‘Damn’

  ‘Wow!’

  The sudden realization hit her like a steel door slamming shut in her mind. If her guess was correct, then everything she had seen until now seemed to make sense. Like a puzzle piece falling into place, Isidora exclaimed.

  ‘But the question was…how?’

  Her thoughts darted backward. The ritual in that abandoned house must have been the main cause. Someone must be behind all this; they must be the one who submitted the report, and in turn, manipulated the report to go through.

  Whoever set this trap had connections for sure. They may have had associates in the high-up, someone capable of manipulating clearance chains without alerting the Central Authorities, allowing it to go through, and then afterward, landing in the hands of the third-channel party, which was her syndicate.

  And finally, she must be some random test subject that the syndicate sold off.

  ‘Did I make them that mad?’

  ‘Bad people must be punished!’

  Isidora almost laughed bitterly. No matter how bad it was, selling off one of their employees seemed not quite ethical, did it?

  Well, what did she expect? Since when had her syndicate operated on ethics?

  They were not charities either, and she was a disposable cog with debt chained around her neck, after all.

  However, the remaining concern was, where on earth could they find out about the power that can send people back into the past? Was that some kind of new technological breakthrough, or did those magicium lunatics discover something again?

  If it was, then her old world in the future would welcome an unexpected change, not a good change.

  As expected, her paranoid thoughts jumped into the calculation. She couldn’t help it, that was the only way she could survive back then, after all.

  ‘But…does it matter anymore?’

  ‘It was not!’

  Looking at the matter at hand, Isidora shook her imaginary head. First, she needed to figure out how to get out of this situation. The situation surely did not look good, but it was not unsalvageable either.

  By the look of it, for now, the old man still hadn’t suspected anything. Until he found out, she still had time to ponder and think of a way out.

  How? Well, the answer had already been with her.

  ‘Look, look, it’s flying! Flying!’

  Unexpectedly, the young mind could actually do something that she could not imagine. It was not actually useless.

  ‘Excuse me? Hey!’

  In front of her, something slender drifted upward like a feather caught in a breeze. It was a pencil, and it was flying. It was extremely slow, hovering in the air, but it was progress nonetheless.

  For the old her, or the mature mind, it was the mind of an adult and an ordinary person, still shackled by the common sense of the past. As an ordinary person in the past without any special ability and magicium, she has no knowledge of doing some extraordinary thing.

  But with the imagination of the young mind, the mind with childish spontaneity and whimsical absurdity that didn’t care about impossibility, thinking something outrageously creative had become its grace, it seems.

  ‘That’s harsh! Who knows? I might actually be a genius’

  ‘Right? You are me, after all.’

  ‘...’

  Looking at the empty room, Isidora imagined herself stroking her chin in deep thought.

  With the help of the young mind, she discovered many of her hidden abilities. Were these powers cheat-granted by transmigration? She hoped so.

  The first and most critical ability that had helped her the most was a form of spatial perception. Isidora could sense her surroundings, reaching roughly fifteen meters in every direction, centered on the portrait, spreading in a perfect 360-degree sphere. Within that range, she could trace their positions as if they were drawn into a mental map etched behind her mind’s eye.

  However, there was a catch. This perception had a drawback like normal vision: it could not penetrate solid barriers and couldn’t sense anything being covered, such as behind the wall or inside a closed box.

  On the other hand, partial obstructions meant nothing. If both objects existed within her fifteen-meter sphere, she could still recognize them even if one hid behind another, for instance, a chair leg concealed by a hanging drape or a small ball hidden behind a wooden plank. Similarly, if a box remained open, she could still perceive the contents inside clearly, as long as they remained within her fifteen-meter range.

  Best of all? Direction no longer mattered to her. Isidora could see behind herself or behind the painting without blind spots. Her awareness unfolded in all directions, a full 360 degrees, provided nothing stood in its way.

  She called this ability ‘Field Vision’.

  Secondly, with enough ‘energy’, Isidora could move objects around the room within the same fifteen-meter radius defined by her Field Vision, centered on the painting. At the moment, the limitation was weight and mental capacity; she could only manipulate small, light objects like spoons, pencils, or scraps of paper. Still, given time and practice, she felt certain she could lift heavier objects and move several things simultaneously.

  This revelation came by accident, when the restless young mind was daydreaming, and imagined what it would be like to pick something up. In that instant, Isidora felt a sudden tug deep within her; a thread was extended and stretched outward from the painting and latched onto a spoon lying on the table.

  Isidora could feel her vitality drain as a faint connection began to establish between her and the spoon. And soon, the spoon rose itself upward, slowly and awkwardly like a newborn bird struggling to fly, but it was undeniably floating.

  ‘Is this Psychokinesis?’

  ‘So cool!’

  The girl pondered, curiosity gnawed at her. The mature mind couldn’t resist testing it herself. She fixed her focus on a fork resting nearby, imagined gripping it and commanded it to rise.

  The connection formed, yet it only moved barely before the link snapped. The connection would soon slip away from the fork, escaping from her grasp.

