Why couldn't he be the guru who enjoyed air conditioning. I swear this guy is gonna tell me some bull shit about needing to embrace suffering.

Sure enough, a half dozen kilometers north, Felix encountered an old looking man, sitting on a rock. Felix was pumping mana into two separate Cool spells and held the remainder of his bed sheet around his head to mitigate the effects of the scorching sun.

"Hello there, I hear you are guru? or the guru?"

The man rose to his feet and looked down at Felix, "I am guru, you may call me guru."

Is this a joke?

"What is it you seek?"

"I was hoping you could teach me something."

"I can teach you many things, what do you wish to learn?"

"Uh, not sure. The last guy I talked to taught be about energy and how to manipulate it to do some cool stuff. You got anything like that you can teach me?"

"I have nothing to teach you when it comes to energy. I am guru, I train my soul to reach and become my true self."

"Can you teach me soul stuff?"

"I would be happy to. Come up here and sit next to me."

As cool as soul training stuff sounds, this better not be bogus. I wonder if I'll take damage from getting sunburnt. Can I get skin cancer? Will it kill me?

Felix hopped on to the rock and sat next the guru.

"What do you know about the soul?"

Considering I wasn't sure it existed a month ago, actually a minute ago.

"All living things have souls, it's what makes them alive. It's who they are? Even if you could animate a body, without a soul it would either be a robot, a golem or wouldn't function at all?"

"Yes, this is all true. You are a caster, yes?"

"I am."

"Good, you know about mana then. All around you there is mana, in all things. In some places there is a lot of mana, in others there is very little. The interesting question is, why can't we see it? It doesn't affect anything unless someone like you or I touches it. The answer is that it is folly to think there are only three or four dimensions just because those are the ones we see. There are very likely many more, but honestly, I have no idea. The leading theory is that mana exists everywhere, but it mainly exists shifted slightly in the fifth or sixth dimension, and something needs to reach out for it to move it into our dimension or do something with it."

"I have no idea if that is true, that is what some people say. What does this have to do with souls? Take everything I just said and put soul-matter wherever I said mana. That's the theory on souls. Souls are a tiny droplet from an ocean of soul-matter or consciousness that exists all around us. When we, or anything, dies their soul is dropped back into the ocean. When someone is born, their soul comes from the ocean. This is where dreams come from, and memories that you never experienced. You soul is made from pieces of other souls that have existed. Or that's what I have been told. I'm not sure how much of that I believe."

"Here is what I do know, I have a soul, I can see it and I can feel it and even sometimes, I can touch it. Here is what I have been taught, and learned over the years, that I am confident is mostly accurate. Souls, at least for us sentient living things, though I can only confirm this in myself, have layers. Our souls have a core soul, this is your identity, who you are, it consists of all of your experiences, it is your personality. It also contains a portion of your stats, but it doesn't hold a part of your intelligence and strength, it holds the other stats. Apparently, The System used to display these on our sheets, but then it stopped because it wasn't useful. They don't really change and The System cannot accurately estimate them anyways. These stats were displayed as wit, creativity and so on."

"The core soul is the one thing, that I know of at least, that The System has no control over, at all. It cannot touch it or move it or even really read it. The next layer contains your other stats, sort of. It also contains most of your memories. The core soul consists of experiences, this is things that have affected you significantly. The rest of your memories, the boring stuff, is held in the second layer. The stats it holds, part of your intelligence, endurance and what not. We know this because there have been liches that have transferred their core soul and the second layer to another body."

"Basically, I can move your soul to a new body, it can be the body of an A grade behemoth, but you wouldn't have a million strength, your soul can't handle moving that much, you can't handle controlling it's body. You would be limited to the most strength your soul can handle. When we level up, The System helps sift our experiences and strengthen the second layer of our soul so we have better control over the limits of our bodies. Then there are a bunch of other random layers. The number varies based on the person, but you can have heavily emotional layers, many thought layers if you are constantly lost in thought or being berated by stray thoughts. You can have a bunch of random crap all around it."

