The raider ship carved a lonely path through the darkness of space, its thrusters glowing faintly blue as it hurtled toward the Magus Alliance outpost. Inside, the stale tallic air buzzed with tension.
Ery sat in the rear chamber, cross-legged in a lotus position. His breathing was steady, his eyes closed, his spirit sinking into the depths of ditation.
At the front, the scar-faced raider who piloted the vessel sweated rivers. His scar, jagged across his left cheek, twitched every ti his eyes flicked nervously at the sensors. For him, this was a nightmare. The Alliance outpost wasn’t just a destination—it was a death sentence. n like him, outlaws who lived off plunder, would be executed on sight.
For hours, his mind had raced in circles. Should he risk a desperate escape? Or should he throw himself on the rcy of the Alliance and hope for leniency? Neither choice promised survival.
Just then, a ragged cough split the silence. It ca from the rear chamber.
The raider stiffened. He hesitated as he abandoned the cockpit and crept toward the chamber. What he found made his heart race.
Blood stained the floor. The cloaked man—this "Senior" who had subdued his entire crew without lifting a finger—was hunched forward, panting. His aura flickered faintly, unstable.
"Senior... are you all right?" the raider asked, feigning concern as he inched closer.
Ery’s pale lips parted, and with another cough, a dark stream of congealed blood splattered onto the floor. The air thickened with the sharp tang of iron. This wasn’t ordinary blood—it carried traces of chaotic energy, remnants of the monstrous creature he had escaped from.
The raider’s eyes glead with sudden, dangerous resolve. Slowly, his hand slid to his waist, where a high-grade plasma pistol rested. If he struck now, he could end it.
But before his fingers brushed the weapon’s grip, the room darkened.
A shadow slithered across the walls, coalescing into a towering figure behind him. A curved blade—long, wicked, and black as midnight. A scythe pressed against his neck. Cold dread paralyzed him.
"...What do you think you’re doing?" The voice was female, cold as death.
The raider’s throat bobbed. His eyes darted sideways and widened. Standing there was a young woman—or at least, she looked like one. Her form was slender, her skin pale, and her long, black hair fell like a waterfall, with horns spiralled on each side; her eyes glimred with a cruel light.
A suffocating aura pressed down, heavy as a mountain.
From the raider’s grip, the plasma pistol slipped free and clattered to the floor. His lips trembled, but before a plea could escape, the scythe swept.
The world spun. His body crumpled. His head rolled across the cold tal floor.
With a sneer, the young-looking horned woman lowered her blade. "What a lowlife... That’s for daring to threaten my master."
She was Livi—the Baphot. She had been assigned a task—guarding Ery while he recovered in ditation.
Ery opened his eyes. The faint golden ring of spiritual light that had hovered around him slowly receded as he exhaled. His gaze imdiately shifted toward the limp figure of the raider lying sprawled against the cold floor, a frown creasing his pale face.
Taking the raider alive had been more than just sparing himself the inconvenience of piloting the vessel. No—Ery’s intention had been deliberate. To drain every piece of knowledge the raider possessed.
The miners he had previously stayed with had known little. But this raider... his mories should be useful—a history Ery sorely lacked after being absent for two decades.
But Livi had acted too quickly.
She didn’t need to ruthlessly kill him—at least, not without his permission.
Then it happened.
A faint, flickering soul erged from the raider’s lifeless body. For a simple Crescent Moon magus to form a soul was rare—a one-in-ten chance—and the raider had drawn the winning lot.
Or maybe not.
The faint spectral silhouette took shape, quivering in confusion and fear as Livi was ready to erase his existence. But Ery intervened. With a re wave of his hand, the fragile soul was pulled into his domain, vanishing in an instant.
Ery turned to Livi and scolded her, ordering her to take responsibility and clean up the ss. Begrudgingly, she set the raider’s corpse afla until it crumbled into dust, then stepped toward the cockpit to stand watch over the ship in the raider’s place. The Baphot sulked as she followed Ery’s command. Of course, Ery would never allow her to actually operate the ship; the console was left in VIA’s control.
Watching her behavior, Ery couldn’t help but shake his head. There was sothing undeniably unique about her. It was rare enough for her to gain a human tamorphosis so early in her realm, but with Livi, the stronger she grew, the younger her body appeared, and her personality turned more childlike. Over the last ten years, she had continued to advance, now standing at the peak of a level seven godly beast—comparable to a peak One-Cosmos Grand Magus.
