Yellow sand billowed, and the air burned. This deadly wasteland held no trace of life, yet an afterimage flashed past, crossing dune after dune at an imperceptible speed. If not for the shifting air currents and the light bending around the figure, no one would have noticed her passing.
She moved too fast for the naked eye to distinguish. Only when the figure stopped before a dune did her appearance become visible.
Her eyes were icy, and even her peerless beauty could not conceal the freezing aura she exuded.
Beneath robes shimmering with the light of witchcraft, a pair of slender hands held an ice staff.
Even the desert heat, hot enough to boil an egg, seemed to fear this peerless witch's chill, retreating three feet around her and not daring to approach.
The wizard stood beside the dune with her brows tightly furrowed, her emotionless eyes fixed on it, as though she could see the stick-thin, desiccated corpse beneath it.
Whatever she was thinking, she raised her staff, lowered it, then raised it again. After repeating this several times, she finally lowered it firmly, then vanished from before the dune.
She left so quickly that it seemed she had never come.
In the dark world, a faint point of light still burned tenaciously, and the murmuring voice continued asking and answering its own questions.
Although he had forgotten his identity and many other things, he had never stopped thinking.
"A cell is a life too, isn't it? Why wouldn't it evolve on its own?"
"It should, right? If it does, what choice should it make when faced with a predicament?"
"Sacrifice itself for the other cells, or wait to die together?"
As more and more questions arose, the faint point of light gradually brightened, as though a new, growing life were about to be born.
Finally, the brightening point of light instantly became a sun, releasing light and driving the darkness from the entire world.
When the darkness disappeared, the voice suddenly grew excited.
"I remember now. I'm Leo. I'm from Earth, and I'm also a Wizard Apprentice in the Wizard World. I'm in the desert, using the harsh environment to push my physical limits."
"Then what's going on with this dark space?"
"Is it my consciousness space?"
"Benji, are you there?"
No one answered within the space. Only the rising sun illuminated it with its light.
There was no one in the entire space, no sense of direction, and nothing else at all. It seemed to be a space of nothingness, containing nothing except Leo's own consciousness.
Leo could not even see where the space ended. It seemed to be a world that existed only within his consciousness, infinite in scale. However vast his consciousness was, that was how vast the world would be.
Length, width, height, time, and space were all infinite here. Or rather, explaining this world through data had become meaningless.
"This should be my subconscious space, at the very bottom of my consciousness. If I have to explain it through data, it's a world formed from brain cells that have never been used."
"So my current state is like waking up within a dream?"
Leo murmured. This seemed to be the only explanation for his current state. Although there was no data to verify whether this conjecture was true, Leo was confident that it was almost certainly the truth.
Leo tried to wake himself up and escape his current state, but he could not do it at all. He was merely a consciousness and could do nothing but think.
Floating in the space without any reference points, Leo could not even determine whether he had moved.
Leo did not panic. He quickly calmed down and thought. The most likely reason he could not leave this consciousness space was that his body had reached its limits and separated from his consciousness. In Earth's terms, his soul had left his body. In this state, he was only half a step from death.
"Even if my consciousness has separated from my body, as long as my consciousness is strong enough, I can still influence my physical body."
"The human body is the most complex structure, especially with the existence of will. Forget Earth's technology-even the Wizard World hasn't completely figured it out. The instinct to survive can make the body unleash unparalleled power."
"This works much like the adrenaline I was thinking about earlier."
"If I follow this line of reasoning, my body should have instinctively acted to survive before my consciousness recovered."
"As long as I follow my instincts and yield to my body's will to survive, I can gain a chance at survival."
Leo's thoughts were exceptionally clear. He immediately recalled what his consciousness had instinctively said earlier: "What are cells?" "Cells are lives too, aren't they?" "Since they're alive, shouldn't they long to survive?"
"So while I was unconscious, my body's instincts should have prompted my cells to evolve, passively responding to the current environment."
"If there's not enough energy, reduce energy consumption. If the ambient temperature is too high, evolve cells that can withstand high temperatures."
"Like cacti, which live year-round in dry deserts with little rain and evolved their leaves into spines to reduce water evaporation. And desert animals evolved their skin into shells and eliminated their pores, all to adapt to their environment."
"I need to evolve like that now, too. The evolutionary process of normal life takes hundreds of thousands of years, changing little by little. But on the verge of death, the power a life unleashes can often accelerate evolution. What I need to do now is direct the evolutionary process."
