Aether had a lollipop stick hanging from the corner of his mouth, while his hands were anything but idle.
Sitting in front of his computer, he was grinding artifacts in Genshin Impact.
He didn't know whether his luck was just that cursed or what, but after farming nonstop for a whole month, he still hadn't managed to get even a single usable set of artifacts.
HoYoverse truly deserved to die a thousand deaths!
Did unlucky players not deserve to play games or something?!
"Buzz! Buzz!"
The phone beside his computer vibrated. Aether casually spat out the lollipop stick, picked up his phone, and lit up the screen to check the message.
His eyes immediately lit up.
On an online marketplace, he had spotted a Zhongli Gnosis model—over ten centimeters in size.
Judging from the pictures, the craftsmanship looked extremely refined.
Well… at least it looked that way in the pictures.
Still, Aether couldn't resist the temptation. The Gnosis was simply too alluring for him, so he went ahead and paid for it.
A full 176 credits!
For a sixteen-year-old like Aether, that was practically textbook impulsive spending.
By the time he came to his senses the next day, the shop had already shipped the item. Left with no choice, Aether started comforting himself with things like, "Well, I've already bought it anyway…"
In short, he thoroughly brainwashed himself.
And now, the message he'd just received was notifying him that the Gnosis he ordered had arrived at the parcel station in his residential complex, along with the pickup code.
Putting down his phone, Aether glanced at the computer screen.
Great. Main stat: HP.
Fantastic!
He closed Genshin Impact, shut down the computer, changed his clothes, slipped on his shoes—several smooth motions in one go.
With his phone in hand, Aether headed straight for the parcel station. About ten minutes later, he returned to his room carrying a package.
He was already itching to tear it open.
From the drawer of his desk, Aether pulled out a box cutter and sliced through the tightly sealed tape in a couple of strokes. Then he took out the item inside.
"The packaging's actually pretty decent."
After opening the parcel, there was still an antique-looking box inside—probably something the seller had mocked up. One look told him it was a product of last week.
He opened the box, and inside was a…
…?
Aether's mind blanked out for a moment.
Didn't he buy a Zhongli Gnosis model? Then what the hell was this thing inside the box?
You're telling me this thing has anything to do with Zhongli's Gnosis?!
In Aether's eyes, these were completely unrelated objects.
Everyone knew that Gnoses had always been shaped like chess pieces, but this thing was obviously some kind of crystal.
They had nothing in common at all!
"Damn it, is this seller scamming idiots for fun?!"
Aether clicked his tongue in anger.
He picked up his phone and snapped several photos of the crystal inside the box. Then he opened online marketplace, ready to confront the seller with the evidence.
But when he opened the product page—
[Item has been removed]
?
Aether tapped into the store page.
[Store does not exist]
So… it really was a scam? Aether instantly felt like he had become the big idiot who got duped.
He had spent 176 credits just to buy something that looked like a plastic hexagonal crystal?
What an absolute sucker.
"Damn it!"
Clutching the crystal, his anger flaring up from the sense of being cheated, Aether hurled it toward the corner of his room.
Bang!
The crystal slammed into the wall—and surprisingly, it didn't shatter.
Keep in mind, this was something bought off online marketplace!
"W-What the hell…?"
What the—?!
Why was that crystal suddenly glowing? Did it have an LED built into it or something?!
A blinding light instantly engulfed the entire room.
When the light finally faded, Aether had already vanished from his bedroom.
"Ahhhhh!"
Aether screamed in panic.
He felt as if he was falling. He was currently hurtling through a passage of pure, dazzling white light.
He didn't know how long this process lasted before his consciousness gradually faded away.
When Aether woke up again, his first instinct was to reach up and touch his head.
"W-What the hell is this?! W-Where's my body? Why am I a… a mass of white mist?!"
Aether froze completely.
His body—his body was gone. How had he turned into a cloud of white mist? What on earth had happened?
He vaguely remembered that the crystal had erupted with blinding white light, then he'd entered some kind of tunnel, and after that, he'd passed out.
When he woke up again, he had become like this…
"Where… am I?"
Aether paused and looked around. He seemed to be in the center of a gigantic meteor crater, right at the very middle, as if he himself had smashed into the ground to create it.
Did he really have that kind of power?
Confused.
"Ugh—so, so painful! W-Why?!"
Aether was in intense agony, though he had no idea why. His body was clearly gone—so why was he still feeling such unbearable pain?
No! This wasn't scientific at all!
Why?!
It hurts so much!
Ugh! Ah!
If the camera were pulled back, one would see a mass of white mist surging violently.
Clearly, this was caused by the intense pain Aether was experiencing.
After roughly more than ten minutes, the pain finally began to subside. Aether let out a long breath of relief. He didn't know what had just happened, but at least it didn't hurt anymore.
"W-What… are all these?"
Aether looked utterly confused.
Because after that bout of pain, something extra had appeared in his mind. It wasn't anything like a tumor or something—he didn't even have a body anymore, so how could he get a tumor?
It was information.
The good news was that the 176 credits he spent seemed to have bought the real deal. That hexagonal crystal was the Authority of Manifestation.
[Authority of Manifestation: What you think is what you see—manifest all things!]
The Authority of Manifestation.
An authority capable of manifesting anything.
Aside from the information about the Authority of Manifestation, Aether had also gained certain instinctual knowledge—Manifestation Instinct.
It was like something innate, the way a baby is born knowing how to blink and breathe. Now, manifestation itself had become his instinct.
A… pretty damn good thing, honestly…
But that didn't change the fact that he was currently a ball of white mist!
Damn it, I'm not even human anymore—what's the point of having this Authority of Manifestation?
So my human experience card only lasted sixteen years, huh?
Thinking about it, Aether felt his mentality crack a little.
Compared to the Authority of Manifestation, he'd much rather have a physical body…
Aether really hadn't prepared himself to spend the rest of his life as a cloud of mist.
He absolutely did not want that.
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