Chapter 502: 502. Mode Phantom
"Sigh... to think that..." Tyler pressed a hand to his forehead, his voice low and strained. His body trembled, the neon-blue digits faintly glowing on his brow.
Mana and the others rushed into the chamber, their eyes widening in horror.
"No..." Zuzia’s voice broke into a desperate roar when she saw the number 500 etched across Tyler’s forehead.
"Yeah..." Tyler forced a bitter smile, though his voice shook. "Looks like I got possessed. Mana, Mode: Phantom ." His attempt at humor only deepened the dread. He was trying—fighting—to keep his consciousness afloat.
Mana stepped forward, hands glowing faintly as she tried to enter Tyler’s body, but the attempt was violently rejected. She staggered back, eyes wide.
"He’s rejecting mana’s essence from the inside... whoever’s in there is forcing me out!"
"Do something, girls!" Tyler shouted, his voice breaking. He quickly crossed his legs, sitting in a lotus position, his body trembling violently.
"Should I knock him out?" Zuzia growled, claws half-extended, desperation burning in her eyes.
"You’ll knock Tyler out too!" Myrtle snapped, grabbing her wrist.
Before they could decide, Tyler suddenly pulled out his pocket dimension orb. Without hesitation, he flung himself into it, vanishing in a flash of light.
"Tyler!" the girls shouted in unison.
Mana clenched her fists, her expression hardening. She looked at Lanny and Myrtle. "Guard this place. Zuzia and Mana are going in to help him."
The two nodded, worry written across their faces. "We’ll hold the outside," Myrtle said firmly. "Bring him back."
Mana and Zuzia didn’t hesitate—they entered the orb.
Myrtle held the smooth sphere in her hands as she sat down beside Lanny. Both wore the same worried look, their hearts pounding in anxious silence.
---
Inside the pocket dimension, the air rippled violently.
"Zuzia, stop me from the outside!" Tyler’s voice echoed through the realm. "I’ll stop him from inside!"
The number 500 flared to life on his forehead, glowing brighter. Tyler’s body shuddered once, then stilled. His eyes snapped open—cold, foreign, alien.
"Ohhh..." the voice that left his lips was not his own. It was deep, eerie, and full of hunger. "Such a fine vessel. It has been too long since I felt anything like this."
He stretched his arms wide, feeling the subtle wind of the dimension brush against his skin.
"The warmth... the cold..." He paused, frowning. "No, not the cold. This body... it’s immune to cold?" His gaze snapped toward the two figures before him.
Mana and Zuzia stood, tense and ready.
"Interesting," 500 mused, his mouth twisting into a predatory grin. "I can sense this vessel’s emotions stir when I look at you two. Ah... if you’re here only for the boy’s face, I could easily replace him. Pleasure you forever... make you forget he ever existed."
His smile widened, wicked and obscene.
"Die, you disgusting bastard!" Zuzia roared. With a flap of her wings, she lunged forward, claws outstretched, fury blazing in her eyes.
Her talons clashed with 500’s conjured crimson claws, the impact ringing like steel upon steel.
"Strong," 500 admitted, his grin twisting further. His neon-blue eyes flared—and suddenly Zuzia’s mind reeled. It felt as though a thousand icy needles pierced into her skull, stabbing her thoughts.
She staggered but roared through the pain, her strength pushing him back. Sparks of lava burst from her veins as her tail lashed violently.
"Hmm... seems I’m limited to the vessel’s strength," 500 muttered with annoyance, analyzing Tyler’s body as though it were a weapon to be tested.
Zuzia’s fury boiled over. Her body expanded, wings stretching wide as her dragon form burst forth. Scales gleamed with fiery veins, her roar shaking the air.
500’s head tilted back, and he answered with a roar of his own. Storm clouds gathered overhead, conjured from his aura. Rain began to fall, cold and heavy, each drop carrying a strange sharpness.
Zuzia’s lava-lit veins pulsed. Her chest swelled—and then she unleashed it. A dragon’s breath, glowing like molten rivers, blasted forward with devastating heat.
500 reacted instantly. Tyler’s body moved with unnatural precision, as though it had been remade. He felt lighter, fluid, every step like swimming through a boundless ocean. He danced between raindrops, letting the storm cradle him, guiding his movements.
"So that’s how it feels..." 500 whispered in awe as he soared upward.
Above, his eyes gleamed, summoning a colossal pillar of ice that formed with a grinding roar. It hovered above him, sharp and gleaming like a divine weapon.
With a thrust of his arm, he lunged downward, ice spear first, toward the raging dragon below.
Zuzia answered with another thunderous roar, her fiery breath tearing through the air to meet the icy pillar.
The collision was apocalyptic. Fire and ice exploded against each other, the clash sending shockwaves rippling through the pocket dimension.
The ground cracked, skies churned, and the battlefield was bathed in violent light.
Neither combatant noticed that Mana was missing.
┉┈ ◈ ◉ ◈ ┈┉
Inside a city that looked plucked from someone’s very extravagant dream, Tyler stood with his soul naked to the light. Towers of glass and living wood spiraled up like fingers trying to pluck the moons — three elevators vanished into them — while flying platforms slid between terraces spangled with bioluminescent gardens. The place smelled faintly of ozone and jasmine, impossibly clean; it was everything the mortal heart could want when it imagined a perfect metropolis.
And in the central square, where a golden fountain threw liquid light like coin, 500 waited. He had reformed his shape; now he wore the blank, wooden puppet face but moved with unsettling, human cadence.
"Hahaha..." 500’s laugh rippled like wind through paper. "It’s smart. Splitting my consciousness — keeping a fragment roaming your skull while I wander your streets. A comfortable distraction. But I control tens of thousands of puppets. A few of them minds to babysit? Trivial."
Tyler’s soul stood before him, head bowed, yet every line of him hummed with tension.
"This space is your mind," 500 said, sweeping an arm to indicate the city. "Made to your taste — opulence and order. You wanted the most luxurious city in the world. You like how it looks. Fine. After I kill the ’One’, I’ll give you back your body and all his wealth. Take it all — the houses, the fleets. Own the moons if you like."
Tyler’s reply was small, almost a smile. "Wealth," he said, shaking his head."Money is not everything."
500 snorted. "Only rich men say that"
"That’s why I am saying that."
500 voice softened almost, conspiratorial. "But your gabelle — that luck around you — it’s a beacon. Immortals plant seeds like that. You acquire things you did not earn; Karma pays itself back one way or the other. Let me take this vessel. I will kill the One, return the body, and erase the debts."
Tyler looked at the puppet, then at the city, and said nothing. The silence was a blade.
"Negotiation failed, then," 500 said at last. He manifested a scythe out of thin air: black wood, edges that drank the light. "In the mind-space, I conjure what I have wielded before."
Tyler’s hand went to his side. He tried to summon the dagger he’d used to cut a clown’s throat in a life that felt like another world. Nothing came; the conjuring failed as if some rule forbade Tyler from pulling that weapon here.
500 smiled with the cruelty of a thing that has all the time in the world. He cleaved. The scythe came down like judgment; the blade sliced Tyler’s soul vertically, and for a heartbeat Tyler felt himself split into severed halves. Color fled; the city dimmed.
"As I said before, only I can conjure weapons I once held," 500 smirked, his tone sharp with arrogance. Tyler’s eyes narrowed, but before he could react, 500’s form began to ripple and distort. Slowly, his puppet-like figure reshaped, twisting and bending until it mirrored Tyler’s own body. The features aligned, the aura shifted, and even the soul’s resonance began to mimic Tyler’s. Tyler’s spiritual glow flickered, his essence dimming as if a candle fighting against the wind.
A creeping dread spread through him—the realization that 500 wasn’t just imitating him. He was becoming him, piece by piece. It’s now not occupying, it’s replacing.
"M—" Tyler’s voice choked into static.
"What are you saying?" 500 mocked, stepping closer as if to examine a fine puppet. "You whisper tiny spells — pathetic."
Then Tyler breathed once, and the world shifted.
"Mode: Phantom," he whispered.
A current of something ancient and liminal snapped across the void. Mana appeared as if folded from moonlight and old paper: not quite flesh in that domain, not quite spirit either. She materialized behind Tyler, then slid into him like water finding a stream bed. Where 500 had cleaved, Mana’s presence closed the wound with light. Tyler’s soul glowed; his edges smoothed. The two were no longer separate. They were a new chord struck in the same instrument.
This is the first time , Tyler properly using this Mode.