The city sprawled in all directions with seemingly no end in sight. It was at the scale where Martin should have noticed it far earlier, but with trees and sometimes even vast planes intertwined between the housing, combined with the effects of the mysterious mirage that seemed to envelop the entire planet, which seemed to be far, far stronger in the area surrounding the city, it had appeared invisible until recently.

‘I wonder what else is invisible to me on this planet. I presume a lot, but as long as creatures of that size are out there, I’m more than satisfied remaining in the safety of civilisation for the time being.’

Looking back at the city, Martin again marvelled at its size. It was large to the extent he couldn’t think of any methods -not involving teleportation or the like- that would allow one end of the city to communicate, much less trade goods, with the other.

This wasn’t because of the lack of high-speed transport, which Martin couldn’t see regardless given how, at his current altitude, he could only barely make out the presence of buildings, but not any specific details. Instead, it was because the civilisation seemed rather underdeveloped. At least from what he could currently make out, Martin saw no sign of advanced architecture, technology or otherwise that would indicate an advanced society.

‘In fact, although I can’t be completely certain, it looks strangely similar to medieval China, at least in terms of architecture.

Despite that, for all I know, there are some technologies in this world that might be even better than anything I could have imagined in my past one. I haven’t even begun to grasp the laws of this world properly yet, and I can already do so much, so who knows what a civilisation that’s lived here for an indeterminate amount of time has managed to invent.

I can’t even tell the exact size of the houses here. The mirage is so strong they could be anywhere frow half as small to hundreds of times the size I’m imagining them to be.’

Incidentally, he couldn’t tell much else about the city, and, given how he was currently waiting for his sub-soul to return before making any large moves, he decided to focus inwards rather than outwards.

The core at his centre had progressed without issue, now producing much larger quantities of the strands. They would still fall apart almost immediately, so currently production speed and quantity were the only possible improvements, but he predicted its potential for the future for its future was vast.

He began to again practice controlling his soul membrane, something he hadn’t done since he’d assumed his optimal shape for travelling. Despite not practicing much, he found he could now form more complicated shapes far more easily than before, although his attempt at folding himself into a circuit board wasn’t as fruitful as he would have hoped.

‘One day...

And since it didn’t actually go that bad, it’s looking like that day’s going to be tomorrow’

At the same time, on a whim, he decided to stop absorbing all the strands of the concept of air, given how it was the most abundant concept here, and started to link them into as long of a chain as he could.

Very quickly, the size of the strand grew to what Martin estimated was several kilometres long –whilst individual particles concepts seemed subatomic in scale, strands of them were far larger, with large spaces between concepts in the chain, reminding Martin somewhat of how atoms were also formed mostly of empty space.

Additionally, the area he was absorbing them from was now several kilometres in diameter, which sped the process up thousandfolds compared to if he’d tried to do the same earlier, and the supply of concepts of all varieties seemed nigh infinite.

‘I should make a note to work out where the concepts come from. At first, I thought they were the only ‘matter’ in this world, but given how whatever I drain seems to be slowly replenished even within the area I’m draining from, there’s very likely something else that causes them to appear.

Whatever the atmosphere might be made of, I suspect it’s part of the explanation for that phenomenon. Looking at the concepts in more detail, I’m already getting some ideas, but it’s too early to confirm something so major.’

Returning back to the strand of ‘air’ growing inside of him, Martin began to warp it into something new. By folding it over and over, wrapping it around itself as if making a string, he aimed to make it thicker.

To his surprise, it didn’t work.

Whilst the strand could be folded in on itself, it repelled itself and wouldn’t come any closer after a certain point. Martin could force it closer, but it would return to its original distance almost immediately after he stopped.

Despite that, he suspected there might be more to it. Up to this point, his training in controlling his soul had mostly involved either utilising more of it or controlling it to a finer extent. He’d certainly improved the ‘strength’ he could exert using his soul manyfold, but it wasn’t nearly to the extent he’d improved the other two aspects.

Martin suspected that, if he continued to train, he’d be able to force the concepts closer together, possibly forming the shape he’d envisioned. For now, however, he knew it wasn’t possible.

Something that was possible was one thing he’d proven himself capable of only recently.

Martin recalled the sensations he felt while breathing and focussed on a particular one of them –forming a sort of concentration gradient in the centre of his soul that would pull the concepts in. Whilst he could feel the exact mechanisms behind what happened were more complex than that, Martin was able to reproduce a similar effect purely using his current abilities.

Using an area roughly near the ‘middle’ of his soul, he constricted the fabric of his soul inwards and guided the strand of ‘air’ towards the area.

Pulling one end of the strand and placing it into the centre of the area he’d created, Martin began to rapidly wrap the rest of the strand around it. Different parts of the strand still maintained their distance from each other, but that didn’t matter for now.

Forming what could be described as a glorified ball of yarn, Martin kept expanding it whilst at the same time controlling his soul’s fabric further to pressure it inwards; if he lacked the strength to do it in the form of a ‘rope’, he’d take advantage of how he’d seen concepts interact before and use the shape of a sphere instead.

While concepts functioned rather differently when linked into a strand, Martin aimed to take advantage of that fact, with the fact the strand repelled itself, combined with how it was totally isolated from all other concepts, meaning that the strand wouldn’t be damaged, would act more predictably, and could only progress in the direction he wanted it to.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Feeling the centre of the sphere, Martin could sense the behaviour of the individual concepts within the strand changing –something was about to happen.

With a final push, a change occurred.

Now, rather than being linked only to the particle before and after them in the chain, the concepts near the centre of the sphere were beginning to link with every particle surrounding them –a change partially borne from the fact each particle was roughly equidistant from each other, and had nowhere else to go but towards each other.

