A small white sphere, about the size of a small ball, was slowly making its way towards me. The sphere was created through Lo Recant's magic just a moment ago. And unlike last time, when I was very surprised, this time I easily found out what kind of magic the sphere contained within it. It was Spacetime Magic––the same one which is in the Breath of Ouroboros. But perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the sphere had to be its complexity hidden beneath its simplicity.
At first glance, the sphere looked to be a basic white ball created through magic, not something which anyone would consider to be "complex". But the moment you try to look at it seriously, you will completely find yourself amazed at the complexity within it––it was to such an extent that the more you looked at it, the more complex and impossible it became. To be honest, it perfectly fits the type of magic a being strong as Lo Recant would use. Though, I stopped thinking too much about it, and kept in the backburner, as I turned towards Lo Recant. "Well, seems like this is goodbye," I told Lo Recant. Lo Recant then curtly answered, "Yeah, see you soon."
Our parting conversation was very short, it didn't even take us five seconds to finish it. I felt bad for not having more to talk to, as I wanted to talk to my only friend more. But I knew that it would be impossible, as no matter how bad I felt, I just couldn't think of any talk which would be best for this occasion. It was sad, but it is what it is. Thankfully, the sadness I had felt was completely overshadowed by the excitement and glee which I was feeling. The reason I felt them was that I had started to imagine how fun it would be now that all the beings were now stronger and that I was weaker, it was now going to be more fun as I had to use every bit of my ability if I didn't want to die. I think I was having the same sentiment people, including me, have when choosing the harder difficulty in a game.
The white ball, as if signifying the end of our conversation, seeped into my body. The moment it did so, I suddenly started to feel weird. It was almost akin to the magic Lo Recant had used to limit me––though a lot weirder.
The ball didn't make me shine all that much. Instead, it made me feel a sinking feeling from my center. The sinking was also accompanied by some slights bends and distortion in spacetime––just like my breath, but much weaker. Then the sinking feeling started to rapidly get stronger and more violent as well as making the distortions in spacetime more apparent. Now that it was so violent, I think it would be better to call it sucking, instead of sinking.
The sucking had gotten so strong that I was now starting to get sucked into myself. Which caused me to suddenly feel myself get violently pushed to another spacetime––a one which felt very weird. The pull was so violent that I felt my entire being get stretched to unimaginable lengths.
It was then, when I suddenly realized, 'This feels suspiciously like "that".'
And just like in a movie, the moment I had realized it, the process had already been completed––I was now completely sucked into this new region, and weirder, region of spacetime.
What greeted me was a sight of nightmares, a place that would perfectly fit in a book about eldritch horrors. It was an infinite dark expanse of a black which was blacker-than-black. It was the void that I had gotten quite used to in the past few days. Though, unlike last time––where only my consciousness had reached this place––this time my whole body was in it. Causing me to feel a whole another level of unease. The already bad feeling of doom, powerlessness, and such were now having an even more profound impact on my psyche. It was such an experience that a normal being, no matter how much experience they had with it, would lose their mind.
Thankfully, my recent ascendence to a higher-being––i.e. me evolving into an Ouroboros, a Divine Evolution––greatly helped in keeping my sanity in check. There were more factors other than it, which had helped me, but I knew that if I didn't have my current evolution, I likely would've lost it here.
Still, even though I was at no risk of losing my sanity, it didn't mean that this experience was pleasant. It was very unpleasant, the creeping sensation of doom was still there, though to a much lesser extent, and there was still this uneasy and weird feeling.
'Huh,' I thought, surprised, 'didn't expect wisdom to activate here.'
I was now a lot more comfortable in this world. Although there were still some unpleasant sensations left, it was light years better than before. It was because of my Wisdom activating and allowing my mind to brute force its way through the unpleasantries through rational thinking, they were: I'm not dead yet; there is nothing in this world so it's normal to sense anything and so on.
I mentally breathed a sigh of relief as I thought, 'Wisdom is really useful.'
Well, it would be, after all, Wisdom ranks 5/10 in the skill rating. It is one of the most powerful skills I can use. The convenience it provides is unparalleled, even skills that rank higher than 5 can't compare to the convenience provided to me by True Sacred Draconic Wisdom.
'Seems like the time's up,' I thought as I felt myself getting tugged.
The tugging sensation was coming from my side, as if I was getting sucked into a portal. It was getting stronger and more violent, just like with that complex spacetime magic that Lo Recant had used before. It didn't take long before the tugging became so powerful and violent that it was stretching my entire being. Though, since I was in the void, still having feeling great unease, the stretching felt, even more, weirder than it already was, it was not to the extent that I would lose my mind over, but still was very weird.
