Chapter 84: Trial 5/6

Chapter 84: Trial 5/6

After completely emptying her mana container by using all of her skills on repeat, she once again looked at the pearl.

It was uncomfortable trying to trust the black blob, but it had never once tried to harm her. Not in a conventional sense, anyway.

She still wasn’t sure if being a Psychokinetic was better than being a Magic Swordsman, but she could already see the vast potential that it had. If she walked on the original path of a Sinwen, she would just be like the rest of her family. Strong, but that was all.

Being a Psychokinetic held a tremendous advantage. Flexibility, range, while also providing high firepower. Although she loved using a sword, she was under no delusion that she was walking a better path than was originally intended.

If she obtained the Legendary secondary class, then she would go through a metamorphosis. It would mean her mana container would more than double to accommodate the rare class. And that wasn’t even adding to the powers that it would benefit her.

Astrid tried to guess what the class would be, judging by the land and the items she had received. Then it had to be something void related, although it was just that, a guess. She had never heard of anyone with a void related class. She could only imagine the powers it would have.

Breaking out of her daydream, she pinched the pearl and threw it into her opened mouth. She wasn’t one to hesitate and swallowed it. Or at least, she tried to.

It refused to go down her throat. Based on the size of it, it should have effortlessly slid down the passage. Astrid frowned. It was cutting off her breathing. She tried to latch onto it with Psychokinesis, but it still refused to budge even an inch.

It felt like trying to move a mountain. The weight bore down on her mind. It forced her to let go, as a stinging pain filled her mind.

She clutched at her throat. As the pain throbbed against her brain, the pearl finally moved. The smooth surface of the pearl cracked and a black sparkling light shot out from her mouth.

A black and purple foam with tiny lights followed it and filled her mouth. It seeped out. Then the pain began. It felt like something was drilling into the roof of her mouth.

Astrid screamed in pain, but despite her protest, it didn’t stop. The drill felt like it broke past the soft muscle layer of her mouth and pierced straight into her brain. She fell to the floor and clutched at her skull. The pain was unimaginable.

She did not know what torture felt like. She had heard dark stories before, usually from the guards within the barrack taverns up on the top floor of rebirth. Of monsters that would bind their prey and inflict torment upon their bodies.

Astrid wasn’t sure if it existed, but she had had no doubts that the pain she was suffering right now would be similar, or worse.

She squeezed her skull and rolled around in the fetal position. Blood seeped from her eyes and the black X scored into her iris displayed itself to the world once more.

Her mind spun like she had taken too much of Charlotte’s prized spirit. Her eyelids turned so heavy, like she was attempting to fight off a never ending fatigue. Her mind was shutting down and her vision turned hazy and blurred.

Then it all vanished like a frigid, crashing wave.

Astrid opened her eyes and spun on her heels. She glanced around at her surroundings of nothing. Unlike the hostile environment within the void dungeon, this was something else entirely.

She was floating in the air. Above, around, and below sparkled dots of all different colours. They reminded her of the countless stars in the sky.

But one stood out to her. It hid behind the other stars, and it was as if it was looking at her. Judging her or trying to understand what she was. Astrid willed her Psych Domain to reach forward. She had no hope with the current range of her Skill, but to her surprise, it reached forward effortlessly.

She had never made out so much matter before, and it was only a second before her reach encompassed all the stars in the sky.

| Eyeball pulling is 25% easier.

| Permanent dark vision in your left eye.

| You can sense dark matter.

With the added upgrade, the world was instantly brighter than before.

Dark matter? Astrid thought.

She had, of course, read about it. It was when she visited the royal library during her training periods after she gained her Psychokinetic class. Different from baryonic matter, dark matter does not emit or interact with electromagnetic radiation. Like light, thus it is completely invisible to the electromagnetic spectrum.

The science classes, although have never directly observed dark matter, its existence and properties come from its gravitational effects. They believe it to make up the vast majority of the universe’s mass.

Astrid entered her Psych Domain, and there it was. The dark matter was pitch black, unlike regular matter that was grey within her vision. At least it made it easy to distinguish.

She attempted to experiment with it. It was a lot heavier than regular matter and sifting through it used a lot more mana than usual.

She strained her mind and amassed it a good distance away from her, then she [Crashed] it. It sucked the mana out of her container like a vacuum and despite the reduced mana cost of [Crash] it was halved in just a second.

Then the explosion came. It sucked in the surrounding air and matter and exploded. Unlike the clear explosion of regular matter, this was as pitch black as the endless and vast night sky.

It pulled in everything around it. It pulled in the bodies that were piled up and were already festering in its grasp. Then the explosion continued. It lingered and sucked in the bodies, then finally exploded. Astrid placed her Mind Barrier around her as she expected a gory mess.

But it didn’t happen. The bodies vanished from existence. They were nowhere to be seen. They disappeared into the void. All she could hear were muffled explosions within the ball of black matter.

Holy shit. Astrid grinned.

A new and unexpected power up, just from being able to sense another form of matter. Just being able to sense the dark matter created endless new possibilities, although she had to explore them all.

She called the new [Crash] effect, the Swallowing Explosion. It acted like a black hole that she had read about, although it used a tremendous amount of mana. Maybe it didn’t use the reduced cost of mana of [Crash] because it was technically something different?

She wasn’t sure, but the one thing she was certain of was, she couldn’t wait until [crash] reached level twenty for the next upgrade to Stage 3.

Astrid just had to make sure that she experimented extensively with the possibilities of dark matter. So that when the upgrade came, it would grant her a wide range of abilities to choose from.

But now, it was time to distribute her points from the fight with the Golem. Not long now, and the last door would open.

She didn’t know what to expect, but if the last two fights were anything to go by. It would be long and excruciating.

Astrid wasn’t aware of it, but in her left eye, a countless number of stars swirled within.