Chương 104: Chapter 102: Outsider

Thalion woke up hours later, his head felt like he had smashed it against a wall for an hour. Now he knew everything about outsiders. For example, he exactly knew what had happened to the guy with the crown and the black spear. The soul had traveled to a dimension dominated by beings of wrath and pain. Lacking a suitable technique to dominate such a creature, a ghost must have merged with the man's soul.

It was almost like jumping on a ride to travel to the system—or better said, the tutorial—where the soul grew in power. This spirit must have been one that fed on fear and pain, which explained why it tortured all those people. Those beings who were able to still progress in this dimension were rare and powerful. Thalion resolved to keep his distance from such realms; he was not strong enough even with the right rituals to dominate such outsiders.

He had something else in mind: an empire that existed in a dimension very similar to this one, which held rituals to combine one of their strongest warriors with a spirit of power and life. Based on the knowledge he gained from the crystal, the chances were high that they were still around, even with such a long time passing. Before he could send his soul there, he had a few things to do first. Thalion stood up and shortly after exited his tower to place the houses he had bought in the systemshop.

As he walked down the street, still deep in thought, he felt the hate most people felt for him. It was way worse after he had taken all their credits. This whole base was not really organized. Most people were simply pointed to their new homes by the other citizens, but he had no time for such things at the moment as he felt how time was running out. Thalion placed the houses at some empty spots at the wall and continued his walk. He took all the materials prepared for the umbral predator by the alchemist.

They clearly disliked him too. This was bad, Thalion thought while moving to the only person that might still like him.

"Hey there, how is it going with the crystals?" Thalion asked Lucan after entering the shop.

"Oh, very good in fact," Lucan smiled, "but I hope you have a plan for Garrick and Michael. They are definitely planning something."

"My visit is part of that plan," Thalion said with a shrug, trying to play it cool while his heart was already racing.

"I need eight of your condensed crystals."

"Sure, here, just take them. I have more than I can count," Lucan laughed.

"With so many crystals, I might reach E grade in two weeks."

"Great, you should be the first one in this base," Thalion replied while sweeping up the eight crystals. After a bit of small talk about the use of crystals, he left the smithy. On his way home, he felt the eyes of the other people like daggers in his back. Something was definitely happening behind the scenes, and he needed to hurry up. Thalion barricaded his entrance door to the tower and moved back to his room.

He immediately started drawing the pentagram on the floor with the blood provided by the sanguine thorn. From the over-three-meter-wide pentagram, eight curved runes extended like flower leaves. In the middle of those leaves, he placed the eight crystals he took from Lucan as the power source for the whole process. When he activated this pentagram, his soul would leave his body, breaking through multiple dimensions until he arrived at the coordinates he had engraved in the pentagram.

He, of course, had no idea how exactly it worked; Thalion was just copying one of the pentagrams engraved in his head by the memory crystal. Another thing that would happen was the passing of time. While in the other dimension, time would pass normally for his soul, but the time that passed for his body would slow down significantly. It was not like the whole tutorial would freeze in time. It was more like after the ritual began, he would exist outside of time, at least to a certain degree.

He had drawn this complex pentagram for hours but finally was it ready. The moment he was finished, he heard the entrance to his tower get blasted open as multiple figures entered. He didn't have much time left until they reached his room. Thalion sat down in the middle of the pentagram and started the ritual by activating the rune in the middle. The whole pentagram burned with power, and pain ran through his body as his soul slowly left his body.

Thalion's soul was fired through the dimensions, seeing all weird, twisted forms of reality. Some simply had no laws like gravity or time, as they looked twisted and unnatural. One looked like hell as the dark, empty space was made out of burning flames. Then he finally entered the dimension he had targeted with the ritual. Thalion tried to keep calm and let it all happen. At least, that was what the memory crystal had advised him to do until he arrived.

In this new dimension, his ghostly form got pulled to one of four planets orbiting a giant palace floating in the middle of space. On the top of the palace was a golden crystal that radiated golden light like a sun and bathed the four planets in golden light. Besides the palace and the four planets, nothing existed in this dimension. He flew with incredible speed in the direction of the smallest one, which from space looked like a giant desert dotted with many tall mountains.

