NOVPUBThird Person's POV
He had gambled on entering this phantom realm to find a way past the sealed wall in Aram's mind, and now, the pieces were starting to align.
But just as he settled into that euphoria, the world around him shimmered and wavered.
Light bled into darkness, and sensation twisted—and before he could react, he was yanked back to reality.
He jolted awake within Aram's mind space as his jellyfish body now resumed its former crystalline white hue.
However, this time his thoughts pulsed with quiet triumph.
Though what he had glimpsed was still uncertain and tentative, it was still a start and a thread of possibility that could evolve into infinite possibilities in the future.
Seeing the webbed sky, he now believed there was a way to bypass that red soul-seal, though as of now, this way was still only a tentative and rough idea in his mind.
And of it will succeed, that question will soon be answered.
Thinking that, he steadied himself and then began to replicate the feeling of weightless immersion he had experienced in that multicolored sea.
He again remembered that tranquil drift, the surrender to the currents of that ethereal dream, like a deep sea.
A gentle warmth surged through Ethan's incorporeal form and washed over him like the embrace of early sunlight.
He glanced down and noticed a soft, seven-colored radiance blooming from his translucent body and bathing him in a calming aurora.
The sensation lifted the heaviness within him and coaxed his spirit into a deeper state of focus.
Then, a sudden tremor passed through him.
It was subtle at first, but it quickly turned unsettling.
It felt like his very essence was unraveling and slipping through the seams of his identity.
A sense of panic threatened to rise within him, but he clenched his awareness around his memories and clutched every thread of who he was.
He anchored himself with his deepest memories, sensations, and emotions over the course of his two lives.
A second shiver followed after his resistance, and it was more potent than the last, and just as he was about to become a little helpless, in the blink of an eye, he was gone.
From an outsider's view, the strange glowing jellyfish that had been drifting gently in Aram's soul space for the last few minutes suddenly vanished and completely phased out of sight without a trace.
However, Ethan found himself floating in an entirely different layer of reality.
He stared at his shimmering body and the seven-colored glow that still pulsed across his limbs.
His nonexistent eyes widened in awe as he could feel it now.
He wasn't just hidden, but he had merged with the very fabric of this strange Astral Realm, and this time, it was more deeply than even the native abstract and unknown entities that called it home.
The nature and origin of this rule-defying concealment spell eluded him, but he knew that there was no time to dwell on mysteries at this moment.
Like sand slipping through an open palm, his soul energy was draining rapidly, and any hesitation would only hasten his collapse.
With renewed determination, he swam upward toward the ever-pulsing massive red web that shimmered with a heat so intense it even distorted the Astral space around it.
Threading himself through the gaps in the web, Ethan moved cautiously.
To his astonishment, the network remained still and unresponsive, and he felt invisible even to its innate defenses.
Yet, the moment he brushed against the barrier's dormant aura, a searing pain bloomed across his jellyfish form.
A fifth of his soul energy instantly scattered and dissipated like mist in the wind.
Ethan winced, and pain flashed like thunder across his thoughts.
It wasn't just discomfort, but it was a different kind of soul-deep pain.
The power of this barrier was terrifying. Even in a passive state, its latent heat had nearly scalded a chunk of his soul energy away.
His spiritual power could match or surpass most early-stage Crystal Formation Realm cultivators, yet even with that, he had barely endured.
He had never underestimated Duke Vord, but the reality of the duke's depth hit like a cold slap, grounding him.
Ethan had almost battled the demon knight Telor to an embarrassing stalemate, and this outcome of fighting a person two realms above him had inflated his confidence in the past few hours.
But this encounter burned away any traces of arrogance and snapped him back to his usual cautious clarity.
Finally, when he crossed the barrier beyond the red misted web, the secret layer of Aram's mind finally revealed itself to him.
He found himself in a surreal sky-like expanse, where thick white clouds drifted lazily and within them floated dozens of glowing crystal orbs.
He gazed in quiet wonder as each orb pulsed faintly while being suspended in dreamlike stasis, though many were still encased in smaller, cruder red nets from which came faint echoes of the great seal that loomed beneath.
Seeing them, a possibility stirred in his mind, and a small hope kindled in his thoughts as he approached the orbs.
His soul-form scanned for any that lacked protection, and when he spotted a few bare of red defenses, he extended his luminous tendrils and wrapped around them.
But the moment he touched them, a torrent of memories burst forth in his mind.
The only word with which he could describe it was chaos.
A torrent of unfamiliar visions, voices, half-felt emotions, and long-forgotten moments surged into him in a flood of intensity.
Soon, his perception of time in this already confusing Astral World blurred even more, and even his sense of identity wavered.
And to his shock, he even forgot who he was for a single second.
The core tenets of his being, like his name and his purpose, jumbled and polluted themselves.
It all blurred and mixed into the life of the ducal prince Aram's arrogant laughter, his ambitions, and even his fears.