Leo instantly sorted out his thoughts. Next came how to put them into practice.
"Since there isn't enough energy to wake my body, I can only look for energy internally or externally. External sources are impossible. There are potions in the Shadow Space, but I can't get them out, and no one will come to save me. That leaves only internal sources."
"My mana must be exhausted. Otherwise, my body should have used it on its own as it was collapsing. So all I can use now is my physical body alone."
"My mana is gone, and the energy contained in my body must be gone too. My shadow abilities require active activation. That means I have nothing except a body that's about to be roasted to a crisp. So I can only sacrifice some cells to release energy, shedding my tail to survive."
After a bout of frantic thought, Leo immediately came up with a solution: voluntarily give up some cells and some bodily functions, preserving only the organs and conditions necessary for survival, in an effort to activate his body.
As long as his body was activated, Leo could replenish his energy from the Shadow Space and come back to life!
"Brain, brain, tell the body to consume every body part it can discard. Keep only the most basic organs needed for survival."
Nothing changed in the space. Leo knew that a single instruction from his consciousness was not enough to make his body undertake such an enormous sacrifice.
"Brain, brain, tell the body to consume every body part it can discard. Keep only the most basic organs needed for survival."
Leo repeated this instruction endlessly, gradually influencing his body to adopt this extreme method of survival.
Fortunately, there was no concept of time in the consciousness space. Leo said it hundreds of thousands of times, yet perhaps only an instant had passed in reality.
Only such a powerful consciousness had any chance of stimulating his body.
After an unknown number of repetitions, the space finally reacted. A rumbling sound resounded as though the world were being destroyed, and an immense suction appeared out of nowhere, instantly sucking away Leo's consciousness.
Leo's consciousness smiled, because he knew he had succeeded!
"Ngh."
The desiccated body buried beneath the sand gave a muffled grunt. He wanted to breathe, but all that came in was sand.
The discomfort was unbearable, but Leo dared not breathe. He did not even dare open his eyes.
The instant his consciousness returned to his body, he realized his predicament. He had been buried in sand.
His weakened body teetered on the brink of collapse. His entire body cried out to him in the despair of impending death.
Leo could only make a rough examination of his body. "Fat, muscle, skin, hair, some internal organs—everything that could be consumed has been consumed. What's left can only keep my bodily functions running for two minutes."
It truly was a passive attempt at self-rescue on the verge of death. Every cell that could be sacrificed had killed itself within the permissible limits. Only through the energy supplied by these dying cells and bodily functions had his body briefly regained vitality.
His heart beat weakly and intermittently. Blood barely moved through vessels that had already shrunk to the millimeter scale. His internal organs had lost all function. Only a single breath separated him from death.
Only a thin layer of muscle remained against his bones, just enough to ensure the bones stayed connected and could move one another.
His entire body reminded Leo of the desiccated corpses excavated from Earth's deserts: nothing but skin clinging to bones.
His body's red warning lights had already begun flashing wildly. He had only two minutes left to live. If he could not restore his body within two minutes, he would be done for.
Two minutes was the survival time bought by sacrificing most of his cells and bodily functions!
Leo had no idea how thick the sand pressing down on him was. He could hear the creaking friction of his bones beneath its weight.
The mana within him had indeed long since run dry. He did not even have enough to maintain the triple-gravity Gravity Rune Array. This was a blessing in disguise. Otherwise, under triple gravity in this state, Leo would not even need to bother struggling.
At this point, he could stop using the harsh environment to push his bodily functions to their limits.
His fingers moved slightly. A black veil instantly enveloped his corpse-like body, then slipped beneath Leo's skin in the blink of an eye. This black veil had no spatial thickness or change in mass. Despite such a large movement, it did not disturb a single grain of sand.
This was none other than the shadow awakened through Leo's shadow talent. Overlaying his body with the shadow could strengthen it.
The enhancement was small, no more than ten percent at most, but this bit of strength was precisely what Leo lacked most right now.
The instant the shadow overlapped with his cells, Leo heard the surging beat of his own heart. He had strength now.
All his cells, along with his remaining bodily functions and organs, were desperately trying to save themselves, using the newly added strength to forcibly supply his body with energy.
The mana that had dried up within his body was like parched land finally receiving rain after a long drought. At last, he had a little. Not much-only around one percent of his original total-but that little was enough to save his life.
Leo sensed something. His body instantly vanished from beneath the dune, and when he reappeared, he was already in the shadows on its far side.
Shadow Jump had teleported Leo out from beneath the dune.