"Got any theories?"

"As to why you're awake? Nothing plausible. Want to experiment with me and figure it out?"

"I guess. Don't really have much else to do while we wait."

"Excellent. Ok, remember you can come back here whenever you want, this is a part of your soul. I want you to exit your soul garden and do your best to turn on your soul sight. Try to look around you."

Felix did as Grim asked, exiting his soul garden and returning to the senseless void. Though not entirely senseless, as he could feel the ambient mana around him. He focused in on his soul got a feel for it, then slowly extended his sight outwards from there. Just like his mana sense, it was like feeling things around himself. He slowly expanded the range and it grew, a centimeter outwards from his soul at first, then slowly it grew to a meter. He continued to push and feel outwards until he could feel dozens of meters outwards.

Ok, what now?

What do you see?

I can feel ambient anima but it's… dead? or asleep?

It's just empty, this is a pocket dimension or universe. The anima here is probably just blank, never been a part of a soul, never stored any experiences. Nothing has ever happened here. It just stores the big universal events that everything contains, so it just feels blank.

Ok. What now?

Take me out of your soul space, but be careful. Use your mana control to keep me tethered to you physically.

Won't you die? Isn't this like the void of space?

Yeah that's exactly what it is. No, I'll definitely be fine. The only worry is getting knocked too far apart.

Felix did as Grim asked, creating a flexible string of mana and holding onto it with his mana control. He pulled Grim out of his soul space and used the cord of mana to wrap around Grim's cover as soon as he appeared. Grim gently floated away from the inertia until the cord was taught and he stopped.

What now?

Felix waited a dozen seconds. He expected Grim to respond right away so he got concerned very quickly.

Grim? Are you there?

He waited just a few seconds this time before sending a stronger message, the equivalent of a yell.

GRIM?

I… Sorry.

What's wrong?

Pull me back… go… go uh…

Grim?

Soul garden… pull be back and… go.

Felix felt the panic returning and pulled Grim back into his soul space then shifted his consciousness into his soul garden as quickly as he could. He saw Grim's form sitting on the ground, wrapped up in a ball with his head between his bony knees.

"Grim!? What's wrong?"

"Nothing… Just give me a second to recover… think…"

"I…" Felix stopped himself and sat down across from Grim a meter or so away. He waited a few minutes with the wind once again, gradually picking up and the water growing turbulent. He kept waiting, so long in fact that the garden had undergone multiple storms as Felix's thoughts raced and calmed multiple times in repetition. After that, he continued waiting and the garden remained calm, it had been long enough for him to accept all the thoughts and accept that all he could do was wait. He kept waiting until Grim finally dropped his hands to the grass around him and looked up at the sky.

"Good news…" Felix heard, the first thing since the wind in what had felt like hours. "I know… That's a lie, I know nothing."

"Well… What happened?"

"I looked at your soul. I was going to ask you to try and let me in, show me as much as you could, open up the outer layers so I could see better…"

"But?"

"It wasn't necessary… Your soul being outside of your body is a unique opportunity. Normally, it's difficult to see anything when souls are contained in the bodies they are bound to. Well… unless you're me cause I was created, not born. Here though, like you are, you're just visible with nothing in the way."

"Ok, so?"

"Your soul is… I don't… Guess we try something new."

"You… What do you mean?"

"I'm just gonna show you because I don't know."

"Same way as with Nova?"

"Yeah kind of. Close your eyes and… just close them."

"Uh… ok."

Felix felt a memory suddenly flood his mind, like a dream. He watched it. In front of him was what appeared to be a white sphere with a slightly yellow tinge to it. The sphere wasn't well defined though, it flowed and morphed like a fire without edges. It's outer most layer was faint and fleeting as it blended into the atmosphere around it. Beneath that was another layer, this one more opaque and defined. The layers continued, dozens of them, all surrounding a golden colored sphere, the core, in the middle. The core was the size of a marble and it flickered and flowed like the rest of the soul but was separate from it. The other layers morphed together and were fused, but this was it's own thing. It was still translucent, but it was more visible than any of the other layers.

"Looks nor-"

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"This is some random creatures soul that was in my memory. It had been incinerated and it's body vanished so it was the perfect opportunity to see an entire soul."

Felix was struck with another memory, similar, but the soul was fundamentally different. He hadn't realized how much he was getting out of the memories until he felt the difference between this one and the last. He could feel the strength of the soul, it's convictions calling to and enticing him, to kill, ravage his enemies, destroy everything. The soul itself was similar to the last, but it was bigger. It was hard for him to determine the relative scale when he saw nothing but a soul floating in a void, but he somehow knew, it was bigger. The layers were more defined and segmented but the biggest change was the core, which was now the size of a tennis ball. It was still just as transparent but it flowed and moved a little less than before. The entire soul was slightly denser than the last, but still bigger. It contained so much more.

"It's def-"

"This is the soul of the strongest being I ever got to see defeated directly. It was some villainous monster with convictions to kill everything."

Felix was struck with another memory, this one of a soul that appeared completely different from the last two. This one was structured. There was a core, but it was different. It was bound in strings, like a rubber band ball. Those strings floated off throughout the soul like yarn. The core was still visible though as it was all still translucent. He could feel convictions from this soul too, but there were too many to sort through. As he looked around he felt new convictions everywhere, but they were different. Instead of something that the soul agreed on, they were like rules that the soul was forced to accept. They felt like chains binding the soul, instead of a common goal or feeling. The soul was denser than the first in some parts and lighter in others. It was like many souls were stitched together and shoved into a body. The weirdest part was that the soul felt weirdly familiar, like seeing school pictures of someone you know.

