Single Wish: Rise Of The Omniscient Paragon

The world snapped back into place.

Corey reappeared in the grand hall, and the moment he did, he staggered.

A groan tore from his lips as he fell to his knees, and his hand gripped the polished floor.

His breath came in shallow, uneven gasps, and cold sweat poured from his forehead, drenching his back and chest.

His skin was pale.

His lips were cracked.

And his eyes trembled.

Blood trickled from his nose, ears, and the corner of his lips, and his body shook violently as if he had been pulled out of a blender.

His consciousness wavered.

His mind... barely clung to sanity.

He gasped again.

Then again.

Each breath felt like knives stabbing through his lungs.

He tried to sit, but he fell forward and barely caught himself.

His hands dug into the floor, and even though the polished obsidian surface felt cold to the touch, his body felt like it was burning.

The pain wasn't physical.

It wasn't ever spiritual.

It was deeper than that, and Corey could feel his Cosmic Soul trembling in pain as it tried to fight off against something intangible, something he could not see or accurately sense, but what was there.

He had stared at something he shouldn't have.

An Old One. The Hollow Creed's god. The entity known as Death.

He hadn't truly seen it. He knew that.

But even the attempt.

Even the glimpse.

Even the memory.

Had broken something inside of him despite him trying to remove it while he was in the memory.

He could feel a fracture in his Sea of Consciousness that had been caused by the presence of the Old One in a mere memory.

'The stone slab... It was meant to show the memories, but a trap was hidden in it.'

'Seeing the memories had not been easy at all. An average Tier 5 could not have seen the memories for as long as I did and as well as I did.'

'Seeing those memories consumed a stupendous amount of mental and spiritual energy, and if I was any weaker, I would have seen only two or three visions.'

'The runes on the stone slab wanted me to see the memories before they completely disappeared, but there was a cleverly placed trap hidden in it.'

'The Old One.'

'Anybody with a strong enough mental and spiritual power would be able to see the end of the memories like I did, but once they glanced at the Old One, they would be corrupted.'

'And then... The person would be similar to the members of the Hollow Creed...'

'... They'll be a pawn of the Old One.'

He groaned again and forced his Stars of Consciousness to act. He used them to completely erase the corrupted pieces of memory left behind, to stop the spreading chaos in his soul and Sea of Consciousness.

His headache was blinding.

His body was weak.

And his spirit? Fractured.

But before he could stabilize his condition...

The stone slab glowed, and Corey looked up.

He barely looked up, and then... The stone slab exploded.

A blast of violent red and black light surged outwards like a tidal wave of destruction. It was a blast of raw energy fueled by runes that had become unstable.

His body moved on instinct, and his Stars of Consciousness reacted before he could.

Hexagon Nova Shield

A blinding six-layered hexagon barrier manifested around him in a radiant glow of pure geometric force.

The explosion collided with the shield.

And the shield shattered with ease.

Layer after layer broke apart until the final one barely held for a fraction of a second, but this fraction of a second was just enough for Corey to dive backward.

He was thrown across the hall, flying and tumbling multiple times until his body slammed into one of the Black columns, shattering it completely and sending chunks of ancient obsidian tumbling onto the floor.

Blood sprayed from his mouth.

His bones cracked, and the ground beneath him dented as his body crumpled into it.

Seconds went by, but he lay there.

He was broken, burnt, and bleeding.

His left arm was bent the wrong way.

His back screamed in pain, and the right side of his face was scorched.

His vision was blurred, and his heartbeat was slow.

He was on the verge of death.

He could feel it.

Taste it.

But he was calm.

He had been on the verge of death numerous times in his life, and this situation was the best for him since there was no enemy or the environment was not trying to kill him.

Not only that.

He refused to die till he saved his sister.

Till he saved Anna.

He clenched his broken hand, and then he began using Dream Healing to heal his body.

His body shimmered with violet-blue glow as threads of dream energy poured from his pores, weaving into his wounds, stitching his flesh, resetting his bones, and soothing the madness and corruption creeping around his mind.

A few minutes later, he felt himself slow drift away from the scythe of death.

He wasn't perfectly healed. But it was enough.

His breathing returned.

His vision cleared.

His bones realigned.

The bleeding reduced drastically.

And his mind was much clearer than before. Dream Healing was truly the best healing skill he had ever encountered since it could also cure one's mental and spiritual state.

He slowly sat up, and leaned against the broken column.

And then he exhaled deeply.

Some seconds later, his mind drifted into everything he had experienced, read, and discovered in the Archive.

He had not expected to experience this much, but he did, and a lot of did not make sense to him since he did not have the full picture.

In fact, he had more questions than answers.

'The First Librarian... The Hollow Creed... The ritual... And... The Supreme...'

Everything he had just seen... everything he had just endured... it spun in his head like a vortex of madness.

But he began to pull the threads.

He began to connect pieces.