The giant creature began approaching Wu Xiaoming. Not by walking, not by flying. It just shifted its position in space, one “hop” at a time. Strangely, it was closer by the second, but its figure did not grow in size in Wu Xiaoming’s eyes. Its relative height and width remained the same - that its full figure was in his vision completely, without him needing to turn to look at any of the edges.
Wu Xiaoming pulled his arms left and then right, he could barely even move his shoulders. He tried to move his legs again, and they were all held up by an invisible force, just like the rest of his body. The only part of him that he could move was his head - he could turn, but for some reason, the slender, faceless human-shaped creature commanded his attention, and he could only look away for a very brief moment at a time without a powerful force pulling his head towards the creature.
“You have a connection to my realm. You have a connection with me.” A faint, grand but cold voice echoed in Wu Xiaoming’s head. It was his mother tongue - Mandarin. It even had the same accent that was native to his birth place.
“No I don’t.” Wu Xiaoming growled.
“You have a connection to my realm. You have a connection to me.” The voice repeated: “You belong - to me.” And right this moment, a rush of information flooded his head. It was the creature’s “public identity”, about its rule, its dominion, its domain and its power, and attached to this information, was an offer: accept the creature as his King, his master and his ruler, then he would be granted power, granted influence, granted knowledge.
“No I don’t!” Wu Xiaoming barked and looked around at his arms and shoulders: “You are not ruling over me. Your offer’s shit anyways.”
“You will be, my soldier. You will be, my fighter.” The creature demanded, as its figure shifted closer.
“No I won’t.” Wu Xiaoming looked to his right arm and focused, his palm glowed in golden for only a moment before it dimmed. His spirit was all dried up, and he simply did not have enough for another spell.
“You belong, to me.” The creature came closer, now it was just probably one hop away. “I am, your master.”
“Break!” Wu Xiaoming focused on the area slightly above his right wrist and barked.
A glowing crack manifested in the empty space above his right arm. Along with it, was a broken veil, or wrap of semi-transparent black veil of energy. The grip on his arm loosened, and he could finally move it. He tried to pull himself to the right, but the hold on his left arm was more than just a wrap-around rope or ribbon and proved impossible to break out just by moving his body.
“Break! Break! Break!” Wu Xiaoming roared three more times, each time more draining than the last. And expectedly, he began to fall when the last word dropped. He braced himself so he did not fall on his face. But right this moment, the creature’s body was already right in front of him - to be more precise, right in front of the top of the building on which he was standing. And this time, it was finally in a size that made sense to him - he was almost two times higher than the already skyscraper of a building, while sitting down.
The creature leaned over, its hand reached towards him. Its fingers the size of train carts closed in on him. It was about to grab him. And right now there was nowhere for him to go.
For screens of golden light shot up from the base of the building into the sky, boxing the entire building inside. The screen between Wu Xiaoming and the creature sliced through and cut off the tips of two of the creature’s fingers.
Immediately following the glowing screens was a female voice, chanting some kind of spell using a language that sounded familiar but still unintelligible.
“You belong, to me!” Finally there was some emotion in the creature’s voice, inside of Wu Xiaoming’s head but not his ears. But combined with the flood of information earlier, the command almost knocked him on the ground. His visions were blurry and flashy, his ears were ringing, and the muscles in his limbs were all sore. Who knew a forceful injection of information would manifest like this physically?
The two fingertips turned into blobs of liquid in midair. They began to take shape as they hit the ground, into the same slender, faceless humanoid creatures he had defeated earlier. He tried to stand up straight, but there still seemed to be some residual invisible force on his limbs stopping him from doing it right away. Yet the two faceless humanoid creatures had already begun to charge at him.
“Attack! Attack!”
These were just simple attempts at pushing the creatures back and buying him time. But to Wu Xiaoming’s utter surprise, the two energy blasts not only blew the two creatures away, but also shattered their bodies, as if they were simply dolls made of clay and playdough.
“What the - ” Wu Xiaoming finally pulled his upper body straight. The word attacks never had this kind of power before.
“You belong to me.” The giant creature’s voice echoed in the empty space, as the distance between it and the hotel building expanded and the figure of the creature shrank and disappeared.
The surroundings flashed, solidified, flashed again and finally settled down.
He was back inside the hotel building. 8th floor, in front of the Queen’s Suite. The interior of the suite was completely pale white - as if someone just painted the whole room, or that the entire interior lost all color from an unnatural force.
“Fucking hell.” Control over his limbs and muscles came back to Wu Xiaoming. He stood up and looked around, then rushed towards the stairs holding both weapons.
