CHAPTER 83: DESPAIR

“Hey, book… Should I just stop playing hide and seek?”

Soren hid behind one of the Memory Trees, this time disguised as a pile of white sand that had drifted toward the tree from some invisible wind. He stood motionlessly and whispered to his eternal companion. A shy Soul Weapon that loves to trick him and yet never reveals itself.

Countless times, he wondered if the thing was truly sentient or maybe he was just going insane.

Of course books don’t talk! The hell are you thinking?!

Even so, he couldn’t help but try and converse with it regardless. It might have been the only thing keeping him from devolving into total insanity. Not that he wasn’t already on the cusp of it, anyway.

A month had passed since he had first arrived on the shores of this deranged forest. Not once during that period of ‘time’, did he have any semblance of rest.

The darkness overhead arrives every 16 hours, or at least, an amount of time that felt like 16 hours. Each time, Soren would have to find the nearest tree to him and disguise himself as something to hide away. There were many close calls and even more harrowing experiences he tried his best to shut away from his mind to no avail.

In one of the periods of ‘hide and seek,’ as he likes to call them, he had to hibernate with another spirit under the same tree—one that was too ghastly to even look at. Soren even wondered if it would have been better to succumb to the tendrils of darkness over looking at it. But what was worse was the fact that the creature was strong. As the tendrils reached it, it fought ferociously, almost ending Soren’s disguise countless times in the process.

During the scuffle, Soren managed to hide himself by burying under the white sand with only his head popping up. Many days of preparation had made it much easier to predict when the darkness would arrive, so he had ample time to dig and find the best hiding spots.

Even so, the image of the fearsome spirit slowly being devoured as its screeching howls of despair vibrated his very bones was not something that could be easily erased. Many times, Soren wondered when his time to join the corpse desert of white sand would arrive.

And yet, each time, he survived. Thanks no less to his newly acquired ability.

It was fairly strange the first few days of his journey across the mysterious forest. For one, Soren realized that the effect of the skill relied heavily on his imagination. Because he was still nothing more than an apprentice, being able to visualize highly complex objects was basically impossible. In fact, he was lucky that his first real attempt was him trying to become a rock. Rocks could come in all shapes and sizes, so there was no need to heavily concentrate on the details. And the tendrils themselves were not fully intelligent enough to notice the off-place details of his disguise.

But more than that, the only reason this was even a possibility was because of his affinity.

After all, creating images of your creation and projecting them into your Soul Realm through anima was not a very complex thing to do—all magi were able to do it to a certain degree after reaching the third circle. That was how they could manifest magecraft spellforms in the first place.

But the difference here was Mesmerism itself.

Because his affinity has ties to illusions and misdirection, the images created by this affinity’s anima have much more realistic properties to them that cannot be easily distinguished. So even the crudest of projections like the ones he was using for disguising himself appeared more refined to the casual observer. Soren had no doubt that those with a more keen eye could probably notice something was wrong, but that was the scary part.

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Soren was still an apprentice. Who knows what these elaborate illusions would look like once he reached a higher circle?

And there was also the fact that at the moment, his body was in spirit form, meaning his Soul Realm was encompassing only his body. In fact, it might have been more appropriate to call it a Soul Frame, similar to what Tina or Tyrel have.

This did get him thinking about his prospects of possibly passing through the metaphorical Fourth Layer. If he had abandoned his Soul Realm for the sake of forming a Soul Frame, what he was currently experiencing was probably the extent of what he could do with his current affinity.

He was glad he didn’t go through with it and stuck to just his Soul Realm. Soren couldn’t imagine how monstrous his affinity would be if he could create elaborate illusions to not only himself, but his very surroundings… And if his Soul Realm could grow even bigger….

Yes, keep imagining your future, Soren! Don’t give up now!

Soren was lying face-flat on the sand, waiting for the darkness to leave. It might have looked unnatural if not for the fact that to everyone else, his body was currently a pile of sand itself.

Over the month, Soren had refined the few disguises he could do in this twisted forest. After all, there weren’t many forms he could take that wouldn’t be easily spotted by the tendrils of darkness. But Soren was fine with that. He would rather have a few options he could improve on slowly, than a horde of them.

This was fairly important to his survivability too, since his disguises relied heavily on having a flexible yet constant mental image. The moment his mind thought of something else, the disguise could easily be disrupted. In fact, this has happened a few times already, leading to very close brushes with death.

Thankfully, his ability to focus was at a monstrous level. He thanked his unique talent everyday in this horrifying forest.

However, none of this really meant much when faced with the cruelties of time. Even with his insane drive and focus, not even Soren could escape the grasp of madness forever. Every day, a new threat would arise, and he would need to hide from it—hoping the predators won’t see him.

He repeated this cycle over and over and over. Endlessly.

And little by little, small cracks were slowly appearing and growing across his psyche. He could feel it. Yesterday, his mind was overcome with laziness. He wanted to simply lay there and wait for the darkness to consume him. Last minute, he realized something was up and slapped himself awake—finding a place to hide and disguise himself before death arrived.

Every waking hour—no, every minute was a struggle. A struggle against himself.

He had to constantly remind himself of his goals. Of what lies ahead. Of what he could accomplish once his magi abilities bloom. After all, was it not this delusional goal that drove him here in the first place? Why waste the precious chance to finally learn magic?

Soren glanced over at his Soul Weapon and smirked. I wonder if he too is also going insane… After all, isn’t he another version of ‘me’? The thought made him chuckle, almost alerting another tendril of darkness nearby.

Soren stayed quiet for the next few hours, focusing all his thoughts on simply refining the mental image of his disguise. Even though he really wanted to give up—this month had been both grueling and terrible—he knew that the end was slowly approaching. His Soul Weapon’s map was finally showing the final stretch of the Dark Forest. There was not much left—if he could survive this cycle of darkness, he could finally make it out of this damned labyrinth of granite pillars and spirit corpse dust.

Just as that thought appeared in his mind, Soren noticed something from the corner of his eye. He slowly shifted his face across the sand, trying not to alert anything to his presence.

And that’s when he saw it... Despair itself.

In the distance, past the sea of granite pillars illuminating a darkened sky, a silhouette appeared. Brick towers rose high above the forest, with walls and arches in between. A ruined structure so vast, the distance he had crossed in the past month paled in comparison.

But what his eyes were drawn to were not the castle itself, but what stood above it. A large crimson eye, beyond the scope of his imagination levitated in nothingness. The iris shifted, glancing across the surrounding Dark Forest with curiosity gleaming in its predatory iris. The more his vision focused due to [Eyes of the Fairy], the more details his mortal mind glimpsed into something it should have never looked at. Millions of souls swam within the crimson iris, desperately crying for an eternal end.

An end that will never arrive for them.

Soren’s body shivered. This wasn’t just fear. It was primordial. A feeling from the very soul. What he was looking at didn’t make any sense at all.

Suddenly, Cassia’s words replayed in his mind.

“The more nonsensical and illogical a place gets, the more dangerous it is.”

As of this moment, Soren was gazing into the abyss of Despair, and the abyss was gazing back with an unrelenting, insatiable hunger.