Even with peak Rank Three Mental Force, Joren could only resist part of the gray mist.
It was enough to keep him from ending up like the Shadow Fiend, but not enough to stop the mist from slipping into his senses.
That alone showed how dangerous this place was.
When Joren believed he was flying forward, his brain received the sensation of forward motion. His vision supplied matching scenery, making everything appear to slide backward around him.
But none of it was real.
His thoughts were being deceived.
Like a dream.
You could run until your lungs burned, cross mountains and rivers, travel farther than you ever had in waking life, while your real body lay motionless in bed with nothing moving but your eyes.
"Not bad."
"You did not trap my body."
"You trapped my mind."
A normal Rank Five Awakened Warrior would eventually break here, no matter how firm their will.
Without a reliable sense of time or space, doubt would keep building until the mind began turning against itself.
Once that final defense collapsed, the victim would stop resisting the gray mist.
Then they would become part of this place, just like the Shadow Fiend.
Fortunately, Joren had something most people did not.
The system.
And more than a hundred thousand Bloodstars.
If Rank Three Mental Force was not enough to keep the mist out, then he would simply raise it.
Rank Three was too weak?
Fine.
Go higher.
"System."
[Host: Joren]
[Mental Force: 5680, late stage Rank Three]
[Bloodstars: 146300]
That six figure balance sat there like a mountain of gold.
In this place, it was the most reassuring thing Joren had seen.
Now that he knew the problem was an invasion of the mind, the solution became much simpler.
There was very little in this world that adding points could not solve.
And if adding points was not enough, then add more.
[Ding!]
[5000 Bloodstars consumed. Mental Force increased by 5000.]
The whispers around him sharpened at once.
The gray mist seemed to realize its prey was trying to tear free.
Malice boiled through the air.
"Hehe... stop struggling..."
"Stay... become one with us..."
Images burst across Joren’s vision.
Fragments from his previous life.
Twisted ghosts reaching for him.
His own corpse, mutilated and cold.
One scene replaced another before he could even process the last.
The space was fighting back.
It wanted to crush his reason before the transformation finished.
"Shut up."
Joren clenched his teeth.
[Current Mental Force: 10000]
Boom!
It felt as though something exploded inside his skull.
Then everything stopped.
The whispers.
The images.
The crawling nausea at the back of his mind.
Gone.
What remained was silence.
A moment later, warmth rose from deep inside his sea of consciousness.
Joren blinked.
His attention turned inward.
The vast and formless ocean of Mental Force within him had begun to boil.
At its center, a single golden flame appeared.
No warning.
No transition.
It simply ignited.
The flame was tiny, no larger than a candle.
Yet its light was almost painfully bright.
Against the darkness of his consciousness, it resembled a newborn sun.
Holy.
Domineering.
"What the hell is that?"
Joren stared at it.
He might have been a Psionic Master, but he had never properly studied the profession.
Most of his progress had come from the system force feeding power into him.
As for the actual theory behind Mental Force cultivation?
He barely knew any of it.
And he had certainly never heard of Mental Force catching fire.
"Whatever."
"Let us see what it does."
Joren reached toward the flame with his mind.
There was no heat.
No pain.
Instead, he felt an immediate familiarity, as though the flame belonged to him in the same way an arm or a hand did.
At his thought, it flickered obediently.
"So I can control it."
Joren guided the golden flame through his sea of consciousness.
Hiss.
Then he saw it.
In the corners of his mind, where the golden light passed, something clung to the Mental Force barrier.
Dust.
No.
Not dust.
Tiny gray growths.
So small they would have been invisible to normal sight, packed together like mold or parasites across the surface of his consciousness.
Joren’s eyes narrowed.
So this was it.
These things had been stuck to his mind like a filter over a camera lens, altering everything he saw and heard before the information ever reached him.
He had been compromised much earlier than he realized.
"So it really was this filth."
"Disgusting."
Goosebumps rose across his skin.
"Burn."
Boom!
The golden flame expanded.
In an instant, it became a roaring dragon of fire and swept across his sea of consciousness.
Shriek!
The gray parasites screamed the moment the flames touched them.
Not the sound of matter burning.
More like living things thrown into boiling oil.
They writhed against the Mental Force barrier, but there was nowhere to go.
One breath later, they were gone.
Every last trace.
The illusion of endless repetition that had trapped Joren for so long vanished with them.
It felt like being dragged out of a muddy swamp and finally breathing clean air again.
His mind had never felt this clear.
"Whew..."
Joren opened his eyes.
This time, the world had changed.
The twisted structures he had spent ten minutes flying toward were less than fifty meters away.
And they were not buildings.
They were enormous dried Voidbeast corpses, piled over one another until their tangled remains formed grotesque shapes in the fog.
As for his supposed endless flight...
Joren looked around.
He had been circling the same pile of corpses the entire time.
Round and round.
Like a donkey tied to a millstone.
For more than ten minutes.
"So that was all it was."
Joren looked upward.
"A trick of perception."
He had no intention of staying any longer.
"Goodbye, hellhole."
The wings behind him spread.
Boom!
Joren shot upward.
This time, nothing interfered with him.
Wind rushed past.
The gray world broke apart behind him.
Then real air hit his face again.
"Much better."
Joren lifted his left wrist.
The black tactical watch was dead.
Inside the gray mist space, the strange magnetic interference had shut down every electronic device he carried.
He held the restart button.
Static crawled across the screen for several seconds before the familiar dark blue interface finally returned.
Joren checked the time.
Less than twenty minutes had passed in the real world since he chased the Shadow Fiend into the void.
He opened the map.
A red marker flashed on the display.
Norcrest.
Roughly one hundred twenty kilometers away.
Before, that trip would have taken two or three hours.
Now?
Joren smiled.
[Garuda Skyfall Wings].
[Sovereign of the Skies].
Boom!
A violent hurricane erupted over the quiet wilderness.
Two enormous cyan wings unfolded behind Joren, each formed from condensed blades of wind.
Their span exceeded twenty meters.
Every feather gleamed along the edge.
At the same time, another subtle force settled over his body.
The authority of the sky.
"Go."
The wings moved once.
Thump!
The air boomed like an enormous drum struck by a hammer.
A white sonic cloud a hundred meters wide exploded around the place where Joren had been hovering.
He was already gone.