James would have liked to say he didn’t expect this. He’d even add that he hadn’t gone looking for anything of the sort.

Unfortunately, he was now in the middle of a tug-of-war with a being he could feel standing several magnitudes above him. Even more unfortunately, he was pretty sure that if he let go of the massive amounts of mana he had accidentally taken under his control, he’d be metaphysically and bodily smashed into nothingness while the orchestrator of the ritual went about finishing their purpose.

When the initial rush of mana had slammed into him, James had thought to handle it much like he did excess power for his own spells, which meant stashing it away into the ether.

That worked for all of three seconds, until the space available to him filled up. Compressing it until he no longer could have earned him another two seconds, but by that point, nothing else could keep the trillions of mana points powering the ritual from subsuming him.

James only had the time to lament his stupidity - he should have tried putting himself in the ether and waiting it out, though doing so would have likely led to a massive explosion of free mana that his friends were unprepared to face, which was why he hadn’t done so in the first place - before the threads slammed into him.

Every cell of his body worked overtime for a few more seconds, absorbing the immense power and trying to get a handle on the influx.

It was too much.

He felt himself coming apart at the seams. The power had no more space to fill, yet it still tried to. Pressure mounted, incomparable to anything he had ever felt before. This wasn’t a malicious entity trying to ruin him. It wasn’t a wild spell breaking free. It was simply an inconceivable amount of mana that had somehow honed in on him as the best place to go.

James would have liked to know why, but something had given in before the thought could fully form. As if a door he hadn’t even known existed suddenly opened. And finally, there was more space.

Power flooded freely into it, seeking to pool and linger as was in its nature.

But the space seemed infinite. More than James believed possible entered him until finally, only the barest of threads remained, those keeping the ritual going. The rest of it had all vanished inside him.

CONGRATULATIONS!

You have unlocked the Boon: Luminous Being!

Your soul has opened up to the World, gaining conceptual weight beyond its origin. You can now directly interact with souls.

Ah, so that’s what that last thing was. I had kind of given up on it.

The thought felt detached in a way James knew should be alarming but couldn’t bring himself to care. His mind was still having difficulties coping with the influx of sensations that had opened when that door was broken in, and everything else felt muted.

Inside his soul - and now that the System had confirmed it, it seemed obvious - was a teeming mass of power that was still connected to the outside. Now, James was no expert in souls, but even he could tell this wasn’t a safe situation.

Still, it didn’t seem to be doing anything, apparently satisfied with having found a place to pool in.

The tether connecting to it was a different matter altogether. It tugged insistently as if trying to pull back the mana. It was such a weak thing that it didn’t surprise James it hadn’t managed to halt the flood. It was, however, growing in strength.

Considering how much mana had flooded into him - enough to far surpass the capabilities of the traitorous Awakener tasked with handling the local nexus - James had hoped it would be enough to disrupt the ritual. That was not the case.

Its main body was now reaching out and wanting back what he had “stolen.” Through the tethers, a presence manifested itself.

The being controlling the entire work had noticed the theft of power, and they were not amused.

James rapidly found himself dragged into a soul battle. He had no idea what his weapons even were or if he could wield any in the first place, so he dedicated himself to keeping the enormous pool of mana where it was.

He didn’t necessarily want it to remain in his soul long-term. That felt like an exceptionally bad idea without an understanding of the consequences, but letting the ritual's orchestrator have it was even worse.

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If souls could creak, James’ certainly did before he understood how to hold it still. Slowly, bit by bit, it became clearer to him how to operate in this new space.

While comparing it to a mindscape would seem fitting, James could immediately tell it operated on slightly different principles. Determination and willpower remained the primary conduits, but they didn’t manifest. They were the channel through which his soul expressed itself.

This was a very rudimentary way of understanding a new skill, but James trusted the System to be truthful. Several of his abilities mentioned souls, and the speed with which he grasped the concept seemed to confirm that he was on the right path.

The being on the other side realized this, too, because rather than remaining content with pulling at the lost mana, it began to actively direct some of that under their control. The intent behind it was hostile, and James didn’t feel the need to wait for it to reach him before he started defending himself.

Since the mana was already there, and he had no intention of leaving it to languish in his soul space, he began tugging on it. Thankfully, it answered without issues. Indeed, it seemed almost eager to be used, something that James had not experienced before.

Still, he had some experience with mana’s peculiar variations, so he quickly understood how to use it to his benefit.

A spark of murky grey energy finally came through the connection, but by then, James was prepared.

A wave of power left his soul and snuffed out the attack as if it wasn’t there. That made him stop and recalibrate, as he hadn’t expected it to be this easy.

