Black watched from the air as everyone in the Kingdom of mana descended into confusion and chaos.

He was not visible to the mortal eye, so most didn’t see him.

Some smashed their head into walls, insisting that it was all an illusion cast by the enemy, and some waved wildly in the direction they thought the status screen was projected from.

The smarter ones became serious and went into their soul space to fight off the system’s influence that was trying to modify their soul.

Some succeeded, many didn’t, and the ones who did retreated back to the Church of mana.

He didn’t stop them; he did not need to after all he could’ve just instantly integrated them into the system but he didn’t.

Black wanted to see if any unknown variables would pop up during the process, and some did, the ones who resisted the system’s influence.

To black’s knowledge, that was impossible, yet here it saw it got done easily.

Another thing he found strange was the souls of the people in the Kingdom of mana, instead of being white, they were blue and burned like fire.

Black concluded that this was the reason some could partially or fully resist the system.

The runes above would siphon excess soul fire off for some unknown reason, he noted it and kept scanning the Kingdom.

During the scan, a huge chunk of the system’s influence was blocked out.

He shot in the direction, two figures floated mid-air waiting for him.

They were both covered in fully plated royal blue heavy armor that emitted faint blue light.

The one on the left held no weapon, but the one on the right held the biggest Great sword black had ever seen.

Runes that shifted reality around them were all over its hilt.

The blade itself had large runes shaped like a coiled dragon.

Black halted a few meters away from them, he inspected them cautiously, these were dangerous people.

They didn’t move or look worried, although he couldn’t see the facial expression they gave off an aura of confidence.

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Black didn’t like that, he didn’t like that at all, these were the things planning couldn’t predict or prepare him for.

He mentally told the system to do a deep scan of them but, as expected, in the eyes of the system, there was no one in front of him.

They completely hid from its eyes.

He took off the restraints and let the system run on full power.

He didn’t use full power mode before because it was too much for his thin soul to keep on indefinitely, but the circumstances called for it.

Black’s form morphed and stretched in madding ways as the full power descended on him and fused into his body.

He called upon the ectoplasm generator to constantly heal his soul from the damage the power would cause.

his body elongated, black and blue mist rose from his body constantly, and his eye sockets were replaced with infinite fractals.

His form shifted from a liquid to a solid, blue veins ran across his body, shifting and pulsing randomly.

Reality felt like clay to black, he felt like he could make worlds with a thought; he felt like his power was unlimited.

He laughed, this was the true power of the system but all this time it was thee, untapped.

He hadn’t been using the system fully all this time, only a tiny fraction of it.

He had once again misused and misjudged the system’s power.

Why had he limited himself? Why did he think so small?

His soul was limitless, the system was limitless; the potential of the system was limitless as well.

His stupidity had struck once again, he had ectoplasm that could heal any soul wound he could and would stay in this state indefinitely.

It would cause a minor headache at most, he stopped being afraid of pain, the path to power wasn’t made by using normal means.

He would stop fearing the gods, stop hiding in his pocket dimension like some coward

He looked up and saw golden strings that constantly wove false information about the people in front of him and sent it to the system through the status screen.

It impressed him how easily they hacked into his system and got past the first firewall.

Although they were an infinite amount being generated constantly, this person or thing still got through somehow.

His fractal eyes peered into the strings and what made it up, there he saw many concepts being used together in harmony, but the most prominent ones were manipulation, trickery, and puppeteering.

He smashed through the innate defenses each concept had, and learned how they worked, learned how they interacted with the system.

He left the main concept for last, the main one that held everything in place, manipulation.

He focused his gaze on it and felt it act upon him, blue strings materialized and tried to restrain him.

The armored figures saw this and charged at him simultaneously, unleashing a host of attacks.

The sword-wielding one glowed a bright blue as he disappeared, shortly after black felt a stinging pain on his left arm.

He looked, only to see that it was missing.

He called upon his power and snapped the strings that were binding him just in time to narrowly avoid a slash that seemed to come from reality itself.

More strings appeared around him, stronger than before, it was getting harder and harder to break them.

A third figure appeared, he looked like a young man in his twenties, his face was deathly pale his eyes looked bloodshot.

He wore plain clothes and had a smug look on his face, despite looking like he was on the verge of dying.

He moved his hands in strange ways, black felt himself becoming slower with each passing second.

He didn’t have time to notice when the second armored figure disappeared, they had prepared for him, very well too.

Black felt something impact his chest area, he looked down to find a fist-sized hole in his chest.