[Lord of Abundance] Chapter 53 — The Twisted Demon Eye
Chapter 53 — The Twisted Demon Eye
The Sea of Aether was merely humanity's name for it.
The dragons called it the Emerald Dream, while the ancient elves knew it as the Astral Realm.
Different names, but they all referred to the same domain of consciousness.
Every world possessed its own independent Sea of Aether. Yet if one's spiritual power was strong enough—or one possessed a suitable anchor—it was possible to leave the Sea of Aether of one's own world and voyage through the void between worlds.
Naturally, such an undertaking carried immense danger.
History recorded countless powerful mages who had ventured forth and never returned. No one ever learned what became of them. All that remained behind were empty shells that slowly decayed where they sat.
Kun himself often immersed his consciousness within Eternal Dawn's Sea of Aether. The deeper he descended, the greater the tempering effect on his spirit.
However, using the Soul Transfer Array and the Flesh Seed as a beacon to enter another world's Sea of Aether...
This was his first attempt at something so perilous.
The Sea of Aether was far from empty.
It teemed with bizarre spiritual lifeforms.
Near the upper layers drifted beautiful creatures born of fantasy—flying fish with rainbow-colored wings, translucent fairies shimmering in every hue, even chairs that walked about on four legs with mouths where their seats should be.
The consciousness of living beings merged seamlessly into the Sea of Aether. Without a precise anchor, locating a specific individual was as difficult as identifying a single drop of seawater in the ocean.
When a creature died, however, its spiritual power sank into the deepest reaches of the Sea. Given enough coincidence and time, it might eventually become one of those strange spiritual beings.
To mages...
That was death.
As for the so-called divine paradise?
True mages had never believed the priests' fairy tales.
The deeper Kun descended, the more distorted and surreal everything became.
A whale with both eyes clustered on one side of its head drifted slowly past him.
Its body shimmered with impossible, iridescent colors.
Judging purely by spiritual strength, the creature rivaled Kun himself, a Fourth-Rank Saint.
Its total spiritual power far surpassed his own.
Taking great care not to attract its attention, Kun quietly altered course.
The spiritual creatures dwelling at the bottom of the Sea of Aether were immensely powerful, yet surprisingly unintelligent.
As long as one left them alone...
They generally ignored intruders.
After all, in this place, concepts like eating and being eaten held no meaning.
Some powerful mages deliberately hunted these beings, harvesting the spiritual cores hidden within them.
The stronger the creature, the purer the core.
Such crystallized spiritual power was one of the very few treasures capable of directly strengthening a mage's mind.
Unfortunately, the cores found in the upper layers no longer benefited Kun.
The creatures below, meanwhile, were simply too dangerous.
Attacking one often meant drawing the attention of countless others.
With sufficient preparation, it might be worth attempting...
But that wasn't why he had come.
"I'm at the bottom."
Excitement flashed through Kun.
Calling it the "bottom" was only a figure of speech.
The surroundings were perfectly smooth, cloaked in endless gray mist that obscured everything.
He could clearly sense the tangible spiritual barrier enveloping the Sea of Aether as if it were an atmosphere.
It prevented those inside from leaving...
While simultaneously protecting everything within.
Imagining himself as a drill, Kun compressed every fragment of his spiritual power into a single point.
After confirming his direction...
He hurled himself forward with all his might.
He smashed through one barrier...
Then another...
And emerged within an entirely different Sea of Aether.
What lay outside the Sea of Aether?
The answer...
Another Sea of Aether.
Just as countless individual Seas of Consciousness combined to form a world's Sea of Aether...
The Seas of Aether themselves were linked together through an even greater network.
Unlike the physical stars scattered across the void, their arrangement had nothing to do with distance or direction.
Beyond one Sea of Aether...
There was simply another.
Then...
Beyond all Seas of Aether...
Did an even higher spiritual realm exist?
Kun didn't know.
No Great Mage in Eternal Dawn's recorded history had ever proven such a thing.
Most scholars believed it probably existed.
But asking that question was much like wondering whether another universe existed beyond Blue Star's universe.
Theoretically possible...
Practically unreachable.
Far beyond anything a human mind could truly investigate.
Perhaps even pondering it was meaningless.
How could an ant ever prove that humans existed?
It couldn't.
And even if it could...
What would be the point?
