Ch: 118.6

Everywhere I looked, my soul was a complete and utter disaster. Of course, I expected some damage from the soul horror incident, but this was beyond anything I could imagine.

As soon as I opened my eyes, I was in the middle of a destroyed clearing. All the plants I’d painstakingly molded out of experience were flattened, ripped in half, or gone altogether. My stonework was all over the place, and my meditation hut was in ruins, looking like it had exploded from the inside out.

But things like gravity didn’t exactly exist here, so while my hut was reduced into countless pieces, the chunks just floated in midair, making it look like everything was frozen mid-explosion. Everything was trashed in every sense of the word, but by far, the most concerning thing was the deep gashes in the ground.

Even though my soul's surface resembled a forest, everything except the occasional hill or divot was usually flat. But now the ground was upturned, and there were deep recesses, some over five feet wide and stretching as far as I could see. The gashes dug deep into the surface of my soul, and just looking at them made me feel a fantom pain in my chest.

My soul was wounded, but I didn't know precisely what caused it. The damage could be from a whole host of things, such as when that first soul horror tried to rip my soul out, or it could be the result of all the experience threatening to crush me. What I see might even be from my soul expanding so suddenly, but I don’t remember this happening when I killed the soul devourer.

But this was why I wanted to risk entering my soul. It didn’t matter where the damage came from; I needed to fix it. A damaged soul couldn't be a good thing; what would happen if I got hit with another skill as I did with the winged serpent?

The few times I’ve been affected by other people’s skills, my soul fought back against the intrusion. A lot determines how long a skill will affect me, mainly the user's skill level and whether it's malicious or beneficial, but they all worked the same. Multiple fragments try to integrate themselves into the target's soul’s surface, but now with all these gashes, those fragments could burrow deeper than they should be able to.

My soul was naturally healing itself, and I could sense the crevasses slowly filling in, but it was happening gradually, and as I said, some of the fissures were quite big.

Focusing on the closest crack, I manipulate the surrounding experience and start shoving it in like I was patching a crack in a dam. The broken remnants of my meditation cabin break apart into motes of light, and I use that experience to cover the last bit of the fissure once it’s full enough.

All that remained of my cabin was a single billboard hovering in the air. On the board were multiple plaques, each representing the multiple contracts I made with Pacore and Kervin. It was a good thing they were intact, but that probably had more to do with their nature as a foreign skill rather than them being that strong.

Glancing around my soul, I sigh; one crack down, countless more to go. It was a good thing there was a time-dilation factor, or else I'd never get all this done in time. But then again, filling that first crack didn't take long, and manipulating the experience felt much easier than I remember. Was this also the effect of leveling up my skills?

Probably.

Like how I improved Mana Skin, thanks to all the levels I gained in other skills, controlling the surface of my soul became much easier due to the levels I gained in Soul Manipulation and Sense Soul. The Soul Manipulation levels let me control everything easier, but Sense Soul breaking past its bottleneck was arguably better.

Overall, I could sense my soul to a much greater degree now. I knew the state of everything around me, and I dare say I felt like a god in my own little world.

But speaking of gods.

Looking up, I stare at the seven full moons hovering overhead, especially the two I felt a faint connection to. It felt like I was being watched, but if I probed any harder, I would be ejected from my soul, so I didn't look up for long. Pulling my eyes away from the celestial bodies, I glance again around my surroundings, half expecting a certain pair of goddesses to appear, but after a minute, I'm still alone.

The pair said they could only interact with mortals on rare occasions, so I shouldn't be surprised they didn't magically appear, but I wasn’t necessarily going to take their word on it. I highly doubted there was a convenient rule saying gods couldn’t lie to mortals, so until I was absolutely sure they couldn’t appear on a whim, I would treat it as if they could.

But seeing that they weren't here, there was no reason to do anything differently. So, ignoring the moons overhead, I focus on patching everything that needs patching. If I have time, I’ll work on my clearing, but I am exclusively focusing on patching up my soul for now.

From the tiniest cracks to the biggest ravines, I scour every inch of my soul for anomalies. Some were already almost finished healing and only took a few seconds to smooth over, while others took what felt like hours to fill in.

I first tackle all the ground anomalies in the forest before moving onto the rocky area separating me from my sea of memories. And while fixing up the rocky area, I do something I’ve been planning for a while; I carve a clear path to my sea of memories so I can get there faster if the need arises.

