Drifting in and out of consciousness. Drifting in and out of pain was completely a miserable and pitiful experience.
When I burst like a balloon, even though I did not see what exactly happened, I damn sure felt it. The sensation was beyond description—like being ripped apart at a molecular level, each atom screaming as it was torn from its neighbors. My entire existence became a singular point of agony, expanding outward like a supernova of pure suffering.
Despite only remaining as consciousness and pure thought, I had some form of control, and this was all I needed. I existed now in a world of complete darkness since I could not see anything at all. With the explosion of my body and the agonizing pain that followed, I couldn't even scream out anything and only used the pain itself to not pass out—a beacon of torment that, paradoxically, kept me tethered to awareness.
'The first step towards achieving the goals set out by myself and my variants was staying lucid and in control,' I thought as I began using my soul sense to feel out my surroundings.
The darkness around me wasn't simply the absence of light—it was the absence of everything. No sound, no smell, no texture. A void so complete that it seemed to consume even the concept of existence itself. Yet within this nothingness, I persisted, a spark of consciousness refusing to be extinguished.
Since I was currently not able to see, hear, or feel anything physically, using my mystique senses—specifically my soul sense—and that alone would ensure my utmost survival. It was like trying to navigate using a sense I'd never known I possessed, like asking someone born blind to suddenly understand the concept of color.
'First, we begin with attracting the primordial mana that Codex is infusing into the domain set by the formation he put up,' I thought and tried to feel said mana particles.
And here came the challenging part. I had never before known how to feel such things. The only knowledge I had of senses was what I had back on Earth. Everything from mana to soul senses was completely new territory, and for the first time, I needed to use all of such tools to ensure my survival.
Back in the city, it was Codex who was using the coverage of my soul sense with a slight boost from himself to show me the map I needed. But now, I needed my grit and, honestly, open-mindedness to navigate this strange new reality.
To utilize soul sense, as per what my variants 'taught' me, was similar to how one would trust their gut. But in this case, this 'gut' was actually a real thing. By trusting your gut, you then need to control it and finally come to be able to control your soul senses.
It was a crude and simple explanation to a complex and mysterious level of senses, but it was ideally one that my variants found would help me understand better since it worked for them when they reached the appropriate level of power to unlock said senses. Oh, and just to be clear, anyone under the mortal plane (with the exception of the truly strong and complete demigods) was unable to even unlock such a type of sense since a person's complete soul sense only awakens when they arrived at the middle tier after being a tier 4 immortal.
In short, while still being a mortal, I'd have unparalleled senses, a version so strong that no assassin of any kind nor any well-planned ambush would work on me. Feeling with one's soul sense, one could sense the intent of another if they did not know how to conceal it well.
'Anyway, back to learning and mastering said soul sense,' I thought as I pushed away other unnecessary thoughts in my current precarious situation.
I focused inward, searching for that intuitive center that humans had relied on since before they had language to describe it. That primal feeling that warned of danger or guided toward safety—a sense so fundamental that most people never thought to harness it consciously.
The feeling of trusting and knowing my gut was not lost to me. And truly, lo and behold, I could actually 'feel' the air surrounding my current ethereal and incomplete form. How, you ask? It was quite simple: from the explanation left behind in the packets of information from my variants, I was not to think too much into it and simply trust and control my 'gut'. Gut, in this case, being that inner and subconscious sound that tells or makes you feel when something is either going well for you or not, or when you were in some dangerous situation.
It was that gut that I needed to control, and to my surprise, I was able to easily.
From said senses, in the darkness I was currently stuck in (and no, not my mindscape to be exact), my world view suddenly changed from complete nothingness to ethereal greyed-out 'substances'. The reason I say substances is because from everywhere I 'felt' as if I was enclosed.
It was then I realized that what I could see through such mysterious senses was the cave I was in.
Everything around me was in varying shades of grey, like viewing the world through an old television set with the contrast turned all the way down. The cave walls appeared as denser patches of shadow, while the formations Codex had created were slightly lighter, almost silvery in their ethereal appearance. The pool at the center—now just a deeper shade of grey—still rippled with energy, though I could no longer see the colors.
Honestly, it felt as if I was in a haunted house, where the world existed but was drained of all vitality and warmth. My disembodied consciousness floated within this monochrome realm, still anchored to the space where my physical form had been destroyed.
Since I was able to achieve the first phase, I now used this and moved ahead. It was time to sense normal mana with my soul sense before I could even move on to the primordial mana.
Normally, a person or being who wished to grow through the ladders of evolution or ascension would develop first the mana sense, which helps them sense mana particles and the elements of their surroundings, thus helping them 'cultivate' said mana into a specific region in their bodies, thus forming their cores. Ideally, these were the normal procedures, but from what I had been taught, there was a better and more efficient method.
'With my soul sense, develop my mana sense. It's the only way to have a surefire way to sense primordial mana, let alone heavenly and divine mana types,' I thought as I urged myself on and concentrated to the utmost to sense anything and everything in my environs.
I pushed my newly awakened sense outward, trying to feel not just the physical structure of my surroundings but the energies that flowed through them. It was like trying to hear a whispered conversation from across a crowded room—I knew the information was there, but separating it from the background noise required a concentration I'd never before attempted.
Considering I was in a sealed space reinforced with the aegis barrier and a formation, both in Codex's control, I was essentially in a mana hotspot since he was infusing and attracting the root of all mana types: primordial mana.
