Overcome by panic, Percy took a few deep breaths to calm himself down. Part of him wanted to question whether it was even real air he was inhaling, but he had bigger things to worry about. For the first time since his original meeting with Sol, he found himself trapped, not even having the option of ditching everything to return home!
Granted, the connection to his main body wasn’t entirely gone. He could still feel it tugging softly at his soul, and he could even pinpoint Remior’s general direction. However, the ever-present force pulling him there was greatly suppressed at the moment, an even stronger force locking him in Rasef’s “flesh”.
‘Is it because of this strange world? Or is somebody doing this to me on purpose?’
Each scenario was more chilling than the last, and he wasn’t even sure which one he preferred.
Either way, he wasn’t completely out of moves just yet. Turning his senses inwards, he tried to activate Metatron’s Decree – to see if he could still escape to the artificial world and possibly return to Remior from there.
Percy had discovered a long time ago that he couldn’t open the portals in his disembodied state – his soul wisps had to possess a host before activating the ability, for whatever reason. Apparently, his current body didn’t qualify either. Or maybe the Decree was simply suppressed by the same rules interfering with his connection.
Scrambling to come up with a solution, Percy then tried to extract an empty vial from his seal. Not that he had anything in there that would help him leave, but he figured it was worth knowing whether his internal storage was even accessible.
Sadly, he soon confirmed it wasn’t. Testing this with various items, he found himself unable to take anything out. Conversely, he probably wouldn’t be able to store anything in it either, though there was nothing here to test that with. The only object in Rasef’s room was his stone bed, and it appeared fused to the floor. The man didn’t even have a pillow, and a cursory test revealed that Percy couldn’t even chip a piece off the material.
‘Okay, that settles it… This is definitely not a physical world…’
Frowning, he considered his last resort. Whether Rasef’s body was real or not, both of their souls currently resided within it, as did his stash of mana. Percy might not have access to a proper mana core right now, but he wasn’t entirely powerless.
Drawing a sliver of fused mana out, he noticed – to his delight – that it appeared in its original bluish-grey colour even here, painting a stark contrast against the backdrop of red. Manifesting a tiny orb no larger than a cherry, he moved it around the room, watching it phase freely through every surface – the bed, the walls, the floor and even the ceiling. Evidently, that property of his soul affinity worked here just as well as it did everywhere else.
Percy tried to turn the substance corporeal too, though that didn’t seem to change anything. The orb still passed through the objects in his surroundings like before. Had this world’s rules prevented him from shifting its state? Or did pure mana not interact with the stuff in here either?
‘Well, whatever the case is, I can use it to destroy myself if it comes to it.’
To his relief, this was an option this dream-like place had failed to rob him of. Not that he liked the idea of essentially committing suicide, but it was definitely better than falling in deep slumber and getting stuck here forever. Besides, he’d come here knowing the risks, so he couldn’t complain.
‘I should still look for another way out before resorting to that though…’
Having nothing else to do in Rasef’s room, Percy decided to explore this place some more. The room wasn’t sealed – there was a single doorway without a door, leading to a long corridor. The doorway’s dimensions were a little off – it was taller and narrower than what he’d seen in other places, likely to accommodate the physiology of the natives.
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But he didn’t care about that.
The corridor was rather dim. Much like Rasef’s room, there wasn’t any dedicated light source. Instead, this whole world seemed to hum in a soft red glow, faintly illuminating everything. Consequently, there weren’t any shadows either, which admittedly looked a little eerie.
Walking through the corridor, Percy spotted many other open doorways on either side, leading to dozens of rooms no different than his host’s. In each one, there was a single bed with a person sleeping on it. All of them were adults, though he saw both men and women. The latter were slightly shorter and much slimmer than Rasef, and they wore a strip of clothing on their chests too.
‘I guess privacy isn’t a big thing here…’
These people clearly didn’t feel the need to shut themselves in their rooms. But maybe it was this sleeping situation that rendered the concept of privacy moot – not the local customs. After all, what would be the point in having doors if there was nobody awake to spy on them?
In any case, Percy managed to get a better look at their faces too. Their features weren’t all that different from a human’s, but their egg-shaped heads were much larger, their foreheads spanning about a third of the space.
He was tempted to sneak into their rooms and read the hieroglyphs on their walls. He didn’t know if it would be considered rude – or if it even mattered, since these people would probably never wake up again. He was definitely curious to learn more about this place, yet he managed to hold himself back in the end. He didn’t do that just to be considerate, but also because he doubted he’d find a way out by reading their personal information.
Percy did gather some mana to his eyes, however, activating Soul Vision. Sadly, it appeared he wasn’t even capable of using Mana Sense without a core in his body, but he could still determine these people’s grades from their souls.
‘Hmmm? They’re all at Green… Are their living quarters segregated by grade?’
Reaching the end of the corridor, he found a few stone steps leading down and to his right, feeding into another corridor. The second corridor looked just like the previous one, though it was located about a metre lower, and Percy could have sworn it looked slightly longer too.
The people in the first couple of rooms were also at Green, much like the ones before, though the mana in his eyes ran out a few moments later. He still had plenty in his stash, but he didn’t rush to reactivate the ability, since he didn’t want to waste it that quickly.
‘Let’s only do that every second or third corridor, to determine when I’ve reached the Yellows.’
Percy would be lying if he said he didn’t find this place unsettling. None of the natives showed any signs of life, and the environment was bland and never-changing. It was rather quiet too, the deep silence of this place only barely disturbed by the echoes of his footsteps and his yawns that kept getting more frequent by the minute.
It wasn’t until two corridors lower that Percy activated Soul Vision again, confirming that he’d indeed reached the Yellow residents at some point. Other than the grades of the sleeping people, not much had changed, however. Sure, Percy had descended another metre and taken a right turn for each new sublevel he traversed, and the pathways continued to grow slightly longer each time, but that was about it.
At some point, he paused, raising an eyebrow.
‘Maybe I should be going the other way?’
Based on what he’d seen so far, Percy was confident this structure was a pyramid, and he was currently traveling along its outer walls, spiralling down towards its base. He had passed through at least two corridors with Greens so far – maybe more – but he didn’t know how many of those existed on the other side. The Yellows should be even more numerous, based on the distribution of souls he saw before entering this world.
But he shook his head the next moment, resuming his stroll down the Sanctuary.
‘I don’t know if I’m more likely to find an exit at the top or at the bottom, but I’d rather not run into the demigods or the god if I can avoid it.’
Since he had already started travelling this way, he might as well check what lay at the end before reconsidering his options. Then again, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d end up ascending the pyramid sooner or later…
Sighing, he pressed on, passing through another dozen or so corridors before something changed.
Once again, Percy found another right turn at the end of the path, though there weren’t any steps leading downward this time. It seemed he had already reached the very bottom of the structure. The doorway to his right didn’t lead to a corridor this time, but a vast room that seemed to encompass the entire base of the pyramid. The ceiling was only a few metres high, but the sides of the colossal hall stretched for over a hundred metres. There wasn’t any furniture either, but that didn’t mean this place was empty.
Far from it, in fact.
The room was densely covered in writing, rows upon rows of hieroglyphs decorating literally every surface, from the floor beneath Rasef’s feet, to the ceiling above his head. Percy’s heart skipped a beat at the sight, as he could tell he’d find something more interesting than somebody’s personal information this time.
‘As soon as I figure out where all this text is supposed to start…’