For now, I avoid the sea because even though there might be more cracks in it, I didn't want to risk getting booted out of my soul prematurely.

I spend a lot of time moving around my soul, examining everything. After the influx of experience, the surface area of my soul increased drastically, so there was a lot of new scenery to see. There was more forest to walk through and larger stone mountains protecting the sea, but the most exciting find was a lake.

It wasn’t a big lake by any means, only a couple hundred feet from end to end, but it was new, so it was interesting. The lake was shallow, no more than five feet deep at its center, with water so clear I mistook the lake for a crater when I first saw it. It wasn't until I touched the surface and the water rippled that I realized what had appeared in my soul.

I say water, but just like everything else here, it was made from experience and just looked like water. And unlike the sea, touching the water didn’t make me relive any memories. In fact, as far as I could tell, the lake did nothing and was simply another way for my soul to express itself.

Personally, I like to think the lake at the center of the crater had left a lasting impression on me, but that could just be me reading into things. Either way, it was something new, and I was interested in trying to manipulate other experience to see if I could replicate the feeling of water.

But I knew I was getting distracted, so after thoroughly examining the lake, I returned to work and didn't stop until I was done.

After a lot of hard work and circling my soul multiple times, I’m confident I patched everything up. Of course, it would take a few days for the patches to blend seamlessly into everything else, but I was confident everything would be suitable when we reencountered the winged serpent.

Now, how long have I been here?

I could vaguely sense that it’s been about nine hours in the real world, but there was a better way to check if I'd been here too long. So, using a combination of Sense Soul and Soul Manipulation, I conjure my status page inside my soul.

LV: 82 Experience: 932,190/ 1,484,280

Health: 2,686.19/2,700

Stamina 1,836/1,836

Mana: 909.61/1,060

Vitality: 270.01

Endurance: 100.41

Strength: 181.01

Dexterity: 181.00

Senses: 62.77

Mind: 65.67

Magic: 106.02

Clarity: 79.35

Status Points: 0

Skills:

Tier 1:

Meditation (LV81), Running (LV80), Blacksmithing (LV75), Hammer Skills (LV71), Axe Skills (LV60), Cleaning (LV58), Chanting (LV53), Mining (LV51), Drawing (LV48), Trading (LV48), Cooking (LV47), Sword Skills (LV40), Acting (LV36), Dagger Skills (LV35), Wood Carving (LV32), Sewing (LV32), Dancing (LV32), Pugilist Skills (LV16), Alchemy (LV15), Spear Skills (LV2)

Tier 2:

Sense Mana (LV81), Double Step (LV68), Charm (LV50), Hammer Arts (LV50), Measurement (LV49), Axe Arts (LV39), Steady Hands (LV36), Intimidating Shout (LV34), Writing (LV32), Mathematics (LV31), Increase Price (LV22), Lower Price (LV20), Sword Arts (LV17), Gourmet (LV15), Dagger Arts (LV13), Marching (LV5), Shout of Valor (LV3), Pugilist Arts (LV1)

Tier 3:

Mana Manipulation (LV67), Expel Mana (LV64), Weighted Strike (LV47), Double Strike (LV46), Precise Strike (LV46), Flash Step (LV39), Contract (LV22), Poison Resistance (LV14), Enchanting (LV10)

Tier 4:

Mental Resistance (LV63), Mana Skin (LV61), Inject Mana (LV57), Extract Mana (LV40), Magic Blacksmithing (LV36), Magic Threads (LV34), Air Walk (LV24), Empowered Spell (LV21), Ironclad Agreement (LV8), Multi-Strike (LV7), Appealing Deal (LV3),

Tier 5:

Sense Soul (LV41), Soul Manipulation (LV23)

Tier 6:

Soul Devourer (LV17), Experience Transfer (LV3)

Increased Skill Levels

Meditation (LV81) 4,050exp

Hammer Skills (LV71) 3,550exp

Cleaning (LV58) 2,900exp

Chanting (LV53)2,650exp

Steady Hands (LV36) 3,600exp

Precise Strike (LV46) 6,900exp

Poison Resistance (LV13-14) 4,050exp

Mana Skin (LV61) 15,250exp

Inject Mana (LV57) 14,250exp

Magic Threads (LV33-34) 16,750exp

Empowered Spell (LV21) 5,250exp

Soul Manipulation (LV23) 11,500exp

Skill Experience: 90,700exp

Crafting Experience: 4,736exp

Fighting Experience: 0exp

Total experience Gained: 95,436exp

“Wow,” I whistle.

