Once again, I dove into the first layer.
The moment I broke through the surface, the strange matter surrounding me gripped my body and pressed down.
The first layer was the same as I remembered.
Faint memories and sensations drifted in and out of my consciousness, barely substantial enough to grasp before another replaced them.
Most were pleasant.
Sure, some stung a little.
But compared to the layers beneath this one?
This was nothing.
I closed my eyes and let myself sink deeper.
The pressure of the ocean slowly pulled me down.
A hand brushing against mine.
A tap on the shoulder.
Someone pinching my arm.
The faint sound of a name being called from somewhere far away.
Biting down on a finger.
The dull ache of a cramped hand.
"Ahhh..."
My body loosened.
God.
There was something almost unnatural about how peaceful this layer felt.
More peaceful than anything I'd experienced in either of my lives.
Maybe more than that, if I counted whatever was buried inside the ghosts.
That thought lingered a little too long.
Where exactly did my memories end?
Where did theirs begin?
Before I could follow the question any further, the pressure around me changed.
My eyes snapped open.
I looked down.
The darkness beneath me had thickened.
"Here we go."
The first memory hit before I could prepare myself.
Something drove into my back.
A blade.
I choked down a scream.
Then fire.
My skin blistered.
Water filled my lungs.
Something cut through my leg—
And suddenly it was gone.
I screamed.
Another memory replaced it before the pain could even fade.
Then came the tearing.
Gods.
The tearing.
"AAAGH!"
I curled inward as phantom hands ripped flesh that wasn't there anymore.
Some of these sensations were new.
That realization managed to surface through the pain.
Some belonged to me.
Memories that hadn't been accessible before.
The tearing was one of them.
Wonderful.
I pulled myself into as tight a ball as I could while agony came faster and faster.
That was different too.
Last time, I'd had moments between them.
Now one memory crashed into another before the previous sensation had even finished.
But I was descending faster as well.
Much faster.
I didn't have time to think about why.
By the time I realized how quickly I was moving, the pain vanished.
I was thrown into the next layer.
Nothingness.
The memories of absent thought.
I floated there, still trembling from sensations that no longer existed across a body I wasn't entirely sure counted as a body anymore.
My leg felt like it had been severed.
My skin still burned.
My back remembered a knife that had never touched it.
Anything.
Think about anything.
Thankfully, that was easier this time.
Pain gave my mind something to hold onto.
Turns out remembering what it feels like to burn alive does wonders for keeping your thoughts moving.
Slowly, the pressure shifted again.
I braced myself.
Usually, this was where the cracks appeared.
Those thin fractures running through the darkness, each one carrying something different behind it.
Except—
Nothing.
I blinked.
"Huh?"
I turned.
No cracks.
Not one.
"Did they... sink or something?"
The thought barely finished.
My teeth clenched.
Hard.
I frowned.
What—
Why the fuck does this keep happening to me!?
The thought exploded through my head.
My jaw tightened until pain shot through it.
Why?
Why was it that every single time I got close to accomplishing something, another problem crawled out of nowhere?!
My hands curled into fists.
First that fucking witch.
Doing whatever she wanted without even asking me.
Making decisions about my life like I wasn't standing right there!
Something warm ran across my tongue.
Blood.
I'd bitten the inside of my mouth.
I didn't care.
Then those fucking kids.
That disgusting blue-haired hedgehog stamping on my arm like I was some piece of trash he'd found wandering around his precious hallway.
How dare he?
My chest heaved.
Spittle flew from my mouth, streaked red.
How fucking dare he?!
The anger kept building.
Hotter.
Heavier.
I couldn't tell where it was coming from anymore.
Then another face entered my thoughts.
The Hero.
Something inside me snapped.
THAT FUCKING HERO!
I was in this entire mess because of him!
Because he couldn't do his damn job!
Not once.
Not twice.
FOUR FUCKING TIMES!
Four chances.
Four failures.
Four worlds—
My nails dug into my palms.
No.
That wasn't it.
There was something worse.
Something unforgivable.
My breathing stopped.
A feeling tore through me so violently that for one terrifying moment, I didn't understand it.
Grief.
Rage.
Hatred so deep it made everything before it feel childish.
Then the thought came.
