Within this Spiritual Dimension, the motion of all things seemed subtly accelerated.
Within this vast and boundless space, like a three-dimensional oil painting with no visible end, Seraphine had only flown for less than half a minute.
Before she spotted it: an unimaginably massive form in the distance, suddenly emerging like a thundercloud forged from fragments of shattered dreams and jumbled emotions from countless beings.
It was one of the largest dream-collectives Seraphine had ever witnessed in this void.
Driven by curiosity and a thirst for discovery, she dove into it without the slightest hesitation.
WHOOSH!
WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!
Her speed accelerated rapidly, and the immense dream-mass ahead, faintly emanating strange and incomprehensible waves of information, grew closer with each moment.
Until finally, BOOM!
A sound rang out. Vast and subtle, real and unreal, echoing all at once in her ears.
Her vision blurred.
Her sight turned hazy in an instant.
Then, Seraphine felt as though she had melted into a stream of cool, crystalline water, trickling down into dense, heavy soil.
There, beneath layers of packed earth and stone, she was forcibly and inexplicably compressed into a block of ice.
Moments later, the ice burst upward through the ground, cloaked in layers of dust and debris, launched skyward, rising ever higher, until it soared into the heavens.
And then, it ignited into a blazing meteor, trailing sparks across the sky as it came crashing down to earth.
BOOM!
The ground trembled violently.
CRACK CRACK CRACK!
The meteor split open.
And Seraphine walked out from within.
"Hoo..."
Seraphine opened her eyes.
The bizarre experience just now began to melt away, like ice vanishing in sunlight.
The memory, too, rapidly faded, ephemeral and dreamlike, slipping from her grasp.
Before her stretched a dark, desolate expanse of empty grassland.
The boundless void of the Spiritual Dimension had vanished completely.
All around her, there was nothing but open, endless prairie.
"How intriguing."
Seraphine smiled faintly, glancing around.
Then, suddenly, the barren, gray-black grassland began to change. From the edges of her vision, strange forms began to sprout, appearing out of thin air.
One after another.
In moments, the sky and ground were entirely filled with giant, milky-white lambs, like soft clouds or sugar sculptures.
Each of them had misty, unfocused eyes. All were utterly still, like lifeless statues.
Hundreds. Thousands. Tens of thousands.
From every direction, the lambs continued to appear, materializing endlessly from nothing.
Then they stood still in the sky, amid the gray clouds, above the open grassland.
Like painted props in a staged scene.
The entire moment exuded a sensation deeply reminiscent of liminal spaces.
Both familiar and alien.
Both serene and oppressively uncanny.
"Is it just some vague emotional resonance," Seraphine wondered, "or the materialized symbol of some liminal phenomenon?"
Her gaze drifted away from the flock of massive, docile lambs. Then, with a subtle motion, her body vanished without a trace.
Just one second later, she reappeared, her expression tinged with surprise, as she surveyed her new surroundings.
Everything had changed.
Now, she stood in a vast, snowy expanse, surrounded by towering, ancient trees.
"Just one step, and I'm here already? How peculiar."
She turned her head and looked in another direction. Roughly a hundred meters away stood a small, gray-black cabin.
It was built of maple wood, weathered and aged. Its exterior was scarred and dust-covered.
CREAK!
A sharp, wooden groan.
The cabin door swung open, and out bounced a small girl wearing a tattered orange hooded cloak.
The moment she spotted Seraphine, she began to laugh cheerfully, skipping in place while waving excitedly:
"Ah, ah, ah! A visitor! Come in, come in!"
She skipped over and tried to grab Seraphine's hand.
Seraphine's expression turned cold. She subtly dodged the dirty little hand without hesitation.
She could see clearly.
The strange girl's pale face was expressionless and stiff, entirely void of any smile.
Her mouth didn't even move, yet audible laughter poured from her body, lively and real.
Like a puppet.
But the girl didn't seem to mind Seraphine's rejection. She kept waving with unnatural enthusiasm, motioning for her to follow her into the house.
CREAK!
Seraphine gently pushed the door open.
Immediately, a warm fire crackled in a stone fireplace straight ahead.
