Chapter 415: Strange Realm

Something inside Ethan was being ripped loose by the demon’s blood ritual.

His soul.

For one horrifying instant, Ethan felt as though his entire existence had been pulled from his body. His vision blurred, and the physical sensation of the floor beneath him began to disappear. His limbs felt distant, as though they belonged to someone else.

Then the pull became overwhelming.

Ethan’s consciousness was hurled forward, dragged through something he couldn’t see or understand.

Toward Mark.

Toward whatever waited inside his mind.

The room vanished, his body vanished, and everything was consumed by darkness.

Outside, Kaela stared at the ritual circle in open disbelief.

Mark’s body twitched violently on the floor while Ethan’s suddenly went completely still. The crimson markings continued glowing around both of them, pulsing with the immense mana the demon was pouring into the connection.

Kaela slowly looked toward the demon.

"Well..."

She shook her head slightly.

"I’m going to need to go to church after this shit."

The demon ignored her.

Its focus remained entirely on the connection.

Inside Elara’s body, Elara watched through the demon’s eyes. She could feel the immense amount of mana flowing through her body and the strange connection forming between Ethan and Mark.

Her expression tightened.

She didn’t like this.

Not one bit.

She trusted Ethan to find a way through whatever waited inside Mark’s mind, but that didn’t make the situation any less terrifying.

They were sending Ethan directly into the mind of someone whose body was actively transforming into something they barely understood. And the one facilitating the entire process was a demon whose motives remained impossible to predict.

Elara’s fingers tightened slightly.

’Please be careful.’

Her attention moved between Ethan and Kaela.

’You two better figure this out.’

The demon’s mana surged one final time, and the crimson inscriptions flashed brightly.

That’s when the connection snapped fully into place.

Ethan opened his eyes.

Or at least, he thought he did.

There was no floor, ceiling, or walls.

Only darkness.

For several seconds, Ethan simply stood there, trying to understand what had happened.

He looked down at himself, surprised to find his body there.

Everything looked normal.

Yet something about it was fundamentally wrong.

He couldn’t feel the ground beneath his feet, there was no temperature, and no physical sensation beyond what his mind seemed to create for itself.

Ethan slowly clenched his fist.

’What the fuck?’

Before he could think any further, something breathed somewhere in the darkness, slowly, deeply, and hungrily.

Ethan’s expression hardened.

"Mark?"

The breathing stopped.

A pair of predatory eyes opened in the darkness.

They stared directly at him.

’So this is what’s been hiding inside you.’

The eyes narrowed, then something began moving through the darkness.

Ethan prepared himself.

Whatever waited for him inside Mark’s mind, he wasn’t leaving without his brother, even if he had to fight the devil himself.

Then the darkness suddenly disappeared.

Ethan suddenly found himself standing in a completely different place.

His eyes widened.

The world around him was dark green.

Not simply because of the sky or the terrain, but because everything seemed saturated with the colour. Thick clouds twisted overhead, illuminated by an eerie green glow. Strange formations of black stone rose from the ground like enormous bones, while dark mist drifted between them.

The air itself seemed alive and dense with mana.

It wasn’t the clean, familiar sensation Ethan experienced in the Tower.

This mana felt foul and heavy.

It clung to his skin and crawled across his senses like something with a will of its own.

A faint pressure settled over the entire landscape.

The place felt hostile.

Not because something was immediately attacking him, but because the environment itself seemed wrong.

Ethan slowly turned in place.

"This is..."

He struggled to find the words.

’This is insane.’

He looked toward the distant horizon.

The landscape stretched farther than he could see, filled with jagged mountains, enormous shadows and twisted structures that looked as though they had grown rather than been built.

’Mark has some fucked-up mind.’

It wasn’t simply a dream or place from his memories, like he was expecting.

This place felt like a distorted, demonic realm.

A world built from Mark’s instincts, fears, and whatever monstrous force was evolving inside him.

Ethan took another step.

The ground responded beneath his feet.

He could feel resistance, his own weight, and the air moving against his skin.

It was almost like being inside the Tower.

Almost.

But Ethan knew that this place was different.

It felt like being inside someone’s soul, and that realisation made Ethan’s stomach tighten.

’If this place is Mark’s mind...’

He looked across the dark-green landscape.

’Then what the fuck am I even supposed to do to help him?’

He didn’t have an answer.

For the moment, all he could do was explore.

Ethan started walking.

Each step carried him deeper into the strange realm.

As he moved, he became increasingly aware of two things.

’I have normal clothes.’

Ethan stopped for a moment and found himself wearing what he had before being dragged into this place. It felt like such a luxury compared to the rags he had grown accustomed to.

But there was something else he was much gladder about.

’I can feel them!’

His beasts.

They weren’t physically standing beside him, but their presence was unmistakable. He closed his eyes for a moment and reached toward the familiar connections, to find each of them ready to jump into action at any moment.

A smile slowly appeared on his face.

It was a strange and almost comforting realisation.

For a period, Ethan had thought of the tattoos on his body as the connection to his beasts. But the fact that they also appeared in the Tower, where he didn’t have the markings, and now here, confirmed to him otherwise.

’They really are attached to my soul.’

The thought was incredible.

And, considering where he currently was, incredibly reassuring.

Because without his beasts, Ethan wasn’t sure how long he would survive in this place.

He opened his eyes again.

"Good."

He rolled his shoulders.

"At least I didn’t come here alone."

The strange world remained eerily silent, but Ethan had a renewed confidence and began moving around. Remaining alert, the same oppressive green mana surrounded him everywhere he looked.

Occasionally, he thought he saw something moving in the distance.

A shadow.

A distorted shape.

Something that disappeared whenever he looked directly at it.

He didn’t chase any of them.

Not yet.

He had no idea what existed in this place, and blindly charging toward something inside Mark’s mind seemed like an excellent way to get himself killed.

’Assuming that death here is absolute like in the Tower.’

The demon hadn’t exactly clarified, but it was best to move forward with that in mind. He continued exploring, and as he did, his thoughts eventually returned to the outside world.

More specifically, Kaela.

’I’m curious how the hell she’s planning to bring living monsters here.’

The demon had made the solution sound simple.

Bring living monsters into the facility, allow Mark to feed on their essence, and keep his body satisfied while Ethan dealt with his mind.

Simple.

Except there was one rather obvious problem.

The monsters needed to be alive.

Kaela couldn’t simply enter a Gate, kill a bunch of monsters and bring their corpses back.

She needed to defeat them without killing them.

Then somehow transport those living monsters all the way back to the facility.

Ethan frowned.

’How the hell is she going to pull that off?’

He could already imagine Kaela standing over some battered monster, complaining about how annoying it was to keep something alive. Then she’d probably have to drag them halfway across the country.

Ethan almost laughed.

’Actually...’

He paused.

’Yeah, she probably does have a way.’

As insane as her ideas usually were, they worked out most of the time.

If anyone could somehow capture a living monster and bring it back, it was probably her.

At least he hoped so.

As Ethan continued deeper into Mark’s mind, the dark-green mist thickened around him, the oppressive mana grew heavier, and somewhere far ahead, something was stirring.

His hand tightened into a fist.

A low growl echoed through the strange realm, and it wasn’t Wolfy’s.

"So that’s where you are."

Ethan was getting closer to whatever waited inside Mark’s mind, and he had a feeling that this was only the beginning...