Visdre could no longer feel his body. He only felt himself in the white room.
"I probably passed out due to lack of oxygen. Someone will save me..."
A few hours passed.
But there were no signs of regaining consciousness in his body.
"I died?"
Visdre couldn't believe this.
Days went by... and he remained in the white room.
"Is this my afterlife? Is this all I have to look forward to?"
Visdre was quite depressed.
He most regretted not reading all the steps of the technique.
"Wait... there was that weirdness. When my hands turned into fog."
He looked down at his hands and tried to turn it into fog. His body started to become transparent. His body disappeared!
He was existing as a body of fog.
He explored the white room which was quite small. He looked at the black door and did various test. It still wouldn't open.
But he noticed something.
His fog body couldn't phase through the walls of this room. But the door was a different story.
He went beyond the door.
"I'm finally free!"
His visualization technique continued to rotate.
[ECHO]: Stage 91 - 50%
The moment he left the white room. It was as if he had left a safe zone. From his perspective. The white room vanished.
"Wait!"
He felt slightly anxious knowing that the white room was gone.
"Initially, when I had a body, rotating the technique brought me to my source castle..."
Visdre tried to rotate his technique. It took 91 milliseconds now.
He found himself back in the white room.
He felt relief knowing that he still had this constant.
He left the white room and it vanished again.
He was surrounded by various bubbles...
"What is this place?"
Visdre entered one of the countless bubbles in this weird space. He saw time behaving weird. The rules in this space were whacky and inconsistent.
He was still a body of fog.
He saw one thing in this bubble that was consistent.
"it's a normal person?"
He condensed his form into that of a human.
He was wearing a suit... his facial expressions covered in fog however.
He wanted to talk to this person to figure out his current situation.
"Hello!"
The person looked at him in horror.
"Who are you!?"
"I am..."
Visdre felt like it may be dangerous to use his real name in this realm. So he gave himself a moniker.
"Somnus."
The moment he said these words, the person screamed and the entire bubble popped.
----------------------------------------
???'s POV:
I'm not sure what I was dreaming about. But something eerie happened. I saw a weird man that distorted the surroundings.
I managed to ask him who he was...
"Somnus."
I then woke up.
----------------------------------------
Visdre found himself back in that weird space.
"What happened?"
Visdre rotated his 'key' and entered his source castle.
He was in human form.
He walked to the podium and flipped through the book. He was hoping that magically the rest of the steps would be within.
But he was left disappointed.
"What is that space outside my source castle?"
Visdre decided to try again. He turned into a body of fog and left the white room. He then entered a random bubble.
He found himself not surrounded by weirdness this time. He was in a hallway. There was a monster chasing a person.
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
The normal person ran right through his fog body. Visdre felt a weird sensation. He returned to his human form and grabbed the arm of the person running.
The person displayed supernatural strength and he was dragged as if he weighed nothing. The hallway led to nowhere. When he reached the end. There was a drop into a pit.
The person jumped into the hole to escape from the monster chasing them. Visdre was dragged along.
Right before hitting the ground.
The person vanished.
The bubble collapsed. But the consciousness of Visdre followed them to reality. The person seemed to be awake but paralyzed.
Visdre felt a huge headache. But he had seized the body!
There was resistance however. Within a few seconds... he was kicked out. The person thought they had experienced some weird type of sleep paralysis.
Visdre's spiritual body was in the real world!
He waved his hands in front of the person. But they acted as if they couldn't see him.
He tried touching them. But his hand phased through them as if he was a ghost.
Visdre was already floating after getting kicked out of their body.
The first thing he did was try to figure out his location. He flew through the ceiling and continued to fly high into the sky until everything looked quite far away.
"I need to find my body!"
Visdre couldn't ask for directions. He also couldn't interact with the physical world. It was a miracle he was even able to observe it.
He decided to try to seize the body of a random person. But he was unable to interact with anyone. He also didn't dare return to his source castle. He didn't know the rules behind how he entered the physical world.
He didn't want to throw away possibly his only chance.
After experimenting. He found that when someone was sleeping. Their defenses seemed to be down. He could then for a very short period of time 'take over' and make them sleep walk.
To do this, he needed to transform into fog and seep slowly into their body.
He tried this on hundreds of different people. But he could only maintain control for dozens of seconds.
This was hardly enough time to figure out where he was.
He however got pretty lucky. He found someone already sleep walking. When he tried to take over, there was no resistance at all.
He went to their room to try to find a computer or phone. But he lacked their memories, so he didn't have the passwords to use them.
His luck was wasted.
"I have been focusing on quantity... I should go for quality."