To the left sat another girl, dressed in red robes, hunched slightly as she leisurely knitted a sweater.
Seraphine's gaze turned to the right.
There, a large, dilapidated wooden bed sagged on one broken leg, half-collapsed.
Upon it, bloodstained sheets, black and mottled, covered a messy pile of scattered bones.
The original state of the skeleton's owner was long unrecognizable.
At that moment, the red-robed girl lifted her chin, opened her mouth, and began to sing a strange nursery rhyme, voice clear and chirping:
"In the town there's Old Tom,
He opened a haunted house in town.
His son played the fake ghost,
And business went up and down.
In nearby town streets, there came a hiss.
A wanderer entered the haunted abyss.
Deep in the house, the fake ghost appeared,
The streets nearby screamed, trembling in fear.
Chopped off the head, then chopped the chest,
Chopped the chest, then chopped the rest.
Tom's son died.
His haunted house closed.
In the nearby town streets, giggles arose.
Another year, another round.
Old Tom's haunted house again was found.
This fake ghost turned into something real,
And the nearby streets began to squeal.
In the nearby streets—wailing,
In the nearby streets—sobbing.
Tell me.
Isn't that funny?"
The childlike clarity of the voice, coupled with the morbid and almost grotesque lyrics, made Seraphine's brow knit tightly.
Suddenly, the red-robed girl turned her head and locked eyes with Seraphine. Her expression was stiff, pallid, like something already dead.
"Guest, everyone is laughing… why aren't you laughing?"
Seraphine raised an eyebrow, her voice cold. "Whether I laugh or not, what's it got to do with you?"
The air in the room dropped several degrees in an instant.
The girl's face didn't change, but her voice took on a strange, twisted lilt: "Well, if you won't laugh, then, Guest, why don't you buy me a meal?"
As the final word left her lips, her pale face swelled grotesquely.
A massive wolf's maw burst outward from within her skull, fangs curving grotesquely as they tore through flesh and bone, lunging straight for Seraphine's throat.
BANG!
Unfazed, Seraphine threw a punch, landing cleanly on the snout of the lunging beast.
HOWL!
The creature wearing the girl's skin let out a monstrous screech as it was sent crashing against the wall.
Without hesitation, Seraphine dashed forward and stomped down hard onto the monster's chest.
CRACK!
A sharp crunch rang out, but before she could follow up, the creature blurred, its body vanishing beneath her foot.
Invisible.
"Hmm?"
Seraphine glanced around.
The wooden cabin had disappeared.
Even the snowfield had faded away, replaced now by a vast, endless sky of storm clouds, rain pouring from all directions.
She looked up.
The entire space was wrapped in a thick, oppressive ceiling of cloud.
Rain was falling upward, downward, sideways, flowing toward a central point in midair.
DRIP DRIP DRIP!
That point of convergence rapidly condensed the storm into a giant droplet of water, roughly the size of a small room.
Then, in the blink of an eye, the droplet collapsed inward and vanished.
With a step that felt like three strides in one, Seraphine closed the distance. She peered into the rapidly forming droplet.
What she saw was a familiar sight: the infinite void of the Spiritual Dimension.
"So that's it… this is the Dreamscape's exit."
Without hesitation, Seraphine leapt into the swirling mass of water.
Moments later, the droplet once again grew to room-size, then folded in on itself and disappeared, taking Seraphine along with it.
...
The dream mass split open with a soft crack, and Seraphine shot out.
As she drifted through the void, she looked back at the vanishing Dreamscape and sighed.
"This trip was stranger than I could have imagined."
She flew further, glancing sideways at the void, and muttered:
"It seems this realm, reachable only by a few with rare talents, is not something one can enter simply with strong Mental Power.
No. To navigate it freely, you need something deeper.
A certain potential. An affinity. As if you were meant to be part of this place from the start.
That is what they called them, isn't it?
Illusionary Aberrants."
She paused, considering:
"The essence of my mind is too overwhelming. Sending even a trace of it here risks destabilizing the void. I will need to dispatch weaker vessels to collect data instead."
