Chapter 115: A Hope

The demon shot forward expanding his fangs and tried to grab Keith's mental projection. 

Keith was already fully alert and tried to activate his blood-qi techniques. To his surprise, the blood-qi techniques didn't work inside this space.

'What do I do?' Keith tried to dodge the incoming attack by jumping backward.

"Hahaha! There is nothing you can do against me here. The blood-qi technique doesn't work inside your mind. All your blood-qi is useless. You are weak if your mind is weak. 

"I've lived for thousands of years hunting vampires like you and strengthened my soul to the pinnacle. I can project my demonic instincts and call forth my primordial form. You don't even know how to bring out a tiny fraction of your vampiric instinct let alone your primordial form."

Keith couldn't dodge the attack fully and the attack struck his leg that sent him flying across the dark space. The demon followed Keith's body and appeared behind in a flash.

'This is not how I imagined my first outdoor mission, how the fuck am I going to defend against him. Am I going to die here? What can I even do... Intent?" 

In that split moment, A series of thoughts flashed inside him trying desperately to find a solution to this problem. Humans had instincts but it was just a basic defensive and fleeing response. He thought about weapons hoping that inside his mind he could manipulate reality. 

But it was totally different from his previous conceptions. This seemed like a place where you could use your instinctual or the reflexes of your body. It was tied to the genes and the information stored in them. Any outside interference was not usable as it didn't belong to genetics.

Keith didn't know that mind spaces didn't work like that. You can't just create a weapon out of nothing inside this space. What you could use, was a technique that uses your soul to strengthen itself and you could create all sorts of things from it like knives and swords.

It also required the full knowledge of the inner workings of the weapons to their exact details. If Keith wanted to implement the technique which he didn't know, he had to know the process to create a sword. The runes would arrange themselves in that manner to create the weapon.

Racking his brain to its full capacity, he thought about all the scenarios and techniques he had learned. He even remembered the lessons he had with Mr. Visit and his uncle.

The demon swung his arm once again and the claws approached Keith's body. Keith looked in despair as his sight shifted to the darkness behind. The black fog felt somewhat similar that he couldn't put his finger on.

'The dream'

He remembered that night of the orientation. A strange dream occurred that night in this exact setting. A dark space with a for everywhere and a pond where he saw a...

Hong! 

The entire space vibrated and the demon stopped its attack. He looked around to find what was causing the tremors thinking that Keith somehow found a way to manifest his instincts.

"You finally managed to manifest your instincts. Still, it can't go against my primordial form." 

The demon laughed and launched another attack at Keith.

At that moment a ray of light shot forward towards the demon who was about to hit Keith.

BZZZ! 

"Wha…"

The demon was blasted away by a huge pillar of light that heated up the surroundings so much that Keith felt his skin melt even though it was not his physical body. The dark space was illuminated for a moment by that blinding light and the next moment two glowing red eyes the size of ships appeared several hundred meters away from Keith.

"What is that?" 

He was also confused about how all of this happened. All he did was remember the dream and the pond where he saw those eyes and the same eyes appeared in front of him.

Amidst the silence that ensued after the light pillar appeared, the demon's voice was heard faintly.

"This can't be! How could such an existence be present inside of you? Soul Artifact? No, that can't be this powerful to completely annihilate me. This is real! Hahaha!" 

The demon started to lose his mind after seeing the eyes and blabbered continuously. Another pillar of light was shot that silenced the demon once and for all.

Whoosh!

The space turned pitch black again and then the silence ensued. The two large red eyes didn't disappear instead, they slowly moved forward towards Keith.

As the eyes moved closer and closer, the darkness grew thicker and fog started to circulate around him. This time he could smell it.

'Is it smoke?' Keith thought after he inhaled the fog.

It smelled like burnt wood but there was an aroma to it. A hallucination effect could be felt from the pitch-black smoke. The veil of darkness was cleared when the two eyes stopped right in front of Keith.

"Fuck! What is this monster? Is this the system's true form or what?" Keith took a step back from the majestic two eyes that were glaring right at him.

[Huh! So you are not dead after all.]

Keith heard the voice of the system inside his head. He turned around to look at the eyes but they were not moving.

"Is that you? This monster?" Keith asked.

[What are you talking about? I just sent a small part of me inside your mind. The runes appear to be collapsing, so I will be inside in a while. Is the demon dead? How were you able to break the runes from the inside..]

"Then what the hell is this?" Keith said with a serious tone.

The system was interrupted by Keith's words. As it was outside the barrier, the system couldn't see what was going on inside so it had no idea about how to answer him. The system thought it was the demon.

[Is that demon still alive?]

'No, not the demon. It's dead. Another monster popped up inside my mind and burned that demon out of existence. I don't know what this monster is, I can only see its two eyes. They are huge… I feel like an ant compared to those eyes.' Keith explained telepathically.

[Two huge eyes. Are you inside your subconscious?] The system asked cautiously.

'I don't know what this place is. But I can't change anything here. Maybe you're right. This is my subconscious. Then how did this monster invade my mind? Is this a nightmare manifestation?' 

A puff of smoke came out from the darkness right below the eyes. The pitch black smoke was covering what was behind. Only the bright glow of the eyes could be seen from the outside.

[ There are no nightmares! This place holds all your physical instincts, sealed or unsealed. The natural and primordial subconscious. I think I know what it is?]

'Is it like a genetic thing? My vampiric instinct.'

[ No, the vampiric instinct should be in your conscious mind as you are in control of the space. This is, I'm afraid of the other genes I suppressed to cure you. This is the gene of your other half and way stronger to control. This was the reason you couldn't use blood-qi and your physique was in shambles.]

'… Is it from my mother's side? What was she? Was she even stronger than my father?' 

Many questions popped up inside Keith's head as he stared at the two glowing eyes. They seem to do the same like both of them were staring at a reflection.

[Get out of there right now. That could take over your mind and you will go back to your faulty physique again. This gene is no joke. It took me a lot of effort to suppress it inside. And this has not even evolved. The existence behind it could be a god-like me.

[I felt the tremendous power within you when I tried to suppress the gene. It was resisting me and was almost equal in power. It was at a stage where you didn't have any power. There was basically no life force within you, still, it resisted me. The source was not life force, only your physical instincts. Then I realized it was way more dangerous and used all my power to suppress it. I didn't even peek inside.

[Well, I couldn't even talk to you at that time.]

'I want to know the other part of my origins.' Keith slowly walked forward.

[I;m telling you. It will consume you. You can't control its powers now. Leave.]

Keith disregarded the system's warnings and moved forward with a face full of expectation and curiosity.

[Don't blame me when it backfires.]

Keith stretched out his left hand and tried to touch the monster which was under the black smoke.

'…'

[…]

'It feels like scales. Wait! Fire… that pillar was fire shot by this monster. A..'

"Dragon?" Keith looked straight at the two eyes whose pupils turned down.

At first, he was in a state of panic and couldn't catch the details. Also, the monster was behind the dark smoke, so its entire body was hidden behind the darkness.

Now that he felt the scales that reminded him of an alligator, his thoughts ran wild to search for an appropriate monster. The most powerful mythological creature he knew that had scales was definitely a dragon. He was also considering a serpent, but then he remembered the pillar of light that obliterated the demon and his guess narrowed down to a dragon.