Not slowly.
Not like something I remembered.
It erupted from somewhere beneath me.
HE LET HER DIE!
My eyes widened.
Her?
Who—
HE LET HER DIE!
My body shook.
I WON'T FORGIVE HIM!
The words weren't even thoughts anymore.
They were screams.
I WON'T!
My vision blurred.
I WON'T FOGIVE THEM!
Something inside the darkness shifted.
I WON'T!
The rage didn't feel like mine anymore.
I WON'T!
But that didn't stop me from feeling every bit of it.
I WON'T FORGIVE THEM!
A guttural roar tore out of my throat.
I'LL KILL THEM ALL!
And somewhere beneath all that fury—
Was a festering field of grief.
"Gah!"
I woke.
Or...
Not woke.
I came back to myself.
I was standing above the cracks again.
For several seconds, I just stood there.
"What... what happened?"
My breathing came in ragged bursts.
I looked down at myself.
Bloodied spittle streaked my chest. Veins stood out across my forehead, several of them split open and leaking down my face.
But the worst part was my eyes.
The wet trails running down my cheeks weren't clear.
They were red.
Blood had replaced the tears.
I sniffled and wiped my face with the back of my hand.
My heart was still pounding hard enough to hurt.
"Gah... what the fuck was that?"
I already knew the answer.
Rage.
I'd been completely swallowed by it.
Another layer.
The layer of anger.
I grimaced.
"Yeah. Never doing that again."
Assuming I had a choice.
I shook my head and forced myself forward.
The silver pool waited farther ahead.
That was why I'd come here in the first place.
Before approaching it, though, I slowed.
Now that my head was finally working again, something about the descent bothered me.
I'd gotten down here much faster than before.
Then it clicked.
I'm tier two now.
Of course.
As a mage rose through the tiers, their mana became denser and more refined. The same amount could accomplish more, and that improvement extended to Origin Spells as well.
They became stronger.
More efficient.
Sometimes, in rare cases, they even changed.
I looked around the depths of my soul.
Soul Diver had changed too.
The descent was faster and apparently there was an entirely new layer waiting to psychologically maul me.
Still...
If the spell continued improving as I climbed the tiers, maybe one day I'd be able to control how quickly I moved through the layers instead of being dragged around like a corpse tied to an anchor.
That would be nice.
But enough of that.
I moved toward the familiar cracks.
Pink.
Green.
Yellow.
At first glance, they looked exactly the same.
The same colors.
The same fractures running through the darkness.
The same overwhelming sense that whatever waited behind them was very aware of me.
I slowed.
Something felt different.
The pink crack regarded me with indifference.
The green one—
Disdain.
The yellow...
My eyebrows rose.
Wait.
I stopped.
I could tell that now?
Before, they had only felt like vague impressions.
Now the emotions were clearer.
Almost readable.
I stared at the cracks.
"Huh."
So Soul Diver really had changed.
I shook my head.
"No point messing with you guys. Come out soon or don't. I don't care."
The cracks glowed faintly in response.
And somehow, I could tell they agreed.
I sighed.
Sheesh.
Apparently being unreasonable was a shared trait across every version of me.
So many Kamriks.
So many insufferable bastards.
I turned away and continued toward the silver pool.
Originally, I'd planned to dip in, gather whatever I needed for the next month or two, and get out.
After that descent?
Absolutely not.
I did not want to make this trip every few weeks.
So I was changing the plan.
This time, I was going after the entire year.
I'd already gotten a broad overview during my first dive, but that had been exactly that—an overview. Events, names, places, scattered pieces of information without enough detail connecting them.
This time, I was going deeper.
It reminded me of those assignments where a professor told you to explain something in unnecessary detail, and then, once you thought there was possibly nothing left to explain, somehow expected even more.
Except considerably more painful.
I stopped at the edge of the silver pool.
I had never gone this deep into the accumulated memories before.
Still...
I had a feeling I could handle it now.
And after what happened with Tias, I wasn't willing to leave gaps anymore.
I couldn't afford another situation where I knew most of what was going to happen and missed the one detail that actually mattered.
This year was too important.
Maybe the most important year of all.
My brow furrowed.
"Here we go."
I let out a slow breath.
And sunk.