Though I couldn't think too much about it, as in the instant I had started to feel the sensation of me getting stretched; I was already sent to another plane of existence.
But what greeted me wasn't the scenery I had expected; that was because of my senses being overloaded with too much stimulus, making it impossible for me to guess what kind of place I was in as all things I sensed were an amalgamation of thousands, if not, millions of different sensations.
My eyes couldn't see anything but the whitest white I had ever seen; my nose smelt an amalgamate of a thousand smells, making it impossible to pick out which was which; my ears were hearing things from so many places that I, again, didn't know which was which; this trend had continued for all my other senses, with me getting bombarded with so many sensations that I could guess which was which.
'What happened!?' I thought, surprised at the condition of my senses.
The current situation of all my senses was very wired, as they felt like they were first being used after an eternity of not using them. Which was surprising since I had only spent like one minute in that black world.
'Wait, a minute, if it felt like "that" …yeah it makes sense.'
I then understood why my senses were like that, because of "that" it had seriously messed with the flow of time, causing even a minute to end up feeling like an eternity.
I nodded to myself as I rapidly felt my senses coming back into their normal state. The rate at which they had returned was very surprising, as it only took three seconds. It was twenty times faster than my expectations. After all, I had expected for my senses to be unusable for at least a minute, and that was with me considering the race.
But, if I had to say, even more, surprising than the rate of my senses becoming normal, but just how much messed up my senses were.
In those mere three seconds; 2.9 seconds were needed for my senses to return to a somewhat normal state. Meaning: I was seeing white for 2.9 seconds, while all my other senses were supremely confused and couldn't differentiate any sensation.
After my senses returned at godspeed; I could now finally observe my surroundings and understand just when and where I had been sent to––even though I could understand the general location of where I had been dropped with just that hundred milliseconds when my sensations were finally returning, and the fact that I was already quite familiar with the surroundings, I still wanted to check it out with my "normal" senses.
With the single observation, I had taken of my surrounding, I could find out that I was in the orc village, which had already been turned into a mass of rubble, and I was sent to the time where the orc leader was slowly walking to kill me.
Though, unlike last time where the orcs were brimming with hope and joy, the current orcs were all surprised and had an aura of despair and defeat surrounding them. Even the leader orc, who was currently the strongest one, shared the same sentiment as his other brethren. All of them had fallen to the ground and were looking at me with fear in their eyes.
It wasn't surprising considering the fact that the Inferno Dragon, who they had thought they were about to defeat, had suddenly turned into a much larger and regal looking Ouroboros. I wasn't even including the fact that I had a Divine Aura around me as Aura Suppression, in its current strength, can't suppress Divine-class Aura.
Although I knew that their despair and the sense of defeat was not unfounded; it still irked me. So, to increase their morale and make them at least fight, I quickly prepared a speech for them.
"Tell me lesser beings, how does it feel to be privileged enough to stand before my true form!? Though I may lack in power still, I am still a divine being, a being of higher existence compared to your lesser ones! Don't worry, I'll grant you your wish of being used for my pleasure and enjoyment, after all, this is going to be the best moments of your pitiful mortal life, isn't it!?" I said, copying Lo Recant's regal tone and putting in some of my own haughty and arrogant voices.
There were two main purposes for this speech: cultivate the orcs' hatred for me, and make them feel a primal sense of fear. The reason I had done so was that when a living being starts to feels the sense of death, they feel a primal source of fear overpowering all their senses; causing them to easily make decisions which normally wouldn't make. But if in the state of primal fear, they suddenly started feeling absolute hatred for a being, then their fear would be replaced by hatred. This will cause them to disregard everything and attack the being which caused them to feel such hate. This was the way how soldiers were made in my previous world, as this was the cheapest and one of the most effective ways of making a person be under your command; I think it was called: Collective Thought Experiment.
'This went horribly,' I mentally sighed in my mind as I felt an even stronger aura of defeat and despair emanating from the orc.
The speech had worked and, sadly, it had worked all too well, way beyond my expectation. The orcs were in no shape or form capable of revolting against me. And only if there were a creature on the level of hero for them, would they gain the resolve to fight me. After all, the fear I had instilled upon them had beaten out their hatred; leaving all of them to become empty husks who had accepted their fate. It was to such an extent that some weak-minded orcs had either urinated or defecated themselves, sometimes even both.
