world, It's like an extension of my soul energy, which is odd. Is soul energy a mobilized portion of the soul then? A strange form of it? It's not like I have a soul mirror or something, I can't tell..."

The fact that the dream worlds were made out of soul energy wasn't too disturbing, it just meant soul energy was connected to the soul, which was already known. But it confirmed soul energy came from the soul, as the drug addicts still had dream worlds, which meant their souls were being used to create them.

"Is soul energy diluted soul? Hmm...either way it changes nothing. Though, I am curious why another Soul Path user couldn't fill this role." Cain mumbled as he moved his hand.

His dream world did as he commanded, it proceeded to unfold and stretch, it popped like a balloon and turned into a rapidly expanding raft.

Cain's dream world connected with the first subject, his soul energy was far denser than the person's soul, and the dome protecting their world crumbled and was assimilated.

"What's happening?! Did you do this?!" The owner of the dream world was furious, they still thought themselves the ruler of this place, not realizing it was their dream world that did it all.

Cain didn't even gaze at them, exerting his soul's aura. Since they were in a place where their souls could fully manifest, this action was too effective!

In the drug addict's eyes, the ghostly man who attacked him became a terrifying and incomprehensible existence.

Tangible evil radiated through Cain's person, droves of human faces and pained wailing manifested in the air around him. His shadow materialized and drowned the sky as numerous red eyes hid within. Even with his back turned, the drug addict was heart-stricken, his eyes bleeding even though he was nothing more than a soul.

Cain didn't go overboard, he still needed these people alive, he vanished from sight to make sure the man didn't die.

After that, everything went smoothly, the other four assimilated into Cain's dreamland. By the end, Cain had a large swath of land, though he had minimal control over it except the area that belonged to him. It would take time to overwrite the lands as long as their owners were still alive.

"This will do, a little shoddy, but they melded together, if I used my actual soul I doubt this would be possible, I would just devour it all through the sheer difference in status.

"At long last, success, now if I can...wait."

Cain focused on one of the drug addicts wandering around the new land in confusion. Cain's vision focused on their soul which sent shivers down their spine.

"They...they don't have origins!? What's going on?!" Cain was sent reeling. He checked each of the souls and all of them lacked an origin.

"This doesn't make any sense, the Origin is the center mass of the soul, the reason it can exist. Even animals have origins! But if these people don't, why couldn't they join their worlds to begin with? Or is it because of the drug? I have to study this, I'm starting to feel this world has more to offer than I first thought..."

Everything was bizarre, without an origin the soul wouldn't be contained, it would dissipate. It was the source of strength of someone, it's why Cain couldn't exist in a body for more than a few days at most; unless he had a method to use flesh as a substitute.

Even possession usually ended with one origin devouring another.

Origins were the soul itself, how could there be souls without origins?!

Cain felt the ceiling crashing on him. For someone like him, this was all too unexplainable.

"I...I need to get stronger so that I can study this without interruption. I must finish this drug and use it for my purposes, Bureau be damned! This tool is perfect for me right now!"

Grumbling, Cain held in his curiosity and didn't kill the souls of the drug addicts for study, he knew deep down he wouldn't learn anything. This problem might have a deep connection to the world he was in, he was almost sure the drug couldn't have done this.

With that, he exited the dreamland and forcibly took out the other souls to see what would happen.