The moment the iridescent liquid slid down his throat, Ademisaul's world shattered.
It wasn't a violent explosion, but a silent, inexorable implosion. The boundary between his physical body and his spirit dissolved into a chaotic swirl of colors and sensations. An icy current, sharp and biting, surged from his stomach, spreading through every vein and capillary, as if trying to freeze him from the inside out. Immediately following it was a wave of searing heat, a molten tide that threatened to boil his very marrow. The violent clash of hot and cold sent excruciating waves of pain racking his frail body, forcing a choked gasp from his lips.
His mind, his consciousness, was no longer anchored to his physical form. It was cast adrift into a vast, illusory river teeming with shimmering, translucent figures and whispering voices. The whispers were a cacophony of gibberish, a torrent of nonsensical syllables that clawed at his sanity, trying to drag him under into a state of pure, instinctual madness. Fragments of images, disjointed and fleeting, flashed through his perception: a fish with seven eyes leaping from a silver stream, a four-leaf clover wilting into black dust, a pair of dice tumbling endlessly, never landing.
He felt his spirit being torn apart and reassembled, piece by agonizing piece. The memories of Brian Yun, the sophomore Physics major, the meticulous Wiki Fandom Moderator, clashed violently with the nascent instincts of Ademisaul, the cursed boy, the Monster. The rational world of calculus and sociology collided with a reality governed by cryptic pathways and divine powers. For a terrifying moment, he feared he would lose himself entirely, becoming nothing more than a vessel for the potion's chaotic power, a true monster devoid of reason.
Then, just as the whispers reached a crescendo and the pain threatened to shatter his will, a profound calm descended. The illusory river receded, the chaotic images faded, and the agonizing clash of hot and cold subsided into a gentle, circulating warmth. His consciousness settled back into his body, finding it both familiar and fundamentally changed.
Ademisaul opened his eyes, his breath coming in ragged pants. The decrepit room was the same, yet entirely different. The world felt… louder. Not in terms of sound, but in a way that transcended the five senses. He could feel the lingering resentment in the rotting floorboards, the silent sorrow of the cracked and peeling walls, the faint, almost imperceptible hum of spiritual energy that permeated everything. His Spirituality had undergone a qualitative leap.
High Spiritual Perception and Spiritual Intuition… The knowledge surfaced in his mind, clear and concise, a direct download from the digested potion.
He tentatively activated his Spirit Vision.
The world erupted in a vibrant tapestry of colors. His own body was enveloped in a faint, ethereal aura, a blend of pale gray representing his health and a swirling, chaotic mix of darker hues that he intuitively understood as the manifestation of his curse. The wooden table before him had a dull, lifeless yellow glow, but the ceramic bowl, now empty, pulsed with a faint, residual light, a phantom of the iridescent aurora it had once contained. He could see the emotions of the world around him, not as abstract concepts, but as tangible, visible phenomena.
Then came the whispers. They were still there, at the very edge of his hearing, a constant stream of gibberish. "Fhtagn… n'ghft… cthulhu…" No, that wasn't right. His brain, conditioned by years of consuming cosmic horror fiction, was trying to impose order on the chaos. The actual sounds were more abstract, a series of clicks, whistles, and guttural phonemes that held no meaning in any language he knew. Yet, buried within the nonsensical stream, he could discern faint, almost imperceptible threads of meaning. A sense of impending danger, a flicker of opportunity, a vague premonition of an event yet to come. It was like trying to decipher a complex equation with half the variables missing. Those who learned to decipher these enigmatic words gain unique advantages… This must be what they meant by becoming a "Monster."
He focused his gaze on the rickety wooden chair in the corner of the room. As he did, a fleeting image flashed through his mind: the chair collapsing under an unseen weight, its legs splintering into sharp, dangerous shards. A split second later, a faint creak echoed through the silent room as the chair settled, a loose joint groaning in protest.
