CHAPTER 118

  THE SPIRIT THAT WATCHES

  Hans hit the water like a whisper—no splash, no sound—only the cold.

  At first, he sank in silence, arms outstretched, eyes wide as the lake swallowed him whole. The surface above shimmered like quicksilver, slowly dimming as he drifted deeper. But something was wrong. This wasn’t how water worked. There was no pressure, no need to breathe, only darkness gathering.

  Soon he saw colours fighting the dark to pave a way for light from the bottom.

  The deeper he fell, the brighter it became.

  Then the world began to tilt.

  Not just his body—everything. Trees rippled above like oil on glass, bending inward. The sky fractured into shards of light, and the sun shimmered beneath him now, where the bottom should have been.

  His fall didn’t stop.

  The water thinned, stretched, became something between liquid and air. He was no longer sinking. He was falling—freely, endlessly—through a column of liquid light. The deeper he fell, the more the lake twisted around him, like the world itself was being turned inside out.

  And then, impossibly, he saw the surface again—below him.

  It rippled like glass caught in a storm, and he plummeted toward it, heart hammering, arms flailing as the sky rushed up to meet him. His reflection was there, upside down, watching him with wide, wondering eyes.

  He crashed through it.

  The cold snapped back, and the air returned with a gasp. Water exploded around him in a whirl of white foam, and he burst up into a sky that was no longer the same. The stars above were wrong—too many, too bright—and the trees around the lake leaned away from him, as if recoiling.

  He was back—but not back.

  The world had turned.

  And so had he.

  The Spirit World.

  A place outside of time. Outside of form. The birthplace of forgotten beings who absolved with mana and still-living myths.

  Hans stood on nothing, and yet something held his weight. Beneath him, an endless sea of constellations shimmered, reflecting shapes that shifted with each heartbeat. Forests floated in the sky like islands torn from the ground.

  “Was Concordia based on this? Did Ancestor ever come here?”

  There were questions in his mind.

  Mountains hung upside down, bleeding waterfalls into clouds made of silver smoke. Creatures moved through the sky like kites—winged beasts with no eyes, massive antlered figures cloaked in fog, birds of glass trailing stardust.

  “What the beautiful hell is this?” He said wondering.

  It was magnificent. And terrifying at the same time.

  A presence moved past him, unseen but undeniable. A pressure—gentle, curious.

  Reina’s voice echoed faintly in his head: “Some spirits will offer strength. Others, wisdom. But only the one you desire the most will attack you.”

  “Nice to know that you could talk to me here.” Said Hans, nudging her to keep talking.

  But Reina didn’t respond. It didn’t take him more than two or three cheeky comments to know it was one-way conversation.

  He walked.

  Where to, he didn’t know. The path was not linear. It was out of whims. Every step changed the scenery drastically.

  A grove bloomed to his right, impossibly fast. Trees taller than cities, glowing with inner light. In their branches perched dozens of swans—pure, gliding through air with divine elegance.

  Hans paused.

  Sorry, but not you guys.

  His thoughts might’ve been heard by them. So they didn’t even bother to attack him.

  Intuitive. He thought of himself—what he needed, what he wasn’t—and the world responded.

  The air became thinner in an instant, crisp as dawn and heavy with an unseen. The ground beneath him pulsed faintly, veins of light tracing fractured patterns of old magic.

  “Here comes what I desire most. A power for destruction—”

  The Feathered Snake.

  Before him, a serpent wound through the invisible currents—its body feathered, its wings radiant as the first light of morning.

  “You look dangerous.” Hans was satisfied. “I am too.”

  He got ready.

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  The five skills working in unison. The first wasn’t needed since he had unlimited aura in this place, like any other candidate. But LumenGaze to pinpoint the spirits’ sharp movements. Fester and Maximacre for long-lasting deep damage. And lightCloak providing a boost to his already fast speed.

  “Show me what you have to offer, bird-like snake.”

  As if the feathered spirit heard his taunt. The creature’s eyes, pools of burning amber, locked onto him and unfolded in the air—a presence, sharp and uncompromising.

  The menacing look suggested that the snake was asking Hans, why did he come here?

  Hans answered simply. “To claim one of you.”

  “Foolish spawn of the Day. You’ll regret stepping into this sacred world.” The snake voiced, laughter, beams of light bursting forth, burning and shaping the very air.

  “So they can talk?” Hans raised his now stable rotating sphere of aura—Armis—and the beams crashed against it, fracturing but not breaking.

  The battle was swift, blinding, the serpent’s wings casting daylight in places that should have known darkness.

  But after hours of relentless assault, the battle remained stalemate. “Damn it. This is not working. And this birdbrain doesn’t have the skill I want.”

  As if his intentions were heard by the world. The snake disappeared in an instant. Like this place wanted to serve his desires.

  He felt like a dignitary in a foreign place. Not knowing that it was the same for every candidate.

  Exhaling, he felt no triumph. Only a cold awareness that if he didn’t keep desiring a type of spirit. The world would sever them from him.

  “Okay, now I know the rules.” He closed his eyes, thinking deeply about what he wanted, what kind of enhancement would benefit both bodies.

  No sooner had the serpent vanished, a new shape moved through the mist.

  Tall, regal, and silently imposing—the White Stag.

  Its antlers pulsed with starlight, its hooves swirling with mist that clung like whispered secrets.