Sifting through the core memory fragments of "Dragonblood", Seraphine quickly located the records.
This strange group, born with unnatural talent and wielding alien souls, had only been named after Earth's humanity contacted a wider galactic civilization.
They were called: [Far-Seer].
That red-robed woman…
"She must have been one of them. A Far-Seer."
Seraphine narrowed her eyes:
"Her brain would be extremely valuable. Perhaps I can turn it into a tool.
A research vessel for unlocking the secrets of the Spiritual Dimension."
With that thought, Seraphine disappeared.
A moment later, she returned to Sorren's Mindscape realm.
She slowly began to unveil the Martial Truth: Great Sun Golden Crow.
Deep beneath the sea, Sorren reappeared.
She gazed across the waters at Seraphine, who stood still, eyes closed, lifeless in appearance.
Sorren cautiously scanned her with spiritual perception.
After confirming that Seraphine's mind gave no response, she let out a cold, triumphant laugh.
"Five minutes! Finally, your consciousness has disintegrated."
"No one has ever lasted this long. You have earned the right to be proud!"
Just as she prepared to seize the spoils, a violent wave of radiant spiritual force erupted from Seraphine's body.
It blasted outward like a blazing tide, shaking the entire dark ocean with a deafening roar.
BOOM!!!
The sea of despair began to boil away at an alarming rate.
Thick, dark-gray vapor surged upward, blanketing the skies in a suffocating fog.
In mere moments, the entire sea was vaporized by an heat that seemed to descend from beyond reality.
"What is this?!"
Floating beneath the surface, Sorren felt a rush of panic.
Her Mindscape realm was collapsing at a terrifying pace.
It was as if an unfathomable being had invaded this sanctuary of her soul, crashing through it wildly, smashing walls and tearing open hidden spaces.
"What's happening?!! You… You!"
Sorren's head whipped around toward Seraphine.
She saw those lifeless eyes opening.
From within them blazed a golden radiance, divine and overwhelming.
Like the eyes of a god awakening.
"You are still alive?! What did you do?!"
But Seraphine merely stood there, calm and composed.
She looked at Sorren's trembling, disbelieving face and spoke slowly:
"Humanity is the spirit of all things."
"Over tens of thousands of years of brutal natural selection, our tenacious will and unmatched wisdom allowed us to rise, becoming the sovereigns of this planet."
"That is why willpower and wisdom have always been the core attributes of the truly powerful."
"But you, your will is fragile. Your intellect is average. And your use of power is lazy and undisciplined, like a soap bubble waiting to burst."
"You…"
Sorren tried to respond, but her senses began to fade, her vision blurring and her mind unraveling into silence.
Whoosh ~ Whoosh ~
Whoosh ~ Whoosh ~ Whoosh ~
The sound of a hot, howling wind pierced her ears, jolting Sorren awake.
"Huh?! Where am I?"
She looked around in confusion, then froze.
She was suspended above a scorching, boundless, and desolate plain.
She spun slowly in place.
But all she could see in every direction was heat-blasted emptiness and howling winds.
A barren, lifeless land so vast it could bury thought itself.
And all around her body, a stifling, oppressive heat.
Though she existed in a pure soul state, Sorren still felt utterly exposed and unbearable.
"It is so hot…"
Her red lips parted with a breathless whisper. One slender arm rose instinctively, waving weakly to fan herself.
"Strange. How did I get here?"
Beads of sweat formed on her flawless face, her brows knitting tightly as unease crept in.
This dry, dead, infinite plain gave off an unmistakable sense of divinity.
It did not feel like a place from the mortal world.
It felt like a place where gods would dwell.
Just then, Sorren's delicate form trembled. Her instincts flaring, she looked upward.
No.
Wrong.
There was no sky above.
Only a golden-white expanse…
A golden-white continent, infinite and radiant, so vast her gaze could not find its edge, floating upside down in the heavens.
That suspended land was filled with winding, golden-red rivers, each one pulsing with divine heat, flowing slowly along the surface of that upside-down continent.
"This… What is this place?!"