"These layers are not useless though, beyond the second layer, the layers all serve to protect your soul. There are things that can attack your soul, things like curses and some nasty branches of illusion magic that manipulate your emotions and experiences. You can also strengthen your soul to have better control over your body, theoretically you could gain stats, but I have never heard of anyone doing so without The System's help. What you can do is gain better awareness of your body."

"Instead of increasing the connection from your soul to your body, we can increase the connection from your body to your soul. There are a lot of things you just can't feel because you don't experience them. This is one way of doing so. Imagine feeling the blood pushing itself through your veins. Imagine feeling your organs as they move and even, one day, individual cells as they perform their functions throughout your body. If we can feel them, we can also control them, to some extent."

"If you get really good, you could tell your heart to simply stop, if you wanted to. At least, that's the theory. You can also increase the size of your soul, add layers, strengthen what's already there. You could form your own soul into something truly unique, powerful."

Woah. That was a big dump of information. I wonder if this guy is just so alone out here he relishes talking to anyone. He seems passionate about this, which is great, but that was a lot. He did seem to be pretty open about what he can know vs what he's been told but still, I can't know if he's right about any of it.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Uh ok, sounds good I guess. How do we do that?"

"Easy. Remember I told you there was soul matter or consciousness all around us? You can take hold of some of that and slowly incorporate it into your own soul. You can also compress your soul, essentially solidifying the outer layers. You can also organize your soul, or take control of the outer layers and shape it all however you desire. You can also peer into your true soul and witness the past and discover who you really are. These are all valid. It is possible you already suffer from too many stray thoughts and emotions and you do not want more, so instead of growing your soul with ambient consciousness, you take control of the outer layers and compress them."

"It is also possible to remove layers, though it is often not recommended as you can go too far or leave yourself vulnerable. If you know what you are doing, you will know to ignore this warning, if you are just thinking it might work or might be cool, do not do it."

"I see. I appreciate the warning. How do I even see my soul though? Honestly, I didn't know they existed until a minute ago, and I'm still not sure they do."

"Easy, I will attack your soul, and you will feel it."

"Woah woah woah-"

"I am barely going to slap it, don't worry."

"I'm not sure I-"

A few minutes passed as the Guru closed his eyes and furrowed his brow. Felix was starting to get uncomfortable under the heat so he barely noticed a slight tickle spreading through his whole body but originating from no where. He simply felt it everywhere. It was similar to when he first felt mana.

"Try to focus on where it is coming from."

Felix felt another tickle coming from inside again, except this time it was like it was the dullest pain. He tried to focus on where it was coming from but couldn't seem to pinpoint it.

"Ok try focusing on where you feel it. I know it feels like everywhere, but focus on something like your hand, is it actually in your hand?"

Felix felt another slight wave of pain and focused on his muscles. He felt pain everywhere but he realized he did not feel it in his muscles, it was not everywhere. He systematically went through his body until he realized he didn't actually feel the pain anywhere, in his body. Now when he focused on the pain, he knew it wasn't in his body, it was somewhere else.

Slowly, as Felix focused, the shape of his soul came into focus.

"Ok, please stop slapping me now."

"If you become really high level in soul manipulation, you can create a soul space."

"What is a soul space?"

"Oh you haven't heard? Huh. Once you are around the A grade moving into the S grade, you can create a small pocket in your true soul where you can store things. It's better than your inventory because you can store things that do not exist, things that cannot be stored. Be careful with living things though, if they are stronger than you in soul, they may take over, you, your true self, possess you and destroy you from the inside."

"I see."

Not sure I see. What's the point of that over my inventory? Maybe there are more things I'll come across that can't be stored.

"Of course you can also store things to increase your stats and give you inherent abilities."

Way to bury the lead there guru.

"Ah, that seems useful."

"How have you not heard of soul spaces? Has no God offered you a pledge yet?"

"I have no idea what that is, so no?"

"You must originate from… Did you just get integrated?"

"Yeah."

"How did you escape the universe during the grace period?"

"I didn't, this is a dungeon."

"This is a what?"

"A dungeon, we are in a dungeon. This is a dungeon."

He can't even hear me, I've been wondering what would happen if I did that. Rather anticlimactic, I was kind of hoping for some paradigm shifting realization.