With that taken care of, Ery returned to his ditation, retreating inward, sinking into the depths of his domain.
This ti, his steps carried him to one of the darker halls—the chamber of pestilence, where one of the Khaos guardians resided. The heavy air reeked faintly of toxins and decay, yet it thrumd with power, the sort of energy that corroded the weak and refined the strong.
At the center of the chamber stood Cthulhu, the towering Khaos guardian, its massive, twisted fra curled protectively around a pulsating cocoon that radiated heat and venom, a dangerous mixture of toxins and flas. Inside lay a woman with flowing red hair, her face serene, eyes closed as if in deep sleep.
"How is she doing?" Ery’s voice was low, carrying both worry and hope.
Cthulhu let out a guttural rumble that echoed through the chamber, the sound vibrating against the walls before forming into words. "She is resilient. She endures. The final phase of her evolution approaches."
Ery approached carefully, his hand brushing against the surface of the cocoon. He whispered words of encouragent ant only for her.
mories flickered through his mind—how Morgana had spent years tempering her body with poisons and flas, pushing herself through agony for strength. During their desperate attempt to escape the beast’s belly, her body had undergone a violent reaction: blood boiling, purifying her genes. Since that mont, she had remained in this cocoon, undergoing a transformation under Cthulhu’s watchful eye.
While Ery’s hand lingered upon the cocoon, a ripple of soul energy flickered at the edge of his perception. Then, two small figures erged—no taller than his palm, their forms luminous and ethereal.
Childlike in stature, yet humanoid in shape, they floated effortlessly in the chamber, their expressions alive with awareness. Anyone witnessing them for the first ti would have been struck speechless—not just because of their uncanny presence, but because they both bore Ery’s own face.
The resemblance was unmistakable. Yet they were not identical. One had hair as dark as shadow, eyes gleaming with mischievous sharpness; the other’s hair was white as moonlight, his gaze calm and steady, almost serene.
The pale one spoke first, his voice like a soft echo inside Ery’s mind.
"Don’t worry... She isn’t in any danger. Her strength is carrying her through."
"Hah!" the dark-haired counterpart scoffed, folding his tiny arms. "What do you know? This is clearly Khaos energy at work—I understand it better than you ever could." He turned to Ery with a smirk, but despite his mocking tone, his words carried reassurance. "Still... she’s fine. Give her a few months and she’ll break through stronger than ever."
Ery allowed himself the faintest of smiles at their bickering.
These two were souls born of the violent rging between his light and dark selves during his breakthrough to the second cosmos. The Magus universe calls such manifestations Avatar Souls.
Each possessed its own consciousness, distinct and independent, but lacked the soul core. They were fragnts capable of thought, growth, and will.
Avatar souls were not unheard of. In fact, several known Supre Magus had deliberately forged them, crafting avatars to act as extensions of themselves. So had risen to greatness thanks to these counterparts, but there were also whispered tales of tragedy—of avatars rebelling, turning against their origin, and shattering the master soul. Free will, after all, was a double-edged sword.
For Ery, however, they had been invaluable. Without them, he would never have mastered the Khaos Convergence technique, nor would he have escaped the abyssal belly of the beast. Their existence had been the difference between survival and annihilation.
The greatest advantage they offered lay in their division of strength. Each avatar specialized in one half of his dual comprehension. The white-haired soul embodied the clarity of light, while the dark-haired counterpart delved into shadow. Through them, both paths could be explored simultaneously, their insights feeding directly back into the primary soul. Ery could ditate on cosmic laws while his avatars unraveled the mysteries of their respective domains. It was a symbiotic bond that pushed his understanding forward faster than he had ever dread possible.
After confirming Morgana’s stable condition, Ery summoned another presence into the chamber—the newly captured soul of the raider. A faint, pitiful wisp of spirit erged, trembling under the weight of his gaze. Without hesitation, Ery began probing, peeling back its mories in search of knowledge.
Ti bled away in silence. Days passed as Ery alternated between ditation and monitoring Morgana’s evolution. The two avatars flitted about the chamber, sotis bickering, sotis assisting in their own strange way. Everything seed to flow smoothly.
Until VIA’s voice resonated in his mind.
[Warning. A fleet is approaching]
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