Chapter 66: Little prince by the sea
Miles met Ryan’s gaze, then shrugged before standing up. He saw no problem with keeping the pattern.
Walking up to the pylon, he placed a hand on it, letting its alien chill flow through him. A familiar screen soon popped up in front of him.
He ignored everything else and focused on the one part he was interested in.
[Upgrades]
As usual, lines of text appeared below it, blurring out all the other parts of the menu.
[EGO: None (Unlockable(0/0))]
[Skills: Delusion(Unique) Lv1(0/100), Cold Resistance(Common) Lv1(0/100)]
He kept his attention solely on EGO.
[Unlock EGO?]
[Y/N (Caution: Be sure you are in a safe environment before accepting)]
He pressed ’Y’ without hesitation. Just then, he felt that alien coldness return to him. It didn’t stop at his hands this time; it was spreading.
His vision turned dazed for a moment, and by the time he recovered, the world around him had changed completely.
It was a dark, almost endless space now.
The room had vanished, and so had everyone else in it. Before him, the metal box that was the pylon had vanished as well. In its place was a thin pillar of light piercing through the darkness.
In the distance, he could see even more similar streams rising skyward as well.
He looked back to his hand placed on top of the pillar, only to find an almost gaseous, white, multicolored mass in its place, alerting him to the current state of his body.
He felt soft, nebulous, in the sense that the hard boundaries between his body and the world that existed in reality were almost entirely gone. His body itself barely felt like one at all. There was no heartbeat, no organs, and likely, not even a brain.
It was just a mix of clouds, ranging from large to nonexistent, shaped roughly into the form of a human. They overlapped, mixed, and reacted with each other, creating his... thoughts?
’What?’
He could feel it. Every thought he had was accompanied by multiple streams of gas moving and interacting in patterns so chaotic that he found it hard to tell what was causing what.
The alien chill, which he could now see was streams of light originating from the pillar, suddenly intensified, freezing the swirling masses of gas that made up his new body.
It latched onto the largest clouds, then fed into them, allowing them to rapidly expand and devour most of the smaller ones.
The expanding clouds mixed together, diffusing into one another until they formed a uniform greyish gas. The outer edges of his new, greyish body contracted inwards, the boundary between him and the world hardening into a sort of skin, shaping and giving him a definite form.
Throughout the process, he felt nothing but a sense of awe, along with a strange sense of hyperreality. Like a greater part of himself had finally been given definite form.
By the time it was done, the gas was gone, and he had a proper body once more. He could feel clothes on his body once again, and a strange weight on both his head and shoulder.
Although he hadn’t left the dark space, the faint scent of sea salt reached his nose, and he heard waves crashing in the distance.
He looked at his hand placed on the pillar of light and found it to be made of shifting scribbles. The sight caused him little panic, as though his mind already knew this was how he was meant to be.
He still felt curious about his new form.
As though sensing his curiosity, the surface of the pillar of light rippled, then produced a full-length mirror.
A boy wrapped in a long black blanket styled as a cloak stood before him. A spindly, red crown sat upon his dark, messy hair, beneath which his grey eyes gleamed with curiosity. On his shoulder perched a silver-eyed crow, staring forward with the same curiosity.
Most important of all was the fact that the boy looked like a drawing. His clothes, face, and crown were all made of shifting, undulating pencil sketches.
’Is that me?’
A screen popped up before him.
[EGO unlocked: Little prince by the sea]
The world around him blurred.
Once things came into focus again, he found himself in the storeroom once more, his hand still on the pylon. The upgrade menu still floated before him.
[Upgrades]
[EGO: Little prince by the sea Lv1(0/100)]
[Skills: Delusion(Unique) Lv1(0/100), Cold Resistance(Common) Lv1(0/100)]
He still felt the sense of hyperreality washing off him as he stared at the metallic pylon that had just been a pillar of light.
’Is that its true form? More importantly, what even was that place?’
The lights in the distance had to be other pylons too. They reminded him of signal towers, how rows and rows of them were spaced out, yet still wirelessly linked in a form of network.
The thought made him freeze.
’Is that the system’s network... the system itself?’
It was a possibility. But he’d gain nothing by just theorizing in circles over it now. He logged the information to the back of his mind before turning back to the pylon’s terminal.
He navigated out of the upgrade menu and went directly to focus on his EGO.
[EGO: Little prince by the sea.]
Lines of text appeared beneath it.
[Little prince by the sea: Self-exiled from the rest of the world, he claims a quiet shore by the sea as his own tiny kingdom. Oh dearest little prince, when shall you return to that beautiful sea? Oh lonesome prince, when shall you drown in it?]
[Effects]
[Awakened EGO: Standard for all Users, backlash and costs of all skills reduced.]
[Unlocked at level 2.]
[Unlocked at level 3.]
[Unlocked at level 4.]
[Unlocked at level 5.]
The description sent shivers down his spine.
’It has something to do with the dream, doesn’t it? With that place.’
Miss Rose had been getting more active recently as well. He’d figured it had something to do with his ability, and this new world.
EGO. The sense of self. His was entirely based on that beach.