It did feel good to taste such despair; but what I wanted wasn't that, not now at least. I wanted to have a good fight before I made them face despair. It was disappointing, but there was going to be a next time, so I wasn't too worried.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, an overwhelmingly powerful aura was released. The aura clashed with mine and won, that was just how powerful it was. The aura made me feel chills as I slowly felt the sensation of death approaching me. The sensation was so powerful that it was even stronger than the time where I was about to get my head lopped off––though compared to Lo Recant, it was nothing. Just with the aura, I understood that this being was stronger than me.
I turned towards the source of the aura, who was, just like I had expected, the leader orc.
The leader orc had a slight red aura surrounding him, one that had distorted the atmosphere around him. He looked much stronger and more menacing than before. His muscles were tightened up and looked even harder than pure Bildegrium [AN: Bil-deg-rium]. Not only that, but his strength had also skyrocketed; the ground underneath his feet was caved in
All the orcs, including him, were surprised at such a scene. But what had interested me even more than that was that the aura of despair was getting weaker, meaning the orcs were very likely to fight against me, now; after all, the sight of the leader orc getting so powerful was akin to that of a hero.
Seeing this made me feel happy, and excited, this meant that Lo Recant's words were already coming true; it was now going to get way harder now.
'It's time,' I thought as I started using one of Ouroboros' abilities, transformation.
Transformation, as its name suggests, is an ability that allows me to transform into any being I desire. The only catch is that I needed to be very familiar with the being, and needed to have some basic understanding of their anatomy and things like that––the latter could be ignored as I had Wisdom. Meaning the only true cost needed to transform is to have a general idea about the being and having enough mana to support the transformation––which I did.
Plus, the mana cost, compared to the transformation skill I had known in Mir Grand, isn't much; as instead of being a steady consumption it's just a one-time cost whenever I needed to transform, with the exception of my original form.
But that wasn't all, this Transformation was a divine ability, meaning, instead of my status being lowered when I transform, I retain them––and the only difference between them was my total surface area, and special racial characteristics––such as scales and claws. Because of that reason, the from which I was going to transform into, my human form, was going to be the best physical form due to the sheer amount of pressure I could exert in it; while my draconic form was going to be one who specialized in magic.
The transformation process then started to take place; first I started to feel my body temperature rise as I felt my body start to compress on itself, making it smaller. That had caused the creation of a lot of weird noises, which I didn't just hear, but feel. After all, my bones were cracking and my muscles were tearing. And in about a hundred millisecond the entire process was finished. At the end of the whole process, my line of sight greatly shrunk while my body's temperature started to plummet down to a normal level as I released the excess heat through steam.
Then I realized another hidden quirk of the compression process, it had changed my skeletal structure by a lot, as it felt very uncomfortable to be on all four. Due to that, I stood up while the next process was starting to take place.
Even though I was small and had a new skeletal make-up, I still had some draconic parts to me, such as my wings, tails, and scales––the former two were currently comically small. So in this second part, all of those aspects of mine were getting cleaned up, making me appear more human due to the wings, tail, and scales disappearing. This process only took my body another hundred milliseconds, which meant that it was finished before I had even stood up.
Still in the process of standing up, the third process started to take place, this process was to make sure all my muscles were in the correct position. But due to my draconic body already having muscles akin to that of a human this was the slowest process by far, only taking fifty milliseconds, as my body only had to add muscles in certain parts and reduce them in others. The reduction part was a little strange, but it made me figure out that there was a certain amount of muscle I could have, probably had to do with my strength stat, which compared to my agility and magic, was lacking at just 99 points.
Then the fourth process took place, this process seemed to be the finalizing process, making it the last. Its entire purpose was to check my body for any deformities and improve on it. Though sounding like an easy task, this process was by far the longest.
And when I had stood up, which took me a second, this process had finally finished. Making it take a total time of seven hundred milliseconds.
After this, I now knew about how the transformation process worked. In the most basic terms, it was a four-step process, which was:
Skeletal Relocation, where the skeletal structure is changed, and to accommodate the change the body shrinks.
External Reformation, where the external appearance is finally changed to the being which I wanted to transform into.
Muscular Redistribution, where muscles are redistributed to the places where I need the most.
Form Integration, this is the final step where the form is finally completed; here, everything is made sure to be perfect and this is the process where there are checks for any faulty parts in the transformation.
Then the steam which had been covering my vision finally let up and I was finally able to see in this form.
'Fuck, I fucking jinxed myself, didn't I?'