Growing Suspicion (3)

The Ether pond was surprisingly empty. The resource, which was supposed to have been usable for a long time, had disappeared without a trace. Naked and afraid, Liam kneeled on the bottom of the pond, clutching his head.

It throbbed endlessly, the pain nearly knocking him out. Whispers scratched at the edge of his sanity, the words they spoke unclear, their voices constant. It was harrowing. He felt as if there were slugs crawling over his brain, every noise they made amplified a million times within his head. At that moment, he heard a voice that seemed to push the whispers away.

[This is impossible.]

Liam could not respond to the Creator's voice. He could not even think. He barely understood the words being transmitted to him, slowly digesting and comprehending them. His mind was in tatters.

[You… I see. You are their last attempt. Pathetic. To think they would try something like this.]

Slowly, Liam's mind cleared. He became capable of forming simple thoughts and sentences. He was gradually trying to understand what had happened to him.

[I don't even need to do anything. You're going to die even if I just leave you alone. Your mortal self can't even begin to bear the weight of what has just happened, Fateless or not. I wonder how long it will take for you to perish.]

"…Ugh."

[Struggle. Despair. Fight to survive while knowing your end is inevitable.]

The more the Creator spoke, the more a formless pressure descended upon the room. Liam didn't need to think about what it was. He was intimately familiar with this power. It was the weight of one's existence. An infinitesimal fraction of the weight of the Creator's existence was leaking through his voice. It crushed Liam onto the ground. Was this done on purpose, or had this existential weight always been there, and only now he was able to perceive it?

[I'll be watching you.]

Abruptly, the pressure from the weight of the Creator's existence was gone. As suddenly as it came, it had disappeared. Liam tried to stand on his feet, only to collapse back down. The pain had intensified. It grew stronger and stronger, to the point he thought it would kill him.

[You must focus.]

The whispers grew louder, turning into an uncountably infinite number of voices that spoke at the same time. It was as if the sound came from all directions at once, drilling into his brain. Liam's eyes rolled back as he nearly fainted.

[You must concentrate on the Order within you.]

[Otherwise, Chaos will devour your soul.]

Almost involuntarily, Liam started to circulate his Aura. The black energy dyed the room, traces of golden lightning painting its dark landscape. The Aura's color was darker than it had ever been, while the golden light was brighter. The darker his Aura, the brighter the light shined, while the pain only intensified. The two opposites fueled each other, surging in power every instant. By this point, Liam was almost completely unconscious, with only mere traces of rationality still active.

[You must endure it.]

Slowly, Liam's life force started to fizzle out. He was dying. It was too much to bear. He could not think or speak. He did not understand what was happening or why. There was no past, present, or future. There was only pain.

His writhing around grew still. He was no longer able to move. That was when it happened, mere moments before his death.

A cracking sound.

It pierced his mind, being identifiable even in his unconsciousness. A sudden feeling of freedom filled his heart. It was as if he had been in chains his whole life but now found himself free of his restraints and in the middle of a wide open field. He felt as if he could go anywhere and do whatever he wanted.

[This is our limit. For now.]

Those were the last words the voices spoke. It was only an unknown amount of time later that Liam woke up. The whispers were gone and the pain had partly subsided, though it was still there. Liam sat up and closed his eyes, head in his hands.

'What the fuck is going on?'

Ever since he got into the Ether pond, everything had gotten completely out of control. His mind and soul left his body and went somewhere unknown, where he met incomprehensible entities and a projection of the Creator himself. When he woke up, he was immediately racked with pain, heard the Creator speak to him, then the voices of the same entities his soul got in contact with.

He felt the desperate need to go back to something he could understand. As such…

'Status Window.'

He turned to the System. The construct that had never failed him before now seemed like his only lifeline. The only thing he understood in this situation. However, as he gazed upon his Status Window, his eyes trembled.

'…What?'

-----------------------------------Status Window----------------------------------------

Name: Liam Allister

Level: 20

Species: Human?

Race: ???

Personal Attribute: Dying Star of Humanity's ??? ???

Attributes:

Strength: 3890

Dexterity: 3890

Constitution: 3890

Recovery: 3890

Intelligence: 311

Perception: 60

Aura: 3890

Will: 15

TITLES:

. Fire King's Blessing; Ancient Forest's Conqueror; Mountain Spirit's Possession; Kingslayer; Sourcekeeper's Tale; Fateless; Last Star.

Skills:

. Passive Skills:

Survive! (S); Danger Sense (A); Hand to Hand Combat; Long Distance Runner (B); Basic Knife Mastery; Advanced Spear Mastery; Aura Incorporation; Grandmaster Aura Path; Advanced Footwork Mastery; Intuition (A); Unbreakable Will (?); Grand Flow (S); Masterful Prowess (A); Undying (S); Depths of Knowledge (S); Masterful Aura Conservation; Expert Aura Condensation; Dense Aura (B); Enduring Soul (SS); Ethereal Body (SSS).

King's Crown; Great Sourcebearer; Titanslayer

. Active Skills:

Singularity; Aura Blade; Event Horizon; Flying Spear; Aura Sight; Aura Manipulation; Waterstep; Crescent Moon Wave; Drizzle; Flow; Riptide; Drought; Aerial Movement.

. Hybrid Skills:

Chaos; Order.

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The most noticeable difference was that the window's color was black, instead of the usual blue. The words and characters on it were also in a language he'd never seen, not the System's. They constantly changed and moved as if they were living creatures, but he could understand them all the same. The Status Window gave off the same type of energy as the voices. It confused him, but his attention was quickly arrested by the window's information.

The first changes he noticed were the ones to his species and race.

'This is impossible.'

Why were there question marks? It didn't make sense. He was human, through and through. He had a mother and father, had been birthed normally, and had grown older as he should have. He possessed human instincts and flaws, as well as humanity's qualities and traits. There was no way he wasn't human. Had he changed somehow? What was going on?

'Calm down.'

He could tell he was still the same. Whatever change had happened, it went deeper than his personality or core beliefs, both of which remained unchanged. Even if his DNA had been altered, in practice, he remained human. He guessed that was why his species hadn't been completely replaced by question marks or something else.

Next, he analyzed his stats. Perception doubled since the last System notifications told him it had reached the value of 30, while his Will had increased by 5.

'It makes sense for my Perception to have increased so much, given how much contact I had with those entities.'

He was starting to unravel the statistic's mysteries. For now, his current opinion was that it was related to the infinite creatures in the darkness. A higher Perception made him get closer to their nature, while contact with them also increased his Perception. It was a feedback loop that inevitably led to a higher and higher Perception stat, which meant an increased risk of madness. Liam no longer underestimated this one downside. His mind had nearly shattered several times, including moments ago and back when he reached the abyss at the bottom of the ocean in his mind.

'It's likely that I only managed to hold on because of my Will.'

If that conjecture were true, then it also made sense for the Will stat to have increased. It was another mysterious statistic that he hadn't quite figured out. Usually, he could only use its power when trying to fight against fatigue and pain, effectively extending the amount of time he could train or fight for, but now it seemed like it had also managed to hold his soul together based on his desire alone. There were more possibilities to it than he previously thought.

His gaze lowered, checking his Titles. He tapped the only new Title.

----------------------------------------Title----------------------------------------

Last Star

* ???

* ???

* ???

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

'Useless.'

Unexpectedly, all the information was locked. Having no idea how to unlock it, Liam gazed at the Title for a few seconds.

'That's what the voices called me.'

Why was he called the Last Star by them? What did that mean? There were endless questions, but no answers. Not being able to infer anything else, he decided to simply move on. He turned to his Skills, widening his eyes.