Translator: CinderTL
When Roland became an enchanter and received a substantial boost to his mental attribute, he sensed a thin yet remarkably resilient barrier deep within his consciousness.
Combining this with the information in his mind, he formed a hypothesis:
The awakening of the Consciousness Shoal had been successful due to the mental attribute enhancement provided by the Spirit Summoning Potion.
This suggested that awakening the Consciousness Shoal didn't require a special ritual; it seemed to activate naturally once the mental attribute reached a critical threshold.
So, what about the Deep Sea of Consciousness, which belonged to the same spiritual hierarchy as the Consciousness Shoal?
Did its awakening conditions follow the same principle?
Did it simply require the mental attribute to surpass an even higher threshold?
At that moment, Roland received his answer.
Falling.
The instant his consciousness touched the invisible barrier and finally pierced through it, this was the only clear sensation.
It felt like plummeting from a dizzying height into a lightless abyss, a profound sense of weightlessness seizing the very core of his soul.
The surreal landscape of the Consciousness Shoal—its boundless beach of shimmering sand and the glimmering shallows—vanished instantly.
In its place came a suffocating darkness.
But this was no void.
This was a tangible heaviness, a viscous silence.
Roland felt himself sinking into a bottomless sea.
The icy water contained unimaginable power, crushing him from all sides as if trying to grind his consciousness into its most primal particles.
Every inch of his perception endured the crushing force of a thousand-ton vise. Each wave of thought became agonizingly labored, like wading through thick, liquid mercury.
The horizon was no longer the blurred, shimmering boundary of the Consciousness Shoal.
Here, there was no light.
Only when his consciousness sank to an indescribable depth would faint, abyssal glimmers occasionally flicker at the edges of his vision.
But these glimmers didn't illuminate; instead, they resembled the pupils of colossal abyssal beasts, accentuating the surrounding darkness.
The light twisted into unnatural geometric patterns, outlining the colossal, despair-inducing shadows of the seabed below.
This was no mere sand. It was something far more ancient, frigid, and skeletal—composed of solidified darkness and the sediment of forgotten spirits.
If the Consciousness Shoal had felt like the relatively "warm" domain where the surface-level activity of the mind intertwined with shallow memories...
To Roland, the Deep Sea of Consciousness felt more like a spiritual graveyard—a place where countless fragments of will, forgotten, suppressed, and worn down by time until only their most resilient cores remained, lay dormant.
It was the deepest lair of instinct and intuition, the bedrock of the soul, forged from the most unyielding essence that had settled after eons of spiritual erosion.
Each "breath" felt like swallowing shards of frozen metal.
Each "perception" was like touching ice frozen billions of years ago.
There was none of the bustling light and shadow of the Consciousness Shoal, none of the shifting, mutable sands. Here, only the soul-shaking depth and crushing weight prevailed.
In this realm, the concept of time blurred, and the sense of space warped beyond recognition.
Only the omnipresent, suffocating pressure and the low, grinding whispers forcibly awakened from the depths of consciousness—like ancient metal scraping against itself—proved the reality of this abyssal sea.
"The Deep Sea of Consciousness..."
Surveying the nearly boundless darkness around him, Roland raised an eyebrow.
"It's somewhat different from what I imagined, but..."
Recalling the scene of sketching the Fire Arrow rune in the Consciousness Shoal, he concentrated his mental power at his fingertips.
Though Roland currently lacked knowledge of the rune patterns for Ring-tier spells, the moment his mental power touched the darkness of the Deep Sea of Consciousness, he sensed the possibility of inscribing spell runes.
Feeling the peculiar vibrations emanating from his fingertip, Roland's lips curled into a faint smile.
"So it seems... I now possess the ability to cast Ring-tier spells, but..."
As the oppressive sensation intensified from all directions, growing steadily stronger, Roland's brow furrowed slightly.
"Inscribing spell runes here will likely be far more challenging than inscribing Trick Runes in the Consciousness Shoal."
With this thought, Roland took a deep breath.
His mind raced as his consciousness once again pierced the dark tunnel, returning to reality.
The surrounding scene was identical to when he had left, not even a grain of sand beside his foot had shifted, proving that everything had transpired in an instant.
"The sudden surge in my mental attribute must be related to absorbing the High Tower magic back then. Right..."
Recalling the two opposing forces that had intertwined within him when he channeled the High Tower magic, Roland retrieved the ring Van Buren had gifted him from his pouch.
Whether it was his imagination or not, the silvery light emanating from the Round Ring seemed to have dimmed slightly.
"Those two forces must have been Shar and Selune," Roland mused. "So..."
After scrutinizing the ring for a moment and finding nothing amiss, Roland clasped it in his palm.
"Could Shar have been trying to drag me into the abyss of death, and Selune intervened to help? But I'm not even her follower..."
The thought sent a chill down Roland's spine.
Yet after a moment, the eerie sensation of being watched by a higher power—the same feeling he'd experienced during his negotiations with the Pixie Queen—failed to materialize.
Shaking his head lightly, Roland banished his speculations about the two goddesses and stretched his body.
As his joints popped and cracked, he replayed the earlier battle in his mind, sinking into deep contemplation.
"While the attribute bonuses and various traits granted by my Job Panel are incredibly powerful, they mostly manifest as unilateral enhancements to my strength."
"Compared to other formidable transcendent professionals, my physical prowess is certainly respectable, but my offensive techniques remain limited."
"So far, in close combat, my Ultimate Strike still relies heavily on Momentum Slash. Perhaps..."
Recalling Graham's earlier promise, Roland pondered as he walked back along the path he had come by.
"Could I ask Graham to teach me some combat techniques? And what was that Dragon Transformation he displayed when fighting the Lich? Does he also have the blood of giant dragons flowing through his veins?"
With this thought, Roland glanced at the text on his Job Panel.
[Human + Dragon Race]
[Current Bloodline Fusion: 76%]
"The repeated battles using the breathing technique have steadily increased my bloodline fusion. I should be close to advancing to the dragonborn class."
"Perhaps I can subtly inquire about this later. I might even uncover something unexpected."
As he was deep in thought, the Job Panel, which had been silent, suddenly reappeared without warning.
Accompanying it was a line of subtitles stained with the colors of blood and fire:
[The path of the knight has been forged within your flesh and soul.]
[Yet every knight who raises a blade, vowing to protect or conquer, must anchor their faith in a higher power. This is the source of strength, the foundation of will, and the path to deeper, greater power.]
[Examine your path, choose your banner.]
[Faith will infuse you with strength and pave your way forward.]
[Faith: None]
[Currently Available Faith Directions: None]
(End of the Chapter)
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