CHAPTER 78: THE BEYOND

“Why did I decide to do this again?”

Roaming across an endless expanse of conceptual objects, a dejected smile reached Soren’s face. The Runic Constellations turned out to be much bigger in size than what he had initially assumed.

Before he began the astral projection, Cassia had instructed him with coordinates that lead to the Pillars of Heaven—or, more specifically, reach as close to them as possible. In a sense, their name somewhat didn’t really match their location. After all, there was no up or down when it came to the Beyond, and in that sense, there could be no heaven or hell.

However, aside from the route he needed to take, Cassia had also imparted him with a bit of advice for this pilgrimage of his.

“First,” she said, “never ever dare to look at the spirits roaming the unfounded realm.”

This was a lesson he had to learn the hard way. Just a day ago (according to his estimates, at least), Soren accidentally glanced at a large eyeball surrounded by halos of fractal geometry. The strange being was larger than the library he was working at.

It didn’t even take a second for the incorporeal creature to notice his presence.

Luckily for him, the creature viewed him as insignificant and simply let him go. Even though his body was in spirit form, Soren almost have shit himself.

And that wasn’t the only danger the Beyond posed. There were other things roaming this mysterious space beyond his comprehension. Even words and language itself could come alive.

“Second,” she reminded him. “Never try to cast magecraft or even utter anything in the Beyond. All words will be interpreted in material runes unseen to you, so even the most mundane of words can have adverse effects.”

This was fairly straight forward, but hard nonetheless. After roaming this space for four days alone, loneliness was hard to avoid. Multiple times, he caught himself talking inwardly—having entire conversations with his own consciousness. Eventually, he even resorted to conversing with his own Soul Weapon, as sad as it was.

So far, it hadn’t posed enough of a danger yet, but Soren was sure that keeping his sanity in check would get harder and harder as time went on.

He glanced ‘up’ at the radiant, neon sky that shifted in a warm gradient of colors. Incomprehensible shapes shifted randomly. At the moment, he was currently crossing the final stretch in the Runic Constellations. This spacious expanse of fractal stars took him countless days to finally exit. With so many spirits roaming across, each one more powerful than the one before it, navigating it became a daunting task. Even the weakest of the spirits was powerful enough to rip his spirit body apart.

Why is it so damn complicated… This was honestly beyond his pay grade. He wondered how the average magi was even able to complete this quest.

Unlike most, his Soul Weapon gave him a certain advantage. Glancing down at the shimmering pages, a map was currently displayed.

Before he chose to undertake the trip, he used [Record] on a book Cassia had that detailed many of the common locations across the Beyond.

Unlike the device the Yadrians used to transport him directly into the Subterranean Shunning Grounds, Cassia’s was much more inferior. In fact, not many in Celestine could boast about having a magitech device that could store coordinates and transport people directly to them—most simply sent them to a random location within a given radius from the designated coordinate.

In Soren’s case, he was especially unlucky. The Runic Constellations were the furthest location of interest from the Pillars of Heaven. For some odd reason, the magitech device Cassia had used had sent him far beyond even the radius of its coordinates.

According to the map, beyond this stretch of runic stars, he would need to pass through the Dark Forest, which was a large area filled with even more spiritual beings, and then beyond even that, the Castle of Devastation which was a location from the Second Age of Fantasia.

But by far the most dangerous location he needs to pass through has to be the Idea Vortex. According to Cassia, it was a storm that has been raging for more than a thousand years. The scary part wasn’t even the ‘winds’ or ‘lightning’, it was what this ‘storm’ was made from:

Ideas.

And not just any ideas… Ideas from the rift.

Seriously, did I get infected by Julie’s cursed luck or something?!

According to Cassia, a large spatial crack opened that created a firm connection to the rift, leading to the Beyond to try and create a representation of it. But that proved to be a bad idea, as ironic as it was to say.

The corruption from the rift propagated across the Beyond, until it finally coagulated into the storm known to magi scholars today.

There is no way in hell I am passing through it. Nope, nope, nope. There was no way in hell he was going to allow himself to be near the rift any time soon. Not when his past experiences regarding it had all almost ended his life.

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Soren decided to try and take a detour around it. The only problem was that he would most likely need to pass through an almost equally dangerous location known as the Daemonic Battlefield or the Fae Sword Field. Either one would equally result in a gruesome death. And yet, he still preferred these options over the Idea Vortex.

This is honestly so abnormal… His situation has been abnormal since his arrival here, but even still, he couldn’t help but wonder if there was a god he pissed off or something.

In most cases, aspiring magi hoping to make the journey to the Pillars of Heaven would at most need to pass through one or two spirit infested locations, let alone a dozen like he was currently charting. And the areas he was currently crossing were designated as ‘Death Zones’, that most magitech devices that have astral projection capabilities are able to avoid.

Even with the randomness of it all, this was still far too sketchy to discount as nothing more than a coincidence.

So why did he end up so far away from his desired location? That was the million lorin question.

