The Place Where Everything Begins

Within Jeremy's sea of consciousness, where a pond filled with murky white water, yellow soil, and a transparent dome resided...

At this moment, Jeremy stood at the edge of the protective dome, which was acting as his sea of consciousness' defending line.

Concurrently, Jeremy was already at work to fix the last crack within his sea of consciousness as the gap on the protective layer became smaller and smaller with each passing second.

The said crack gradually closed up as Jeremy placed his hand on it...

'Done...' thought Jeremy as he retracted his hand back from the crack.

*Whoong*

The entire transparent dome, encircling Jeremy's sea of consciousness, simultaneously pulsated throbbingly as if it was becoming alive. Simultaneously, Jeremy felt his mind power become intact and ample once again. In fact, he felt even better than before he had those cracks...

'As my sea of consciousness is not only recovered but also enhanced several times by the Evolution Pill, I wonder if I can use Mind Eyes to observe the surrounding...'

Mind Eyes was something people with a high-level sea of consciousness could use, especially most high-classes mages.

Nonetheless, Jeremy might be the sole exception of all humans as he had long gained accessibility into his sea of consciousness. Unlike other human mages, who had to level up their mind power step by step before they could access their sea of consciousnesses.

Talking about Mind Eyes, as the name suggested, it would allow Jeremy to use his 'mind' to 'see' the surroundings instead of using his other senses.

Undoubtedly, Mind Eyes was different from Sixth Sense that Jeremy had acquired in the first stage. After all, the former would allow him to 'see' while the latter would allow him to 'sense' the surroundings around him.

Having thought about the notion of trying Mind Eyes, a special type of 'eyes' induced from the mind power generated from one's sea of consciousness, Jeremy promptly closed his eyes to control his sea of consciousness.

Soon, Jeremy was in the outside world as he could see himself sitting inside a tent with a zipper being pulled up to the top.

It was as if Jeremy was an invisible ghost looking at his own self, meditating there silently with eyes closed.

Then Jeremy turned to look at the tent's canvas before willing himself to fly to the canvas.

Unexpectedly, Jeremy's corporeal body went through the canvas easily, facing no obstruction whatsoever, as if the latter was just air.

After coming out of the black tent, Jeremy looked around the vicinity of the forest as he saw the sky was already at dusk, causing the atmosphere to be a bit gloomy, before flying his corporeal body upward into the sky.

Jeremy went skyrocketing straight into the vast dusky sky above his tent. His transparent body flew past the tallest tree in the surrounding areas, going higher and higher into the sky, without a sign of stopping at all.

Jeremy's corporeal body created no sound nor air turbulent in the least, yet his speed was even faster than sound as the world around him appeared to be in slow motion.

A split second later, Jeremy's speed started to slow down as it became half of the speed of the sound. Shortly after, his speed became even slower as he went higher until Jeremy moved at a snail-like pace that he finally stopped.

Having eventually reached the limit of his sea of consciousness, Jeremy gradually stopped as he looked down below him.

'Hmmm... My current distance limit is roughly three hundred meters away from my body. The result is even better than when I was a class 4 Wizard in my past life.'

Upon finishing his flight test, Jeremy went back down and entered inside his currently-meditating body within the black tent.

After coming back inside his 'spacious' sea of consciousness, Jeremy closed his virtual eyes briefly to feel the space fluctuation before thinking to himself,

'Unfortunately, I still cannot use Wise Eyes with my current mind power... but this pace of development is pretty good. Also, the time has passed approximately four seconds in that Mind Eyes state, but the real-world time has passed only one second, so the time ratio is four to one...'

'Not bad at all...' Jeremy finished his thought with a light smile.

Having wrapped everything within his sea of consciousness up, Jeremy turned to look at the pond of murky white water for one last time as if trying to peer into the deepest part of the pond, his own soul.

'Let's go out,' thought Jeremy as his virtual figure disappeared from the sea of consciousness.

Coming out of his sea of consciousness, Jeremy opened his azure blue eyes slowly. At this time, his eyes looked pretty enchanting.

If someone looked at Jeremy's blue eyes for a prolonged time, they might become enticed in the alluring traps hidden within. Such a result was closely related to Jeremy's mind and soul power as they induced a special kind of mysteriousness within his eyes, the outer entrance to his mind and soul.

'Haven't slept for two consecutive days; furthermore, I've spent more than six hours within my sea of consciousness, my mind feels a bit weary right now...'

Jeremy felt his body was still in top form, ready to fight a prolonged battle anytime, yet his mind couldn't quite keep up with his own body right now.

At the end of the day, Jeremy's mind and soul were regressed back to almost their original shapes by the imposed universe's laws when he cast the time-reversal spell. In contrast, his body had suddenly been boosted to another level after eating the evolution pill, causing the formers somehow unable to keep up with the latter.

As a result, Jeremy would always feel tired mentally whenever he exerted too much mind power to do things. Meanwhile, his body would always be fine as long as he hadn't gone into a fierce and prolonged battle.

'The only solution for now...'

Having thought so, Jeremy pulled the tent's zipper down to look at the somewhat darkened sky before pulling the zipper back up.

'I will hit the sack for ten hours straight. Hopefully, no wolf nor kenku will come to interrupt my sleep...'

Jeremy's solution to his weary mind was none other than sleeping...

Soon after, a rhythmical breathing noise resounded inaudibly and peacefully from within the black tent, pitched amidst the temperate forest full of deciduous trees and fearsome predators.

...

At a long creek, cutting through the forest's middle, running along the mountaintop outside the barrier until the end of the barrier situated on another side...

Currently, Rachel, heaving in and out exhaustedly, stood on one side of the creek, looking at the distance fifty meters away from her, which appeared to be the other side of the creek.

There... at the shore of this small river, Rachel saw a muscular creature lay motionless on its stomach with its face looking resentful and unwilling.

On the back of the dead creature, Gnoll, spotted more than fifteen arrows stabbing in every part of its back. Meanwhile, eight wolf corpses lay sparsely in the area around its dead leader's location.

From the looks, one could surmise that Rachel had fired the arrows unstop at the Gnoll ever since the latter decided to retreat, making the latter almost look like a porcupine in the end.

Furthermore, Rachel had gone as far as firing another ten or so arrows to kill more than eight wolves, not wanting to let her enemy get away from her grasp.

That meant only five or six wolves had gotten away from Rachel, the Killing Machine. Thus, Rachel's tiredness was justifiable as she had overworked herself to the absolute limits.

At this moment, Rachel couldn't care less about her exhausted body as she looked at the transparent interface before her.

'A white star? What can it be used for?' thought Rachel in puzzlement as the interface started fading away from her sight.

Finally, Rachel looked at the other side of the riverbank for the last time. To be specific, she looked at Trevor's unrecognizable corpse, whom had bought her some time to escape as he couldn't make it in time after stumbling down the ground.

Then Rachel shifted her eyes to the 'porcupine' Gnoll...

Shortly after, Rachel sighed depressingly before dragging her feet away under the darkening sky over the temperate forest.

Rachel's figure gradually disappeared in the direction, leading to the human camp, alone...