Sorren's breath caught, her cherry-red lips slightly parted as she stared into the heavens. Her body began to tremble uncontrollably.
And when she finally saw that massive continent clearly, hanging motionless in the sky, the divine pressure suddenly surged.
It crashed down upon her with crushing force, intent on shattering her consciousness.
"Is this… Heaven? Or Hell?!"
Her body shook violently.
Then came the illusion.
She could no longer tell if she was merely a soul, or if she truly existed here in both body and spirit.
Horrifying sensations began to creep across her flesh.
Like hooked threads crawling out from her marrow, slithering through her organs and her mind.
An unbearable storm of pain surged through her.
Itching. Stinging. Tearing.
She couldn't think.
She was going mad.
"It's the Kingdom of Heaven… This is God's domain…"
Sorren stared upward, dazed and trembling, her crimson lips murmuring over and over.
In all her memories, only one image came close to this impossible sight:
The Heaven described in the "Holy Bible".
A presence, ancient and magnificent, descended and engulfed Sorren's naked soul.
In that moment, she felt it.
All her lifelong convictions, her belief in scientific supremacy and racial superiority, were crushed beneath this indifferent pressure.
Completely and irreversibly.
"I… My years… I…"
Sorren stood frozen in chaos.
BUZZ!
The Golden Continent in the sky trembled violently.
A tidal wave of pure gold surged from the edge of her perception, rumbling toward her like an avalanche.
It swelled larger, its presence broader.
Until, to her horror, it expanded to cover nearly half the sky above.
Then, it stopped.
Abruptly.
Hanging motionless directly above her.
Like a colossal eye, cold and expressionless, gazing down upon Sorren, a meaningless speck.
"No… That's not right!"
Sorren's eyes flew wide open.
She trembled and collapsed.
Her knees hit the ground as she crumpled, sobbing in terror:
"This is an eye!!!"
That Golden-White Continent was nothing more than the sclera.
The crimson rivers coursing through it were merely blood vessels and nerves.
And that stunningly pure golden expanse?
That was the pupil!!!
"Ugh… Ugh…"
Sorren was caught in the grip of a full-blown megalophobia attack.
Existential dread, panic, and helpless awe flooded her mind.
Why? What were these things?
As her mind teetered on the edge of collapse, that colossal eye in the heavens began to rise.
Rapidly.
Higher and higher.
Seeking to pierce the very fabric of the sky.
The firmament shattered.
Reality ruptured.
From the broken heavens, a chaos of color and light surged forth.
Within that roiling chaos, the eye that once seemed infinite shrank.
Hundreds of millions of times, collapsing under the crushing logic of perspective.
Sorren broke further.
Now, she saw it.
That eye was embedded in the face of a golden three-legged divine bird, wreathed in eternal flame.
Its form fractured space, tearing apart the shattered sky.
Its body, covered in trillions of radiant golden feathers, emanated a majesty that defied comprehension.
"This is… This is…"
Sorren stared blankly upward.
"This is a spiritual essence fluctuation?!!!"
"That thing is actually the spiritual essence of a living being?!"
BUZZ!
The sky trembled.
The divine bird lowered its head.
Two blazing golden eyes, each as vast as a sun, locked onto her.
A majestic, domineering divine voice thundered through Sorren's entire mind:
"As you said, this world can only harness the essence of the mind."
"And this is the essence of my mind, the Great Sun Golden Crow."
Sorren froze, her body trembling uncontrollably.
An unfathomable force surged forth.
A heat so blistering it defied logic.
A torrent of divine will, vast and overwhelming, came crashing down from above.
Beneath that blinding, pure spiritual pressure, Sorren felt her thoughts and her soul ignite.
Like a candle, she began to melt.
To crumble.
To shatter.
"If your mind is like the great sea, capable of swallowing all things?"
The cold, divine voice echoed again.
Deep within her soul, Sorren felt threads of fire burning through her being.
Tearing her apart from within.
The pain was agony deeper than any she had ever imagined.
"Then I am the Great Sun in the firmament."
"Burning away all creation. Drying up the endless seas!"
BOOM!!!
The colossal Golden Crow erupted in a blinding radiance.