Did Cassia betray me? This was a thought that continued to spring up, but Soren always tried to dismiss it. But now that he finally reached the final stretch of the Runic Constellations, he couldn’t help but feel distrustful.

In the past few days, his emotions had been all over the place. Hope, despair, sorrow, doubt, fear, anger, pity… It was as if his anima was splitting into several different wills. He wanted to blame someone—something. His sanity was slowly being devoured as he continued this asinine journey.

Even so, Soren knew that it was completely illogical. Cassia had no reason to harm him—she had done nothing but help him endlessly in the past few days. Even though she was somewhat annoyed by the mistakes he made that disrupted her workflow, she would still be patient enough to guide him through it. If Soren had to be honest, out of all of the members of Star Fate Guild, aside from Joyce and her talent for cooking, Soren enjoyed his time the most with Cassia.

This is useless… He decided to dismiss the thought. There was no point in theorizing about it when he was still trying to escape the maws of death. If he could make it back in one piece, everything would become clearer.

Luckily, he still had two advantages he could utilize.

The first being his Soul Weapon. Aside from the map feature, Soren was also pleased to find out that unlike in the natural world, Soren didn’t need to activate [Eyes of the Fairy] here. Because the ability was meant to bridge his own vision to that of the Beyond, there was no reason to activate it, since he was already in the Beyond. It was always active, without needing to even use his Astral Anima.

Of course, this did pose a few challenges in its own way. Because he was constantly piercing through the unseen, anything he looked at here could become knowledge for him to [Record], but it was also insanely taxing on his spirit.

And yes, his spirit body itself did feel pain. In fact, Soren had no way to differentiate it from his actual body. He could feel his raspy breath every time he inhaled ‘air’, his heart would beat faster everytime he encountered a strange abomination, and even his very ichor could leak out from a cut—something he tested himself on the first day of his journey.

This meant that even headaches could happen—and oh was Soren prone to having those…

If he had to be honest, Cassia’s first advice about not glancing at things you shouldn’t be looking at was even more important to him than the average magi.

Because of this, Soren decided it was best to directly send anything he sees through the great filter known as [Record]. He didn’t want to risk any of that knowledge directly going to his mind instead. And even still, with his thoughts, he commanded the ability to only chronicle things that it thinks are safe, something he didn’t think was even possible to do.

His Soul Weapon was him, after all, so there was no reason why it wouldn’t be able to control its abilities in distinct ways.

But there was also the second advantage he discovered only recently, and it had to do with his newly acquired Mesmerism affinity.

Soren could now somehow turn himself invisible.

This was something he discovered completely by accident. After encountering a school of spirits traversing over his head, he stupidly glanced at them for too long and a few of the spirits in the cohort managed to catch him in the act.

Fear and adrenaline mixed into a cacophony of heart beats and jagged breaths. He was almost certain death had finally gotten a hold of him, when suddenly, his body turned translucent.

This wasn’t something he did on purpose—it was instinctual. As if his very mind knew what to do—a defense mechanism he was completely unaware he had.

After the danger passed, many theories flew across his mind, but none of them stuck, except for one.

His Mesmerism affinity had to do with it.

It was a logical conclusion to come to. Mesmerism was after all, an affinity to do with misdirection and manipulation. And he had already seen some of its capabilities during his Soul Search—he had to face the wrath of countless illusions of past memories and mind storms so powerful, he continued to question their legitimacy but found nothing that could prove that they were fake.

The illusions were that real.

Since that was the case, it would perfectly make sense for it to also be able to allow a person to become invisible.

Still, there was no concrete evidence to support this—he didn’t even have a way to replicate it. In the past few days, he had tried countless times to turn himself invisible again and again, but nothing worked.

And there was also the implication of why this was even possible in the first place. Magecraft, after all, needed a spellform to function, and yet he didn’t utilize one at all. It was as if the raw anima associated with that affinity had been manipulated instinctually to create the effect.

Soren sighed to himself in relief and shook his head. His feet for the first time in ages, finally reached down to solid ground.

In front of him, a boundless tapestry of endless pillars stretched beyond the metaphysical horizon. The pillars held crowns of shaded fractal geometries that shifted mysteriously.

The Dark Forest.

He had finally made it to his next destination. Unlike where he was earlier, this location was even more odd. But what truly made it stranger was what was lying beneath his feet.

Solid ground.

This was completely uncharacteristic of the Beyond, where the concept of ‘up’ or ‘down’ were meaningless. In a way, the Beyond acted in a similar manner to outer space. There was no gravity to hold anyone together, nor was there a way to differentiate directions. In fact, his map itself was nothing but a loosely disjointed ‘suggestion’. The Beyond was prone to change over time, and even the borders of certain areas couldn’t escape this rule.

And yet, here he was, planted firmly on what looked to be white sand.

A maddening smile took over his face. If there was even a question of whether he’ll need the ability to turn invisible, now was the moment that solidified the answer: yes.