Faded Painter

"Still the same..." Klein frowned and withdrew his spirituality.

Behind the Crimson Star, the white mist showed no sign of dissipating. Unlike the grayish-white mist surrounding it, this mist was pure white. When his spirituality touched it, Klein could feel an icy aura winding its way toward him, only to be blocked by the gray fog.

That convinced Klein that it had indeed been brought here by the subject of his divination back then. It might not be dangerous, but he thought something had definitely happened to his fellow transmigrator.

Was she trapped? Was there some danger on her end that kept her from coming out?

Although Klein was worried, there was still nothing he could do. He could only turn to other matters for now and keep waiting.

Neph was examining the potion before her.

The Faded Painter potion had a texture like the oil paints Neph remembered. It was grayish-white and looked somewhat murky. From the right angle, she could see fleeting specks of iridescent light within it.

Neph reached out to touch it, but instead of swiftly merging into her body as before, the potion settled on her hand. She paused, then frowned and carefully sensed it, realizing that it was still slowly seeping into her.

She had no intention of waiting. Under the effects of aggregation of extraordinary characteristics, the potion had taken the shape of a sphere. Neph stuffed the ball of liquid into her mouth in one go. In that instant, she felt that not only did it look like oil paint, it tasted a little like it too.

Fortunately, the potion was not quite like traditional Chinese medicine; its taste did not linger in her mouth. It quickly merged into her body, and Neph felt her spirituality rising as though it were about to leave her body.

She was not sure where her spirituality had stopped. All she could see was a scene from above: herself standing in a land of pure white snow, where every boundary had blurred like oil paint on a canvas.

Neph saw her hair. Its beautiful, long black strands had lost their original color and turned a rather dark gray-a shade slightly darker than the granny gray she remembered.

She also saw her eyes. At some point, they had ceased to be pure black, taking on a faint hint of blue that made them blue-black. After a moment's distraction, Neph noticed that their color seemed to have changed again, becoming black tinged with green.

They could... change color?

Neph grew a little confused, but she soon had no room to dwell on it. Aside from her eyes, the rest of her body was fading too. Color drained endlessly from her, and she was gradually becoming transparent.

For an instant, Neph felt as though she saw a beautiful, lifelike ice sculpture. Then it shattered, turning to dust along with the person who should have been inside it.

I have to get back right now, or I'll end up like that!

As that realization surfaced in her mind, Neph's expression changed. She hurriedly tried to focus, making her spirituality sink back into her body. Fortunately, it worked. Neph felt herself drop sharply, then fall back into her body.

As Neph regained control of her body, some of the lost color seemed to return. Once her advancement was complete, she moved her body a little, then reached out and pulled her braid into view.

"So it really did fade..." Neph released her hair, looking thoughtful. "At this rate, won't my hair end up fading to white...? And my eyes... why does that color look a little like the legendary, colorful black...?"

Neph lowered her hand and checked the Faded Painter's abilities. One was something she had long been anticipating: adjusting the strength of her presence to make herself more conspicuous or relatively unnoticeable. The chill she had been unable to turn off at Sequence 7 was also included in her presence-as part of the whole, not something she could adjust separately.

At Sequence 6, this ability could not actually make someone disappear from other people's sight. But Neph thought she might have a chance to try it. Her presence was not particularly strong to begin with; if she lowered it further, it should be no different from invisibility.

Death Perception had also undergone a corresponding change at this stage. Predicting death no longer depended on the strength of someone's life force, but on a premonition. That premonition was extremely vague and easily misinterpreted, though it worked a little better when its subject was herself.

Correspondingly, Neph could actively accelerate that process, though the effect was very slight-unless the subject was herself.

...Wait, isn't that suicide?

Neph shuddered. The special spirit vision she had used several times before also belonged to this stage. In addition, the Faded Painter could directly observe other people's memories, although each use revealed only a few fragments and required the subject to retain some impression of the relevant memories. The observation process was also easily detected, and could expose her to corruption from those memories.

Paired with this ability was the Faded Painter's power to blur the fragments she observed, making the other person temporarily forget the corresponding memories.

After briefly familiarizing herself with her abilities, Neph turned her attention to the Blank Canvas. While sorting through her abilities, one thing had particularly caught her attention: when she tried to adjust her own presence, she discovered that the Blank Canvas was included within the scope of "herself," even when she was not holding it.

After a brief hesitation, Neph stepped forward and picked up the Blank Canvas. Her spirituality spread outward, enveloping it. Its "presence" within the Pure White Space faded little by little until it disappeared.

Nothing seemed to have happened, yet Neph sensed something. Her spirituality reached into the depths of her mind, toward the faint but impossible-to-ignore anomaly that had just appeared. Then she saw seven pure lights that seemed to hold countless pieces of knowledge, and densely packed figures whose forms defied description. She saw them spread across the heights, covering everything.

This was the sky of spirituality, the reflection of the Spirit World on the mental plane!

Despite her lack of experience, Neph recognized it all immediately. Her attention shifted downward, where a deep, dark sea lay. Each drop of water was like a trace of light and shadow, as though it represented a fragment of consciousness, an imprint.

This was a mind island... Neph's heart skipped a beat. She looked toward her own island. Beneath the water's surface, instead of the gray haze that should have been there, she found pure white.

That expanse of white was precisely the faint but impossible-to-ignore anomaly that had appeared after the Blank Canvas vanished!

Neph instinctively extended her spirituality toward it, but the formless white barred even her, its nominal owner. She could only settle her consciousness on her mind island for the time being. Here, there was a better point of contact.

-it was a pure white door, inconspicuous yet impossible to ignore.

"So..." Neph placed her hand in the Mind World against the door in the Mind World, feeling that familiar chill. "This is the form in which you truly exist."