Following the spiritual beacon of the Flesh Seed...
Kun's consciousness soon surfaced from the Sea of Aether before a single Sea of Consciousness.
Then he attacked it.
As a precaution, he had only brought one percent of his total spiritual power.
Yet even one percent of a Fourth-Rank mage's mind—especially one whose strength rivaled an ancient dragon—far exceeded the entirety of most Third-Rank beings.
The Sea of Consciousness before him...
Was absurdly fragile.
Like that of a newborn infant.
Rather than attacking...
It felt more like trying to squeeze an elephant into an eggshell without breaking it.
"Is every creature on this world this mentally weak?"
"Or..."
"Did the Flesh Seed happen to infect a newborn?"
The Flesh Seed lived up to its name.
It was an algal spore capable of parasitizing only genuine flesh-and-blood organisms.
Plants wouldn't work.
Tiny insects wouldn't either.
It was actually an accidental byproduct of Kun's earlier experiments with parasitic red algae.
Once awakened, it survived for only a month.
If it failed to find a host...
It simply died.
Even after successful infection, this inferior strain possessed almost no contagious ability.
While coexisting with its host, it even helped condense mana within the body.
That harmless nature...
Applied only as long as Kun himself didn't descend.
Once he did...
Unless the host's spiritual power exceeded his own...
Its body would inevitably become his puppet.
As the final strand of Kun's consciousness flowed into the tiny Sea of Consciousness...
He felt as though his body had been stuffed into an impossibly small box.
The slightest movement threatened to shatter it.
"Good."
"The first step succeeded."
"Now..."
"Let's see your memories."
"...Strange."
"That's all?"
"There are barely any."
"And every single one is just blurry aerial scenery."
"What kind of bizarre creature is this?"
"At least there's mana in this world."
"It's scarce..."
"And unusually violent."
"But it's still infinitely better than Blue Star's magical wasteland."
Having finally taken complete control...
Kun opened his new eyes.
Red mist surrounded him.
The clouds themselves weren't crimson.
Rather...
They had been dyed red by countless floating creatures overhead.
Creatures that looked exactly like enormous crimson kites.
And now...
He was one of them.
His body was completely flat.
Like a giant flatworm.
Diamond-shaped.
Nearly eighty percent of its mass consisted of a single enormous blood-red eye.
Trailing behind it was a long blood vessel that functioned like a tail.
From a distance...
It genuinely resembled a kite floating in the sky.
"No wonder all its memories were aerial views."
"It lives ridiculously high up."
"Is this the troposphere?"
"The stratosphere?"
"It has to be seven or eight kilometers above the ground."
"And it can still see the surface clearly."
"Quite impressive eyesight."
"The anatomy is unbelievably simple."
"No mouth."
"No organs."
"It's basically..."
"...an external eyeball."
"What kind of lifeform is this?"
At last, Kun understood why his Flesh Seeds had sprouted so quickly.
These creatures lived at extreme altitudes.
Their biology was astonishingly primitive.
They lacked even an immune system.
The Flesh Seeds could infect and reproduce almost effortlessly.
"Judging from this..."
"It doesn't feel like an independent organism."
"It looks more like..."
"...a parasite."
Some parasites harmed their hosts.
Others developed mutually beneficial relationships.
Some cleaned food residue.
Others eliminated harmful organisms.
Kun's Flesh Seeds belonged to the latter category.
After thousands—or even tens of thousands—of years of coevolution, certain parasites and hosts could become practically inseparable.
Some animals had even incorporated chloroplasts into their own biology, allowing photosynthesis.
This bizarre kite-like creature with nothing but a giant eye clearly couldn't survive on its own.
Yet it possessed its own Sea of Consciousness.
Its own soul.
That convinced Kun it truly was a parasite.
More specifically...
A specialized parasite responsible for surveillance.
"What an unusual biological system."
"There must be eighty thousand of these eye parasites..."
"If not a hundred thousand."
"What kind of organism could possibly support such an enormous parasitic population?"
"And what's the point of having only eyes?"
"How do such fragile creatures defend themselves?"
Still baffled, Kun drifted lazily through the crimson sky.
"Hello!"
"Wanna be friends?"
"Brother, have you ever heard of the Spiritfolk?"
The surrounding eye parasites completely ignored his mental communication.
Some even drifted farther away in apparent annoyance.
