Little by little, the static space crumbled into the void as cracks emerged in their place. The small rifts in space and time allowed the realm of colourless to be ever so close to the mysterious abyss, making it easier for the power of corruption to leak into this world. Although it was impossible to move in this unchanging state of reality, the energy from the abyss still managed to move freely.
The power of corruption gathered together, morphing into a black spherical ball of gas. Their interior regularly moved around, crashing with others before devouring each other madly, becoming purer every moment. As they did, the size of the ball began to shrink, becoming smaller with lesser yet purer power of corruption.
Some times later, the ball burst open with a soundless detonation as its outer layer couldn't handle the pressure of the condensed power of corruption anymore. After getting condensed into becoming smaller, the gas began to liquify itself into a black fluid, taking up lesser space and turning even more refined and pure.
Due to the explosion caused by the orb-like container, the heat it produced caused a chain reaction, igniting the black liquid of corruption. The ball of liquid burnt dimly, emitting black flame and darkness as they did so. However, instead of producing ashes and let them scatter with the wind, the white ashes it produced magically gathered together and reassembled into a piece of paper. The pale sheet of paper flew towards Forus, hovering in front of his face, waiting for him to read the contract and signed his name on it.
With the mysteriousness of the evil entity and the source of corruption, even through Forus could not see anything, in his mind, he saw a paper detailing the condition of the deal inside the infinite blackness devoided of visions and scenery. In the absence of his mind, Forus reached out with his hand to grab the paper before regaining his focus. Although he was shocked, he still managed to calm his mind and attentively read the contract.
The contract stated that from the moment he agreed onwards, his soul and his fate would become the property of the ruler of the abyss. For whatever reasons or motives the entity had for some, it could freely do so without his consent. He would never be able to disobey it as long as it commanded. However, once you sealed the contract, the entity would also help Ocelia to escape from this apocalyptic world without any lasting negative consequence.
Although it seemed that Forus got cheated by this unfair contract, in reality, it could even be that Forus struck a better deal for himself and Ocelia. In this dull world where there were existence like the dark hand and the white figure as well as the mysterious invisible force looming behind the curtain of the grey mist, it was nearly impossible for Ocelia to survive and escape this place alone. Even if Forus was perfectly fine and could break through to the stage of the first-ranked sorcerer, there was no guarantee that they would not encounter and life-threatening situation.
As Forus finally decided to accept the contract, space around him trembled once again as more power of corruption poured out from the rift. Like its predecessor, it formed a spherical-shaped ball and continued to condense itself into liquid before bursting into flame. However, this time, it didn't become the same pale pape. Instead, the fire gradually subsided as the white ashes integrated onto itself and transformed into a pointy-shaped object.
The exterior of the object was pure-white as well as smooth, reflecting the black light that came in contact with it. On its surface, many symbols depicting various letters that Forus didn't know shone dimly. With the handle in one end and a pointy tip on another, it was for cutting. The knife slowly landed on Forus' hand, caressing his skin and exposed bone. Forus could vaguely hear that the blade was begging for him to use it, to cut himself with it so that it could taste blood.
Without any hesitation, Forus grabbed the knife and cut his wrist, letting blood oozing out and moved his hand towards the contract paper, waiting for enough blood to come out and group together to drop onto the page. As soon as the drop of blood hit the said paper, it slowly expanded into an intricate symbol, having his name below it in blood-red. Suddenly, as if Forus was a puppet, an invisible string emerged from the contract and shot towards him.
Even if Forus wished to dodge, his body nevertheless wouldn't listen to him. Forus could sense that something had traversed into his body, moving towards his soul and warping itself around it. After the string attached itself onto him, it slowly disintegrated into nothingness, leaving only the uncomfortable feeling inside of him. Forus felt light-headed as if he had lost something, letting some places inside his body empty.
Before he knew it, the loud cracking sound began to echo the world, breaking the world from its static state. At that moment, the barrier that blocked the river of time collapsed as time and space resumed its natural routine, moving the world once more. Like others, the previously-stopped realm of consciousness began to deteriorate again, stabbing Forus with rounds of pain and dizziness. If nothing happened during this time, Forus would surely die after a moment of meaningless struggle.
"Very well, young man. We hope you could bring us more enjoyment than ever before." The distorted voice that consisted of every voice Forus knew resounded as an all-corrupting ray of black light generated itself into existence.
The ray of light broke through laws of space and time as it crossed the boundary of dimensions and time, arriving in front of Forus without moving before penetrating directly into his soul. Effortlessly, it went past the realm of consciousness and the liquified Elements, rapidly expanding as it did so. As it approached the greyish soul, the ray of light was already at the size of the soul, enveloping it completely.
The blackened soul violently twisted as it devoured the black mist of corruption like crazy, turning it into black tentacles and used them to preserve the realm of consciousness. With many tendrils at work, they began to pull the fragments of Forus' mind together, assembling them into a whole again. In a blink of an eye, the situation changed from Forus dying to his power becoming stronger with the help of the mysterious entity.
