The city square of Carnova always saw a steady stream of people going in and out or lingering around it. The square had a public fountain, a statue of the city's founder, many guild headquarters, players workshops, top restaurants among many other things.

In any city's territory the center of that place was occupied by the awakened as they are the true rulers of this civilization. As for unawakened? They could only live on the periphery by huddling around the players. In this world they didn't have much value.

They were to keep the population afloat.

This evening, the always bustling city square was empty as if it was a deserted area from a ghost story. The local guilds had ordered the evacuation of all non-combatants. A palpable amount of spatial fluctuations were observed throughout the afternoon. All the citizens who were at the square at that time either suffered an almost head-splitting headache or some literally got their head splat.

Because of spatial fluctuations any unawakened inside that area would randomly lose a part of their body at any given moment. Some were casually walking down the street only to find that they tripped on something. No, they didn't trip, rather their legs went missing. Some would have their entire torso in the middle of the fountain floating serenely. Some even regretfully lost their "family jewels".

Ahem!

So after the initial chaos was handled the local guilds hastily barricaded the square area and prepared all the combatants in a battle-ready state. They also send the information to the capital at the first confirmation. An unannounced Dimensional Gate was a huge matter. Ever since the foundation of Astral Divination Guild nine hundred years ago and their subsequent entry within the key positions of Guild Alliance any signs of a Dimensional Gate's appearance would be predicted more than a week earlier.

There has never been a mistake since.

Yet this evening, Carnova's guilds would have to bear the honor of the first players "fortunate" to defend against the invaders of an unpredicted Gate in nearly a thousand years. They truly lucked out, it seemed.

Actually, they were glad to give this honor to another guild. Thus the weird scene unfolded where they still couldn't decide on the vanguard players even after an hour as all the guilds had nearly the same strength and influence in the city. Fortunately for some and unlucky for others, someone else made the decision for them.

The Guild Alliance in the capital responded with unprecedented haste listing out an entire roster of who would take part in the initial defense, what role they would take and even the reinforcements details. They were told to withstand for two hours till the reinforcements would arrive from the capital. When the local guilds saw the announcement those unlucky chosen to be a vanguard cursed and those lucky ones who had reserve members role rejoiced.

An unawakened might had thought "why not gather all the combatants of every guild in a single unit to defend?" but that would be an utter idiotic notion. All guilds have their own self-interests and they wouldn't let their members jointly co-operate with other guilds unless absolutely necessary lest some of the players gets poached or worse became a spy for others.

Chain of commands will also be a mess since all the guilds would only know the situation of their own combatants. Trying to order around a different guild's member would either see drastic inefficiency, verbal arguments and even physical clashes.

There also needed to be a group of reserve players who could reinforce, replenish or replace the vanguard at any given moment with undiminished stamina and strength. These were some of the basics in the awakened players society.

Unawakened could never understand it.

°°°°

Blue walked out of the room after reviewing all the past scenes still with no crucial clues found. At least his previous hypothesis of being able to replenish his mental strength and increasing the limit by just sleeping proved to be right, on top of that if he accessed the Memory Palace while sleeping then he was still able to perceive his surroundings through smell and auditory senses. Sleep and slowly increase your strength while not being in a vulnerable state.

Such a good thing actually possible?

He looked at the corrupted director and read his mind. Without even needing the director to say anything he had already pieced together what he wanted to say.

"... Oh, a Dimensional Gate?"

He had sensed the urgency from the way this guy knocked earlier and after this director entered his perception range, he could already read his surface thoughts thanks to the bloodline abilities Mind Corruption and Soul Corruption's combination effects. A target having been corrupted to a certain extent would allow the corruptor to read the thoughts of the corrupted as long as they are in the corruptor's perception range.

At a certain proficiency, the corruptor could read all the memories and any deep thoughts of the corrupted. Blue's previous proficiency at it was even higher as he could do all the mentioned things irrespective of perception and distance limit. Invading a distant world and getting a bunch of corrupted to do his bidding efficiently while he was "entertaining" his women without needing to bother to connect to the shell a second time. That's the height he reached back in the abyss same as other top powerhouses but now?

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Blue couldn't help but feel a bit gloomy. Except for the Rules of Anomaly ability, which has reached an insane amount of proficiency that he could still use it in the same way he did back in his peak, all the other bloodline abilities proficiency had degraded to the very beginning an adult abyss spawn would commonly have.

Being a natural born, this meant he was at the stage where his strength was similar to when he was just born. No, even weaker since he is in the body of a mortal human which was so weak that it would evaporate if his newborn self had even let a single breath from his nostril.