Grim spoke first this time, before Felix had a chance to "This is my soul."

"Wow, it's so… constructed?"

"Yeah. Last one."

Felix expected to look out into a void once more, but instead he just saw white. Nothing but white filling the entirety of his vision. He couldn't look around as it was a memory, but he was certain there was nothing but white.

"Uh Grim. What am I looking at?"

"Give it a second. It's playing in real time."

Felix waited and the white subsided as everything came into focus, like the camera's lens was adjusting the exposure. In front of him was a soul, but it was entirely different from any of the others he had seen before this. The core, was simple a white ball, about the size of a volleyball or so, about 20 centimeters across. The thing that was the most different about it though, was that it was completely opaque and hard. It looked like a small porcelain bowling ball. It did not move, it did not shift. Around it were a few layers that were similar to the last souls, translucent and shifting, morphing. These outer layers stretched out in every direction growing gradually fainter off into infinity, out of sight. The layers didn't feel like they were a part of the soul though, they felt like they were simply taped on, following the soul around. Like sheep following the unintentional shepherd. The core of the soul looked completely out of place in comparison. He got the feeling of density from the core and it was like trying to weigh something you couldn't even budge. The other souls were like comparing a dense gas to a light gas. This was denser than lead and completely unmeasurable.

The worst part of the whole thing though, were the convictions. As soon as the soul came into focus, Felix felt his soul cower. He didn't really feel it, it was a part of the memory, the experience, but it translated well. It was like looking at death in the face, this standing before him was something out of reach, unattainable. He felt like there was no hope, there was nothing. It was just acceptance of the end. Everything was closing in and it was impossible to escape, it was impossible to stand against it, it was impossible to defeat. This soul was completely dominant in every regard, it seemed almost indomitable. As soon as the memory was over Felix leaned forwards catching himself with his hands on the grounds and he breathed. He felt like someone had taken his pre integration body into the depths of the ocean. He felt like he couldn't breathe, like he had been strangled but was too distracted to notice. It had felt inescapable, but now he was free.

"This is your soul. Hopefully the strangling sensation translated somewhat."

Felix just gasped for air staring at the ground. He didn't have lungs, didn't even have a body in his soul garden, but the instinct remained and so he breathed in relief and breathed out the fear. His mental construct included a body and he felt the breath, even though it was his imagination or a complex dream, it helped calm him. The entire garden was slowly settling back down. As he watched the memory, experienced what Grim had, an obsidian fog had rolled in, closing in on the surroundings like an impenetrable wall. Now that he was free, it receded and the trees bloomed, restoring themselves from a necrotic husk. The grass regrew to what it was before and the water returned to it's clean clear stillness instead of the solid black ice it was just a moment ago.

"Yeah, sorry about that. I suspect it was likely worse for me too, memory sharing like that doesn't translate perfectly, but looks like you got the idea. That's why it took a while."

"What… the… hell…"

"Yeah… I don't know."

"So that's why The System couldn't knock me out?"

"Yeah, seems like it."

"What does it mean?"

"The hell am I supposed to know that?"

"So…"

"Well, you probably don't need to worry about Nova's curse."

"Would it have been that bad if I hadn't formed this conviction?"

"You didn't."

"What do you mean?"

"Didn't you notice that there were multiple convictions there? Most sentient being's souls are formed from the ambient anima collecting together into a soul. You end up with parts and pieces of souls from all kinds of different things. This results in past lives and their memories and sometimes reoccurring trauma from them."

"So why did I form like this?"

"That's the only thing I know for sure. You didn't"

"What the hell does that mean?" Felix managed to recover himself enough at this point to sit back up.

"That thing is not… sorry, your soul is not natural. That didn't form naturally."

"So The System cr-"

"Hell no. I've seen it do some crazy things, but there is no way."

"So what?"

"I have no idea."

"Great. So what does it mean? What happens now?"

"Great question…"

"Should I not harvest souls then? Does my class even matter?"

"Uhm… You should still… If your soul… That ball, that's the core soul. The untouchable part. If your stats were always maxed out instantly, I would say don't bother. It seems more likely that your core soul was never a sentient being or ever had a body, so you still need to grow into your body. Get used to a body and handling it."

"So stats still matter? What is any of that going to do though?"

"It will probably build permanent outer layers, make them denser and more usable. We can look at growing your core soul later but it might not be possible."

"What could have created something like…"

"I thought about it, I got nothing. I've sensed, not directly seen, the souls of lots of things, god level things. This is just different. Your soul is smaller and weaker, but infinitely stronger at the same time. A god could step on you, crush your body with their ridiculous stats. Your soul would live on though… Not that you could touch them either. You would be like an indestructible pebble smacking a giant in the face repeatedly. Even if you penetrated right through them, they would just heal it back. So it's not like you're a god or anything. Soul attacks, soul illusions, things like that… You should never have to worry about them."

"What did you mean about the conviction?"

"It was already there. You just discovered it. I don't think that was a traumatic enough event to create a conviction on that soul. You sensed more too, right? They just weren't very clear? I suspect any others you come across will just be rediscovering convictions that were already there."

"How do I find them then?"

"Don't do anything. Keep doing what you're doing and you will find them. They're a part of you and they will surface in things you do."

"So what now?"

"Let me just… lie here for a bit."

Felix decided to lie down too, in the soft grass and just stare up at the sky. They spent a few hours sitting there and enjoying the serenity. Felix felt himself completely calm down but he knew Grim was hit much harder by the experience so he waited until he was ready. It was just a few hours later when Grim sat up.

"You ok?" Felix asked.

"Yeah. I'll be fine." . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .