Alex finally accepted the use of the Book of the World, and the skill, The Voice of the World, integrated itself into his mind. The voice was identical to the one from the orb, but the crucial difference was access: now, he could pose questions. His brain was violently overloaded with data, the volume of information akin to a supercomputer's worth of files being dumped onto a flash drive. He fell unconscious for a minute.

  When he woke, he felt as if he had the worst hangover of his life.

  “What happened? How many days have passed?” He looked around. The neatly trimmed grass patch was now replaced by a thicket of young tree saplings.

  The voice spoke in his mind, its tone still synthetic:

  “YOU HAVE RECEIVED THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORLD. YOUR BRAIN HAD PASSED OUT FOR A MONTH UNDER THE PRESSURE OF THE KNOWLEDGE THAT WAS INSTALLED INTO IT.”

  The voice was the same, yet fundamentally different. Before, the voice was perceived by his soul, speaking to a deeper part of him. Now, the voice was sensed directly by his brain—it was like a separate consciousness had entered his skull and begun speaking.

  Alex stood, moving back and forth through the new patch of saplings, processing the dumped knowledge. He knew the names and rarity of the saplings now, a sudden, instinctual understanding. He realized this must be the power of the Noble Rank skill he'd acquired through the lower-tier functions of the Book, allowing him to sense non-sentient information.

  He whispered the new facts to himself, confirming their reality:

  “So, this world is called the Throne World. It’s not a single planet but a group of worlds or planets in a distant solar system. There is magic here, and the technology is also much more advanced than Earth.”

  He realized he felt no tiredness while walking. Then it hit him.

  “The body I have now resembles my original, but it’s fundamentally different. I can’t feel tired, hunger, or thirst. I don’t even need to excrete. This is like an actual magical body. Am I still human?”

  He asked the question to himself, but the voice answered.

  “YOU ARE AN OMNIARCH.”

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  Alex’s eyes glowed with a childlike sparkle, his curiosity overriding his recent trauma. “What does Omniarch mean?”

  “AN OMNIARCH IS A PERSON WHOSE BODY WAS CREATED BY HIS SOUL RATHER THAN A REPRODUCTIVE METHOD. YOU ARE A NORMAL RANK LEVEL 0 OMNIARCH. YOU NEED TO REACH ROYAL RANK TO UNLOCK YOUR FULL RACIAL BODY.”

  Alex's face twitched. "There are seven ranks, and if I am correct, Royal Rank is the third highest rank." He looked around, thinking aloud.

  He started moving deeper into the forest, his feet crunching loudly on the dry leaves. It was the first time he had truly left the initial patch of grass.

  “WARNING: YOU ARE ENTERING A SOUL DOMAIN. YOUR ABILITIES WILL BE SUPPRESSED.”

  He instantly felt his body grow heavy. Simultaneously, his eyes glowed in black, gold, and silver, momentarily turning into miniature versions of the orb he had consumed.

  By the time Alex regained full sensory awareness, he was running, his limbs pumping with incredible speed, driven by an urgency he couldn't name.

  “NOBLE SKILL – ALL-SEEING EYES, RECEIVED.”

  His vision exploded. He felt an intense, blinding pain, as if an electrical drill were boring into both sockets. He screamed, dropping to the ground and clutching his eyes. He could suddenly perceive a full 360-degree view, though the periphery behind his head was mostly black, speckled with gold lights that he instinctively recognized as the massive trees. His sprint continued, now guided by a flashing silver arrow that his new skill superimposed on his forward vision.

  “At least I have a direction I can move towards,” he thought, forcing his speed faster.

  Alex sprinted through the dense forest for an entire week, moving at speeds his human legs could never have sustained. “I should have been more careful,” he muttered, referencing his hasty acceptance of the orb.

  He finally halted at the entrance of a ravaged settlement. It was a tree city: half the houses were burned, and the rest were strangled by an overgrowth of thick vines. In the center, however, stood an unusual structure built directly on the ground, not in the trees. It was made of black stone streaked with occasional veins of gold and silver. He felt an unconscious compulsion pulling him toward the building.

  “What is this place?” he asked, half expecting the voice to answer.

  He was correct: “THIS IS THE TEMPLE OF ANCIENT.”

  He nodded, realizing the structural similarities to temples he knew. As he crossed the threshold of the black stone building, the voice spoke one final time:

  “YOU ARE ENTERING A PLACE WITH ITS CONNECTIONS SEVERED FROM THE WORLD. THE SKILL VOICE OF THE WORLD WILL NOT WORK WHEN YOU ARE IN PLACES WITH THEIR CONNECTION TO THE WORLD SEVERED.”

  “Even if I don't feel tired, I must take rest,” Alex thought, slumping onto the cold stone floor. “Sheesh, this is a large forest. This must be bigger than New York.” He returned to his open thoughts, looking back at the entrance of the ruined tree city. “I have been running non-stop for a week, and I am not even halfway out of this forest if my vision ability is accurate.”

  He sighed, pushing away the exhaustion he technically didn't feel. “Next, I need to explore this temple first and then start moving again. This is a really big forest, after all.”

  He laid down, falling asleep on the cold, black stone.