sleeping has become harder nowadays. I think that is both due to my master's appearance and this freezing cold. I am sitting next to a fire and still, I am shivering.
my master is very good at touching the pressure point of people, not only with his ability but with the other things he does. he found it easier for me. he has been with me from a very young age.
his ability is one of the most insidious I have ever seen. his enemies have the most terrifying time dealing with him. I know him and have defenses against him, which is the only reason I have trouble sleeping. others would become raving idiots.
nameless - commander, are you also having trouble sleeping?
me - the last couple of days have been pretty hard on me. also, this place is dangerous, not sleeping is the better option than being ambushed.
nameless- commander, honestly speaking, how much of a chance do we have against the necromancer. you seem to have avoided the question the entire day.
me - honestly speaking, I don't know. we are going in blind against an enemy that we have no idea about. necromancers were always a tough bunch.
nameless ( throwing a log of wood into the fire) - so how are we going to fight them, do you have any plans.
me - I have a couple but I will need to wait till tomorrow to verify which might just work. you don't need to worry kid, I have faced worse and I am still breathing. anyway, you really need to get your act together if you want to live?
nameless - what did I do this time?
me - every action of yours proves that you are an outsider. you don't want to be an outsider in this land. it is not as peaceful as the world you come from.
nameless - okay, so what do I need to do.
me - first of all, get a good nights sleep. right now your mind is a tightly wound spring. it keeps you alert and that is good, but keep it up for too long and you will be exhausted. you will make mistakes if you are exhausted. also, you can't learn anything if you are exhausted.
nameless - I can't go to sleep. no matter how much I try, I just can't go to sleep.
me - that is natural, you go through what is known as interplanar fatigue. basically, you have come to a new world. this world is different from ours in a fundamental manner.
everything about this world is different. the basic laws that govern this universe allow you to survive, but you are in a foreign land with different laws.
you can say that you are subconsciously feeling uncomfortable. hence you can't relax and that's why there is a lack of sleep.
but you need to relax and rest. fear is a good thing, but too much will kill you.
nameless - thanks, but what is the problem of introducing myself as an amnesiac.
me - you are not even acting like an amnesiac, kid. believe me when I say every soldier of every force in this world has trained in the method of recognising otherworldly beings. they will easily recognise and put you down and if they were to see your book, let's just stuff are going to be messy. your problem is from the fundamentals. the way you react to every question asked. the way you think, your opinion. very small stuff, that you won't find in otherworlders. it might take you a lot of time but It is something you need to learn. I will teach you, I don't really mind.
nameless - why are you helping me? as for as I know, I don't have any relation with you.
me - I knew your predecessors and he made a promise to take care of you if possible. also, I have a small work for you, I need you to destroy something for me in the future when you have become stronger.
nameless - fine.
then either of us stopped talking, I can see the kid is in deep thought.it is a critical point for him. he doesn't know me and trust me. he has to take a leap of faith and hope that I am a good man. till dawn both of us are like still statues looking at the dancing flames, sometimes adding logs of wood into the fire. this continued till dawn.
at dawn, phantom snow woke up. I am surprised he sleeps through the night. it is cold as fuck.
then again, mental magic is one of the most exhausting magic I know of. he had to enter my mind for two weeks, after all. with my defences, it is a pretty hard job.
anyway, after the kid woke up we woke up from the trance-like focus with which we were staring at the fire. I am thinking of a lot of things. I am thinking about my past a lot. the kid sparks memories I had forgotten. those were the good times.
then we noticed how it is outside. snow was falling from the sky and had covered the ground like a white sheet. the most abnormal thing was the uniformity of the snow. it was like somebody had taken a lot and carved a perfect cuboid in the ground. it has happened a short while ago, maybe half an hour to one hour.
shit, the god mana corruption has worsened a lot in the two weeks that I was unconscious. it had crossed the second stage long ago.
it had actually managed to get corrupted to this point. what the hell were these two kids doing these two weeks? while they are dumb, but I am sure that they should have noticed something in these two weeks.
I stopped for a few seconds, taking deep breathes. now is not the time for me to lose control of my temper. blaming others won't solve the problem. be the bigger man here.
me - pack everything, we are leaving now. we can't stay here anymore. ( I am practically screaming. it is a very dangerous situation, especially for me. )
the kids followed my commands perfectly, being ready in a few instants. I don't have anything except for my bladed bow and their quivers. it is enough for now. I must say nameless has been trained pretty nicely.
me - before we leave, be ready for anything. most of what you see won't make any sense to you, but constantly keep moving. if you stop even for a second, we might just not leave this place.
they did not reply, but they understand my command.
saying that I go toward the door. I think the snow is a manifestation of the god mana. god mana manifests in one case and that is not a good situation to be in. the moment I touch the door the entire door collapse to release a wave of white behind the door.
in a few seconds, the snow touching the house floor, began to corrode the floor. corroding the floor is the wrong way to describe it. it was converting the floor to snow. I front of my eyes the snow began to spread like some kind of a spider web.
me - you know where the gate is right, this snow won't affect you. but the same can't be said about me. no matter what happens, just don't go beyond the new walls that have been constructed.stay in the place between the temporal shield and the walls.
while speaking to them I caught a handful of the white snow. as expected, the moment that the ice touched me, I can feel a bone-chilling coldness, and my arm is being broken apart, becoming snow.