And since he began in small bursts, those small bursts ideally already broke down into concentrated mana. In the end, the environment around me, from what I could see in the shades of grey world through my soul sense, began filling out with color.
'Mana senses...' I thought in awe as from the different shades of grey world, some of the said shades suddenly developed varying colors.
It was like watching a black and white film suddenly bloom into Technicolor. The transition wasn't instantaneous but rather a gradual awakening of perception, as if my consciousness was learning to interpret an entirely new spectrum of sensation.
The cultivation dome that surrounded me suddenly got an earthy brown color, and in it, a golden, purple smaller dome that fit the size of the cultivation dome appeared—clearly, this being the aegis barrier that was deployed to protect and give me enough time to pull off my stunts.
The aegis barrier's golden-purple light pulsed with a rhythm that reminded me of breathing—expanding and contracting almost imperceptibly with each cycle. Within this protective shell, the energy concentration was visibly higher, the mana particles more densely packed and moving with greater urgency.
And lastly, another multicolored formation was directly above and beneath me. Well, considering I couldn't even say that I had a body in this state, I only could say that it was 'above' and 'beneath' me since I was in a state where I couldn't tell up from down.
The formation itself was a marvel of magical engineering—concentric circles of power connected by lines that formed complex geometric patterns. Each line glowed with a different color, representing different aspects of the energies being channeled. At key intersection points, the colors blended and shifted, creating nodes of heightened power that regulated the flow of mana throughout the entire structure.
It was then I came across something intriguing.
'From the info I have, mana is broken down from its raw nature, that's usually white to almost colorless, to varying colors signifying its elements,' I thought curiously while observing the formation that Codex had deployed, which was responsible for holding my current ethereal soul state.
The formation hummed with power, each strand of energy vibrating at a frequency I could now perceive. The multicolored energies weren't static but in constant motion, flowing along designated pathways like blood through veins. At the heart of the formation, where the energy was most concentrated, I could see tiny motes of light that seemed almost solid in their density.
'Then what I'm seeing now, the energy in the formation above and beneath me, the multicolored and compact energy particles making up said formation... could it be...?' I thought as I tried to 'stretch out' and touch what I was curious about.
It was like reaching out with a limb I didn't know I possessed. My consciousness extended toward the formation, drawn by an inexplicable pull that both terrified and exhilarated me. The closer I got, the more I could feel the energy—not just see it, but sense its vibrations, its potential, its raw power waiting to be harnessed.
Who would have thought that immediately, I even tried and went for it, I suddenly came closer, close enough that I could touch the formation and was able to touch a single particle...
The moment of contact was electric. The particle—no larger than a pinpoint in my perception—seemed to pulse with recognition. It was as if it had been waiting for me, as if my touch was the key it had been created to respond to.
Which then, and suddenly... led to a series of events that I would never forget in my entire lifetime.
The particle erupted with light—not the diffuse glow I had perceived earlier but a focused beam of energy that shot through my ethereal form like a lance. In that instant, time seemed to stop, the grey world around me freezing into perfect stillness.
Then, like dominoes falling in perfect sequence, the other particles in the formation began to react. Each one ignited in turn, creating a cascading wave of power that raced along the geometric patterns. The colors intensified, shifting from the gentle hues I had perceived to blinding intensities that would have seared my eyes had I possessed any.
The energy converged at the center of the formation—the exact point where my consciousness hovered—creating a nexus of such concentrated power that reality itself seemed to bend around it. I felt the energy penetrate what remained of my essence, not destroying it but transforming it, rewriting the very information that defined my existence.
Pain returned, but different from before—not the agony of destruction but the searing intensity of creation. It was as if every cell that had composed my body was being reconstructed simultaneously, each one remembered and recreated with perfect accuracy but also... improved.
I could feel my physical form beginning to take shape again, molecule by molecule, atom by atom. But this wasn't merely a restoration; it was a rebirth. The primordial mana, channeled through Codex's formation and catalyzed by my own soul's touch, was using the blueprint of what I had been to create what I could become.
My core—previously just a theoretical concept in my mind—began to form at the center of my reconstructing body. Unlike the cores I had learned about, which accumulated energy gradually over years of cultivation, this one was being forged in an instant, under conditions that should have been impossible. The primordial mana condensed and compressed, folding in on itself countless times like a smith hammering steel, creating layers of pure power that nested within each other like Russian dolls.
Through the haze of transformation, I heard Codex's voice—distant but clear, resonating not through my non-existent ears but directly into my consciousness:
"It has begun, my lord. Phase one of evolution. Hold fast—this is merely the first step on your path."
His words were both reassurance and warning. The process I had initiated couldn't be stopped now that it had begun. All I could do was endure, riding the crest of this transformation like a surfer on a tsunami, knowing that to fall would mean destruction beyond recovery.
As the initial shock of the process began to stabilize, I became aware of something else forming within me—something beyond the physical body or energetic core. Knowledge was being written directly into my soul, information encoded in the very structure of the primordial mana being used to reconstruct me.
This wasn't the compressed knowledge my variants had left me; this was something older, more fundamental. The primordial mana contained within it the memory of existence itself—the basic principles that governed reality and existence as a whole, the fundamental forces that shaped the universe. And now, those principles were becoming part of me, integrating with my consciousness on a level so deep it transcended understanding.
In that moment of transformation, suspended between what I had been and what I was becoming, I glimpsed the true nature of evolution—not a ladder to be climbed, not a path to be walked, but a perpetual state of becoming, of transcending limitations only to discover new horizons beyond.
Phase one was merely the beginning.