Foresight… and Danger Premonition. His spiritual intuition screamed at him that sitting on that chair would be a very, very bad idea. It wouldn't just break; it would break in a way that would cause maximum injury. That was the essence of his curse, now amplified and intertwined with his Beyonder abilities.
He let out a shaky laugh, a sound that was half relief, half hysteria. He had survived. He was a Sequence 9 Beyonder. A Monster.
The full weight of his situation crashed down on him. Brian Yun, an Asian-American Physics major with a minor in Sociology, a sophomore at a decent university, was gone. He had spent countless hours moderating the Lord of Mysteries wiki, debating the intricacies of the pathways, the powers of the Sefirot, the motivations of the Outer Deities. He had treated it as a complex, fascinating system, a work of fiction to be analyzed and cataloged. Now, that fiction was his reality. The theoretical knowledge he had amassed was his only lifeline.
He felt a familiar warmth spreading from his stomach, a sign that the potion was continuing to digest. He instinctively knew, with the certainty of a wiki moderator recalling a specific entry, that his calm, analytical approach to testing his new abilities was a form of "acting." By embodying the rational, observant nature that was second nature to him as Brian, he was aligning himself with the core principles of his new sequence, accelerating the digestion process. He had to be careful. Digesting the potion too quickly, without fully understanding its implications, could be just as dangerous as losing control during the advancement. He needed to ground himself, to find his place in this new, terrifying world.
His eyes scanned the squalid room, finally landing on a faded, yellowed calendar hanging crookedly on the wall. He walked over to it, his movements still feeling slightly disconnected, as if he were piloting a body that wasn't entirely his own. The calendar was simple, a cheap print with illustrations of pastoral Loen Kingdom landscapes for each month.
The current month was marked as "October." He traced a finger down the column of dates until he found the one that was circled in faded red ink.
October 18, 1348.
Ademisaul's breath hitched. A cold dread, far more chilling than the potion's initial effects, washed over him. 1348… Seven months. He had seven months until Zhou Mingrui, the man who would become Klein Moretti, the protagonist of the story he knew so well, arrived in this world. Seven months until the Great Smog of Backlund, seven months until the gears of the grand, cosmic plot truly began to turn.
He was in the deep past of the story, a time of relative peace before the storm. But peace in this world was a fragile, fleeting thing. And he was a Monster, a walking catalyst for disaster.
A faint, crimson glow from the window drew his attention. He walked over and peered outside. The city below—he didn't even know its name—was a dark, sprawling labyrinth, its gas lamps flickering like captured stars. Above, in the inky blackness of the night sky, hung the Crimson Moon.
It was larger than the moon he remembered, its surface a swirling canvas of unsettling, blood-red patterns. It wasn't a celestial body of rock and dust; it was a living, breathing entity, a prison, a seal. He could feel it with his newfound spiritual perception, a faint, almost imperceptible aura of madness and depravity radiating from it, a constant, low-level hum that whispered of unspeakable things. The Mother Goddess of Depravity. The thought, a piece of trivia from a long-forgotten wiki page, now felt like a terrifying, personal truth.
He shuddered, a tremor that ran through his entire body. This was real. The Outer Deities were real. The madness was real.
He quickly, almost violently, slammed the wooden shutters closed, plunging the room into near-total darkness. The faint, crimson glow was gone, but he could still feel its presence, a lingering stain on the back of his eyelids.
He stumbled to the lumpy, straw-filled mattress that served as his bed and collapsed onto it. The exhaustion, both physical and mental, was overwhelming. The events of the past few hours—the transmigration, the encounter with the Golden Buddha, the agonizing process of becoming a Beyonder—had pushed him to his absolute limit.
He was Ademisaul. He was Brian Yun. He was a Monster. He was a Beyonder. And he was utterly, completely alone in a world that was far more dangerous than he had ever imagined.
He closed his eyes, the whispers of his new sequence and the faint, maddening hum of the Crimson Moon echoing in the darkness of his mind. Sleep, he hoped, would offer a temporary reprieve. But he knew, with the chilling certainty of his new premonitions, that there would be no true rest for him, not anymore.