The Dawn of the New World



"So it's perception manipulation," Hao Xuan mused, "For now I can only change my face but the Greater Shadow Beast was not only able to hide its entire body in plain sight but even influence other things that I was seeing. And because it was basically created from my own thoughts it was THAT much harder to discover something had gone wrong."

"Let's just call it what it is then...[Umbra], a mere shadow on the wall."

He looked over at the Death Moss with a glint in his eye. Its entire stem was bubbling and barely holding together from the dozens of lesser cores, "Although it's pretty weak right now I can use the other cores to make it stronger and enhance its effects. Or I can use them to unlock other abilities of various shadow beasts."

*beep*

"Given the current circumstances, the system suggests the first option. It is unknown what kind of abilities the other cores hold and diluting the pool further would not do any good."

Hao Xuan let out a resounding sigh, "I know, that was a joke. Of course I'm only going to upgrade this one."

He quickly reached out and brushed its stem with the back of his hand, "It's okay, you can let them out now."

It understood what he meant and immediately vomited out all of the cores one by one. Hao Xuan started counting, "Five...twenty...there are forty-one total but some of them are very small. I don't know how good they will be."

He grabbed the smallest of the bunch which was the size of a young pearl and crushed it between his fingers. It popped like a bubble and all the surplus of Yin energy erupted onto his hands before being guided to the Mind Palace by the threads of Spiritual Sense.

They were directly injected into the Umbra's insignia which made it shine brightly.

"That wasn't enough but I expected that."

He picked up the second one and did the same. Then the third and fourth cores which all together were finally enough to make the magic happen.

The insignia dimmed again but this time it was a bit more pronounced.

Hao Xuan activated [Umbra] and checked for the changes with the help of [Arbiter]. At first, it was the same as before because his facial features were constantly changing in the spiritual herb's 'eyes' but when he focused on his own thoughts they suddenly solidified.

"It worked! I can control what others see when they look at me!" he rejoiced and continued experimenting a little more before realizing that wasn't exactly the case.

"Okay scratch that, rather than controlling what they see it's more along the lines of telling them. It can't be anything too outlandish so it has to conform with the target's own thoughts."

Realizing that there was quite a lot of room for improvement Hao Xuan picked up all the remaining cores and started breaking them by the handful. It only took 15 minutes to assimilate all of the Yin energy into [Umbra] and by the end its design had seen significant changes.

Hao Xuan entered the Mind Palace to see it firsthand. Not only was the insignia much more complex but almost every little detail could be made out as if it was handcrafted.

'Let's try this again...'

He reached out and touched the insignia to activate it. It came to life with an array of different colors that shot straight into his eyes.

"ARGH!"

He screamed from the burning sensation that could be felt even in his physical form. Hao Xuan quickly exited the Mind Palace to see what was going on.

*beep*

"Minor physical transformation detected."

"You sure it's minor? Because I feel like my eyes are burning!" he mumbled through gritted teeth.

With a flick of the wrist the hammer appeared in front of him. Bringing it closer, he used its glossy metal surface to see what was happening.

From an initial glance nothing could be made out but when [Umbra] was activated the corneas of both eyes began to rip and split open forcing him to turn away from the intense pain while gritting his teeth.

His eyes began to water and after ten seconds the pain slowly subsided.

Hao Xuan took a few deep breaths before checking his eyes again. There was an X-shaped pattern created from the corneas being cut into 4 equal parts.

He willed and the ability was canceled. Following that, the pattern also vanished and his eyes returned to normal.

"So...this one is more like the ability I got from the Puer. It manifested a physical transformation in almost the exact way, only this one is in my eyes. At least...it doesn't look too bad."

He stored the hammer away and activated [Arbiter] first to see everything from the perspective of the Death Moss before activating [Umbra].