Chapter 4: Inner World

And… Silence.

Well, mostly silence. Annalise, as the young girl was called, was slamming that rattle all around.

Ain allowed his body to fall backward onto a pillow as he let out a small sigh.

'What's up with this world? First, it was that corvid monster that the woman who abandoned me had, and now a sentient tornado wearing armor. I suppose they might have to do with this world's law.' he hummed to himself.

World Law. A restriction that bound worlds to function in a specific way. At the best of times, they forced denizens to utilize mystical energies in a particular way. At the worst, they can impose predetermined fates on the world's people.

Ain was well-versed in the concept. When he was still Castor, Pollux and he explored undiscovered planets and removed that law so the people could be inducted into the universal federation.

Or rather, that was the job of his entire Celestial Clan, but the twins were better than anyone else when it came to it. Not that such a thing was surprising. 

World Law was deeply rooted in people's souls, so removing it without harming the general populace required a profound knowledge of the topic.

'Wait… Does this world's law bind me? Shit, I need to check that, don't I?' Ain wondered with an irritated expression.

Normally, such a thing shouldn't be possible. His soul was far too strong for a world to bind him, but he burned away most of his soul to defeat Leviathan.

Ain took a deep breath. Slowly, he began to circulate Mana around his entire body. A minuscule amount, even compared to his extremely meager pool.

As he closed his eyes, his mind and body grew lighter. When he opened them again, the scenery had changed.

He looked around, and his eyes widened in shock.

"Is this… What a shattered soul looks like?" He nearly choked on his words.

The world around him was a chaotic, nonsensical white void. The ground below was smooth and featureless, almost like a blank piece of paper or a canvas that had yet to be painted over.

Cracks and fractures broke apart the eerie, empty perfection of the ground as they spread out and segmented the land. When Ain looked at the wounded ground, all he could see was black.

Nothing, the absence of anything. Even in the blindingly white box, he could tell where the floor was, but that wasn't the case for these… Wounds.

Ain couldn't think of them any other way. It was like his soul was barely being held together by scotch tape and a dream.

In the distance, he saw a solitary tree. It had brown leaves and green bark. It twisted in on itself, bending at impossible angles, and smoke fell from it like sap.

When he looked up, the top of this place echoed the same story. Those same cracks marred the sky, and something tried to seep in from them but failed to fall past a few meters.

The entire thing gave him a massive headache. Ain didn't know an Innerworld could be this… Wrong.

An inner world, a mindscape—once again, every world and culture had a different name for it. It was a creation of the individual's mind that grew more full and vibrant as one's soul strengthened.

The blank canvas of white made sense, given Ain's weak soul, but he had never witnessed such a deranged scene in someone's inner world. Usually, such damage to a soul was fatal and would cause it to vanish before it got this bad.

Worse still, he could feel something dangerous creeping up his back. It made even him shiver.

He tried to clench his fist, but with how damaged his soul was, he couldn't even manifest a proper body for himself in this realm. If he had to guess, he was little more than a wisp or a floating orb of some kind.

He turned to face the source of the danger, expecting the worst. He had some methods to protect what little soul he had left, but if Leviathan himself left something, Ain doubted he'd be able to resist it.

Luckily, what he saw wasn't a horror beyond mortal comprehension!

Unluckily, he still had no idea what it was.

There were three distinct objects. The center of the three objects was his past life's body. Or what was left of it, at least.

Like the rest of this realm, it had cracks and lacked discernible features.

"This must be my Soul Vessel. I can't even muster the strength to have it take a proper form, huh?" He thought to himself out loud.

In this realm, there was no difference between thought and speech.

Truth be told, Ain could only guess what this was. It might've not even been his body. The soul took various forms as it grew ever more complex the stronger it became. 

It was as if it tried reverting to its base state, that of a colorless blob, but failed to do even that.

To the left of the unidentifiable corpse was a dark, purplish black ball.

It gave off a warm sensation, a pulse of life.

"An egg? Maybe?" He said, his thoughts growing grim.

An Innerworld should be nothing more than an elaborately crafted illusion created by the mind. There's no way a lifeform could exist here…

Unless it was related to the unique World Law.

"What a terrible start. At least there aren't any chains." Ain lamented.

He wanted to interact with the egg but lacked the limbs. Instead, he turned his attention to the third thing.

Two gems that rested on an ornate marble pedestal. One was a sky-blue color and gave off a faint mana signal. Weird, sure, but honestly, it was the most normal thing in this place as far as Ain was concerned.

The other gem, on the other hand… It took a single glance for Ain to realize that the dangerous feeling came from this thing.

He looked at the gemstone, constantly changing the angle to see if anything changed about it, but there was no such luck. Or perhaps nothing happening meant he was lucky.

"Whatever it is… It's probably dormant for now. I'll keep an eye on it for now and worry about it later."

What else could he do? Ain didn't like being so passive about such a thing, but he'd need to recover his soul at least enough to freely manipulate his inner world before messing with it.

THUNK!