Again, another spark, this time larger and angrier, came through, but it faced the same fate as soon as James mobilized a tiny portion of the power he held.

There was not much space to think. Unlike a mindscape, time still passed normally here. The enemy continued ineffectually attacking, slowly increasing in power, but it was still far from threatening.

Of course, that didn’t mean James was waiting idly for them to finally send something big enough. He spent the time tugging at his reserves, trying to understand how much he could manipulate them.

The answer to that was a lot. Unaspected mana was generally quite malleable, and having been primed to be used in a ritual made it even easier to convert into specific purposes.

James waited for a new attack to come before making his move.

Where before they had been sparks, the enemy now sent angry clouds of buzzing power. The current one was at least a hundred times stronger than the first attempt, though it was drowned just as quickly. There was a qualitative difference between what he was doing and the enemy’s attacks that couldn’t be surpassed easily.

As soon as the newest cloud was snuffed out, James acted. Gathering the vast majority of the power, billions of mana points, he followed the direction the attacks had come from and launched his counterattack.

Immediately, he found himself outside of his soul, though still connected to it. The threads of power that made up the ritual were now visible to him, and he followed them, riding on the immense wave of power following in his wake.

Though the real world felt muted, as if visible only through a veil, James still recognized when he exited from the sewers, passed Brooklyn, and arrived in Manhattan, where the largest concentration of threads led.

When he reached the HQ, he barely had time to notice thousands of Awakeners and even the National Guard preparing roadblocks and evacuating the closest buildings.

There, familiar figures waited for him at the top, though he couldn’t spare more than a thought.

What he needed to do required all his attention. The wave of power that had led him here would no doubt do much to disrupt the ritual. It might even be enough to cause it to break down, but the consequences were not something he could allow.

If a trillion mana points had reacted to his meddling with a single nexus, he couldn’t imagine how much mana was contained in the center of the work. Unleashing that on the city would cause more damage than a nuclear bomb going off.

And he couldn’t forget he needed to deal with the intelligence behind it all. There, glowing in sickly colors, was the being coordinating the ritual. To James’ soulsight, he appeared like a patchwork of different materials. Some parts of his soul were human, while others were taken from monsters and grafted onto the original. More than that, bits and pieces from beings James couldn’t begin to recognize fluttered haphazardly, stuck at times by only specific grafts.

These last parts, however, were much different than the rest. Some were distant and barely visible, as if not fully there, while others shone so brightly that they almost covered the rest of the soul.

It didn’t take James much to realize that the chimera had somehow gained access to the soulspace by attaching bits of other beings who could onto his soul. It likely wasn’t the only power it had gained doing so.

But whatever means it had to interact with souls, it wasn’t comparable to a System-granted one. Still, it might have some trick up his sleeve, so James didn’t take any chance.

There was one thing in his arsenal he thought could overwhelm the chimera. One thing only that could grab onto the ritual and break it. At least that wouldn’t lead to it spilling its contents disastrously.

Transforming unaspected mana into corrosive power had always scared James if he was honest. It was effective beyond any skill he possessed, but it also led to death in all cases it was used upon a living being.

This time, James didn’t hesitate. He couldn’t, not with all that was at stake. As always, the destructive power didn’t take much to manifest.

Rage, fear, pride, disgust. He threw all of these emotions in with the command, fueling the corrosive mana’s growth. It sprung forth from his depths, and only now did he realize that it was coming directly from the soul.

Before he could reflect on that revelation, it came into contact with the immense wave of power he had brought along and infected it.

With so much mana at hand, the corrosion feasted. It expanded rapidly, taking over and producing more of itself, guided by the emotions James had fed it.

By the time it was halfway through, the being leading the ritual had realized something was coming along the connection and shifted just a bit more into visibility, likely activating some grafted skill.

At three-quarters, the chimera started casting something. Urgently pulling at the mana fueling the ritual, it stilled in the real world for a fraction of a second, completing its own attack.

When the mana James had brought along was absorbed, the others on the roof realized something was going on and took advantage of it, unleashing a barrage of attacks that would have annihilated James had he physically been there.

Instead, they passed through him. His enemy wasn’t as lucky and was forced to abruptly stop his defense, moving away with a shout of blind anger. By then, the corrosion reached the ritual’s mainframe.

To say that something visually spectacular happened would have been a lie. The corrosion quickly subsumed the threads of power. It advanced unhesitatingly, taking over entire chunks of the work.

Finally, the damage became too much, and the whole thing destabilized. James couldn’t spare any more thought to the enemy then because he had what felt like a quadrillion mana points to absorb. He just hoped the others he had felt fighting on the rooftop would be able to deal with what remained of the enemy.