While the soul was repairing the realm of consciousness, it was also absorbing the liquified Death Aura and Elements, pushing them into condensing again, turning purer than before. The process of compressing lasted for several times as the size of Forus' soul turned smaller each time, containing stronger Death Aura.
With the whole realm of consciousness, Forus could begin to absorb the faint incompleted Elements in the atmosphere again. Although these Elements were impure and mostly unusable for ordinary sorcerers, with Forus' mystical soul and body, he could still extract the useful bit and converted it into sorcery energy.
By regaining his sorcery energy, Forus used it to circulate his body, accelerating the rate of recovery of his body. He could feel the heat travelled through his body multiple times, coming from the process of regrowing missing flesh and skin. Slowly yet steadily, his body began to repair itself, turning from the ugly monster to something more like a human.
However, every time the sorcery energy travelled through his eyes, it became dimmed and slowly disappeared before it could regrow his eyes. From several checkings, Forus concluded that the spiritual seed had awakened from its slumbering state due to the resonance when the evil entity mimicked the appearance of the female sorcerer. With its unknowable power, both the presence and aura it imitated were like the authentic person.
As it received stimulation from its owner, the seed became unusually empowered and hyperactive, going out of its way to cause terrible for Forus again. It would occasionally block and try to devour his sorcery energy, preventing him from using it to recover his bodily damage.
However, once Forus stepped onto the realm of the first-ranked sorcerer, he could slowly corrode the seed with his highly-concentrated sorcery energy. Although it would take a long time that he wouldn't be able to do it inside this world, it would be better than having no chance of getting rid of the seed.
While Forus was feeling the change inside of his body and soul, the mist slowly diminished in quantity, making the scenery from the outside view becoming more apparent as time passed. Ocelia immediately noticed the change and looked attentively at the area, trying her best to find the figure she so dearly wished to see.
However, she could only witness Forus from a distance, for fearing that his final attempt at the break through the sorcery cultivation would fail and all would lose. Although she didn't know what happened inside the black mist, she inwardly felt sorrow and worry sprung inside her body, making her uncomfortable.
Ocelia forced her eyes not to let out any tears as she stared at Forus without any pause in-between. His newly grown skin reflected light into her eyes and the silver stain of hair danced with the wind, suggesting the extraordinariness of the figure. Although the masterpieces that were the sky-coloured orbs were not on his face, Ocelia still felt her heart throbbing as she planted them into her mind.
With the connection resumed, the pinkish gas began to spread forth outwards, covering the area while battling the dull mist. It chased the fog away from the surrounding, forming an invisible barrier only for the two to stay inside. The corruption of the surrounding also dissipated as the greyish soul madly devoured it, turning it into the energy for the breakthrough.
A sound of cracking and crushing disrupted Forus' concentration as he quickly observed the inside of his realm of consciousness. He saw that his soul had already become infinitesimal as the Elements also almost finished its merging process, drying the said realm of consciousness with multiple colours.
Although the size of his soul became miniature, Forus could feel that its ability gradually improved as its size shrank, filling his mind with a comfortable sensation. He could think faster and sharper than before. He was able to make accurate judgement and having higher comprehension skill than his previous self.
Accompanied by the shrinking of his soul, the wall of the realm of consciousness slowly expanded, making room for more space to store the sorcery energy. With more storage, Forus could have a higher rate of converting Elements into sorcery energy and store more said sorcery energy.
Around Forus, the air started to heat up as the ground abruptly shook, sending shockwaves everywhere. Soon, the whole dull world became distorted as it couldn't withstand the sudden force, making the edge of the world disintegrate, moving across the endless void away from its whole.
The mystical force had a majestic aura that suppressed the lower existences, commanding them to lower their head for it. The golden colour of it eclipsed the brightness of the realm as it moved across the boundary between worlds. Its coming was the signature of something of a great origin. Not even in the past hundreds of years had this type of aura appeared in the Mountain Union.
The wave shook again as other near worlds got affected by said force, violently trembled as the habitats inside suffered the unintentional consequences. With its destructiveness, the orb at the centre of the Fleeting Emotions Ruin would have already made a move and detain it. However, despite the damage done to the ruin, said orb didn't react and floated emotionlessly inside the void.
As it got severely damaged by the power from the abyss, the orb got into self-preservation mode that would set its survival as its top priority. Even if the Fleeting Emotions Ruin got destroyed, the sphere could still repair them after an enormous amount of time. So, it was natural that it would ignore the commotion caused by the unknown force.
Soon, the barrier that once got destroyed by the evil entity crumbled once more, opening the gateway for the outer world to peer into the inner world. The great force immediately rushed outwards towards the external world, showing its destructiveness to the outsiders.
Its characteristic was inviting everyone to view upon its feature, causing uproars to the sorcery community as the members of various forces used their fastest method to send the message to their superiors about this earth-shattering event.