  ‘How can you do it so easily?’

  Frustration burned through her thoughts, she muttered inwardly. After another failed attempt, the mature mind sighed and let the effort slip away, conceding temporary defeat.

  ‘No, you should not command it. Think of a hand and move it like you move your limb!’

  ‘Whatever, you do it’

  She gave up on controlling things and left the task to the young mind.

  ‘Oke~’

  Thirdly, Isidora discovered that she could possess things.

  Through playful mimicry, the young mind gleefully made a spoon hover in the air, while the mature mind decided to try again with a different approach. Instead of brute-forcing control, she focused on thinking from the perspective of the object.

  Suddenly, her perception shifted. One moment, she was staring at the spoon. Then next, her vision was now from the spoon's perspective.

  The transition was very abrupt. In her mind, Isidora experienced dual visions: one from the portrait's viewpoint, the young mind observing the spoon with bewilderment, and the other from the spoon itself, gazing back at the portrait with equal confusion.

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  ‘???’

  ‘???’

  It was… disorienting.

  ‘You are a spoon now, Izzy, hahaha!’

  Ignoring the commentary, the mature mind decided to test it further. This time, she tried with a different object, a ball of yarn sitting lazily by the table leg. Her perception once again shifted, as she successfully became the yarn ball.

  With the young mind’s help, she lifted the yarn ball and tossed it across the attic outside of her Field Vision. She soon regretted her choice of action, though.

  ‘Oh…’

  ‘Ugh…’

  The world spun like a nightmare as the yarn tumbled end over end. The sensation of twisting midair was nauseating to a degree that would have made her hurl if she had a stomach.

  It was surely not…enjoyable. Both minds groaned in unison, assaulted by a storm of sensory chaos. They experienced what could only be described as 'brain overload.'

  Fortunately, having two minds allowed them to share the burden: one took control of its trajectory, guiding it to slow down, while the other stabilized the yarn’s perception, effectively reducing their individual workloads.

  ‘Ooohhh…ohhhh! Awesome!’

  As soon as the yarn finally steadied and her dizziness settled down, a realization dawned upon her. This was a precious boon to have. Through this, Isidora could now see two places at once, her main vision anchored to the portrait and a secondary vision riding along the possessed object.

  Of course, there was a drawback. While inhabiting an object, her Field Vision shrank significantly, only about five meters from the possessed object. Far smaller than her main Field Vision. Still, that was a minor inconvenience compared to the utility this power offered.

  Even better? She could still use Psychokinesis through the possessed object. It was weaker, also with a five-meter radius, but the synergy between the two abilities was undeniable.

  She decided to call this ability ‘Possession.’

  Over the course of time, her experiments grew bolder. What began with spoons and pencils soon extended to objects of all shapes, and eventually to living things. Or rather, small creatures.

  This discovery honestly surprised her the most, that was, with enough accumulated energy, Isidora could even possess a weak-willed creature like mice, creatures that could be easily dominated. The smallest creature she managed to seize was a mouse. Anything smaller, like ants, beetles, or even tiny birds? Impossible. The connection simply wouldn’t form.

  The first time she slipped into the mouse’s body, the experience was jarring. Her young mind, of course, reacted with wild excitement, like it was a part of her body.

  ‘I can move now!’

  We could move now. After all this time in stillness, motion felt intoxicating and liberating to her. Yet it was also profoundly strange.

  For the mature mind, the sensation was quite weird to experience as a four-legged creature. Everything about it felt alien, from the way its limbs scurried to its tiny heart hammering like a drum, its shallow breaths.

  Isidora could see through its eyes and felt the brush of wooden floorboards beneath its claws. When she looked up, the world became monstrously large and overwhelming. Table legs towered like an ancient tree, its shadow stretched like a black canyon over her. Everything was magnified, a surreal distortion that left her dizzy.

  And there was more. The creature Isidora possessed could either be dead or alive. If alive, she could seize control over its body and could even forcefully kill its mind, crushing its consciousness into silence. If it was dead, she could still move the corpse, albeit with difficulty, or reanimate it, restarting the blood flow by her energy and causing the heart to beat again.

  It was exhilarating to say the least, to possess this kind of power.

  When possessing a creature, she retained some of her other abilities: Psychokinesis and Field Vision, albeit much weaker.

  As for Possession, she quickly learned that it was impossible to “jump” from one body to another while inside a vessel. That ability remained exclusive to her original form, the consciousness tied to the portrait. No leaping from host to host, chaining possession like a ghost hopping from body to body. It would be better if she could, though.

  A pity.

  ‘That’s really disappointing.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because if we could chain possessions, we could leap from one thing to another without the need to return to our original position.’

  ‘Ohhh!’

  And lastly, there was the matter of energy, the vital force that fueled every ability she used. This energy was essential for her, because her awareness also drained from this reservoir.

  Without energy, Isidora could do nothing. If the reserve ran low, she would feel fatigue, and her concentration would break. Worse, if her reserves ran dry entirely, she suspected the outcome would be more than mere exhaustion. Her consciousness would drift apart, and her very existence would likely be obliterated.