Sighing heavily at this misfortune, he ordered the director to narrate the whole event. Though he could read that guy's surface thoughts he couldn't gather all the information from it. There would always be a chance of missing some important parts thus listening to the whole story from word of mouth still became a necessity at his current state. After listening to the whole event that was transpiring at the city square he suddenly jolted.

The "instinct" was kicking in again!

It was telling him that he might find the answer he was looking for if he investigated the Gate and it was urging him to hurry.

Blue dared not take this "instinct" lightly. It had always acted in the most crucial times of his life by saving him from misfortunes and leading him to fortunes. So he hurriedly ordered the director,

"I will be outside throughout this evening or maybe the entire night. Make sure to cover for me when others ask why I was absent from my dorm room."

The director bowed to show his compliance. Blue didn't linger around and directly bolted out of the corridor at full sprint. On the way, many kids and staff went by him without noticing his sprint speed was on the same level as the athletes they watched on tv. They would have surely nominated him as a prodigy in sports.

Unfortunately for them, Blue didn't care for those nonsense as he didn't want any unnecessary attention on himself in this "illusory" world, which he was now 95% certain that it wasn't the case after his mental strength limit strengthening hypothesis was proven correct but still labeled it as such lest he forgets his true identity from the attacker's schemes.

So throughout the sprint he kept using Perception Dissonance bloodline ability at full strength. He was now imperceptible by the five senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch. He exited the Verdant Orphanage main gate and dashed through the city with no heed to the people walking around as he was aware that those were all a bunch of unawakened.

He still avoided the surveillance cameras since he wasn't 100% sure if his degraded proficiency of Perception Dissonance could avoid the mechanical monitoring. He was however absolutely certain of deceiving any unawakened human's perception since they were only reliant on the five senses.

As for the awakened?

He would surely be found out and captured for showing strange signs while still being a mortal human. Though awakened and an unawakened both had the suffix "human" on it but an awakened human was an entirely new race, an evolved species.

Human race within the Endless Void had the weakest and malleable basic form. One of the evolved forms of this race was the awakened human race who were known as the players. They would go through an awakening ceremony at the age of 18 inside an aether-rich spot and try to awaken their aether vein to gain the attribute they had a natural affinity with. Many fail at this stage but those who pass become awakened. However what made them unique as an evolved species was that they would get a "class" after their awakening.

All who have an awakened aether vein can naturally perceive the flow of aether in the environment. He might deceive their five senses but the aether sense would rat him out when he was in their sensing range.

This sensing range varied from person to person but any being without a special ability to not to stir the naturally flowing aether in the environment while moving around would definitely be caught by their aether sense.

If his Perception Dissonance was in a higher proficiency than he could even deceive that sense but unfortunately it has been degraded now. And there was still that "class" all the players had. In short, there were too many variables and he would have to tread with extreme caution.

So the only option left was to get as much near to that Gate as possible while being within the group of unawakened. He went to the nearest place to the barricaded city square area that would be ideal. He found the candidate, a hospital that had to tend to the injured citizens who were at the square during the spatial fluctuations. Being the nearest hospital for the unawakened from the city square it was naturally where all those victims had been taken with haste.

All the players were either preparing for combat at the square, guarding the periphery of the barricaded area from any miscreants or were now clamoring within their guild. The hospital was left as is for one, it was just unawakened people who were among the casualties and two, they had to defend against the invasion as soon as possible.

Blue got that information after interrogating a few people who walked out of the hospital earlier. He had a person he corrupted to take him inside and appeared naturally at the unavoidable surveillance cameras at the entrance and further inside the hospital. He made his way to the stairway and started going up floors. He went to the highest floor possible to visit without garnering any suspicion. He then casually walked off as he pretended to be a curious child in front of the surveillance cameras and finally he went inside one of the rooms that had a window facing the city square while being easy to enter and away from any monitoring.

He got to the window and looked outside.

He saw a circular crack in space about 30 meters in height and more than 50 meters wide. It looked the same as a mirror that had been shattered with a punch but just that it had manifested on an empty space. Aether flowing out of the crack was visible even for his eyes. Considering that it was a mortal human's body but still was able to perceive the aether meant that the aether was so dense that perception became possible. It emitted all sorts of colored flowing lines while floating throughout the environment.

A sight he was familiar with since his birth.

All abyss spawns, whether natural born or reproduced, would have their aether vein awakened at birth regardless of the aether density on that spot. So they all had aether sense since their time as an infant.

Regardless, the very moment he observed the "Gate" he exclaimed in disbelief,

"This isn't a Dimensional Gate! It is a subspace… My subspace, damn it!!"

Indeed, what appeared was his personal subspace used for storing his belongings.