When Viltz opened his eyes again, he was met with the ever-familiar sea of stars.
"Such a magnificent sight...I never tire of seeing this."
Viltz raised his illusory hand and waved it a couple of times in the air.
"This is what I truly seek, true freedom.
Someday I can be in this same landscape but with my real body, not through an astral projection."
Clenching his fist, Viltz suddenly felt an aura unlike any other he had ever felt.
Curious, he connected with the strange aura, causing him to suddenly be transported to a dark place.
Frowning, Viltz looked around but saw nothing but darkness.
Suddenly, a few torches flared with a blue light, revealing that he was in a huge room with a giant heart floating in its center.
Frowning even more at the strange sensation he was having, Viltz tried to disconnect from the projection state but froze as he felt as if he could not leave it.
As Viltz tried to make sense of the situation, suddenly, a projection similar to his own floated out from inside the heart.
The projection was in the shape of a wild-looking man, with two small horns on his head and bulging muscles full of veins even though it was nothing more than a projection.
The man examined Viltz for a while and arched an eyebrow before speaking to him telepathically.
"Interesting, I didn't imagine you'd be just a kid, you have a pretty interesting ability but spying on the immortal plane with this ability is all nonsense.
You're lucky I saved you, otherwise your projection would be destroyed and your soul would suffer a major setback that could kill you or leave you disabled, judging by how weak your soul seems to be."
The man rubbed his unkempt beard and commented with a playful smile as he picked his nose.
Cold sweat began to run down Viltz's royal body as he imagined the dire consequences of what the man in front of him said happening.
"Thank you for helping me sir!"
Viltz bowed sincerely by way of thanks.
"It's nothing, a trivial matter, for me to do this is like farting."
Viltz was speechless at the man's attitude.
"Well, sit down. I don't usually get many visitors, in fact I don't get any."
Viltz could only scratch his cheek awkwardly and sit down on the floor next to the man who suddenly waved his hand and a gourd decorated with oriental dragon engravings appeared in his hand.
The man held the gourd to his ear and shook it a couple of times to check if it was still full before uncapping it and taking a big gulp of the wine it contained.
Viltz gawked at him as if he had seen something unimaginable.
"Hmm? What's wrong? I got something on my face kid?"
"Ehem! No, it's just that we're supposed to be astral projections and can't interact with the physical world."
"You talk on too many technicalities boy! Relax a little!"
The mystery man tossed the gourd to Viltz and Viltz caught it on instinct, amazed at the feat he had just accomplished.
Without hesitation, he poured the liquid from the pumpkin directly into his mouth, feeling a refreshing taste he had never tasted in his life.
Eyes lighting up, Viltz took the gourd directly into his mouth and began to drink without stopping until a full minute had passed.
Shaking the gourd, Viltz realized that it was not empty at all. On the contrary, it looked completely full.
"That's the fruit wine made by the monkey tribe, they make the best wine in the whole immortal plane!
Once you taste it, any other wine will seem tasteless to you! Haha!"
Viltz handed the gourd back to the man and asked curiously, "Why can we touch that gourd and drink that wine? That doesn't make sense."
"You don't know anything yet, boy. Your knowledge is too poor.
Doing something like this is easy for me. After all, this world was created by me."
Viltz was surprised by the man's words.
"Um, excuse me but I haven't asked your name so far."
"My name? I have a myriad of names, The father of all, the unconquerable, the creator, the divider of heaven and earth, but the one I like to use is the one given to me by all the creatures of this land.... Pan Gu."
"Pan Gu? Are you Pan Gu?"
"Oh? Do you know me? Haha! After all, I messed up a lot thousands of years ago by killing those 3000 bastards so it's only natural that my story is spread all over the universe.
That battle was legendary kid! You should have seen it! It was me, who had just been born, against those 3000 cowards! None of them escaped the edge of my axe! And now their bodies serve as fertilizer for this world!
Just like mine... Damn you brat you've already depressed me!"
Viltz rubbed his head, unsure of how to deal with this temperamental old man.
"But aren't you supposed to have died and your soul was split into three? How come you still have your astral body?"
Viltz had read enough Chinese novels of immortals and considered himself quite knowledgeable about the various stories of this world.
"You are still too green child! The soul is but one more layer protecting the consciousness. At my level I don't need a body or a soul to live."
Viltz looked at the huge heart beating at a steady pace and then looked at the man in front of him with a dubious face.
"Well yes! I use the heart as an anchor for my existence but that's not the point! The point is that since I am an astral projection I can do nothing but hide from the will of the world lest the very sow exterminate me with lightning.
Sigh, I feel like a father who has given birth to an ungrateful child."
The self-styled Pan Gu went back to drinking from his gourd as he continued to dibagate more and more until Viltz noticed how strangely more than five minutes had passed and he still didn't feel even a little fatigued from maintaining his astral projection.
"Don't worry, I hold your astral projection with my energy.
Good. Anyway, your ability allows you to explore other worlds right? Tell me, what are they like? How do they compare to my world?"
Pan Gu waved his hand and a clump of gray mist materialized in his fingers before transforming into a huge mirror showing a magnificent dreamscape.
Viltz was dumbfounded at the scene.
"Beautiful isn't it?"
"It's... By far the most beautiful world I've seen to date, and I've seen quite a few."
"Haha! I never tire of seeing this landscape!
It's a pity that I'm limited to watching.... I'm back to being depressed again!"
The dreamy scene dissipated and Pan Gu began to depotriate again.
"It seems that so many years in solitude have left him somewhat deranged."