I still must be adjusting after absorbing all the soul horrors because to level twelve skills in three days was a lot, even for me, especially considering I spent two of those days sleeping. That meant I leveled almost every one of these skills in the last twenty-four hours, which was insane.

I knew Mana Skin and Magic Threads leveled, but the rest were a happy surprise.

I was overjoyed to see my Meditation level again. It’d only been like a week since it last leveled, and for it to happen again so soon was a big boon. It probably reached level 81 because of the mana control I demonstrated while leveling Mana Skin. I was in a deep state of meditation during that whole process and was rewarded for maintaining it throughout the experience.

But only a few of my skills leveled because of what I did with Mana Skin, the rest leveled from helping Tabitha fix her armor and me cleaning my hammer. The only exceptions were Poison Resistance, which leveled two more times after the winged serpent poison was finally purged from my body, and Soul Manipulation, which leveled just a little while ago while I was repairing the damage to my soul.

The two skills I was most surprised to see level were Inject Mana and Hammer Skills. For the former, I pushed my mana into many different objects, mainly using Magic Threads, but that wasn’t why my skill leveled. Instead, it leveled because I channeled my cleaning spell into my hammer. I don’t know why I’ve never thought of it until now, but it made sense. What were spells but mana organized and controlled by an enchantment? As long as I kept it powered and waited until it was finished, why couldn't I force a spell into something?

I was going to need to investigate this further. I only knew four spells, self-cleaning, hovering light, small flame, and flame javelin. The cleaning and light spells would do little inside my hammer, but I could see potential with the other two. To this day, I miss my flaming katana I sacrificed to bring down the soul devourer, but I couldn’t just channel any spell into my only weapon. What would happen if the spell melted it from the inside out; I would be left without a weapon.

I needed to test this new application of magic on something I didn’t mind destroying, but that was another thing I would have to wait until later to explore.

I had much to ponder, but my mind kept returning to Hammer Skills. I still couldn't believe it leveled from fixing Tabitha's breastplate. It took a lot of control not to ruin it but enough to level it; I didn't think so. Maybe the skill was closer to leveling than I previously thought, and Tabitha's armor was just the thing to push it over the edge.

Ugh, so much was changing; it was hard to keep up with everything. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy. I just felt tired, is all, which was funny because I was almost fully healed.

In the last nine hours, my body had converted enough mana to bring me back up to 90%, and I only needed less than twenty points until my Health was fully recovered. So I was almost back to perfect fighting shape, which meant, it was time I go back to the real world and check on Tabitha and see how she was doing.

I know she’ll say whatever she can to convince me she’s healed up enough to explore the bottom chamber of the ruins, but as long as Tabitha doesn't exaggerate too much, now might be a good time to finally see what's drawing the remaining death mana to the chamber beneath us.

If we can just find one more soul horror, I should get enough experience to bump me up to level 83.

I know it was greedy of me to hope for such, especially after spending so much time fixing my scared soul, but I wanted to help Tabitha. According to her, there were still around fifty levels separating me from the winged serpent. Sure, I killed the soul devourer, which was at an even higher level than the lesser dragon, but that was only because I had the exact skills to counter it.

The winged serpent wasn't as specialized as the soul devourer, which, oddly enough, made it more dangerous rather than less.

No matter what, Tabitha would have to be the main attacker, but there had to be something I could do to help her.

I groan in frustration. My mind was spinning in circles, and that wasn't helping anybody. Maybe Tabitha can help me come up with an idea?

Closing my eyes, I search for the connection that leads back to my body and find it almost immediately. Again, Sense Souls' breakthrough fundamentally changed how I feel my soul. If I was ever in the same situation again, crushed by experience, I was confident I could handle myself better.

Triggering the connection, I feel my consciousness being forced back into my body and the real world.

It was time to see what secrets this building was hiding and, if lucky, maybe a way to escape this death trap.

Or, possibly…. kill a lesser dragon.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

**********

2,550 words.

I finished this chapter late last night, but I didn't want to rush the editing, so I held off doing so until I got some sleep.

What did you think of the chapter? I'll admit not much happened, but I think it’s an important transition chapter, showing Aaliyah is back to full strength and ready to rumble.

Please comment your thoughts below, and as always, stay safe.