Coming closer, it seemed that every one of those planets was at least four times the size of Earth. There were many giant cities with millions of citizens and multiple palaces in the center. Of course, none of them came close to the palace with the golden sun on top. The good thing was that this empire hadn't changed much. The three other planets and the palace looked bigger than in the vision from the memory crystal, but there were no significant changes that should stop his plan.

Now the tricky part of this whole ordeal would begin. In this dimension, he was the outsider—a ghost that traveled through the lands. Now he needed to find a body he could use. According to the crystal, he just needed to fly into the body and overlay the soul body of the being in question with his own, completely suppressing the other soul. When he achieved that, the other soul would fall into a deep sleep and only awake after he left the body. Why was that necessary?

According to the memory crystal, they held a ritual to give many of their strongest warriors in the young generation a chance to bond with a spirit. Since they didn't have the system here, they instead selected the people according to age and skill. Thalion would take a body and pose as one of the many warriors who competed for one of those slots. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Thalion was currently stuck in the outer layers of the atmosphere and started his descent. He didn't know how much time he would have with Garrick or Michael, likely both on their way up to his body in the tutorial. Thalion had prepared a failsafe: the moment one would enter his room, he would be brought back to his body, and the ritual would end. As he descended, he saw that everything he had seen from space actually didn't look that great.

Of course, the palaces and houses were so large they could be seen from space and glowed in golden runes. What he hadn't noticed were all the slums outside of the city. There were multiple farms with antlike beasts and multiple trade hubs. It was fascinating. Inside the wall, there were houses kilometers high with palaces surpassing even those. However, the outside reminded him more of pure medieval villages. Only a few buildings reached the height of 60 meters.

Instead of golden, marble-like material, they were made out of wood or some kind of sandstone that didn't look stable at all. As he came closer and closer, he saw cultivators flying between the high houses, their power radiating. They must have been at stages far above F grade. They looked just like humans, but all had golden skin, hair, and eyes. Their clothing was entirely in gold with white runes. As he descended, Thalion smashed hard into an invisible barrier surrounding the inner part of the city.

"Ah, shit, what a mess," he muttered. It looked like he would have to go for one of the slum people. The inhabitants of this world shouldn't be able to see him until they gained the necessary classes or reached a high enough level in their cultivation. He didn't want to risk anything, so he traveled several kilometers to the side so no city guard could spot him. The village outside of the main city was actually many times as big as the actual city, at least when it came to the area it covered.

What were the chances they would accept a warrior from the outside, someone who was not part of the noble houses? Probably very slim, but maybe he could do something good for the people here as long as he remained. When he reached the outskirts of the slums, he descended and flew over the antlike farms, watching for a potential host. He saw many people working there, but none really appealed to him. Then he noticed a boy at the age of 15 getting beaten badly by a man over 30 years old who seemingly enjoyed himself.

The boy, of course, didn't have that much fun as the man smashed his fist over and over into the boy's face. The man must have had significantly more levels than the boy for this to be possible.

"Well, you gotta follow your guts," Thalion thought as he dove down with maximum speed and entered the body of the boy. Since the boy was almost unconscious, it didn't take much effort to push the boy's will to the side and overtake his body in one go. Everything was black and hurt badly; at least no bones seemed to be broken. The power of his spirit body rushed through the weak body of the teenager and gave him power. Thalion opened his new eyes to see a plate-sized fist coming down on his face.

It was probably not the smartest thing to take the body of a teenage boy who was getting beaten to death. Thalion kicked at the knee of the man, breaking it and rolling to the side. He activated mana blade. Nothing happened. What the fuck? Why couldn't he summon his mana blade? Thalion thought in panic. He searched for the information he had gotten through the crystal and found the answer. This dimension was outside of the system, so he had no skills to activate.

He still had his blood sense and infused mana in the blood he had—no, the boy had—lost and formed a blade out of it.

