Chapter 4 - Leaving Home

Slowly, the years went by like leaves falling from a tree, and Mark kept broadening his knowledge. Strangely, as the years stacked themselves one after the other, he started to feel that his mission in this world had been accomplished. Furthermore, he thought that he had nothing else to do. Following this feeling, his body’s brightness slowly started to vanish, to the point that even he could sometimes be unable to see himself in the mirror. Terrified by this, he wondered whether he was going to disappear forever.

Unable to accept that fate, he chose to go to what appeared like another way out, space. After having visited his family for the last time, he mentally prepared himself before directly shooting towards the sky, at a speed that could rival that of an airplane. His velocity gradually augmenting as he accelerated, he passed through the barrier of the Karman line with ease, instantly entering the exosphere of space.

However, what he feared did not happen. Although it might seem logical that he wouldn’t die from the disappearance of oxygen, he had still lost his wits thinking that he would somehow die after passing through this layer of death. Relieved, he observes his surroundings. Thanks to the fact that he no longer has human eyes, he can see further than 100 times what a human could. However, that isn’t enough to clearly see the surrounding objects, since everything in space is separated by thousands and thousands of kilometers.

His speed now more than 5 times faster than that of light itself, it took him around one hour to get to Mars, since he had lost himself in the meantime, even though he had been going in a straight line. After that, he wandered around the milky way before heading out into the unknown, now clearly lost and with no hope of finding his home again. Dispirited because of his failure, he kept wandering about.

Sometimes, he would leave or enter different galaxies, and contemplate on the mysteries of the universe, those very same mysteries that human-kind had been dreaming of discovering for thousands of years. He felt thrilled. Seeing something that no-one else has ever seen really made him feel unique. Once, he even met another civilization. Although their appearance was totally different from humans, their intellect was higher than theirs, resulting in the colony of various neighboring galaxies. However, he did not spend much time at that place, since he knew that it wouldn’t bring him anything useful. Furthermore, aliens were not really his center of interest.

Along the road, he suddenly felt that his trajectory was slightly being tilted towards the right against his will. Annoyed by this interference, he was, however, unable to contain his curiousness as he headed towards this source that acted like an attractor beam. The closer he was to it, the stronger the pulling force was. At some point, Mark was terrified when he realized that even with his speed, he would barely be able to escape from it. However, what troubled him the most was that the space in front of him was completely black and that the stars that should have been there had mysteriously evaporated.

Thinking back to his physics class, he started remembering what he had learned during his lessons on space. Browsing through his memories, he managed to find a phrase from one of his professors, who was talking about dark transparent orbs that would appear in space after the implosion of a star. Remembering the contents of his teacher’s speech, he realized that what he was facing was a black hole, one of the most mysterious and dangerous things in the universe, that could even destroy light itself.

Suddenly, fear swelled up in his mind and covered his reasoning. Panicking, he suddenly shot in the opposite direction, praying with all his heart to be able to survive. His speed, which was normally as fast as 10 times the speed of light, suddenly accelerated into a peak-like state. As his speed nullified the attraction coming from the black hole, he suddenly and ferociously shot out, traveling thousands of light-years in mere milliseconds. It was only now that he realized that, even though he may have an ethereal body, there were still some things out there that could easily kill him.

During his travels, he had never found a planet where magic or summoning existed. This left him really dispirited, because, since he was small, all he could dream about was to go to another world where he could practice as much magic as he wanted while fighting great enemies to prove his strength in battle. Sadly, it seemed that this was not the path that was chosen for him. Thus, he could only sigh in sorrow at his misfortune.

A few years later, after having spent tons of time wandering around in empty space, and heading towards what looked like the center of the universe, where the big bang supposedly happened, he suddenly felt a familiar feeling, like coincidentally finding something that you had been subconsciously searching for. After wondering why it felt so familiar, and being unable to find any link between that feeling and himself, he thought that maybe this was his destiny, where he was meant to go, and therefore headed in that direction.

What he thought would be ages of traveling was, actually, and thanks to his speed, only 1 minute and a half of flying through space. Suddenly, a majestic sphere popped up in front of him, as if it had just appeared out of nowhere. The sphere, which he had taken for the sun, was actually impossibly smooth, and big, bigger than anything he had ever seen, so big that he couldn’t determine it’s size.

Marveling at this imposing scenery, Mark felt like he could be squashed by it at any moment. It is only then that he noticed the unordinary color of this sphere. The bottom of it was a bright fiery red, while a bluish color was right above a graceful green glow. The whole of it was dominated by a white chill glowing at the top, that felt like the actual wind. Mark could only describe what he saw as: “The fire lies under the earth while the water flows over it, grazed by the wind”.

Somehow attracted by these four colors, he hesitated for a moment before carelessly rushing into the sphere. As his ethereal body passed through it, his mind suddenly vanished, as if it had never existed.

After his disappearance, the sphere immediately imploded and vanished, while the explosion it created caused ripples in the surrounding space for kilometers, destroying various galaxies.