-The next day-

Xanther sluggishly woke up and sat on the edge of his bed.

"Ugh, my body feels so sore."

His body was still adjusting to the flow of mana and his new muscles. It had made his body a bit thinner, but he didn't lose any weight. His muscles had started to compress themselves and his bones were getting stronger. His skin also became sightly tougher as a result of his first real contact with one of the world's energies.

"...I did my job, that's why. Be thankful that I'm not some useless brute who can only use mana clumsily, otherwise you might have been permanently disfigured."

"What did you change?"

Cold sweat ran down his neck as he thought of the possibility that he was tricked. After having rested and calming his mind, he realized that he had rushed into this too fast and may have just forfeited his life.

"...I changed your bloodline to be closer to that of a mana human, but it's still incomplete. Your body is surprisingly resistant to change."

Xanther had a relieved look on his face.

"Well, of course, I didn't build up these muscles for nothing"

"... It's not because of your muscles you oaf, your body itself is weird. I realized that it kept taking in mana and feeding it to your soul automatically while I was working last night. It's as if your body was used as a filter, so your body was filling up on mana your whole life without actually being able to make use of it in any way. It did wonders for your strength, but you had long reached your limit for passive strengthing."

"Wait. So I already had mana within me?"

"...Well, we all have some mana within us that we are born with, it's just that nobody automatically sucks in mana for their soul while being unable to use mana. It was a bitch to work with because it kept resisting my changes for some reason, but now you should be able to direct some of that mana towards places you want to strengthen properly."

"Do you know the cause of this? While I want to hope that I'm some peerless genius, I can't be too optimistic about everything."

"...The was something odd about your soul, to say the least. There's a black ball within it which absolutely scares me. It looks like a deep abyss and seems like it is taking the main portion of the mana, with the rest going to your soul and nourishing it.

"So it's a good thing?"

"...No, it's a bad thing that happens to give you some benefits. This thing scares me to the point where I'm regretting forming this deal with you."

"What are you trying to do by telling me this? Should we get rid of it or keep it?"

"...I'm telling you because I'm getting rid of it, but it will most likely hurt a lot."

"Hey. This is my soul that you're about to mess with. Why should I let you do that at all?"

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"...First, you have no power over me since you can't even use mana. Second, I live next to it and within you, if I mess this up we will both be in deep shit. This thing is bad, I can feel it from the depths of my soul while being disconnected from it, so why should I leave my ticket out of hell to die because of negligence?"

"What did you just call me—"

"...Nevermind that, I'll be starting now. I can't stand even a second more next to that thing."

Xanther immediately began to feel an excruciating pain within his skull. It was like his brain was being torn up and filled with magma. He wanted to scream, but his body wasn't in his control, it just lay limp on the floor with pain in his eyes.

While this was happening, Ozryn was carefully cutting into Xanther's soul to try and reach the orb. Each cut had to be slow and precise to not irreversibly damage Xanther's soul. As Ozryn was cutting closer and closer to the orb, it seemed to be reaching out to him as well. It produced these tendrils that shared that near endlessly deep black look to them. If possible, Ozryn wanted to avoid them, but he knew that he would probably need them to pull the orb out.

After 5 minutes of cutting into Xanther's soul, Ozryn finally reached the tendrils, hoping to grab them. They suddenly grabbed at Ozryn's hands instead and began sucking out all the mana he had accumulated over the past 100 years within his body before throwing him out, picking up all the soul pieces floating around, and making the soul complete once more.

Xanther finally regained control over his body after what felt like hours of torture and saw that only 10 minutes had passed. His legs were shaky and felt like jelly, so he didn't move from his position. He wondered if Ozryn was successful and called out to him, but he never responded.

An overwhelming sense of dread washed over Xanther's body as the black orb separated itself from his soul. Eyes and mouths full of sharp teeth opened all over its surface as it grew to be the same size as Xanther's soul. Then, it spoke.

"I'm finally awake."

Its voice echoed throughout Xanther's consciousness and shook the core of his soul. It was a deep voice that sounded both like a shout and a whisper.

Xanther finally realized why Ozryn wanted it to get out so badly.

"Ah, I let out a bit too much. Sorry about that."

The pressure suddenly lifted off of Xanther. He realized that he had stopped breathing before and started hyperventilating. He felt terrified.

"W-what are you?"

It's all Xanther could muster out while knowing the situation he was in.

"Oh don't be so scared, I just let out a bit of energy to relax after finally waking up. You must be curious about your little demon friend, right? I accidentally ate a good bit of him, but he might still be of use as is."

"W-why were you even inside my soul?"

"You, my friend, are one of the few people who are compatible with this fraction of me, and because of that, I will help you gain the power to either work for me or become a good source of entertainment once you've lived your life though."

"A fraction? And what do you mean by entertainment?"

"I was someone who exceeded everything you know and don't know. Time, space, entropy, galaxies, dimensions, multiverses, the beginning, the end. Once you go past everything, living becomes boring, so I decided to split myself and watch the stories of people living their lives as a bystander. On the off chance, they do awaken me, I'll become somewhat of a helper and see how far they can go with some random pushes along the way. Maybe you'll even be able to give me a good fight for a while."

"So you're just raising someone who can give you a good fight?"

"That's if you decide to not work for me once you get strong enough. You might have also noticed that you're too calm in certain situations, like how you are now. That is an influence of me being within you. It should also come with a strong craving for power along with some other stuff. I just thought that I should let you know before there's another 'am I really me' kind of moment where you try your best to reject me. It was funny the first 100 times, but now it's just annoying."

"You're really talkative, huh?"

"Kid, I am from an empty place where nothing and everything used to exist before I turned it all into nothing. You start to talk more after you can't talk to anyone for multiple eternities."

After a good talk with this entity, he seemed to finally calm down completely. It seems like he had changed to be a lot like the entity as it stayed within him, or was the entity inside him because he was a lot like the entity? Too many questions for now. It was only the start of the day and too much had already happened.