As the night arrives, something else comes out to replace the denizens of the city. A mist, no, THE mist. If the black smog owns the day, then the white mist owns the night, it was clearly as natural for this world as the sun and moon back on earth.

The black smoke was quickly absorbed by the pipes. But this implies the pipes had some kind of mechanism capable of sucking all the smog back in. No, what's actually happening is that the smog is moving back into the pipes of its own volition, and the white fog replaces it, like the black smoke was just another citizen that was going home, and its good old friend the mist was in charge of the night shift.

At first, I thought the smog was a result of industrialization, factories, that type of stuff. But it doesn't add up, does it? People here have clearly adapted to it. They breathe it, they can see through it without any issue, do you know how many years of evolution would need to happen for this to be possible? No, the smoke is not the accidental byproduct of some factory, it IS the product. And that smoke has been here forever, probably before humans were ever a thing in this universe. The people here are just another part of a massive organism that they cannot ever hope to comprehend.

And do you know what an organism does when it finds something that doesn't belong inside it? It gets rid of it.

The mist thickens, it has noticed me, but it doesn't hurt me, not yet. But I can tell, it's trying to figure out what to do with me. To be honest, it could probably rip me to shreds in seconds. Yes, my endurance is a little higher than normal. But this isn't some big monster I can just block by raising my fist. I can think of a few thousand ways it could make me die without even giving me the chance to fight back.

This is its domain, after all.

See, this is kind of an issue, I could fight back. But then what? Great, I've destroyed what all of those people need to live, my plot is ruined. Fantastic. No, I have to find another way to survive this thing before it figures out that I'm not welcome. But I think it already made up its mind.

The mist starts to surround me, I can feel it, the pressure. It doesn't know exactly what I am. So it's trying to get rid of me in the most tried and true method of all. Crushing. Breaking. Obliterating. It's trying to apply enough pressure to turn me into a red mushy paste.

Ha, screw it, I'll have to cheat a tiny little bit. For my own survival.

Name : N/A Nickname : Leave Sex : Female Sanity : Acceptable

Soul Bloat : DANGEROUS

[STAT MENU] [INVENTORY] [CURRENT UNIVERSE DATA] [SKILL MENU]

[SOUL STATUS]

Note : Forget

Note : gather rock

Note : you're doing great <3 Note : please forget

Note : take out extra experience URGENT!!!

I press the yellow SKILL MENU button and sort by "used recently".

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Skill Name Description Drawbacks Soul Searching Find someone in the same emotional state as you, you can fake your own emotional state to find a person different from you, within reasons. Loss of self if not used in moderation. WARNING : NEVER use this with superhuman charisma Material Solidification solidify anything using soul surgery. Making something "too" solid might turn it into a truly immovable object. Sometimes messes with the universe's physics in ways that shouldn't be possible. Memory Cleanup Rearrange the soul's memories and try to only keep the memories that are the most important to the user. Necessary to avoid soul bloat.

If too much experience is accumulated, it can lead to a mix-up in the way memories are processed.

Get rid of as much experience as possible before using Memory Cleanup to avoid this.

Menu Tracking Track an already marked menu's location and, if applicable, its user. Cannot be used to find a menu in another universe. WARNING : Your perception stat will become extremely unstable if you use it to track your own menu

Menu tracking! That's the one!

My soul moves on its own, it knows what to do, I can feel a path make itself in front of me. It's not visible to anyone but myself. Actually, I can't "see" it. But I know it's there. I cut the mist in half, not the actual white mist. But the soul behind it, The pressure stops for a split second and I use this to make my escape. A soul is often seen as sacred, but just like a body, you lose and gain parts of it all the time. It'll regrow, it's fine.

I cut through more of its soul, I'm carving a path though the fog as I keep following the road that the menu tracking made for me. I can't see the pipes, I can't see the white haze, but I don't need to. And just like that, I reach the end of my destination.

I enter, I don't bother using the door, the door isn't really there. It's a manifestation, like everything else, I'll just cheat a little bit, and I'll play along again. It's fine. I can't see him. I can't see the house. I'm inside. I know I'm inside. The mist won't go here, following some rules it set for itself. I feel weird. I think I'm forgetting something? Forget? Why am I here again? I can't forget things, my Memory Cleanup is optimized. Ho right, I remember why I am forgetting, it's because-

ERROR : [ATTRIBUTE] BEYOND ACCEPTABLE LEVEL, SHUTTING DOWN ALL ACTIVE SKILLS AND RESETTING EVERY STAT TO DEFAULT VALUES. THE ERROR LOG WILL BE STORED IN THE [INVENTORY].

I faint.