Pov: Ryuk
Everything went black.
It was darker than black; it was the same infinite, primordial void that I had seen in my dream about the golden throne. At that time I had no arms, no legs, no physical eyes through which to weep, and no heart from which to bleed onto the cold rocks of the mountain ravine.
I was just a bare, wandering soul.
Nevertheless, even though my mortal body had been removed, my consciousness stayed as clear as crystal. The intense memory of Reynolds's white flames scorching my flesh, and the nauseating noise of that lady with the golden mask pulling the green pearl from my open chest, was still burned into my mind.
They believed that they had managed to harvest me and that Reynolds had turned the leftover trash into ash.
Fools.
So consumed were they by their arrogance and so intoxicated were they by their high cultivation realms that they failed to notice what was going on right in front of them as they searched for me through the forest.
When the skeleton warrior carried me across the rocky terrain hours ago, a system notification had chimed in the background:
"Host has finished the main quest: obtain information about the secret your body contains (1/1)."
"DISTRIBUTING REWARD."
"REWARD: PAR-KAYA PRAVESH (MYSTERIOUS SOUL SCRIPTURE)."
At that time, while riding through the howling wind, I used my trembling fingers to open the reward.
The description alone sent chills down my spine:
Par-Kaya Pravesh is an ancient and highest occult scripture of the eastern region; it is a divine art which overcomes the cycle of samsara. It is possible for the practitioner to project their living consciousness into a different form by cutting off the connection between soul and body, thus avoiding physical death and attaining everlasting existence. When one achieves true mastery they will be able to undergo eternal transmigration among the heavens and the various realms.
It was a real supreme reincarnation technique!
In the earlier stage of my life on Earth I had read the ancient mythological scriptures and also heard from my grandmother tales concerning great yogis and rishis who had the siddhi of Par-Kaya Pravesh—the ability to leave their own physical body and enter another one at will. But in this world, where martial arts and mana are concerned, it was entirely surreal to see that scripture.
The only great difficulty was that the scripture was written in dense, incomprehensible glyphs similar to sanskrit. Even though I had some general knowledge of this world, as a common mortal boy I was unable to understand a single word. It was just like an ant attempting to work out the blueprint of the cosmos.
I didn't have time to study it; Reynolds was approaching quickly, cutting through the sky.
I immediately took out my last remaining Experience Card.
"USE EXPERIENCE CARD: PAR-KAYA PRAVESH!"
At the instant the card broke, a large number of esoteric mantras and golden verses poured into my mind. Yet even with 50% temporary mastery, this ancient soul art was still too extensive and too deep to be fully stabilized within the weak meridians of an eleven-year-old child.
It was then that the chain reaction started.
She was completely unconscious of the fact that the divine artifacts floating in my inner consciousness had begun to enter a state of violent resonance as she drove her golden-masked claws into my chest and gouged out my right eye with cold indifference.
The Beacon of Truth shone just as a dawn is rising, throwing its bright light across the chaotic mantras, which purified the wandering thoughts and kept my soul firmly anchored to absolute order.
At the same time, the Sigil of Evolution ignited strongly in my spirit body, mutating and refining the ancient scripture and forcing this human technique of transmigration to adapt to my present catastrophic death!
Right before the white flames of Reynolds consumed my vision, the final string of notifications flashed across my fading sight:
The SIGIL OF EVOLUTION IS INFLUENCING PAR-KAYA PRAVESH."
The BEACON OF TRUTH IS INFLUENCING PAR-KAYA PRAVESH."
"PAR-KAYA PRAVESH ACTIVATED!"
"Severing vessel connection. Soul separation successful!"
When Reynolds cast his white flames, he only succeeded in setting fire to an empty shell! The "martial pill" which he destroyed was nothing more than dead flesh and broken bones. My true self—my undamaged soul, bearing the Emperor System, the Beacon of Truth, and the Sigil of Evolution—had already slipped away like smoke slipping through fingers and had drifted into the astral currents above the Dark Mist Mountains!
My soul, floating high in the cold night air, looked downwards at the dark ravine beneath.
To my spirit the world appeared entirely different: there were no actual trees or stones—only grey lines representing the terrain, swirling wisps of natural spiritual energy, and threads of destiny linking living beings.
My eye then settled on a familiar figure in the middle of the ravine.
There was a small, worn-down figure crouching on the blackened earth, holding against it the charred remains of my previous body.
Yuki.
Her clothes had been torn apart and the blood from her hands was dried up after she had been running for twelve continuous hours through the thorny wilderness. She pressed her forehead into the soot, holding a piece of paper stained with charcoal against her chest and cried out with genuine, heartbreakingly sad wails that made her whole body shake.
"You promised. You liar. You promised!"
Her desperate and muffled screams resounded across the cold night, directly piercing my spirit.
A deep sense of sorrow rose up within my soul. Although I had lost my physical heart, seeing her cry like that caused more pain than having my eye gouged out. She had traveled so far, risking her life in the mountain region filled with beasts, simply to find my ashes.
"PAR-KAYA PRAVESH. THE TIME LEFT FOR SOUL DRIFT IS RUNNING OUT."
Warning: the soul must anchor itself to a compatible vessel within sixty seconds or else it will dissipate into the void.
"Scanning nearby life-forms for transmigration..."
Around my spiritual sight, red warning runes flickered.
I needed a body, and I needed it right away.
If I remained in this astral form for too long, the natural laws of this world would realise my soul and crush it just as they would an unauthorised intruder.
The system's scan pulsed outward across the ravine, highlighting several nearby targets:
Option A: A first-rank shadow wolf that was dying was crushed beneath the cliff debris.
Option B: The bones of the necromancer Roby, broken and incomplete.
Option C: Unknown lifeform.
I fixed my spiritual attention on the third choice.
I don't want to become a wolf, nor do I want to inherit a body made of bones, so I decided to gamble my fate on the third option.
I stared one final time at the crying Yuki.
I whispered to Yuki with all my soul, even though the sound amounted to no more than a soft, unnatural breeze running through her messy hair. "I'm not dead yet," I said, "wait for me."
By thinking it over firmly, my spiritual form transformed into a thin streak of pale golden light and shot directly across the dark ravine towards my new vessel!