Chapter 231: Chains, Smoke, and a Creepy Smile
Just as I was replaying the vision in my mind, the class change began and this time, it was nothing like what I had experienced before.
First, I felt it in my chest.
My Generator Core—my heart—began to thrum with a deep, powerful vibration. It wasn’t just a sound. It was a force . I felt it spreading through my entire body like a wave, shaking everything inside me. Then, all at once, I froze. Completely. I couldn’t move a single muscle. Not even my eyelids. It was like time had locked me in place.
Then it happened.
All the Essence stored inside my core suddenly surged out of me. It didn’t just vanish, it poured out and surrounded me, hanging in the air like thick, swirling smoke. I could see it with my eyes—vibrant, alive, and full of meaning.
That’s when I noticed something strange.
The violet Essence around me started to change . Its shape, its feel, everything about it shifted. And then I saw them—tiny runes, smaller than grains of sand, appearing one by one in the air.
They were red, glowing softly, and began to mix with the Essence like fireflies dancing in a fog.
They weren’t just decorations. They were working—rewriting, rebuilding. I could feel it. They pulsed gently, almost like they were alive, slowly blending into my Essence and altering its structure. The process was painfully slow. Every moment felt stretched.
I waited.
And watched.
And for what must have been an hour, I sat completely still, my mind locked onto the transformation happening before me. Finally, a small part of the Essence finished restructuring.
That changed portion shivered once and then rushed back into my chest.
The instant it entered the core, my mind exploded with information.
A massive wave of knowledge hit me. It wasn’t just words or images, it was understanding. Raw, direct understanding that skipped thought and went straight to instinct. Even with my powerful Psynapse, I struggled to keep up. It was too fast. Too much. Like trying to drink an entire river.
2
I tried my best to hold on, to process everything being given to me, but I barely had time to catch my breath before it happened again.
Another small section of Essence transformed.
Another surge.
Another flood of knowledge, this one even heavier than the first.
My thoughts turned slow. My focus wavered. My brain felt like it was overheating, like it had been pushed beyond its limit.
And then, I lost.
With my eyes still wide open, my consciousness slipped away. Everything went dark, and I sat into silence while my Essence restructured itself.
*****
Suddenly, my consciousness snapped back.
I was still seated in the exact same position as before, completely motionless. There was no sign of my Essence around me anymore, not even a trace in the air. I tried to move, even just a finger, but my body still refused to respond. I had no idea how much time had passed since I blacked out.
But it wasn’t time that brought me back.
It was the pain.
A sharp, overwhelming agony unlike anything I had ever felt before surged through me. It wasn’t physical in the usual sense—it was deeper, as if something was tearing at my very soul. The pain was what yanked me out of unconsciousness and slammed me back into awareness.
And then, right in front of me, space itself began to distort.
A long, jagged tear split open the air. It wasn’t loud, but it felt wrong—like the world was being sliced apart. Thick black smoke leaked out of the crack in space, curling and coiling in slow, unnatural movements. The tear was about a foot wide.
But the shocking part wasn’t the tear—it was how it was made.
Two hands reached through from the other side.
They were covered in black, tattered cloth, as if belonging to something ancient or dead. I could see them clearly, pulling at the edges of the tear, forcing space itself to rip open wider. There was someone on the other side—someone strong enough to tear through reality with their hands.
Inside the tear, everything was darkness. Thick black smoke poured out constantly, hiding most of what lay beyond. The only thing visible were two glowing white eyes. Cold. Unblinking. Staring directly at me.
That gaze alone made my skin crawl.
The reason for the tear became clear a moment later.
A chain emerged.
It slithered out of the dark like a living thing—crimson black in color, gleaming with a sinister glow. As it moved through space, the very air around it cracked like fragile glass. Small rifts appeared in its wake, as though even reality couldn’t withstand its passage.
And one end of the chain was already attached to me.
It had latched onto my right wrist, and the moment I noticed it, the pain intensified a hundredfold. I wanted to scream, but my frozen body wouldn’t let me. My mouth wouldn’t open. My voice was sealed away.
The chain continued to climb my arm slowly, curling around my skin like a snake.
With each inch it climbed, the pain deepened—sinking past flesh, down into the roots of my being. It wasn’t just my body hurting. It felt like my entire existence—my soul, my origin, whatever made me me —was being unmade and rewritten.
I stared at the figure inside the tear, unable to look away.
It just stood there, or maybe waited was the better word. Motionless. Watching. Its hands held the tear open, doing nothing else but allowing the chain to pass through.
There was no expression, no gesture, no sound.
Despite the pain, the chain didn’t burn my skin. There were no cuts, no wounds. It wasn’t heavy either. But the agony it carried was unbearable—silent and precise, like every link was a needle threading through my soul.
The process dragged on for what felt like forever.
Eventually, the chain reached my shoulder and then stopped. It pulsed once with light—bright, blinding—and then vanished. In its place, burned into my skin, was a tattoo. A perfect image of the chain, starting from my wrist and wrapping up to my shoulder.
And then, suddenly, the pain vanished.
Gone, like it had never existed.
At the same moment, the hands holding open the tear withdrew, and for the first time, I saw the figure clearly.
He sat in front of a large wall, completely shrouded in grey, tattered robes. I couldn’t see his face or body—only the outline of a person surrounded by chains and black smoke. He was like a prisoner locked within the void itself.
His glowing white eyes never left mine.
As the tear began to close, I continued to watch.
Then, just before it sealed completely, something changed.
The figure moved.
A small shift, subtle but unmistakable. The hood tilted downward, and beneath those glowing eyes, I saw a grin. Faint. Unsettling. Like he was pleased.
And then I heard it—a voice. Hoarse, dry, barely a whisper.
"Billion... #$%***#$..."
Only my name reached me clearly. The rest... a garbled mess. Incomprehensible noise. Words twisted and crushed by some unnatural force.
Then the tear vanished.
Completely.
And just like that, I was back in control of my body.
"Hoooooo....."
I breathed heavily, my chest rising and falling with each labored breath. My entire body was drenched in sweat, as if I’d just survived a storm.
My eyes drifted to my right arm—where the tattoo of the chain remained. Dark, intricate, and unnatural. I reached out with my other hand and touched it, half-expecting it to vanish. But it was real. Solid. Warm.
Still, everything that had just happened felt like a dream—distant, unreal, and terrifyingly vivid.
I closed my eyes and forced myself to calm down, drawing in a slow breath.
That’s when the system notifications began to flood in, one after another.