Nothing attempted to stop or follow him, and he made it out of the hotel without any hurdles.
Maybe it was some kind of bias after surviving a major encounter, or maybe it was wishful thinking, but the entire color theme of the hotel building seemed lighter and brighter, even considering he was in the ethereal realm.
He ran into the coffee shop and sat down in a corner, where he could both observe the hotel front gate and take a breather.
His head was still a mess. Too much information registered with him, and he had yet the time or energy to process.
The first thing he needed to process was the information of the giant entity that might have had somewhat of a dominion over the hotel building. If the self-involved, even somewhat pretentious self proclamation of the entity was truthful, then this very hotel was once partially ruled by a lord, or king, or emperor, or overlord, of the ethereal world, who had dominion over all kinds of matters in the ethereal realm and their connections to the presence of the physical realm; it had soldiers, heralds, believers and followers in both realms, and they were as powerful as they were influential and many; and its offer to Wu Xiaoming, was that as long as he was willing to open his mind and establish connection, he would be one of its most esteemed heralds, its highest ranking officers, with countless soldiers and other followers at his disposal.
The last part was the most concerning - how powerful and connected was this “lord”? If it did indeed have as many followers in the physical realm, would they know about him? Would they be coming after him? Apparently Nicolas Sproutlinger was just one of them, but would the rest be as deranged as he had been?
At least, one silver lining was that he knew now - how the “upper level” powers in the ethereal realm worked. And the knowledge of the existence of such entities would prevent him from being caught off guard.
The next things he would like to process would be the memory flashbacks he had suppressed during the fight. And unfortunately, all that was left of them were only a few very short flashbacks - the original owners of the memories were in the suite, standing in a circle, watching their co-conspirators take the oily “pills” and freaking out; they were also reluctant, scared, albeit somewhat excited to take their own “pills”. And just like the first unfortunate women, they began hurting and seeing illusions. Yet, neither of them actually made contact with the other realm, and had only been swallowed by whatever effect the pills had.
He tried to dig up more pieces of memory - but they had faded already. It had been indeed a really tough trade off.
He sat for a while, still nothing happened at the front gate. So he just took a deep breath and pulled up his character panel. His spirit and Qi were close to empty, just like he had suspected. And - there was more information on his character panel.
The simple human-shaped figure that was supposed to represent him was no longer simple, its inside was now filled with what looked like plots and lines of meridians, just like the ones one could see in an acupuncture shop.
And there was a dropdown menu filled with notes - notes like he would take when he was designing a game character.
“Active Buffs: Clear Mind * 2, Protection, Strong Will, Resonant Will of Battle (temporary)
Active Debuffs: Unclean Attraction, Constraint of Presence (Temporary)”
He focused on the notes on the buffs and debuffs, to his pleasant surprise, a small detail panel would pop up each time he did so.
“Clear Mind: Enhances resistance to mind control and manipulation; Slightly increases Spirit Resource regeneration.”
“Strong Will: Enhances resistance to mind control and manipulation; Enhances Spell and Mind-based attacks.”
“Resonant Will of Battle: Enhances Spell and Mind-based attacks. Enhances physical reflexes and pain tolerance.”
“Unclean Attraction: Attracts unwanted attention from surrounding unclean entities.”
“Constraint of Presence: Locks your presence, you cannot leave the realm for a period of time.”
“Nice.” Wu Xiaoming took a deep breath and smiled, for he double checked everything twice, and the “MARKED” warning sign was truly gone. He switched to the skill tree panel. There was simply no way that he would finish that big a fight without getting a massive bump in experience.
He was now at level 15, and already halfway to level 16. That was a four level jump. The number of skill points he had right now: 7, which meant that aside from the level jump, he got two more spare skill points, probably from the fact that he defeated a “boss” - maybe more of a “herald” than a “soldier” of a really powerful entity. Right now he could afford more skills, he would need some time to think about it a little.
Switching to his item panel, the first thing that struck him was the numbers of his currencies.
Current currencies: 34322 Spirit Fragments, 170 Vision Slivers. That was more than a 10 thousand jump in Spirit Fragment numbers, and a whole whopping 100 Vision Slivers. Though it was a pretty hard fight, this kind of reward actually made him regret less now.
He counted three new items in his panel.
“Ash of the Herald: burned ashes of a herald after his demise. Trace amount of energy from the entity that he once served remained.”
“Golden Conduit: a high quality conduit. 1/1 use. Use it to connect objects between worlds.”
“Recipe of Vision Pill: a recipe for an ill-omened pill, whose knowledge was bestowed upon a herald by his master.”
“Fucking hell.” Wu Xiaoming shook his head.