As though a million suns had detonated at once.
Blazing light and searing heat devoured everything.
Her eyes flared open, but her awareness was already melting away.
"Aaaahhhh—AAAHHHHHHH!!"
Sorren shrieked in agony.
In that moment, she understood.
The one she had sought to kill, the one she had tried to dissect, was a god.
A being whose mental essence had ascended beyond all limits.
A sovereign of spirit and will, the likes of which had never appeared in Earth's history.
She was wrong.
Catastrophically wrong.
She, Sorren, had dared to blaspheme against a True God.
Three times.
A sin of the highest sacrilege.
And she, arrogant and blind, was the lowly one.
Terror, like a bottomless abyss, tore through Sorren's mind.
It obliterated her consciousness.
"Mercy…"
"Please… forgive me…"
"I was wrong…"
"I'll be your slave…"
All coherent thought evaporated.
Beneath the indifferent gaze of the Great Sun Golden Crow, the layers of spiritual defenses protecting her psyche shattered.
Her soul-body split apart, rupturing with countless glowing cracks.
Wounded, disfigured, trembling, she collapsed to her knees.
Falling face-first onto the barren plain.
With great effort, she lifted her melting, hideous face.
From her disintegrating spirit, she sent out desperate cries for mercy.
But the divine Golden Crow above did not respond.
It watched her, silent, cold, unmoving.
"Ugh… ugh…"
At last, in pain and despair too great to withstand, Sorren's mind began to slip into unconsciousness.
And with a final, ragged scream, BOOM!
She dissolved.
Her soul was completely and utterly annihilated.
At that very moment, Seraphine—who had been silently waiting—unleashed her spiritual power, finally capturing a faint trace of that elusive innate spiritual light from her Illusionary Aberrant Soul, which had briefly materialized due to the profound transformation she had undergone.
As she rapidly analyzed this subtle glimmer of soul-light, the [Mind] fish within her sea of consciousness grew another segment, reaching 95% completion.
Only the final 0.5% remained, and the [Martial Saint] model within her Ocean of Knowledge would be fully perfected.
At the same time, Sorren's memories also flowed into her mind.
Among them were vast amounts of research data—on the human brain, as well as detailed studies on mind, spirit, dreams, and the Spiritual Dimension.
There was also a crucial piece of intel that had been absent from Abram's memory—he, after all, was only a fake executive of the corporation.
The exact coordinates of the company's central base of operations.
"So… this woman must've held a very special place in Monroe Holmes' heart," Seraphine thought to herself with quiet amusement.
…
Back in that same laboratory.
The fierce clash between Seraphine and Sorren had unfolded entirely within a dimension disconnected from physical reality, the Spiritual Dimension.
Thus, aside from Sorren's corpse, now lifeless and crumpled on the ground, the outside world remained untouched.
CREAK!
Inside a glass container, Abram—his body restrained by a mercury-like resin—suddenly opened his eyes. A chilling, divine gleam flickered in their depths.
"The structure of his thoughts and consciousness is thoroughly shattered, and his soul is broken, barely hanging together. He's basically a vegetable now."
"His sensory-nullification and heat-absorption powers are essentially dead. Even his Dimensional Pocket is ruined, gone entirely."
"But it doesn't matter. His darkness ability is still intact. That's all I need."
Abram—
No.
Seraphine.
She quietly scanned the body with her Mental Power, murmuring to herself:
"Looks like I'll need to handle things personally. Think of it as a massive live-action RPG. Let's see how far I can push this 'game' using only darkness abilities."
If this body got destroyed and she could no longer play, she'd simply open the Real Number Channel and send over a Clone loaded with a million attribute points to raze everything to the ground.
Having resolved herself, Seraphine's spiritual projection—hidden deep in the recesses of the host's brain—unleashed ten tons of spiritual force.
The surrounding gelatinous resin and reinforced glass container shattered like paper.
BANG!
Seraphine landed heavily on the floor.
She shot a glance at Sorren's corpse and said coolly:
"So-called spiritual essence is just the embryonic form of Martial Truth. I don't know where you got the confidence to challenge me with something so crude and low-tier."