"Trade secret."

"Ah I see, fair enough since it must be something very powerful."

Felix closed his eyes and focused on his soul. It took him nearly a half hour to clarify it's outline before he started to do anything with it. He first tried to reach out and hold onto some of the ambient consciousness. It took almost two hours, but he managed to move it and hold onto it. He made sure he could press it into his soul then let it go.

"Alright, have you got anything else you can teach me or tell me about souls? Any pro tips or tricks?"

"Find what works for you, have a goal in mind with soul cultivation, refinement, forging whatever you want to call it, and figure out how to get there. You want better defense? Harden your soul, grow it or take control of it and shape it into a wall. If you want body awareness and control, work on defining and controlling your soul first."

"I appreciate your teachings. Thank you guru."

"My pleasure."

Felix hopped off the rock and ran back to the ruins. Using his map, he ran in a perfectly straight line. He maintained two Cool spells targeted directly on top of himself the entire time. Without them, he wouldn't have been able to sit atop the rock with guru for so long. As it was, all of his exposed skin was sunburnt, on the back of his neck and arms mostly. He had even taken almost a hundred points of damage.

Back at the ruins, Felix ran into the aqueduct but stopped right as he passed through the entrance. He sat down, drank two full canteens then pulled out a few mana batteries and began meditating.

Once he was mostly recovered, he set out into the aqueduct towards the nest. He reached it without issues with only a small swarm of scorpions remaining from his last clear. He began burning away the blockage with Flame Throwers. Instead of burning a hole all the way through, he focused on heating the whole thing up, weakening it and hopefully causing it to catch flame and burn independently. It did not catch flame at any point, however it did burst open allowing a massive wave of water to rush through the tunnel.

Felix was carried away by the torrent of water and thrashed into the walls of the tunnel taking just over half of his health in a few seconds. Felix quickly enforced his whole body with energy hoping to increase his durability somewhat. In a last ditch effort Felix took a gamble and cast Mana Shield. He didn't have much time to think of a great solution so he just hoped it would dull the impact between him and the wall.

He was being whipped around in every direction, when suddenly he fell to the ground, no longer completely submerged. His mana was dropping rapidly at around a hundred per second. Felix sputtered water out of his lungs and recovered on the ground in the aqueduct. Looking around him, he was surrounded by water gushing past him. His Mana Shield was parting the sea for him and keeping him safe. Felix quickly pulled out mana batteries to try and keep up with the drain from his shield.

I really should have expected that, I didn't really think there would be that much water built up, but I should have known it was a possibility. It's really lucky Mana Shield works the way it does though. I thought it might transfer the force of something pushing against it onto me, like if someone whacked it with a hammer, I would get sent flying, but that's not the case. I feel nothing even though it's holding back tons of water. This spell is much better than I thought. It's also really promising for some things I want to try out later on.

Ten seconds passed, then twenty, the amount of time he could have held out with only his own mana pool. Finally almost a minute later there was a pocket of air appearing at the top of the tunnel. It was another thirty seconds or so until the water resembled river rapids, which was still potentially deadly, but much more manageable.

Felix made his way to the side of the tunnel where there was a walkway, likely built for maintenance, like clearing out Scorpions when they start building up. Felix dropped to the ground and meditated to replenish his dwindling mana. Once his pool and the batteries were mostly restored, he followed the tunnel past where the nest was. He could only tell where the nest had been because of his map as the torrent of water had washed away any sign the nest had existed.

I thought scorpions didn't nest or form herds. Maybe it's the Brood-Mother's that have an ability to gather them and make them act like a swarm. They aren't very coordinated anyways, they mostly hinder each-other. I'm pretty sure a lone Brood-Mother would be much harder to deal with than one that's stuck because the swarm has them jammed into a tunnel.

Felix continued walking down the tunnel and judging from his map, he was about three quarters of the way towards the oasis. He saw the occasional scorpion corpse but none that were alive. After a few more minutes of walking through the tunnel Felix peered around a corner and ended up face to face with a Scorpion Brood-Mother. . . . . .