Sornid stood up, with small cracks upon his skin. He’s translucent. That’s new. Certainly not a usual situation. And he’s certainly still in the same field. The same light shines down even. It’s very nice, the way the sun shines on his skin, even if most of it shines through him.

  He wonders how this was even plausible, in fact the first thing he did was open his notebook, the same deathly hollow it was before, and began taking notes. He felt the ground under his feet, but the land didn’t give in like the soft soil it looked like.

  He felt the air brush by, but it also hit his bones. Only of the upper body. Ah, it feels as if he’s forgotten something once again. How unfortunate, he was just with Clara when-

  A sharp burst of pain goes through his head, as he clutches at it with a hand that feels not like his own. A small sound escapes his mouth, but he must continue onwards through the pain. This is a small price to pay to find out the true nature of magic.

  He wanders through the very same forest he grew up in, stopping in front of his favorite tree. Another sound escapes his tongue as his mouth fills with the copper taste. He sees a red window but can’t make out the words through the dizzying pain.

  For a split second, he thinks he sees Clara with someone lying in front of her? But even that’s hard to see as his vision is splitting. He feels as if every part of him except the upper body and right arm is filled with splitting pain, it’s fracturing apart like glass.

  But he must continue onwards, for he must figure out the true nature of magic. The true nature of the system. He got a moment to catch his breath at least between the surges of pain at least, each time it occurs he sees the sky filled with gray clouds. But then the very same sky goes back to be impossibly lit up.

  He can’t tell what’s going on between every ding of pain, before it clicks. He’s dead. He’s the one laying down in front of Clara, and he can’t help but scream as the pain only gets worse. It’s not just the parts he lost against the man who spoke in green.

  Now it’s his head, as he feels another crack form. He knows the tower is the cause of this, having destroyed everything he had left to stop the pain. He at least had friends in the tower, even if he treated them terribly.

  But now he’s left alone in whatever hell this is. His own childhood, tainted by whoever did this to him. Another splitting headache as lightning forms around Sornid. It’s the same putrid white that the very cracks are.

  “I’m going to die even as a soul?” Sornid pleads out, cries out, but his voice is just as calm and calculating as it is panicked. Of course, it sounds fragmented of those two emotions at the same time. “That seems a bit cruel.”

  Yet nobody came. This is the true nature of the afterlife. The beautiful sky that the tower had constructed fractures with this cry of pain. It falls apart showing the red sky of the real environment he’s stuck in.

  The fragments of where he was is burning away constantly, landing in the same forest. It’s causing everything to burn. And it’s a beautiful kind of flame, a flawless orange matching the red of the sky.

  And another cry of pain as another crack forms alongside his face. He continues fragmenting, begging for health. But nobody comes to heal him. He hears Clara’s pleading for his survival in the small moments of sanity.

  He can’t afford to say goodbye. He couldn’t say goodbye. He’s dead, and now he has the flawless chance. He won’t let something like death tie him down. His soul must stay together.

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  He clutches at his head as he bites on his tongue to prevent another scream of pain. He refuses to let a piece fall out of his head, it’s the only thing he really has to prove that he’s alive. To prove that he was alive.

  The power of his will is enough here, it has to be. Never before had it failed him, even when he was naturally gifted he refused to take the easier path. He had taken harder courses to enact a challenge.

  And this challenge and striving for it led him to want to learn the true nature of magic and the system. And he finally found his answer in his own death. The system is something designed to… cultivate.

  To collect people strong enough to take something down? No, that makes no sense, because; all these thoughts, theories, and everything else is impossible to track. Can’t even write any of it down because if he moves his hand away it’ll shatter.

  His left arm is covered in cracks already, small pieces falling apart showing nothing within, as the light of the fracturing is shown to only be the underside of his skin. Ah, so souls are physical yet ethereal.

  He can’t help but to grin while he cries out another point of pain. The pain holds so many answers yet it avoids his grasp. But he can’t accept defeat, that’s not who Sornid is. That’s not who he is. The cracks can spread all they want, but he’ll stand.

  He’ll stand tall. He couldn’t see outside of the tower in so long, and now that he could, he saw the worst thing anyone could ask for. A view of pillars of obsidian, with red-hot magma surrounding them.

  His soul continued to break, but he held together, albeit barely.

  He had to hold together. For who knows when his friends would save him.

  This was his destiny, wasn’t it? A fickle thing, fate. He never believed fortune tellers, even when they said he had a good fate. Because you can’t predict the real future. Ah, what was it that Bariton was worried about on floor 39?

  Ah, that’s right. Someone was going to die on floor 40, so they had to get stronger. And now look at them. They got stronger, and all they have to show for it is… Death. Certain death. It was him that was meant to die, and Bariton feared that.

  And instead of acting in any reasonable manner, he pushed Bariton to leave. Gods was he stupid. But he now sees the truth behind his death. He understands he was meant to die so his friends could continue on.

  He sees now that the system needed someone to die for the others to be motivated. He reached his goal. He can tell that the system made this world for a reason, and the reason involves hundreds, thousands of people dying.

  Millions of people died. But they were given a better fate. He can tell that this is certainly no afterlife. This is where souls are sent when they fail to go to the afterlife. The demonic energy, something only Dark Mages usually wielded.

  And something he had to learn plenty about in the tower, due to the few puzzles that revolved around. And his curiosity led him down the same exact path. The demonic energy was stronger, more potent than mana.

  And despite the potency, he could wield it not so similarly through effort, and he even heard of a legendary magic eye that allows the user to see and bend dark magic without having any dark mage related class or personal trait.

  This eye was one of his life goals, along with those eyes granted to the vessels of the gods. He remembers the god Heavenly Dealer of None. Right, he had a vessel too, a pirate with a singular green eye who was ruthless.

  Usually killed in a similar manner as he was killed. But his soul wasn’t getting repaired. It was staying broken. And Sornid knew it had to. He wasn’t meant to come back, and therefore he won’t.

  He won’t come back to his home plane, and therefore he’ll make his home here. It’s a much more fitting environment for someone like him, who’d do anything it takes to survive. The random bursts of pain finally stopped too. So he knew it was time to survive in this strange environment.

  But he couldn’t help but miss his friends, or his family. But if they needed him, they’d find him eventually. He’ll become too big a presence to ignore.