"Had you abandoned your body and fled right away, in that vast and formless Spiritual Dimension, it might've taken me quite a while to hunt you down."
Shaking her head, Seraphine lifted a finger and tapped the air lightly.
BUZZ!
The real number solution of Sorren's cranial-space coordinates was instantly derived.
One second later, a grayish-white brain materialized, flickering and suspended in midair before her.
Immediately, she opened the Real Number Channel once again, teleporting the brain to the Sapphire Research Institute far away in Emberlight.
A clone stationed there would safely preserve it and begin a full suite of experiments centered on the [Spiritual Dimension] using this brain as a key research specimen.
As a flood of data flowed into the brain from the neural net of this borrowed body, Seraphine frowned slightly and muttered:
"Only visual and auditory signals are being received… All tactile feedback and sensory inputs beyond sight and hearing are blank."
"Controlling a puppet remotely through spiritual projection really is like viewing a flower across a river. Like piloting an RPG character."
With that, she threw a punch—
CRACK!
The air screamed as the wind exploded outward.
"Strength output's only around 30 tons. Tch. Pathetic."
Shaking her head in disappointment, Seraphine finally activated Abram's core ability—Shadow Domain.
BUZZ!
Ability activated.
In an instant, Seraphine collapsed, melting into the ground, her entire form transforming into a mass of black shadow with zero thickness.
"Fascinating… this ability is anything but simple."
That shapeless shadow bolted across the laboratory like a streak of lightning, darting and twisting at impossible speed.
"The body hasn't actually vanished—it's been strangely fused with the Spiritual Dimension. What's visible here is just a symbolic projection. How very intriguing."
As she streaked through the space, Seraphine's Eye of True Revelation activated, swiftly analyzing the nature and mechanics behind the ability.
"Furthermore, when this body uses the shadow to manifest physically, it temporarily gains both volume and mass, possessing strength comparable to reinforced steel alloys."
"The ability seems to tap into a vague 'channel' embedded deep within Abram's soul, drawing in large quantities of some unknown force from the Spiritual Dimension. Through a process akin to [Turning the Fake into Real], this mass is finally materialized in the real world."
In mere moments, Seraphine had completely unraveled the essence of this so-called Shadow Domain.
And what she discovered even made her marvel.
Consider this: with Seraphine's current level of unmatched power, the vast majority of abilities were simply beneath notice. Too primitive. Too weak to even glance at.
But the Shadow Domain… its potential was vast enough to capture her full attention.
"So in the end, Abram really is an idiot," Seraphine sighed.
"If this ability had been pushed to its limits, its power would've rivaled even the strongest."
So, what is the true nature of the Shadow Domain? To answer that, one must begin with a simple question: What exactly is a shadow?
In this world, where light exists, darkness naturally follows. The contrast between them gives rise to what we call shadow.
But a shadow is not a flat two-dimensional plane. To discuss dimensions, we must ask: Is a shadow a form of matter?
Take away any one of the following—light, a surface, or an obstructing object—can a shadow still exist? Of course not.
A shadow has no mass, no substance. It is not a physical entity, but a phenomenon. It's simply a defined region where radiation is reduced. It's not real darkness, it's relative.
And this "darkness" depends entirely on who is looking. To a hawk or a beast with night vision, what a human calls "a shadow" may not appear dark at all.
In other words, the existence of a shadow is not absolute. It is a product of observation. A matter of perception.
So, when a creature possessing a sufficiently complex structure and cognitive capacity perceives shadow in a space, then for that being, that space is shadow.
Thus, the so-called shadow is actually a flawed judgment by the brain. It is a pseudo-phenomenon generated by conscious beings.
In other words:
"If I want someone to believe that everything around them is shadow, then, inevitably, everything around them will be shadow."
Seraphine whispered softly to herself.
"I am the shadow."
Her power surged outward—an immense force descending into Abram's mind, initiating deep-level hypnosis at the core of his consciousness.
BUZZ!
At that moment, Seraphine's spiritual projection sensed it—an invisible "door" was slowly creaking open within Abram's fractured soul.