In the deep sea at night, an entity was letting out a desperate shriek—or at least, that's what living organisms would define it as.
It was a creature of darkness, resembling a squid, an octopus, and a fish all at once, as if all their parts had been mixed together. Lacking any structure or design, the final product was nothing but chaos.
It was Scorpion.
Named after the zodiac constellation, it was one of the few individuals that had surpassed the evolutionary limits of its own race, reaching a new level. Theoretically, very few things in the world could injure, let alone kill, it. Yet now, Scorpion was wailing miserably, the tentacles sprouting from its body flailing wildly, its countless crimson eyes rolling back.
It was being burned alive.
A silver flame spread through the void, gradually engulfing the entire monster. Even though it possessed an absurd ability to regenerate, these brilliant flames seemed to be the perfect counter to that very power. Wherever the silver fire passed, everything was instantly incinerated into nothingness; regeneration was useless.
Finally, the silver flame swallowed Scorpion, consuming its piercing shriek, leaving behind not even a speck of ash.
The moonlight shone down, revealing a somewhat blurry silhouette that emitted a silver glow from its body, every line and angle both defined and infinitely sharp. Eventually, the silver fire covering the figure faded away.
...
Asahi floated in a space of pitch-black darkness. No, in this context, "Asahi" couldn't even be considered whole. He was fragmenting, like a mirror shattered into countless pieces.
Time here was indeterminate; perhaps an immensely, immensely long time had passed, or perhaps only an instant.
He knew this place.
The Sea of the Unconscious, the foundation of the mind lying beneath consciousness. It was also the deepest part of the "mind" that he could currently access.
The mind is the integration of many different aspects, with the first and outermost layer being consciousness, and the deepest foundational layer being the unconscious. Between these two layers lies the intermediate layer: the subconscious. Because it bears the characteristics of both the upper and lower layers, it can be called the intermediate layer, the submerged part of consciousness, or the emergent part of the unconscious. All other aspects, such as emotions, memories, the ego, etc., are all derivations of these three main parts. All have integrated to form a complete "mind."
From the moment of birth, humans absorb countless pieces of information—not merely memories of events, but every sensation from the smallest to the largest, every emotion, every thought, however fleetingly... None of them are lost; they are all "submerged" beneath this Sea of the Unconscious. This massive data repository is retrieved by the subconscious and presented to the conscious mind whenever necessary.
To visualize this easily, imagine the human mind as the Internet. The Sea of the Unconscious is the totality—and here, we emphasize the entirety—of all information existing on that Internet. Whenever we need to search for a specific piece of information, we filter it through a search bar; that "filter" is the subconscious. And what appears on the screen, the search results, is the consciousness.
However, unlike the Internet, these three aspects are not sequential; they coexist simultaneously and interact with one another.
And now, the situation Asahi was facing was extremely critical: his consciousness was fundamentally unable to withstand the pressure from the setup in the Titan world and had shattered. Every fragment here was a part of him, but he was not the "every fragment."
Overloaded, like stuffing too much data beyond processing capacity.
Fortunately, he had a backup plan.
"Restructure."
Like a pre-established setup, the Sea of the Unconscious began to boil. A torrent of information circulated, beginning to mend the fractured pieces of his consciousness and reassemble them, returning to the true "Asahi."
Continuing the Internet analogy: If all search results related to "Asahi" constituted his consciousness, then in this state of shattered consciousness, he was like a person who had lost his search keywords—the information was still in the data repository, but scattered and in disarray. Restructuring is the process of rebuilding that "search result," picking up every scattered piece of information from the data repository and organizing them back into the search result "Asahi."
This degree of meticulous and complex mental operation was the first time he had ever performed it. Regrettably, there were no prior experiments; success or failure depended only on his will.
He did not know how long had passed, but he finally regained consciousness. Although this "regaining consciousness" only meant his conscious form had recovered—it was still too weak to leave the unconscious, like a person in a deep coma.
But he knew that this outcome was already relatively promising.
"Damn it, I almost died this time!"
Although it was over, he still felt nervous recalling it. Throughout the entire journey, he felt like he was treading on thin ice. Carrying a bomb powerful enough to wipe out an entire world from the self-induced reality collapse, the situation was complex and not easy to handle.
Asahi sighed, at least it was temporarily resolved.
"But never mind, this isn't the main worry."
Waking up was only a matter of time, so Asahi had a more crucial matter to worry about.
In the previous world, he felt shackled, which led to too many unplanned changes. Asahi did not intend to be bound like that in the next world.
The reality-destroying bomb within him could not yet be defused. So he resorted to another method, one that sounded rather ridiculous.
The transition from one world to the next is not instantaneous. The moment his vision stretched infinitely was when the system pulled him out of the original world, into the endless void that borders all worlds. There, Asahi decided to undergo a transformation. It was true that he contained a terrifying explosive force, but that explosive force was nothing more than throwing a pebble into the ocean compared to the space between worlds.
Unfortunately, he couldn't stay longer to completely release the energy. This also meant he would have to remain in an armor suit throughout the next world to keep his physical state "stable."
It sounds bad, but what could be worse?
That's what Asahi thought, truly unaware of what he was about to face.