Chapter 118 Sight of The Blind
These series of events happened in a tenth of a second:
Rowan took one look at her and his eyes exploded, he grunted as his body was hurled backwards by a crushing force, and he began to disintegrate, his Ouroboros Serpent wrapped around him, creating a wall of flesh around him.
But soon, the two of them roared in pain, as they slowly turned to ash. This also happened to the two other Serpents outside this place.
The surroundings seemed to shimmer as if they were underwater, and black lightning filled the entire space leaving deep tears in space, and the world groaned and began bleeding Aether.
A sound like the cries of a thousand dying angels filled the air, before silence prevailed.
The moment ended.
The goddess vanished.
But the horror had just begun.
Rowan had only glimpsed the goddess with his vision, but that alone was enough to not only tear his flesh apart, but branded the image in his mind like a virus infecting a cell.
He could not understand the image he saw, only that, its existence inside his mind was corroding all his thoughts and personality. He used his meager spirit to fight back, but it was consumed in a fraction of a second.
His scattered flesh turned into hundreds of giant bats made of gold, and they screeched before turning to dust. His body quickly regenerated only to be scattered to pieces, and those pieces birth different lifeforms that did not live for more than a few seconds.
Rowan's arms exploded, turning into a herd of white and yellow zebras who neighed sorrowfully as they turned to dust, his spine became massive crocodiles dozens of feet longs, they also died and it continued endlessly.
His consciousness was under intense pain, and at every passing moment he was inching towards death, as the destruction of his body was not ceasing and his Spirit was being stretched to a breaking point.
The four Ouroboros Serpents were reborn inside his heart, and they all shared the burden, giving him a small chance to gather himself and consider his options.
There was no time, else Rowan would be busy slapping himself. When something as powerful as the Primordial Record says to look away, it probably was the wisest option to follow that simple instruction.
He did not think he was being too harsh on himself, he had to become used to making split second decisions without wasting too much time thinking about those decisions.
Of course, the Primordial Record could have given him more time, but would his enemies do the same? Besides, he could not be sure if the Primordial Record had to do what it did as a matter of urgency.
This was all his fault, and he had to fight to survive through this somehow.
The image of the goddess was only present for an instant before it was dispersed by the Primordial Record, and if he had looked away, he would have been safe, but not only did he not just look at the goddess, he had also used his Spatial Sight, branding that image into his Spirit.
The image of the goddess destroying his body was not the problem, as long as he was not vaporized completely by any attack at once, then it was most likely that his regenerative ability would keep up with any deterioration, the issue was his Spirit.
He had no defense on his Spirit, and it did not share the same robustness as his flesh, and yet it had been repeatedly destroyed, it was only his powerful vitality that continuously fed his Spirit that allowed him to hold out.
He had no method to even visualize his Spirit, so he could not properly mount any defense, the only thing he could perceive was a vast consciousness that resembled a blank face.
It was larger than the sun, and every moment that face was covering his entire introspection and he could barely put two thoughts together. The blank face kept pushing out more and more of himself, until he could barely scream.
He kept his last thought process under tight guard, and began brainstorming on how he could survive this disaster, even as this last bastion inside his mind began to crumble.
The first option he thought about was to allow himself to die, but after thinking about it, he knew that would be a bad option, when his Spirit was first infiltrated by the wisp of the Primordial Keepers, even though he had died twice it did not reduce the effect of their gaze.
He could only ride out this Storm. Even currently, Rowan refused to enhance his Soul Reaver bloodline, in his panic he would rather not jump out of the frying pan and into the fire.
He may be able to suppress the image of the goddess in his mind if he upgraded that bloodline, but it might open a doorway to greater access to the Keepers.
Deciding to stick to what had been giving him a limited chance against this mental invasion, he pushed the last Soul point into Ouroboros, if Rowan were fully conscious, he would have been amazed that he was able to bypass the Primordial Record and use the Soul points he had to grow his bloodline.
His usage was crude however, and although he thought he used a single point, the truth was that with the efficiency of the Primordial Record, he wasted more than a thousand points for the price of one.
It was impossible for him to control Soul Point and channel it as effectively as the Primordial Record, but he had made the first step in accomplishing this process, and it might just be the silver lining in this entire disaster.
The process by which the goddess corrupted his Spirit placed him in a unique state that would be extremely hard to replicate as he grew stronger, there was something's you had to experience at a certain time because even if he faced a similar occurrence later on, it was impossible to tell if it would give him the same result.
His fifth heart bloomed, and under the constant corrosion of the goddess image on his body, his Ouroboros bloodline was stimulated, and the hearts grew faster, with the remaining four serpents sacrificing themselves, so they could quickly feed the fifth heart.
Outside his body was a scene of madness, mountainous piles of ash flooded the temple from the creatures that were created from his body, Rowan had unconsciously protected his head, and everything below that was in chaos.
He must have created millions of various creatures by now, and only the grace of his unending vitality kept him sane and barely alive. His body would repeatedly explode, creating giant spiders, worms, goats, birds, fishes, toads, all kinds of known and unknown creatures were birthed by his body, although they did not survive for more than a few seconds, their deaths left piles of ash behind.
Rowan's fifth heart completed its evolution in record time and the fifth Ouroboros Serpent was born, and his birth triggered the evolution of the rest of the four Serpents.
Inside the five voids in his chest, an intense change was happening to all his Serpents. The bumps along the ridges of their spine exploded and sharpened spikes grew out, all the way until their tails, and extra rows of teeth were created, and their size began to balloon once more.
They began feeding their vitality into Rowans body, and he began to glow like the sun. His vitality increased until it began to burn the air. His eyes opened and lightning shot out from them, up until four feet.
The Terrifying blank face remained in his consciousness, but it could no longer grow.
The destruction of Rowan's body slowly ceased, and his body began to recover.