Chapter 63: Force Eyes, Fourth-Dimensional World
I took a deep breath and focused.
A soft hum began to build behind my eyes as I directed the energy there.
Then everything changed.
All color vanished.
The world turned black and white—no, worse than that.
Even shapes were gone.
The garden, the trees, the sky. Everything had disappeared.
In their place were lines.
Thin, flickering, constantly moving lines that twisted and crisscrossed into each other.
Circles formed and broke apart.
Scribbles appeared everywhere.
It was like looking at the world drawn by a child who didn’t know what shapes were.
The ground was gone, replaced by white lines.
Even my hands had turned into scribbles.
Then nausea hit me like a wave.
I lost my balance and fell forward, gasping.
The world snapped back to normal.
The colors returned, the grass felt solid beneath me again.
I was sweating.
"What was that?" I asked, breathing hard.
"That was the Colorless World," Dad said softly. His voice was calm again, almost gentle.
Mom was already beside me, kneeling down with a towel in hand.
She wiped the sweat from my forehead.
"Are you alright, sweetie? There’s no need to push yourself this hard. You can rest if you’re tired," she said, her voice full of worry.
Dad chuckled. "He’s fine. In fact, he’s doing incredibly well. Most people faint or throw up the first time they use Colorless World. He just got dizzy."
Mom’s eyes narrowed.
Her voice took a sharp edge.
"Dear, this is the first time I’m hearing something like this. You told me the first stage was safe."
He looked at her, confused.
It seems he had lied to her, partially at least from the looks of it, and forgotten he had lied.
He quickly came up with an excuse.
"Haha, I mean, it is safe. Even I didn’t puke when I first used it, so technically—"
Her glare cut him off completely.
He shut his mouth.
She turned back to me, her voice soft again.
"It’s enough for today, sweetie. You should rest. We can continue tomorrow."
She tried to lift me, but I shook my head.
"I want to train."
Her worry deepened, but Dad grinned proudly.
"As expected of my son. You don’t back down."
Then he looked at her more seriously.
"It’s better if I keep teaching him while he’s here. If we stop now, he might try to use Colorless on his own. That would be much worse."
Mom hesitated for a moment, then sighed.
She stood up and walked back to the pavilion, telling one of the maids to prepare a drink for both of us.
Dad crouched next to me again.
"What did you see when you used Colorless?" he asked.
"Scribbles," I said.
Neither of them was surprised about how I spoke so clearly despite my age.
They had always known I was smarter than average.
"Those aren’t scribbles. They’re the lines that make up the structure of everything.
"When your control improves, those lines will become clearer. You’ll eventually see something completely different."
He smiled faintly.
"That’s the first stage of Hollow Eyes, [Colorless World]. Most people just call it Colorless."
"What about the other abilities? Aren’t there five stages? How do I unlock the rest?" I asked.
"You’ll have to master Colorless first. And you’ll need to train your body. Hollow Eyes puts a heavy strain on you."
I thought about that quietly.
From what he said, Hollow Eyes depended on mental energy, not aura.
But even so, the body needed to be strong enough to handle the burden of the Hollow Eyes.
That explained why warriors of House Daelthorn trained their bodies to the extreme.
Their bloodline already gave them stronger bodies, but they still used Aura to push that limit even further.
It was how they could handle Hollow Eyes without collapsing.
Dad, however, was different.
His energy center was broken.
He couldn’t use Aura anymore.
The destruction of his Energy Center had caused a backlash, weakening his body.
He was still stronger than normal people, but not by much.
Maybe around the level of a Rank 1 Exorcist.
He could still use Hollow Eyes since it didn’t rely on Aura, but only to a limited extent.
His body just wasn’t strong enough now to endure it for long.
"Let’s keep training," he said.
I nodded and focused again.
He didn’t need to tell me what to do this time.
I gathered my mental energy and pushed it toward my eyes.
The soft hum returned, and the world started fading again.
This time, I prepared myself for the dizziness.
The colors drained away, and the lines returned.
It was easier to handle this time, though my head still felt heavy.
I could see the thin threads that formed everything.
The garden was nothing but moving patterns.
The flow of energy from the trees looked like slow, twisting streams.
Dad was standing behind me, but in this world, he wasn’t human-shaped.
He was a cluster of dense lines, glowing faintly in the middle.
And there was something strange about him.
His right shoulder had an empty patch.
That area had no lines, or structure, just emptiness.
I blinked, but the spot stayed the same.
"Dad," I said quietly, still focusing, "your shoulder..."
"Don’t talk. Stay focused. You’ll lose control if you get distracted."
I stayed silent and tried to keep my breathing steady.
The energy in my head began to throb harder.
My sight started to blur again. I held on instead of stopping.
At that moment, I looked at Yuna.
Her entire body was made up of scribbles.
They shifted and flowed around her like living ink.
She hovered in front of me and said, "Lord of Shadows, what your father told you was correct, but it wasn’t complete.
"Your Hollow Eyes are a type of Force Eyes.
"They let you see into the Fourth-Dimensional World.
"The scribbles you see now are the foundation of that world.
"Maybe because your Force Eyes are still weak, you can only see the base structure of the Fourth-Dimensional World."
’So that’s why the scribbles looked familiar,’ I thought.
What I was currently seeing was somewhere between a Third-Dimensional and a Fourth-Dimensional World.
Pretending to be clueless, I asked, ’Yuna, what’s a Fourth-Dimensional World?’
"Hmm," Yuna said, tapping her chin. "Let’s just say it’s a higher plane of existence.
"Your world is only three-dimensional.
"But Force Eyes let you peek into something beyond that.
"If you learn to use them properly, your perception won’t just grow, it’ll evolve."
I nodded.
She floated closer and placed her small hands on my head.
"I’ll guide your mental energy. Watch how I move it and learn. If you can follow me, you’ll master the [Colorless World] soon."
I focused and felt her energy move inside me.
I copied her movement carefully, letting my mental energy flow along the same path.
My vision started to change again.
The scribbles around me moved less wildly, forming shapes that made sense.
"Huh?" Dad and Yuna spoke at the same time.
"This... you learned so quickly, Lord of Shadows," Yuna said in surprise.
"You can already use it that well?" Dad laughed and picked me up, throwing me in the air playfully.
I was still using Hollow Eyes while looking around.
Then something new appeared.