If his conclusions were correct, then everything he currently perceived was merely information being fed into his consciousness. Meaning... there was only one way out. Break the receiver.
Inside his body, Linked Energy Manipulation roared back to life. The remaining traces of Qi fused violently with his dwindling vitality. Green energy flowed upward first, wrapping around his brain like a cool stream, saturating every corner of his consciousness. Healing. Protecting. Preparing.
Then—Black. A razor-thin strand of corrosive energy shot directly into his own mind. The instant the black energy reached his brain—Reality exploded. The pain was so terrible that he wasn't sure if he blacked out from thr pain or the brain damage.
Leon lurched awake with a violent gasp, his entire body convulsing as white-hot agony erupted from his abdomen. The peaceful town, the warm fireplace, the relieved smiles—they shattered like fragile glass, replaced by the freezing crimson wasteland. For a brief, disorienting moment, he couldn't breathe. A thick, translucent tendril had pierced clean through his stomach, and dark red blood dripped steadily onto the frozen ground beneath him.
The giant violet eye, now bleeding internally, hovered directly before the cave entrance, its countless optic nerves rooted into the earth like the roots of an ancient tree. The psychic monster hadn't been waiting. It had been feeding. The survivors around him remained motionless, their eyes closed, faint smiles lingering on their faces as though each of them were trapped inside their own perfect dream.
"...A mind hex." Leon gritted his teeth. "So this... ...was reality."
The green energy flooding his brain had healed it exactly as intended. It had also awakened him while the monster was still draining his blood. His vision blurred, and his limbs felt heavy. The creature was clearly heavily injured by the first attack, but he had already exhausted nearly all of his vitality during the first exchange. Now the remaining strength in his body was leaving through the wound in his stomach.
The eye noticed him awaken. Its enormous iris contracted, and the feeding tendril twitched. Without hesitation, Leon moved. His left hand seized the tendril impaling him, preventing it from withdrawing, while his right fist shot forward. The familiar mixture of environmental Qi and his dwindling vitality surged together under Linked Energy Manipulation. A layer of pristine white energy wrapped around a dense core of black.
This time there was no hesitation. His fist struck the monster's enormous eye. The white energy slipped effortlessly through the thick outer membrane, and only after it had fully entered the creature did the white layer collapse. The imprisoned black energy erupted.
The inside of the giant eye instantly curdled into smoking grey sludge. The optic nerves spasmed violently as the creature convulsed, smashing blindly against the rocky cliff while its own internal tissues dissolved from within. Leon released the tendril and threw himself backward. The monster continued thrashing for several more seconds before finally collapsing onto the crimson snow with a heavy, wet crash.
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Silence returned, and only Leon's ragged breathing disturbed the frozen wasteland.
"...Dead." His voice was barely audible.
He had won. Barely. Leon tried to stand, but his knees buckled immediately. Too much blood. Too much vitality. His body was already approaching its limit before the illusion, and during the time he had spent trapped inside the mind hex, the monster had quietly continued draining him. His heartbeat grew weaker.
"...Damn."
His gaze drifted toward the corpse, and the Universal Vessel stirred. Leon frowned. Supporting himself against the stone wall, he staggered toward the corpse, every step leaving droplets of blood behind him. When he finally reached the enormous eye, he slowly placed his palm against its cooling surface.
For a heartbeat... Nothing happened. Then the corpse dimmed. A pale violet stream, neither liquid nor light, gently rose from within the monster. It flowed into Leon's hand before disappearing into his chest as though swallowed by an invisible abyss. The enormous corpse visibly withered—not physically, but conceptually, as though something fundamental had been removed from it. At the same time, a realization surfaced naturally within Leon's mind. Origin. The Universal Vessel had absorbed the monster's Origin.
Leon's eyes widened. "...Origin..."
He immediately examined the strange energy within himself. 'I knew the universal vessel would absorb something but that was supposed to be source energy....origin is unexpected. What even is that? It feels like source energy but it's not.' It wasn't Qi, nor was it vitality. Yet, it possessed enough similarities to vitality that his intuition instantly reached a conclusion.
"...Can I..."
Without wasting another second, Leon drew environmental Qi into his body once more. Normally, his exhausted vitality would have been incapable of supporting another cycle of Linked Energy Manipulation. Instead, he guided the newly acquired Origin into its place. Qi. Origin. Link.
The two energies revolved together almost effortlessly. Unlike vitality, Origin didn't resist the violent mixing process. It accepted the Qi naturally, producing a fresh stream of internal energy.
"It works..." Relief flashed across Leon's exhausted face.
Without hesitation, he directed the newly formed internal energy toward the wound in his abdomen. The familiar green hue spread across his stomach, bringing warmth. The torn muscles slowly knitted together, the punctured flesh sealed layer by layer, and the bleeding gradually stopped. It wasn't perfect; his body remained weak from blood loss, and his stamina was nearly nonexistent, but the wound itself had closed just as he had used up all the energy gained from the eye creature.
Leon leaned heavily against the corpse, breathing deeply as the green light finally faded. His eyes drifted toward the sleeping survivors inside the cave. They still hadn't awakened but were stirring.
"...I'll deal with them in a minute."
He lowered his head, laying down and staring at the ceiling in disbelief.
"Are you serious? ....This is the first enemy?" His fingers tightened unconsciously. "Even I almost died fighting it. How is anyone else supposed to survive here?"
He looked across the endless crimson wasteland stretching toward the horizon. If creatures like this were merely wandering predators... Then what kind of existence stood at the top of this world's food chain?
"...This world..." He laughed out of sheer disbelief. "...is absurd."