Autophagy

"So that's about it," Song Lei muttered as he put the last page he had bought on top of the pile of old pages. He was now ready for whatever was to come after reading through the process of the ritual.

After stretching his body, he started buying the rest of the necessary ingredients, which were not much.

First of all, he needed something that he could use to draw the ritual circle with. By the looks of it, the necessary material wasn't specified in the guide, which relaxed Song Lei slightly. If he had to use something like blood to prepare the magic circle, the ritual would've been severalfold more suspicious.

Being able to pick whatever he wanted, he decided to go with the simplest choice and bought a few boxes of white chalk from the system shop, using a single blood bead. He then stuffed a few chalks into his pocket before putting the rest into one of the drawers in his room. He didn't know if he would need them in the future, however, it was always good to have some.

Now that he was done with that, he proceeded to buy two regular candles and a lighter.

"That should be it..." He muttered as he checked. Walking out of his room, he walked to the staircase and started ascending. The nothingness was only a few steps away from him. Fortunately, he would get a notification every time he entered it that specified his leftover time.

As he reached halfway to the upper floor, the awaited notification popped up.

[You've entered nothing. The time you can be something inside nothing is related to your soul power. Time left until nothing: 00:05:34]

"That's really good..." Song Lei muttered to himself. As it was mentioned in the guide, people weren't able to exist inside nothingness for a long time. Even the author of the guide was only able to last for one and a half minutes.

'Does that mean that my soul is much stronger than theirs? Or is the difference related to something else..?'

As Song Lei kept pondering, he made sure that he wasn't idly staying there. Running up and entering the floor thoroughly, he looked around. Although he had never felt this before because he had always focused on leaving the 15th floor as soon as he could, an impending sense of doom was encasing his very being every second he stood there.

Crouching down and taking out a stick of chalk from his pocket, he pressed it down on the ground. However, as soon as he did that, the chalk broke into two pieces.

"Shit. I applied too much force..." He muttered as he threw the remaining piece aside. "I can't use this anymore. I need to do my best to make the circle perfect," he thought out loud as he dug out another stick of chalk from his pocket.

This time, he held the chalk closer to its tip before pressing it down on the ground. Ignoring the fact that he was feeling as if he was inside a small boat in the middle of the ocean, he drew a circle with a radius of one and a half meters using a tape measure he had previously bought.

Drawing the best possible circle he could, he then proceeded to split it into twelve slices. While doing all this, he was making sure to keep an eye on his remaining amount of time.

Although the sensation of being suffocated by his soul was telling him to leave quickly, he still had two minutes left. During that time, he made sure that the slices were drawn as perfectly as possible.

[You've entered nothing. The time you can be something inside nothing is related to your soul power. Time left until nothing: 00:01:12]

"Thi-s this should be..." Song Lei tried to speak out loud. However, his throat was becoming tighter as he stood in the middle of nothingness. Because he had started showing signs of losing his consciousness. He gathered his stuff and went back to the lower floor for a quick rest.

As soon as he left the range of nothingness, he felt as if a claw that had his heart in its grasp had released him. Breathing heavily, he collapsed on the ground to rest.

'I should leave earlier next time. It doesn't look like I can last the whole time without losing consciousness,' He decided as he laid there. Quickly going back to room 1401 and resting for some time, he felt that he was ready for the next round. Taking the page that contained the symbols he needed to draw into the circle, he went to floor 15 once more.

Fortunately, the symbols were very simple. As long as he kept focusing on making their sizes as similar to the drawings on the page as possible, he would complete it perfectly.

After repeating the same process of drawing, going back down to floor 14, and resting before going back up a few times, Song Lei managed to finish the ritual circle. After placing the two candles he had bought on the opposite sides of the circle, he went down to floor 14 for the last rest.

As he felt his soul being restored to its best condition, he went to the ritual circle once more.

Making sure that he didn't accidentally break the ritual circle, he stepped into the middle of it.

After getting down on his knees and closing his eyes, Song Lei took a deep breath.

'I have five minutes,' he reminded himself. Opening his eyes, he lit the two candles to his sides up. He then closed his eyes back.

As he internally recited the contents of the guide on shamanism, he held the ritual dagger in a reverse grip with his right hand. Raising it slowly into the air, he grasped the rest of its handle with his other hand.

With the dagger in a two-handed reverse grip, its blade was directly facing towards himself.

Reaching out into his soul and pushing out, Song Lei encased himself with a thick, gray layer of soul energy.

He then lifted his face up by forty-five degrees before raising the dagger.

Aligning the tip of the dagger's blade with his face, Song Lei stabbed the tip of the dagger into his glabella....