  Hans studied it carefully. The stag was not a beast of brute force but of grace and subtlety. It illuminated hidden paths, both literal and metaphorical.

  With a sudden leap, it vanished from the ground and floated—walking on air as though the very world bent to its will.

  Hans lunged, but the stag was a ghost—untouchable, evading with a spectral elegance.

  The battle was less about strength and more about understanding—about seeing through illusions, reading the currents beneath surface.

  Hans had desired speed and evasion. So the fruit this world bore was this enchanting spirit. Eventually, he lost interest and the stag bowed its luminous head, stepping back into the mists.

  “That’s new?” Hans saw everything unfolding with a puzzled face.

  Many situations of the same kind kept repeating again and again.

  But the Spirits did not grow weary.

  They came—majestic and terrible and stronger one after another.

  The Amateran Tiger, a colossal beast of molten gold and flame, appeared next.

  “Now that is something.” Its roar shattered the Armis, a deafening pulse of fire that called the edges of existence.

  Hans met it head-on. Full offence.

  The tiger’s mane blazed with flame, charging attacks with a ferocity that made the world tremble.

  Its Guardian Flare burned the surrounding—with a fury that felt both divine and terrible.

  Hans’s caught on it too, his arms burned as he met every strike with his aura’s spinning shield.

  Yet, even as his energy flared, the tiger never faltered.

  When the beast finally stepped back, the air was thick with smoke.

  “Now that’s a destructive capability I want.” Even with severe burn. Hans had a satisfactory smile.

  “Let’s put you to submission.” He added.

  Suddenly the sky cracked, horizontally and from its dark came—a wreathed in crimson and gold flames. A burning bird. The stuff of legend.

  A phoenix.

  Its eyes were twin suns blazing with archaic fire, wings trailing that could both slice and shield.

  The Phoenix offered rebirth and purification but demanded sacrifice.

  Another desire of Hans was to never die fighting. “Aw, man, you are making me do hard choices.” He clashed with it until exhaustion threatened to swallow him whole.

  With all the skills active and the timeless strikes appended one after another. It was relatively easy to kill the bird who had zero defence mechanism. But to really kill it, it was another story.

  As it was rising again from its own ashes, the tiger who should’ve disappeared when the Phoenix came remained in the world.

  It wasted no time and attacked Hans before the Phoenix could complete the rebirth.

  In an instant, it closed the gap, and the world seemed to tilt as gravity bent around its divine form. Its paw struck the ground—and an eruption of fire exploded outward like a miniature volcano.

  Theodred knew his Armis would shatter, but he had no choice but to trust his half-baked skill.

  And it happened as he predicted. With an impact capable of creating a crater, Hans landed on his back.

  But when he rose, he saw two terrifying creatures’ eyes at him like a fresh piece of meat.

  Fuck me. I’m greedy.

  The Phoenix soared skyward, wings trailing fire into the void. While the tiger leaped distances like it was nothing. Both lands and skies were claimed, and there was no place for Hans in it.

  Goddamit.

  His heart pounded beneath, as both spirits closed in.

  He had faced creatures of creation and destruction, wisdom and wrath.

  None bent to him.

  And the one whom he wanted, teamed up.

  His sword moved, and all of his teachings came to test. From techniques of Inheritor—the timeless strikes— to Reina’s all six skills working in fusion. Even his half-baked Sirius strike. But to no avail, the creatures resisted.

  If it were the outside world, Hans would have died dozens of times, and most of them would have been from Aura exhaustion or overload.

  It continued for several hours, a stalemate, and sometimes, Hans battered and beaten, but the creatures had no interest in leaving him alone since his desires were driving them crazy.

  All Hans had to do was decide which one should take priority, but he couldn’t let go of the benefits others brought.

  Then, beneath the blinding sun of this fractured realm, the air itself changed.

  A silence fell—so deep it swallowed the clamour of battle.

  The light dimmed.

  From the shadows, immense wings unfurled.

  Another one. What is it, my birthday?

  A presence so vast, so ancient, that the sun itself seemed to wane beneath its shadow.

  The Avian—the Owl.

  Wings larger than any of the creatures in existence, spread wide, eclipsing the fractured sun that hung over the Spirit World.

  Eyes were like blazing runes that spun like stars in a night sky gone mad.

  Feathers of crystallised light—some white-hot, others stained glass glowing from within—bristled like a sapphire of destruction.

  The world held its breath.

  Hans felt it—an annihilation waiting to unfold.

  Even the Amateran Tiger and Phoenix recoiled, vanishing with tails between their radiant legs.

  The Owl’s wings tore through illusions and spirits alike, its beak and talons etched with golden veins that scorched with a purity beyond mercy.

  Hans was an ant in front of this catastrophe. Its presence was a judgement, not of man or god, but of existence itself.

  “Beware the owl whose gaze is a thousand dawns,” whispered the wind in fear.

  Hans met those eyes, and for a heartbeat, his soul vanished from the world.

  The Owl’s Cataclysm, an energy of pure destruction, threatened to erase everything—matter, magic, memory—leaving only white ash in a silent void.

  Hans couldn’t even move, wielding his aura with endless ferocity, testing his limits beyond what even he imagined was not even possible.

  The Spirit World trembled.

  And yet—

  When the dust settled, when the light had flickered back to the fractured sky—

  Hans was gone from this world, turned to ashes.