I manipulate the mana in my body and concentrate it on my arms. the snowification stops. I can feel my mana draining at a pretty decent pace.
me - let's go, nameless. you are going to have to lift me and try to have as little of contact with the snow as possible and make sure that I don't touch the snow.
the kids obediently follow my orders and with nameless lifting me, we begin to cross the snow. the snow is significantly deep, with it reaching at least till phantom snow's shoulder.
luckily they are not becoming snow.
we keep going, very slowly due to the depth of the snow. I am above the snow, but the snow falling from the sky was still touching. only the mana inherent to this body, the puppeteer mana ( a half specialised mana ) was the reason I have not completely crumbled. it does not help against the coldness. this is a bone freezing coldness. I could feel my mind slowing down, my thoughts freezing and it became so cold that I felt I have been encased in a nice cube( a very unpleasant sensation )
I have a few ideas as to what this is. this is the process of becoming a god. the snow in front of me somehow absorbing all the god mana in my surroundings and is turning into a god. if it does succeed to do so, it will become a mad, chaotic, and crazy god that will make the totems seem like downright gentlemen.
thankfully this god has not become fully self-aware,(most likely never will ) so we are not being actively attacked.
if it began to attack actively, even specialised mana won't protect us ( especially me )for long.
we make our way to the gate, with almost no competition. thankfully the gate is on the ground and not somewhere under the ground.
digging in this snow would have been suicide, at least for me. the kids are barely affected.
the kids are not in the least harmed by the snow. it would be a different case if it was an actual god controlling the mana.
with these thoughts, we continued towards the gate in record time. I can confirm that there is no active personality behind this massive snow wave.
otherwise, there are many ways that I can imagine this snow could have screwed with us, none of them happened.
we reached the gate with no event. I am not really sure what we will find beyond the gate, but being ready will be useful. there is a necromancer behind this gate. that much is there for certain. now I need to see if he is daring enough to attack us taking the risk of getting himself infected.
right now all I can hope for is that the god mana leaking from the gate has managed to terrify it Into leaving.
nothing really happens as we cross the gate and reach outside the temporal seal. we are in the region between the new wall and the temporal seal. During this time, even with me circulating all my mana, there was a pretty thick layer of snow covering me.
phantom snow wiped off a bit of the snow on my hand to reveal the flesh beneath. thankfully nameless quickly reacted by coagulating the blood in my body, covering the wound without any bloodloss. thankfully this snow is stuck on me, like somebody had glued it to me. l just can't imagine what I would do if this snow fell off from my body( like normal snow does). I would literally lose all my face ( and rest of my body ) and become a pile of organs.
thankfully, circulating my mana through the snow is slowly converting back to flesh. it definitely not helpful that my immortality is not useful right now.
I am literally a soul in a different body. the soul and body are very different. without my immortality, my soul will burn this body to ashes in a matter of minutes.
from experience, I can tell that my regeneration powers shall return in a couple of months to years. by then my new body shall have gotten adapted to my soul.
So for now, no regeneration for me. in a few minutes, my body returns to normal. right now I have to do the hardest thing possible. I have to talk to my masters, more accurately disappoint them.
the city of madness has been a very unlucky place for me. let's hope that I have to never return to this place. it has been a load of crap since the beginning.
right now, I am stuck between a rock and a hard place. if we cross the wall, we have to face a hostile necromancer, going back is not an option.
we can't stay in this place for long. god, mana has a way of corrupting stuff made from mana and temporal shield is made of pure mana.
any second now the temporal shield might fall and the being behind it will begin to spread. it is the most basic instinct of any being.
we are going to stay in this in-between place for the night. the kids are terrified especially nameless. this type of stuff must be coming as a shock to him. his kind already has a hard time adapting to this world. he is acting calm, but I can tell when a person is hiding his emotions.
I had to deal with nobles almost half of my life, before joining the military. I have met some of the most amazing actors among the nobles, who are often the most dangerous people to deal with. the kid would make a good noble.
anyway, time for me to report to my bosses.this is going to be a very painful ordeal.
drawing a magical rune on my arm, I go to sleep. very soon I find myself in the fifth emperors dreamland. this time it is a grassland. in front of me is two thrones, meant for the two emperors who are going to kill me, at least make me want to die.