CHAPTER 322: WHAT LIES AHEAD

Victor narrowed his astral eyes as his gaze swept across the region.

Within a half-buried crystalline cavern, something moved.

A strange looking creature completely covered in white fur and crawling on eight spindly legs, emerged from the hole.

It looked really muscular with a fairly humanoid torso and elephant like trunk. Its body emitted faint azure light and when it opened its mouth, mist gushed out like steam escaping a dying forge.

"...What in the hell..." Victor muttered under his breath. His voice echoed faintly within his mind, sounding almost disconnected from his form.

All around the icy landscape, similar movements stirred.

Massive beasts roamed between the frozen pillars, all having white fur. Some were winged with translucent feathers that glinted like shards of glass. Others burrowed beneath the ice, leaving trails that cracked and refroze almost instantly.

And in the distance, far ahead, a strange storm could be spotted. This was no ordinary storm born from mere weather... It had arcs of bluish and dark red lightning coursed through the clouds, twisting into strange sigils before fading into nothing.

Even from this distance, Victor’s astral form could feel the pressure of something unnatural.

"This place..." he whispered with an intertwining tone of caution and awe. "Never seen anything like this recorded about the outside world beyond the domes."

Although, Victor wasn’t the best student when it came to studying, he had paid attention in classes a lot and read more than a few books on the current state of the world outside the domed cities.

Not a single place had ever been described like this.

Yet among the endless stretch of frost and ruin, one sight in particular drew his attention...

He spotted a lake.

At first, Victor was glad that he would finally have water to drink but then something suddenly struck him.

Thr lake gleamed like polished glass, reflecting the churning skies above.

However, unlike everything else in this terrain, it wasn’t frozen.

Instead, it rippled eerily calm.

"That lake..." Victor frowned. "Why isn’t it frozen? The temperature here could freeze anything."

It was strange. Everything else around him screamed of death, stillness, and cold, yet that lake flowed like a living thing. From it, faint tendrils of mist spiraled upward, curling into symbols that almost looked like runes before dissipating.

He decided he would explore that place once he returned to his physical body.

He turned his astral projection around, scanning the horizon for where he’d left his body. The landscape behind him, however, looked... different. There were no familiar goo covered ground,bridges, no marks on the ground he could recognize.

The terrain was different.

"What the—where’s my body?" He panicked.

His astral form rose higher into the mist with its eyes darting over the horizon. The frozen plains stretched endlessly behind him, yet his body was nowhere to be found.

He muttered with a baffled tone, "Don’t tell me I went too far..."

Victor tried to sense his body and the moment he felt the connection, he realized something deeply unsettling...

The distance between his astral form and his physical body wasn’t just far. It was absurdly far. Farther than he could have possibly imagined.

"...How?" Victor murmured as his eyes narrowed as he stretched his perception backward.

His mind eye soon settled on his body. He realized he didn’t control how far he wanted to send the Astral Projection which was why it just went ahead randomly.

Victor shook his head.

"This means the icy terrain isn’t anywhere near me. It’s over a hundred miles away... It will take a lot of time to get there."

And yet...

His physical body could already feel the cold despite how very distant the border between the icy terrain and him were.

Victor’s brows furrowed as he extended one astral hand downward. The moment his spectral fingers brushed the frosty wind, a chill surged through him, crawling straight into his consciousness.

"That’s... not right." He looked down at his translucent hand.

Frost was beginning to creep along his astral fingers, not from within, but from outside, like something in the very air was biting into his soul form.

Victor immediately severed the contact, retracting his hand. The frost dissolved, but the sensation lingered like a memory carved into his nerves.

"Whatever’s down there," Victor muttered, "it’s not just dangerous physically—it can affect the soul."

He tried to pull back, to retract his consciousness and re-enter his physical body. But as he began to draw his astral form back, his vision spun.

His surroundings blurred.

A wave of dizziness crashed into him.

The vast world of frost and light fractured like a mirrorand then Victor’s eyes snapped open from his physical body.

He was kneeling on the ground with sweat trickling down his forehead.

His breathed in and out profusely as his hands trembled faintly.

"Wha—what the hell?" He pressed his palm to his goo covered ground in confusion.

He could feel that his qi wasn’t expended in the slightest, so why was he dizzy?

He looked inward and once more, his consciousness traveled back into the space where his inner bank was located.

He stood before it and noticed that the pond was nearly depleted.

Victor frowned. "So this is why. Looks like I expended a lot using astral projection."

Victor held his chin upon recalling a moment in the past; "But that’s weird. When I used a soul attack for the first time and even in the real world... I never felt dizzy. Which meant, it didn’t drain this much?"

Back then, when he unleashed a soul-based attack, he didn’t feel anything. At that time he didn’t even know that the source of energy for such abilities was from the soul bank... But now...

He could barely stay upright.

Victor steadied his breathing as his eyes narrowed. "So Astral Projection takes a heavier toll... but why?"

His gaze flicked toward the faint mist still curling from his skin... the residual aura of his astral form.

Then the realization dawned on him.

"...It’s the size."

His astral form had been over a hundred feet in length... It was his first time using it, so he never tried to customize the size or the distance he needed it to travel...

Victor analysed internally and felt that a larger form would definitely take up more energy and considering how far he subconsciously sent it, that must have also contributed to the expenditure of the bank.

Although, he couldn’t confirm this belief right now, he was at least 99% sure it was accurate.

He chuckled bitterly while shaking his head. "Of course it’s because of that. I overdid it."

His vision steadied as he sat cross-legged, regulating his breathing. The cold sensation from before lingered faintly on his soul, whispering that the frozen expanse was no ordinary place.

For now, though, he would have to rest.

And though exhaustion weighed on him, his lips curved into a smirk.

"Well, looks like my next destination’s decided."

Victor contemplated on whether to return back to the starting point... where Commander Aiz and himself were spat out by the space time continuum. However, he decided against this.

The whole point of heading in every direction, every day, was to find a suitable path to head forward and leave this particular terrain he found himself in.

Now that he had spotted a different place that actually had life, he didn’t see the need to return. Besides, he wasn’t looking to consume Commander Aiz flesh again. Hopefully, he’d find something proper to eat westward.

When he looked toward the distant west, he could almost feel the cold biting at him already. A distance of over a hundred miles between him and the icy terrain’s border.

With his current speed, if he ran nonstop, he could reach it in about four hours without the need to activate Wind Dash.

But the problem now was the fact that his head throbbed lightly from the lingering strain of astral projection.

Not to mention that his inner bank was nearly depleted right now. He wanted to hold on till it got filled up again before going on this journey.

"Yeah, no," Victor muttered aloud to himself while rubbing his temples. "I’ve done enough today. Running a hundred miles half-dead doesn’t sound like my best idea yet."

He exhaled and slumped down near a twisted statue that jutted crookedly from the cracked terrain.

The strange figure seemed humanoid at first glance but was covered in uneven grooves and strange inscriptions. Its face was both majestic and grotesque.

Victor stared at it for a long while before chuckling softly.

"What am I worrying about...? There are like hundreds of these things here. They’re totally harmless," he muttered.

"So, I’m gonna borrow your leg for a bit, big guy."

He leaned back against the statue, feeling his body scream for rest and his mind for silence.

"Just a quick nap..." he murmured with a slightly sleepy look. "Then I’ll head west. Maybe this time, I’ll find some real food."

His voice faded as exhaustion pulled him into a deep sleep.

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