Damien blinked, his eyes adjusting to the soft morning light filtering through the shades. He stretched, feeling the familiar comfort of his bed, but his mind was already racing with thoughts of what he wanted to do in Origin today. A faint hum filled the air as Claudia familiar voice, came through.
"Good morning, Damien. It's 6:12 AM. Ready to dive back into the game?"
He smirked, already swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. "You know me too well, Claudia. I've got a few things to take care of."
"Of course," Claudia replied. "I've optimized the gaming room for you. Everything is ready for you to dive in."
He chuckled, appreciating her. "Thanks, Claudia. You're the best."
After a quick wash and a change into something comfortable, Damien headed straight for his gaming room. His prized possession, the game pod, sat in the centre, waiting for him.
He stepped inside, feeling the pod's frame close around him as it powered up.
A moment later, he was logging in, his heart beating a little faster in anticipation and immediately made his way to the Ancient city greeting everyone on the way.
Once he arrived instead of going through the former route he glanced around, searching for an alternate entry point and once he figured out where he came from yesterday he circled around making sure to leave a large distance between where he expected the strange skeleton to be.
As he moved forward, he began to feel off, it felt like... 'I don't know, something just isn't right.' Damien thought.
At first he thought it was the weird skeleton but he looked around trying to spot it but couldn't find it, 'It can't be that hard to pick out a skeleton in this ruins right.' Damien thought.
Sudden fear enveloped him and he tried to run but a wide crack swirling with chaotic energy rushed towards him and he was swallowed.
The last thing he saw was the ruined city vanishing behind him as he was carried away into the unknown.
*******
Damien was annoyed when he realised his mistake. He had unconsciously ignored the spacial fluctuations because he thought it could no longer affect him.
After a few seconds Damien shoved his thought back and focused on his surroundings.
Damien was dumbstruck when he saw the huge sphere of light covering a large area of land and beyond where the light stopped was just darkness.
The light originated from a ball of light that levitate a few metres from him.
Damien thought about getting closer to use ~inspect~ on it and immediately got into action.
Damien cautiously stood up and stepped forward. He was having the feeling of being stared at by someone.
It was as if someone was looking at him without blinking for a long time from afar, so far that Damien was unable to even locate the direction from where he was being spied on.
Arriving in front of the sphere of light, Damien tried to use inspect on it but it didn't work so he extended his hand to touch the sphere, only to feel a pulling force and the next moment, he found himself standing in a completely different space.
'Another forced teleportation.' Damien sighed as he found himself standing in front of a huge mountain.
He looked up and down could clearly see that halfway up the mountain, there was a mountain gate.
The mountain gate was surrounded by clouds and mist, and it gave off the feeling of a... I don't know... Special not quite the word.
Damien didn't know how or why he just knew he could find something important by climbing up.
This place was strange and he was most likely inside the sphere of light right now.
Well, there was one right thing which happened was that the feeling of being stared at by someone disappeared the moment he entered the sphere of light.
Damien started climbing the mountain. The mountain was tall and Damien knew it'll take him hours to climb half of the mountain.
After climbing for close to one hour, Damien noticed something was off.
He realised that he was just as far from the top of the mountain as when he started climbing. It was like the distance was not reducing.
Could it be that his mind was trapped in an illusion?
He grabbed his spear and nicked himself in his hand.
He smiled as excess blood flowed out of his hand so he immediately knew his mind wasn't trapped anywhere.
_______
[Name: Blood Fang]
[Item Type: Short Spear]
[Grade: Epic]
[Rank: 1]
[Effects]
- Increase agility by 25%
- Increase critical hit chance by 20%
- 50% chance to deal bleed damage
- 100% chance to cause severe bleeding for 4 seconds when a critical hit is dealt
[Active Skills]
[Blood Nova]: Inflict bleeding on everything in an 8-meter radius (Cooldown: 5 minutes, Mana Cost: 100)
[Blood Thrust]: When used, deal 300% damage with guaranteed bleed damage (Cooldown: 8 minutes, Mana Cost: 150)
_______
Instead the illusion was most likely the mountain itself or something else.
Thinking about it, Damien decisively tried to use ~Inspect~ to see if there was any illusion formation here. If there really was, then it'll definitely be caught even if it couldn't be identified.
However, in the next moment, his expression could not help but change.
The system didn't react at all. It could only mean there was no illusion formation here.
Damien's expression became serious.
After some time, Damien decided something and without much hesitation, he once again decisively took a step up the mountain. However, after just taking a dozen steps this time, he sensed that something was amiss.
He found himself standing at the same point of the mountain where he started again.
He also didn't feel the slightest bit of movement of air, and after scanning the surroundings, he found that everything was all exactly the same as before.
He was naturally not an idiot. How could such a thing happen, the only explanation would be the effects of the illusion formation.
But if this really was true, then why was his system unable to detect it?
Could it be that the system stopped working?
That possibility couldn't be ruled out here... 'No, I just used 'inspect' on my spear so that shouldn't be the case.' Damien thought.
But when it came to illusions Damien wasn't really that versed but then again he felt that something was wrong and his instinct has never failed him.
After thinking about it for a while, Damien decided to test something else out. He used his spear to strike the ground and created a small hole. Then, he turned around.
"Hmm?"
He frowned and again turned back to look at the same spot and the hole was indeed gone.
That confirmed it that there was definitely a Illusion formation here.
Damien sighed in his heart. He had never thought that he would encounter something that he could not understand.
And, why was it that even his system was unable to see what this formation is?
Damien becomes worried; however, this also aroused his competitive spirit. For the system to be unable to detect the illusion formation, such formation must be of an extremely high level, higher enough to be out of the System's reach.
That begged the question... Where was he?
"I have to break the Illusion Formation to move forward. But how do I break it when I can't even see it?"
Damien frowned and started looking around. He once again looked at the surroundings and tried to use the system with some hope in his heart. He looked at the ground to detect the formation, only to be disappointed.
'Well it looks like I will be stuck here for a while at least the place looks cool especially the way the clouds in the sky... Wait the sky?'
Damien looked at the sky and he had never been so happy to see the system's prompt appeared in front of his eyes.
It turned out that the formation was not laid in the ground or the forest or the mountain, instead, it was laid in the sky. Whoever was able to do this, that person must be very strong.
_______
[Name: Unknown]
[Item Type: Formation]
[Grade: Unknown]
[Rank: Unknown]
_______
[Name: Unknown]
[Item Type: Formation]
[Grade: Unknown]
[Rank: Unknown]
_______
Name: Unknown]
[Item Type: Formation]
[Grade: Unknown]
[Rank: Unknown]
_______
Name: Unknown]
[Item Type: Formation]
[Grade: Unknown]
[Rank: Unknown]
_______
The system prompt continuously appeared in front of his eyes, making Damien dumbfounded. He could not believe so many illusion formations to be in the sky.
Why were there so many formations in the sky?
And he had a even bigger problem, all the formations were unknown.
He paused and kept staring at them trying understand what he was looking at.
After nearly an hour of waiting, he finally received the notification he had almost given up on.
[Ding: Your body is Adapting]
A wild smile appeared on his face.