Chapter 152: The Surreal Place

The frightened and despairing Evin could only wait motionlessly. After he entered the World of Thoughts, he realized that there was something very, very wrong with everything. Not just the dark-blue vines, but literally everything. There were no silhouettes in this foreign World of Thoughts, no boost to his thoughts, no feeling of clear-mindedness. Instead, an unrelentingly oppressive feeling of eeriness and decay filled every pocket of air, further enhanced a loud rumbling noise that occured every few minutes.

Moreover, Evin couldn't exit this frightening place as well. He was stuck here for almost two hours at this point, unable to move a single part of his body. Thankfully, the voices and sounds in his head died out after a while, so Evin wasn't in danger of going crazy. Yet. The dark-blue lines in his vision still writhed about disturbingly, slowly but surely chipping away at Evin's mind.

But finally, a change occurred. Evin's frozen body suddenly sprawled onto the vine riddled ground with one of the vines going splat under his knees. Evin was shocked for a moment, but it very quickly turned into hope. 

'I can move again!' Evin thought, finally seeing a ray of hope in the dark tunnels.

Evin hurriedly stood up on his feet and ripped off the vines that were growing onto his feet. A wet, ripping sound would go off every time Evin teared a vine apart, and an almost black liquid, with a tiny glow of blue and red would ooze out of the ripped vines. Disgusted, Evin wiped the liquid on the drier part of the walls. 

After calming down, he realized that the slithering movement in his eyes stilled as well. They weren't completely gone, unfortunately, but Evin wasn't going to complain about it now.

"Where is this place?" he murmured softly. From the structure of the place, he could tell that he was still in Nasst's test room, but everything detail looked slightly worn down and crumbled. The paint on the metal beams that supported the test room had peeled off, littering the ground alongside the mass of vines.

No World had this kind of effect, as far as Evin remembered. And it was especially confusing, since Evin's goal was to enter the World of Thoughts, the arguably the 'cleanest' World of them all. At least it wasn't constantly burning, like the World of Fire.

The only possible outcomes he could think of were that either the World of Thoughts went to shit, or something in his mind went to shit. But Evin leaned towards the latter conclusion.

'Everything went very wrong after Twelve touched my forehead, and showed me that map of Alvox. Right after I was done seeing the picture, Twelve's personality did a complete 180, and she started to rip open my heart, while my head was riddled with countless voices…' Evin remembered and realized that something must have happened while he was checking through that map.

Thankfully, Evin's attempt to escape the World was successful, and he ended up in the main World. But even then, his head was still afflicted by the voices and the sounds. Evin decided to enter the World of Thoughts for some reason at that point as well.

'Why did I do that?' 

As far as he knew, there wasn't a single smidge of information in his brain, telling him that entering the World of Thoughts would solve these kinds of problems. The idea appeared out of nowhere, and Evin clung onto it like his life depended on it. It was almost like the thought wasn't his own… And now, Evin was stuck in this creepy place.

'I should go out and take a look around,' Evin decided and walked out of Nasst's mansion. 

Outside, Evin saw an unforgettable sight. A giant dark-blue colored 'tree' made of countless vines intertwining with each other was looming like a huge mushroom cloud under the monotonally grey sky. Its size could be compared to a fifty-story skyscraper. Moreover, it bloomed these disturbing blue flowers which had the shapes of sunflowers, but in the center there would be a human face. And it constantly spewed out some glowing blue substance into the air.

Under the tree, were the countless buildings of the Tribe. All broken down and battered beyond recognition. Most of the building's colors turned pale white, only the blue vines of the giant tree giving them some color. Evin could also tell that the buildings near the tree were the most unchanged. But the ones that were further away from it were almost all completely crumbled down, with the furthermost ones all turned to white ash-like dust.

The grey sky continued on to the horizon, before its colors gradually whitened out and merged into the pale-white, decaying ground. 

"Fuck…" Evin clumsily ran towards the white 'edge of this World', his feet digging into the ash like ground.

Surreal could not begin to describe the feeling that filled Evin. In front of him was complete whiteness. Evin was almost fearful to turn back, lest he find that the buildings and the giant tree behind him gone. Evin couldn't even take a step further, since he had no idea where this whiteness would lead him to.

Then, like a dam that had been broken, primal fear began to take over Evin's heart, with only a single thought filling the entirety of his head.

'How do I get out of here?' 

Millions of different voices seemed to repeat this sentence in his mind, the previous schizophrenia incident almost cute compared to it.

Evin was very close to going crazy. It was this close. He knew it very well, since he personally experienced in many times. But a familiar voice, of the one who was allegedly the reason why he found himself in this situation, was the one thing that pulled his sanity back to the safer areas. 

"Burn the tree. Beware the night"

Twelve's emotionless voice echoed in his mind like the morning bell, completely silencing the rest of the voices. 

It was a bit forced, but Evin calmed down.

"Burn the tree, burn the tree," Evin chanted as he stared at the gigantic tree. 

"How the fuck do I burn anything here?"

"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Motherfucker!"

Evin's old habits of talking to himself reappeared. As for the cussing, he just really wanted to do it. After cussing to his heart's content, he sat onto the dusty ground and took a deep breath.

Evin didn't feel despair. What Evin was most scared of was to be left completely alone. With no one to look at him, and no one to care. Like on Earth.

But this time, there was a spectator. Twelve knew about his situation and was observing him. Even though she put him into this situation in the first place, Evin could forget it for the time being, since she was the only thing that connected Evin to reality.

"How do I burn that? Does it even burn?" Evin pondered out loud. 

"Perhaps?" Evin wondered and tried to absorb mana into his mana-core. The amount he had absorbed was truly pitiful, but it was there nonetheless. Mana. 

"Pity I can't do much with it…" 

There was mana here, which meant that this place really wasn't a World. Evin's eyes then fell onto his storage ring. A trickle of his mana went inside the magical device but Evin could not for the love of god access its insides. It almost seemed fake to Evin.

'Then what about my shadows?' 

Evin thought and tried to exchange some mana for Dark energy, but something was blocking Evin from accessing the other Worlds.

'Guess I can't seek help from Enri and the others…'

His channeling artifact wasn't working either, so he had to work something out with raw mana, or find another method of burning the tree.

Evin sighed and pondered about how to set the tree on fire. He guessed that he should perhaps look for a match or something in the city, since magic wasn't an option for the time being. He should also need some food and whatnot...

…