"Tch."
"Bugs with brains smaller than walnuts."
Grumbling to himself...
Kun abandoned the pointless conversation.
Instead, he focused on descending toward the ground.
Unfortunately...
These kite-like creatures were unbelievably slow.
One gust of wind...
And he was blown all the way back to where he'd started.
"Thankfully..."
"There's mana in this world."
"Otherwise this would be troublesome."
Closing his enormous eye...
Kun released his vast spiritual power.
Mana from the surrounding air surged toward him in endless streams.
Unlike when he had physically descended upon Blue Star...
This time only his consciousness had crossed over.
If he wished to cast magic...
He first needed to accumulate sufficient mana inside this Flesh Seed body.
Meditating like an ordinary mage would take far too long.
So...
Kun chose a shortcut.
Inside the eye parasite...
Its original brain slowly dissolved.
Fresh flesh began to grow.
Mana poured into the developing tissue.
The new flesh gradually crystallized...
Until the brain disappeared entirely.
In its place formed a specialized organ remarkably similar to the magical cores found inside magical beasts on Eternal Dawn.
This...
Was the Flesh Seed's true purpose.
Normally, the dangerous red algae gradually replaced portions of the host's blood cells.
Reproducing little by little...
They quietly occupied part of the body.
At that stage...
The Flesh Seed remained harmless.
Simply another parasite.
Only when Kun's consciousness descended...
Did the algae awaken their true nature?
Their fangs emerged.
Using the host's flesh as raw material...
They multiplied without limit.
Kun could reshape that flesh into any form he desired.
Provided sufficient nutrients...
He could even reconstruct an entirely new body for himself within this world.
For now, however...
That wasn't the priority.
Maintaining his disguise...
Remaining hidden...
And gathering information...
Were far more important than creating a more comfortable vessel.
"So little nourishment..."
"Only enough to form a First-Rank magic core?"
"Oh well."
"It'll have to do."
Using a simple wind spell...
Kun summoned a gentle breeze carrying a thick scent of blood.
Riding the current...
He rapidly descended toward the earth.
Even with magical assistance...
The eye parasite's speed remained painfully slow.
Still...
It was vastly preferable to drift like a turtle.
"Hm..."
"I can finally make out the ground."
"...What?!"
Kun's enormous eye widened.
Below him stretched a world straight out of a nightmare.
The earth itself was crimson.
Rivers flowed red like blood.
Trees grew from intertwined flesh and bone.
Towering mountains of exposed muscle writhed endlessly, their veins pulsing across their skinless surfaces.
Grotesque blood-colored creatures—just as horrifying as the eye parasites—roamed this hellish landscape.
Enormous crimson beetles pulled wagon after wagon piled high with bloody carcasses.
They were driven by skinless humanoids...
Toward one colossal mountain of flesh that constantly squirmed.
Like a malignant tumor growing upon the planet itself...
The towering mass extended beyond the clouds.
Only then did Kun realize...
The blood vessel attached to his own body originated from that mountain.
Countless blood vessels stretched skyward...
Like strands of crimson hair growing from the head of a giant.
Together with the innumerable eye parasites drifting above...
They formed the blood-red sky itself.
"So..."
"The body I'm possessing..."
"...is merely one parasite living on that mountain of flesh."
"Could those hideous creatures..."
"...be the so-called Spiritfolk?"
"...Maybe I should ask someone."
After a moment's thought...
He abandoned the idea.
Unlike the fragile eye parasites...
The creatures below were frighteningly powerful.
Even after observing only briefly...
He had already spotted numerous lifeforms whose vitality rivaled Third-Rank magical beasts from Eternal Dawn.
Curiously...
Like the eye parasites...
Their spiritual power remained surprisingly weak.
They didn't feel like naturally evolved organisms.
Rather...
They resembled incomplete creations of flesh.
Weak spiritual power generally meant limited intelligence.
Societies composed of such beings typically formed strict pyramidal hierarchies.
Every level ruled absolutely over the one beneath it.
Those above held complete authority over the lives of those below.
Given how feeble the eye parasites were...
Their status was likely near the bottom.
Besides...
They didn't appear intelligent at all.
They were simply external eyeballs.
Making contact recklessly would expose him immediately.
For now...
The wisest course was to quietly gather information about this bizarre world.
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