Alternate Tuning was a very strange experience.
When he used Alternate Tuning with the Nether Devil, Ash felt as if he had been set down on a storm-tossed sea beneath dark clouds and lashing rain, drifting with the waves, sinking and rising, so miserable it was like being a Doll thrown into a tumble washing machine.
When he used Alternate Tuning with the Mirror Demon, Ash felt as if he had sunk into a quiet ocean. Outside, he could not tell whether moonlight or sunlight was shining down into the sea. The light took on a soft shape, gently covering Ash, and in that tender embrace, Ash sank little by little, letting himself fall toward the pitch-black seabed.
But Ash never lost consciousness from beginning to end, and he clearly knew what his "real body" was doing in reality. It was like having a lucid dream. He could not change the direction of the dream, could not interfere with his own actions—there was not even the thought of "interfering." His thinking speed dropped to Lala Fat levels, and he could only record the whole process of selling himself like a camera.
So this time, he was not startled awake by his own brutality. He was choked awake by the turbid currents of the deep sea.
Darkness lay above, below, and all around him, without a single ray of light seeping in. He could not even tell which way was up and which way was down. Undercurrents wrapped in silt slapped him back and forth. He felt as if he had fallen into the deepest trench, a place abandoned by the entire world, where even the fiercest light could not reach, where even the hardiest life could not survive. Aside from the seabed mudstone left behind by volcanic eruptions, there was