Viltz began to ponder to himself when suddenly the wine gourd hit his head.
"Who's the deranged one? You're the deranged one! Hmph!
By the way what was your name kid?"
"Sigh, my name is Vilgefortz."
"What an ugly name, you should change it to something cooler. Look at my name! It brings out my greatness!"
"I'll think about it, now if you'll excuse me I have some unfinished business so..."
"Don't try to duck out! We still have time to chat. You're the first living being I can converse with after 50,000 years! Come on, do this old man a favor."
"Sigh, whatever."
Viltz had no choice but to sit back down and start an idle chat with the man until a couple of hours had passed.
Viltz tried to get some benefit out of his situation so he asked Pan Gu if he could bestow any cultivation technique or secret technique on him but the old man just shook his head.
"Those things won't work for you because they only work with spiritual energy, which is only produced on the immortal plane. I think it's time for you to leave now kid."
Pan Gu took a big gulp of his gourd before tossing it to Viltz, who caught it out of instinct.
As he brought it to his mouth, he realized there was no more wine left.
"Hahaha! What a silly face you've made! Well, you can keep that pumpkin as a gift. I hope to see you again someday but for now you're still too weak to sit and drink with me properly.
With a snap of Pan Gu's fingers, Viltz's consciousness was ejected from the place, leaving behind nothing but emptiness.
"Sigh, what an interesting guy..."
Viltz snapped his eyes open and found himself lying on his bed.
As he tried to get up, he noticed the extra weight in his hand.
"How the hell..."
Shaking the gourd in his hand, Viltz analyzed it for a good while before attempting to pour his energy into it.
Viltz's consciousness was drawn into a dark dimension in which floated a faint gray mist.
After exploring the place with his consciousness for a long time, he realized that there was nothing in that dimension, it was all empty.
As he expelled his consciousness from the place, a spiritual message entered his mind, explaining the functions of the gourd.
"Who would have thought that a storage object would have such a peculiar shape."
Viltz channeled some of his energy, causing a small swirl to appear in the mouth of the gourd.
Curious, Viltz grabbed a pillow and pulled it close to the swirl, which immediately sucked it in.
Entering his consciousness back into the gourd, Viltz found the pillow floating in the midst of the mist.
With a spiritual command, the pillow was expelled from the gourd again.
"I wonder if living things can be stored."
With that doubt in mind, Viltz went out into the forest and caught a wolf, sending it into the pocket dimension of the gourd.
As his consciousness entered the gourd, he noticed how the confused wolf opened and closed its mouth constantly, trying to breathe.
"There seems to be no oxygen so I can't put living things in there directly.
I have to keep investigating."
The gourd disappeared from Viltz's hands and went somewhere inside his soul.
...
A day later, Viltz tested all his theories.
The first thing he did was to put a fish tank full of fish into the dimension, noticing how they were still alive and without any apparent problem.
He then checked with a hen's egg that was about to hatch, which also suffered no problems after hatching when he took it out.
"I guess as long as they're not oxygen-dependent, I can store any creature in the gourd."
Finished with his analysis, Viltz went off to review the various projects his group was working on.
Sitting in his office, Viltz reviewed the three reports on his desk.
The first was from the group of alchemy students led by Opus Kroft, who were tasked with investigating a method of atabism to purify the lineage of hybrid creatures.
For the moment, they had achieved a small breakthrough but nothing really remarkable.
The second was about a project he had given to Idarran whose codename was demon god. This project had the goal of creating an extremely powerful demon that could rival even a god in strength.
The first step was to create a hybrid demon born of two different demonic races, a fiend and an Incubus, which ended in success.
The second step was to subject the new demon to a witcher mutation enhanced with research data from the late Professor Moreau.
So far, Idarran's various test subjects had had varying levels of defects, but in reviewing the data, Viltz noted how Idarran's constant data collection was fixing each of those defects, showing their progress on the project.
The third document was the most important and the largest of all, with a stack of over 50 sheets of paper.
After reviewing the entire document, Viltz let out a deep sigh.
"As expected, the project is progressing at a snail's pace and the brotherhood has already become suspicious of Ortolan and his group."
Rubbing his temples, Viltz began to think of some plan to deal with both problems at once.
He couldn't simply declare war on the sorcerers of the brotherhood, doing so would be a waste of both time and resources, not to mention trying to put them all under his bondage seal, doing so with one would alert the others and provoke a war between the two sides. The best course of action would be to make them drop their guard by putting a distraction on them and fragment their attention to enslave them one by one without them noticing.
"As the saying goes, divide and conquer.
I think it's time to go ahead with the plan to overthrow Brokilon, if all goes well the sorcerers of the brotherhood will put most of their attention on such an incident and will be busy enough. Only then will I have a chance to parasitize their core.
If I gain control over the chapter members, dealing with the lower echelons will be easier."
Getting going immediately, Viltz pulled out a piece of goatskin and began to draw a map.
After a few tweaks using some magic, the original piece of goatskin became an ancient treasure map that appeared to be centuries old.
Nodding with satisfaction, Viltz stored the scroll inside his magical gourd before opening a portal to the vicinity of Kerack's kingdom, where he infiltrated the second prince's personal escorts by usurping the identity of one of them.
Using the identity of one of his most loyal servants and the ancient-looking map coupled with some subtle spells, Viltz managed to convince the naive prince to embark on a treasure hunt.
As he watched the foolish second prince confidently lead his men straight into his trap, a sly smile appeared on Viltz's face.
"Let's see how you'll manage to stand up to this storm I'm sending you straight to your doorstep..... Eithné."