Taking a potion and advancing amid tens of thousands of people was an experience Audrey had never had before. This was also the most important ritual of all—advancing from an ordinary Beyonder to a demigod. Even though she had long prepared herself mentally, the sudden sensation of weightlessness left her a little panicked.
Fortunately, she soon realized that this abnormality came from abruptly entering the Sea of Collective Subconscious. Amid the intense, resonating emotions of the surrounding crowd, she stabilized her condition and understood the ritual's purpose:
It used collective, shared, extreme emotions to help a Manipulator who had just taken the potion and become lost in the Sea of Collective Subconscious recover their sense of self, preventing them from being utterly overwhelmed by the mental imprints left behind by countless human ancestors and losing control.
Amid repeated chants of "The only destination is peace," Audrey used layers of Placate to purge the mental corruption she had picked up while lost. She swiftly returned to her best condition and gradually adapted to the perceptible expansion of her subconscious perception after becoming a demigod.
She discovered that she could split off more "Audreys" at will, allowing these virtual personas to enter different people's Mind Islands simultaneously and easily perceive the sources of their sorrow.
This was clearly a power Audrey had not possessed as a Dreamwalker. It allowed a Manipulator to modify and manipulate multiple people's subconscious minds at once in combat, as well as use different "persona masks" to resist other Beyonders' influence over their own mental domain, and even attack the intruders in return.
There was also an incomplete mythical creature form with fewer restrictions and less risk of losing control than those of other pathways—the Mind Dragon—as well as Beyonder abilities such as Mental Plague and Mind Deprivation...