Jake's soul was wrenched from his body, drawn into a vast, lightless void.
No light. No sound. No sky, no ground. Not even the comfort of emptiness—only the absence of everything.
Though Jake was no longer a mundane spirit, a faint heaviness settled in his heart.
But he quickly regained composure.
This scene feels familiar… yet not quite the same. It resembles the place I was once trapped in—but something's different.
What exactly had changed, he couldn't say. He turned his awareness inward.
Oh? This soulform…
Jake found his Spiritform Entity unusually solid—almost indistinguishable from a physical body. His Divine Perception had also grown exponentially.
The realization filled him with renewed confidence.
"Hmph." His eyes snapped open, blazing. "Now that I've awakened… I won't be so easily subdued."
He formed a hand seal, chanting under his breath. In an instant, his soulform radiated golden light. His eyes flared wide.
"Swift!"
A brilliant beam of gold shot from his gaze, piercing the void before him.
The darkness recoiled like an ancient beast—yet the light made no sound, no ripple. As if it had never existed at all.
Jake Nickelson's brow furrowed. He didn't act rashly. Instead, he sank into deep thought.
I hold at least half of the Magworldz realm's supreme cultivation arts. I refuse to believe there isn't a method to break through this.
He began combing through his memories at high speed.
Time passed—how long, he couldn't tell. Then, like a statue coming to life, Jake moved.
His hands began forming intricate seals, one after another.
At first, his motions were slow and deliberate. But gradually, they accelerated. Soon, his hands blurred into a haze of motion.
That haze began to coalesce—two hands again, but now tracing a profound trajectory, spinning with such velocity that the flow of time around him began to distort.
The golden light rising from his Spiritform Entity condensed into a radiant sphere, glowing like a miniature sun.
It expanded—slowly, steadily—pushing back the surrounding darkness.
Not enough. Not yet!
Though the Spiritform Entity did not sweat, nor tire in the mortal sense, Jake felt his arms growing heavier with each passing moment.
Still not enough!
The golden sphere had grown vast—so vast he could sense the edge of the void itself. He was close. So close.
But that final stretch felt impossibly far. As if the last inch were an entire world away.
"Still not enough?"
Jake Nickelson could see himself—his physical body—lying motionless on the sofa beyond the edge of the dark domain. Breathing. Alive. But…
This time, even the soul that once lingered outside the boundary has been dragged in. If I can't escape, I'll be sealed here forever. Not even qualified to live as mundane.
For the first time, Jake felt fear. Not of death—but of endless imprisonment. A terror without horizon.
He didn't give up. But despair crept in. After nearly two thousand years of cultivation and countless brushes with death, this was the first time he felt truly powerless.
The spell he was using didn't exist. It was a construct—born from his previous entrapment, his understanding of the barrier, and the fusion of multiple top-tier mental-type magics. He had modified, merged, reforged, and simulated seventy-eight million outcomes.
Only one held a chance of success. And even that—just a chance.
"I would rather die than be imprisoned by you!" Jake roared into the void.
His eyes no longer held fear. Only unwavering resolve.
The trajectory of his hand seals shifted. He had made his decision: to burn the essence of his Spiritform Entity.
The golden sphere trembled—then surged forward like a warhead, piercing toward the edge of the dark domain.
Two forces—light and shadow—collided in silence.
Yet the golden light could never quite outpace the devouring dark.
Jake's consciousness began to blur.
Scenes flickered past like a carousel of memory.
A castle. A lake. A sacred spirit of magic. The First Sect of Magworldz. Ten thousand kneeling in reverence.
Ruins. Shattered walls. Corpse beasts. Endless war across a scorched wasteland. Struggling to survive.
Asking God, yet, the wrong time, era, me...
Jake felt his body grow heavier. He clenched his teeth.
A thread of golden light seeped from the corner of his mouth. Then from his eyes, his ears, his nose—light began to leak from every orifice.
In a haze, he saw her again. That silhouette beneath the bronze tree. Her long hair drifting, untouched by wind.
So familiar. So close. He reached out to take her hand...
Heh. Is this death again?
A surge of defiance roared through Jake Nickelson's sea of consciousness.
Now a Spiritform Entity, the inner turbulence of his mind began to manifest outward.
Golden light streamed from his seven apertures, rippling through the surrounding space.
Just as Jake was about to lose consciousness, a violet-gold hexagram appeared on his forehead.
Moments later, the hexagram began to protrude from the center of his brow—slowly, as if with great effort.
The pendant around his neck—Tear of Time—struggled upward, floating three inches before his eyes, perfectly aligned with the hexagram.
Huh?!
Tear of Time?
Jake squinted. The droplet-shaped pendant had become blurry.
And he was now a soul at the Archon Magus tier—his perception should be flawless. Even a nearsighted mundane person could see something three inches away.
Then the Tear of Time rippled, giving off a strange illusion of speed—fast and slow at once—before wobbling and vanishing into the void.
Jake was stunned. Suspicion and uncertainty surged within him.
Suddenly, a wave of pain struck—like a thick steel needle stabbing straight into the crown chakra point atop his skull.