Back in my throne room, I was busy brooding about everything I had discovered so far. While I had joked about being Sherlock Holmes earlier, I wasn't exactly enthused about everything suddenly becoming so mysterious. Honestly, I had expected to just explore the stupid fortress to secure my backyard and then make my way into the world to finally reach civilization. While I had other side goals in mind as well, none of them had included all the shit I had run into so far: the destroyed state of the fortress, the missing library, the mana stone mine, the red barrier, and the purposeful positioning of magic creatures. However, one thing had led into another, and here I was.

  Drumming my fingers on my armrests, I was back to staring at the torches. “Sigh...” As wrong as it felt, I had very little choice but to explore what lay behind that barrier. Leaving trouble at my base camp meant danger. However, there was one more thing I could do beforehand to understand what I was walking into. For more than one reason, I had not planned on taking this step until I understood more about magic and had time to fully assimilate the knowledge Neduzar had left behind. Learning and reciting spells had been relatively simple, but magic was much more beyond that.

  To understand why it was so complex, one had to understand the core part of magic. It included two things: a fuel called mana and the rules that governed the use of that fuel. Spells were a manifestation of those underlying rules, but something had to exist to make those very rules. While I had not exactly been a fantasy geek back on Earth, I had read my fair share to know about so called 'Systems' or the 'Magic Net' used in various books and games. I had expected something like that in this world, but what I had learned was a little different.

  The thing that set the rules of this world was the Side Realm. It was a dimension that overlapped with the world, and if it wasn't the very source of magic, then it controlled every aspect of magic: every spell that was cast, every lineage spell that was given, every magical creature that was born, and every magical phenomena that occurred. However, the only way to actively access the Side Realm was using one's soul, and only souls that were at high tier level were strong enough and had permission to actually do so. Unfortunately, the Side Realm was my next destination, if I wanted to know anything about the red barrier before entering it.

  There was a risk to everything, of course. Entering the Side Realm was like walking outside during a hurricane. If I could not stand the force around me or some anomaly occurred, there was good chance of my soul being traumatized. Fortunately, being undead, my soul technically had a toe into the Side Realm, hence why I was able to use so called magic senses. However, stepping fully into the Side Realm was another story. I hoped I would find something worth the risk I was taking, as unprepared as I was.

  Following Neduzar's memories, I began by centering myself, ensuring my soul was in a stable state without any strong emotions roiling through it. Just to be sure, I even withdrew the portion of my soul parasitizing my last skeleton avatar and restricted my mind links to my summons. It took a while as I slowly let my soul expand, letting go of the constraints I had on it. If before my soul had been tightly constrained in a ball, now it was more like a black cloud barely being held together by just my will in the whirlwind of my surroundings.

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  I felt my magic senses expand and strengthen, as I began to see and hear more and more things that were surreal. Instead of just seeing some mana concentrations, the world literally took shape as though it was built from mana. Patterns and figures surrounded me, some permanent, while others nothing more than a transient vision. That wasn't all, as each change in the structure of mana around me allowed access to all my senses for the first time in this world. Bizarre, ethereal sounds, exotic flavors, and poignant odors impacted on my soul and sent a plethora of emotions rippling through me. While it was both soothing and painful, it took every bit of willpower I had to keep from surrendering to the changes.

  The whole experience was bizarre but also scary as hell, because I constantly felt like the world wanting to absorb my soul, while I desperately fought against the desire to let it happen. Neduzar's memories clearly told me that losing any portion of my soul would be like losing a part of everything that made me an individual. Going crazy would be the least of the consequences. What shocked me, however, was the dark, red splotch that shone malignantly in the far distance, past all the walls, rooms, and corridors of the fortress. It so concentrated in red that it could be seen through all the natural, blue mana that surrounded it.

  According to lichopedia, there were three types and colors of mana in the world based on thousands of years of research. First was blue, natural mana, which was used by most existences in the world. Second was black, death mana used by the undead. Last was white, holy mana used by the so called gods of the world. However, what I was seeing was a never heard of type of mana: red.

  Soon after, I got a close look at the barrier as I finally reached it in my mid tier body. While the portion of my soul in this body wasn't large, it still had the same permissions. So, it too had expanded for me to be able to see into the Side Realm. However instead of a pure dark black cloud, the combination of my soul and the body's original, wight soul was more like a ball of dark gray, parasitized by a black web that was now reaching out misty tentacles into the surroundings. That wasn't all as the web was connected to a black 3D formation in the center of the cloud. It looked exactly like some viral infection from a horror movie.

  However, the true horror was the swirling, crimson nightmare before me. It wasn't some solid wall, but a dense concentrated wall of red mana that extended in every direction, forming a sphere. Moreover, the space around the massive, spherical malignancy was covered in almost sentient, pulsing strands of crimson mana reaching out, creating disruptions and cracks in its surroundings. The 'wrongness' I had felt before was magnified a 100 times over, and every time the crimson strands neared me, I felt its anger at wanting to devour me but not being able to get too close.

  That wasn't all, as the the natural mana around me had formed a cage around the red space, almost as though it was containing the spread of the red mana. This was more obvious where the red barrier intersected with the corridor walls, where blue and red mana intermixed violently like an ocean in the middle of a storm. However, my last discovery was in some ways more important.

  In addition to the constantly changing shapes and designs of natural mana that eddied around the red malignancy, I found an active magic spell. Thin web like strands of death mana were embedded in the wall of red, constraining it. Even as I watched, some strands of the death mana would break before slowly repairing themselves.

  I snapped out of my Soul Projection state, stepping backwards while staring at the solid, red barrier before me. 'Aberration' had been an appropriate word for it, because it was beyond anything from Neduzar's memory. However, more than that, I knew the spell: [Web of Despair]. It was an 'Ancient' spell designed for restraining and weakening only the most powerful of enemies, that only two existences in the fortress had access to all those years ago: Neduzar and the Soul Focus.