Visdre decided to stalk a single person and learn everything about them. He would hover behind them at all times. He memorized their passwords and the locations of their devices.
Every night, when they slept. He would stand in the corner of their room. This person however started to develop schizophrenia.
They became paranoid and felt like someone was always watching them.
[ECHO]: Stage 120 - 97%
They were eventually admitted involuntarily to a mental hospital. They claimed to see a man in a suit with unclear facial expressions.
Visdre was quite shocked.
"They can see me?"
He tried communicating with them.
But they didn't react.
Visdre tried taking over their body every night for a few seconds.
[ECHO]: Stage 487 - 10%
Visdre spent a year following this person. They were released and on medication. They still felt as if some presence was there. They felt as if something was haunting them.
Visdre could now control their body for hours. During this time they were 'sleep walking'.
It had taken too long to reach this level of control.
Visdre gave up on finding his dead body. He figured the place he was renting probably had new occupants as well. All of his stuff was likely long gone.
But he wouldn't waste this opportunity in the real world.
He controlled their body and pulled up "Path of Somnus: God's Death".
He checked the synopsis and found it was still the same universe. It was still 'F555'.
He went to read the next chapter:
Step 12: Kill God
He was deeply disappointed in the contents. It was too simple. Far too simple. Why was this? He had already lost his brain. He was already existing without one. This step would have been helpful before death...It was too late.
Step 13: Hidden Existence
He was far more happy with the contents of this chapter. It had far more use to him then the last one.
"Become a hidden existence?"
"There are a few issues with the steps in this chapter. I lack a body to 'wake up' from to trick nonexistence into branding my key on it."
"My 'source castle' also wasn't constructed by me. I have always had it. I am unable to destroy it."
Preparation:
1.) Manifest your consciousness.
2.) Entangle your brain with your soul.
3.) Temper your will.
"I have already manifested my consciousness in a sense."
"I lack a brain."
"I don't have a body to experience life with to temper my will."
"This is a dead end..."
"I'll have to heavily modify this part of the technique."
"I will return to that white room. But first, I'll read ahead a bit more."
Secrets of Universe 'F555'
'You are now officially a hidden existence! Congratulations...
There are now things you can learn that no ordinary existence should ever know. One of those things is 'hidden rules'.
What exactly is a 'hidden rule'?
Well...
Every single universe is generated based off a seed. This is incredibly simple as well. I use the seed as the identifier of the universe. The seed itself isn't in any readable language. So I have translated it into something understandable.
The current universe you are reading this from is called 'F555'.
I would never dare to leak information on hidden existences to a ordinary existence, this is why this information is protected.
If you are able to read this text.
You must meet some sort of condition.
Your Destiny is definitely not normal.
Each universe is generated based on its seed. But each universe also has something entirely unique to it. This is the 'hidden rule'.
I can give you an example using this very universe itself.
The main hidden rule of this universe is called 'Dream Realm'. All the dreams of those in this universe are connected together.
This rule means it is possible for hidden existences to 'piggyback' on the consciousness of those dreaming to enter the real world with their avatars.
But interacting with this world requires a lot of power.'
Step 14: ECHO - System Genesis
Visdre was most intrigued with this chapter... the fact that the sentience of ECHO was growing with the technique was interesting.
Visdre learned about 'system_genesis'.
This was perhaps the most important piece of information.
[ECHO]: Creating system...
[ECHO]: Current universe: F555
[ECHO]: Mana null.
[ECHO]: Qi null.
[ECHO]: Aura null.
[ECHO]: No supernatural power detected.
[ECHO]: Searching memories...
[ECHO]: Type 1 civilization.
[ECHO]: Intelligence... (IQ:100)
[ECHO]: Hidden rules... analyzing...
[ECHO]: 'Dream Realm'
[ECHO]: Creating cheat schematic...
[ECHO]: "Master of Dreams"
[ECHO]: Estimated system construction time: 48,312 hours
"Get out of my body!"
Visdre had been too focused on the book that he hadn't realized that the body he was borrowing had woken up from 'sleep walking'.
"I said! GET OUT!"
Visdre tried to leave the body. But he was a step too late.
This person was insane! They had long ago noticed the 'sleep walking'. They had planned to kill this entity that had ruined their life!
The person took a knife and slit their throat. Visdre died with the body before he could exit.
As he was losing consciousness...
He rotated his 'key'.
He appeared completely unharmed in the white room.
"I should probably avoid seizing the body in the future."
He felt responsible for such an outcome. He had indirectly killed someone.
He had gotten the information he needed from this sacrifice.