"What the fuck!" The brute of a man stammered as he saw the blood blade forming in front of him. A fireball appeared in the hand of the man, but he wasn't fast enough as the blade pierced his heart and nailed him against the wall behind him. Thalion slowly pulled on the blood of the man, and when it touched his skin, he absorbed the mana in it, letting it drip to the ground after healing his wounds. So what should he do next? He had a body but no skills.

He had hoped to just turn into the umbral predator when things got nasty, but that was no longer possible. This was bad; first he couldn't get a noble body, and now he was stuck here. This dimension was sadly the only option to be bound with an outsider of power. Everything else would have taken too long, or he was too weak. He couldn't give up now; without the power of the outsider, he could even die when returning to his real body. Thalion loosened the grip of the child's soul and sent a telepathic message.

"Hey boy, who are you?"

"Who am I? Who are you and what are you?" the teenager responded back in panic.

"Hello, I'm Thalion, and I need to use your body to get access to the ritual that binds a spirit to my soul," Thalion replied camly to the boy.

"Yeah sure, a thief becomes one of the holy ones. Why don't you just kill me," the boy laughed in his mind.

"No need to be so negative. So can you tell me your name and who your family is?" Thalion responded back. A thief—that was just perfect. Wait, was the man right in killing the boy? Maybe he had stolen something important from the man.

"I'm called Rylak. I don't have anyone; my family got killed years ago," the boy replied back in sorrow. This brought back some memories. He never had a family, but to have one and see how they got killed was something else.

"Why did that man try to kill you?" Thalion asked, hoping that it was not what he thought.

"I intruded on his territory. He was the lackey of one of the underground lords in this area," Rylak replied, disgusted.

"Interesting. Who are those underground lords?" Thalion kept questioning.

"Just groups of former guards or murderers who make life so much harder for the people here," Rylak answered.

"They also sell drugs, which is their main income."

"What level are they?" Thalion asked with curiosity.

"What do you mean by level?" Rylak responded in confusion.

"Ah nevermind. What spells can they cast?" Thalion kept pressing.

"I have no idea, the normal ones, I guess—some lightning and fire spells," Rylak retorted.

"Some are over 500 years old, so they at least got a lot of tricks in their arsenal."

"What about I don't suppress your soul completely, and you help me out? I really need a guide, and I have saved your life. When I am finished here, you can have your body back." Thalion finished. If the soul of the boy was as obedient as it was now, it shouldn't be a problem.

"Not like I have a choice in the matter," Rylak sighed.

"So what is your glorious plan to become one of the holy ones?"

"Well, for now I want to check out the city," Thalion thought while looking down. The boy had black shorts that had multiple holes and a brown shirt that was also ripped in several places.

"Do you have a home?" Thalion asked the boy.

"A home? What are you dreaming of? Many here don't have a home," Rylak retorted in amusement.

"Who lives in this house then?" Thalion questioned the boy, looking at the farm behind him.

"This house belongs to one of the lords and is mostly used as a hideout for their lackeys," Rylak sighed.

"Another thief brought me here to gather the gold they put out for my head." Thalion looked around. It was lucky no one had entered this part of the street, and he took a few steps away from the corpse. He only had blood skills for the moment, but that should be enough to defeat those inside the house. It would be very disturbing to fight without his movement skill, but he had to play with the cards he had. Thalion started moving in the direction of the farm.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Rylak said in his head.

"Are you stupid? They will kill you."

"I have a dream, and I will achieve it, and those people won't stop me," Thalion replied with determination. He had already started to purify the boy's blood. Even though he felt weak in comparison to his real body, it should be good enough.

"I don't like this. Please turn around," Rylak started to panic more and more with every step Thalion took. Thalion didn't know why, but he could feel the power of his title more than ever. Maybe it was because all his other senses were turned down. Anyway, he instinctively knew that his future lay beyond that door. Thalion walked up to the building and knocked against the door.

"What are you doing?" Rylak asked in his mind, now utterly confused.

"Well, I knocked on the door. Don't you people do that?" Thalion responded while he kept hammering with his fists against the door.

"Normally we touch the golden rune on the door and send a telepathic message to the owner of the house," Rylak answered in confusion.

"You just triggered the alarm for sure."