  In short, this energy didn’t just power her abilities. It was equivalent to her own life, her life force.

  Fortunately, it could replenish over time. Yet the process was extremely and frustratingly slow.

  There were other methods to replenish it. She discovered she could absorb energy from death. Killing a living creature released a certain amount of energy. Not directly killing them was also an option, they also retained a bit of energy, and by focusing, she could leech what remained.

  Possession added an interesting possibility. If she seized control of a living mouse, for instance, and then crushed its mind, it fulfilled the same condition as killing. But the expenditure outweighed the reward; Possession consumed far more energy than the kill could return, which was not worth the effort.

  So she turned to scavenging what chance offered her, such as insects, the occasional mouse, and creatures unfortunate enough to wander into her Field Vision. Their lives weren’t worth much, but their energy was still something.

  She couldn’t see the energy outright, but with enough concentration, she could sense a faint, green mist emanating from the dead. She suspected that green mist was the energy she needed.

  Although the recovery of her energy was far slower than her actively killing small insects and animals that were wandering inside the attic, even then, she resisted slaughtering them outright. Life was scarce here. The attic saw only the occasional intruders, which made their bodies very precious.

  Instead, Isidora rendered them unconscious, hiding their limp bodies in shadowed corners or beneath draped furniture. She would not want them to decay over time, and she didn’t know how long it would take before she could escape from the old man's grasp.

  Speaking of which, the reason her periods of wakefulness had grown longer could be related to this energy. It might accumulate slowly on its own, but there was no way her reserves could have reached this level just through passive recovery, especially when she hadn’t been hunting wandering creatures that much.

  The mature mind had a fairly good idea where it came from, for her to use and experiment recklessly like this. The answer wasn’t hard to guess. It had to be connected to the screams that she heard each day, always dragging her from her slumber.

  To be honest, it wasn’t even a complicated one. Just a bit of observation and a little thinking, and anyone would come to a full conclusion.

  ‘Hmm, no, not obvious to just anyone.’

  ‘Mmm?’

  With the old man each day regaling her with stories of his daily life, she could pretty much draw out the full picture of the situation.

  Well, what else? A reclusive man, an abandoned mansion, a nearby village, his fanatic gaze, and his mad-toned prayer. Add in the rumors of missing children, the wailing echoes she heard in her slumber, Laid it all together, and the truth practically screamed back at her.

  Must be a ritual, anything but that?

  ‘Did you just… refer to me? Hey?’

  ‘Tch, so noisy.’

  That old man was literally feeding children to her, sacrificing them in some deranged attempt to “awaken” her. That’s literally what was happening. And an echo of agony was fuel that poured straight into her core.

  Naturally, Isidora deliberately did not show any sign of being awakened in his presence. That’s only her theory, uncertainly, after all. And her life was still above anything else. She could hardly afford to waste thoughts on morality when she couldn’t even move or do something in the first place.

  In any case, she was in a hopeless situation right now. And even if she showed signs of being awakened, it’s not like that he would certainly stop his sacrifice ritual. If anything, it might only spur him further. There was no way to predict what madness would bloom in his mind if she began to respond.

  With each scream in despair, every choked sob that crawled across her consciousness, Isidora could feel she had grown stronger a little. Her consciousness would then be prickled by invisible threads that seemed to stretch from far away.

  When she tried to dive deep into it, she could feel that she had grasped something, a kind of energy thread that would then coil into her being, burrow deep into her, and anchor itself there.

  After each incident, the old man would appear, sitting in his chair like a doting grandfather sharing afternoon tea, recounting the latest from Wrislein as if nothing had happened.

  That was…kind of creepy, in many ways.

  ‘Do not worry, kid! I will make sure that Gramp will pay for this!’

  ‘And how exactly?’

  ‘That’s… you think!’

  ‘...’

  Silence stretched between them as Isidora let out an imaginary sigh. The enthusiasm was appreciated, but enthusiasm alone wouldn't solve her predicament.

  Anyway, with her newly discovered abilities, maybe there was a chance to turn the situation around…perhaps?

  In truth, the more she analyzed her options, the heavier her resignation settled.

  ‘Aren’t our abilities just cheap tricks? How exactly can we use them effectively?’

  Moving small objects? What would that accomplish? Tripped him on his way down the stairs with a rolling pencil? Maybe made a spoon levitate dramatically and given him a mild heart attack? Laughable.

  What about Possession? It offered more possibilities, but its limitations quickly crushed any grand ideas. She couldn’t possess anything bigger than a large bird, at best an eagle. And even if she managed to use that as a weapon, what next?

  Biting him with venomous reptiles? Scratching him to death with a cat? Was that even an option? She couldn’t possess him directly after all. She might as well be screaming “I’m here” loud and clear if she failed.

  In any case, the progress would be very slow and require meticulous preparations to work with. Besides, success wasn’t guaranteed; who knew what that old man had up his sleeves? A man steeped this deep in ritual and fanaticism wouldn’t be this unarmed or unprepared.

  This was surely…troublesome.