Hence, the strong bond between consecutive particles of ‘air’ had been replaced with a weaker one to all of their surrounding ones. The change didn’t seem major at first, but the matrix-like structure formed had a variety of new and interesting properties.

‘The only downside is that, unlike the strands, my soul doesn’t seem to stabilise this structure. I’d love to experiment with it, but given the fact it would fall apart far too easily, I can’t do anything with it.

I suppose the most I can do for now is press further. At this point, even assuming each particle’s effect on my consciousness grew a hundredfold, I still wouldn’t be affected, so I’ll presume it’s safe to do so’

And so he did.

Pushing the structure even closer together, the repulsive force between them weaker due to the matrix’s properties, Martin could feel the individual particles of ‘air’ again changing behaviour, now completely free of any vibrations they might have had and simply locked in place by the repulsion from all sides, whilst simultaneously growing ever closer.

Unfortunately, Martin realised he didn’t have the strength to push them past a certain point. He was constantly improving, but not enough that the task could be finished right now.

With that, he decided some practice was due.

Selecting the concepts whose strands he was finding most of, such as ‘light’, ‘heat’, ‘breath’, and ‘energy’, he formed several more, similar spheres throughout his soul. These progressed similarly to the first, with the type of concept used surprisingly having no visible effect on its behaviour.

The spheres progressed at an almost even rate, with the more abundant concepts progressing minutely faster, and began to enter a similar state to his first pure concept sphere of ‘air’.

‘I should look into that, actually; I made sure to create each sphere exactly the same as the other ones, regardless of how long the strand for any concept became, so there should be no reason for them to progress at different rates. Could it just be a difference between the type of concept after all?

But then why would there be no difference between them other than this?

I’ll have to pay closer attention from now on.’

After again exhausting his options rapidly, Martin now began to make balls of even the slightly less abundant concepts, such as ‘space’ and ‘time’, but also ones like ‘cold’, ‘entropy’ (he wasn’t exactly certain what that one meant, sensing he had insufficient knowledge to fully understand what it meant) and even ‘earth’.

Dedicating the creation of new spheres as a background process, Martin returned to the original sphere he’d created –not the one containing the air concept, but the one that was a mix of all the individual concepts within the air.

To his dismay, employing some of his newfound techniques and slightly increased strength to condense it didn’t do much other than increase the rate at which tiny strands of concepts were formed –in other words, it’s instability.

Just as he was about to stop absorbing the strands from this sphere too in order to see what would happen once it became unstable enough, Martin heard a knocking on his link to the unknown cosmic entity –his sub-soul had returned.

While Martin’s main soul had been busy experimenting, mostly to stave off boredom, his sub-soul had focussed on the assignment it had been given.

Finding the closest bird, he’d flown over to it and, while repeating the self-suggestion he’d previously utilised, allowed it to enter the area he was linked to.

The moment the first trace of the bird entered, he was overwhelmed with a barrage of new information; a sensation similar to what his first exposure to the sea of concepts outside had been only mere hours ago, but with a key difference: it was far, far stronger.

In the span of an instant, his mind had been crippled; thought ceased, instinct crumbled to dust, and soul began to tear.

In this state, he didn’t even have the presence of mind to unlink himself from the world outside.

Or that would have been the case.

Within the additional ‘space’ his link gave him that he could use to think, a nascent consciousness emerged. While his soul itself was collapsing under the burden of reality, a Martin independent from either his main or sub-souls emerged.

Without having time to question his identity, he immediately sprang into action.

Deciding there was no time for hesitation, he unlinked himself from the outside world and immediately began to draw upon every possible measure to save his fragmenting soul.

First, he attempted to recreate several bodily functions –something he’d originally put off experimenting with until he’d found himself a body due to the unpredictability that came with them. In an instant, he cycled through countless of them, trying to find something that could help with his current situation.

‘Sensing pulse – too much information, soul further damaged: ceasing immediately

Constricting veins – soul further damaged for undetermined reason: ceasing immediately

Limiting metabolism – no effect detected: trying opposite

Maximising metabolism – stored concepts being consumed, soul’s degradation slowing: continuing

Increasing heart rate – unknown effect: continuing

Limiting perspiration – soul leakage slightly reduced: continuing

Releasing hormones associated with cell division – soul tears slowly healing: continuing’

Reducing his thoughts to nought more than a computer programme for maximum efficiency, the vestige of his existence rapidly cycled through any method that had a chance of helping his current situation, not even taking the time to understand what exactly was happening.

The loop simply repeated until the list of possible actions was exhausted, then started over again with the actions that had succeeded on the first pass, adjusting the intensity to which they were being performed until they were either optimised or at a level where further effort brought diminishing results.

He’d even had to restart the breathing process, though ensuring to keep far away from any birds this time, since the supply of concepts stored within his soul had run entirely dry.

Slowly but surely, Martin was recovering.

The exterior of his soul, which had become perforated at some point, had been entirely fixed, though some of the inside of his soul that had leaked out could not be reclaimed.

However, the inside of his soul still wasn’t in nearly as good of a state; with tears present at almost all points in his soul, despite its infinite size, and a portion of the insides missing, Martin’s condition still couldn’t be considered good.

However, at the least, he was now able to think using his soul to some extent if he so desired. Currently, fearing further damage, he didn’t, instead using more of the space granted by his link to the cosmic entity, taking the time to consider what had just happened.

‘First... I can’t remember anything from the beginning of the process. Normally, this is just extra space to use, almost like an extension of myself, but not quite. It doesn’t make sense that my mind was somehow brought into action by itself from here, since that goes against what I know about this place.

More than that, I can’t seem to recall a large portion of what I did to try and repair my soul. Even though I’m aware I mentally skipped over large parts of what was happening, it’s still inconvenient to not be able to remember the effects of most of those processes.

Regardless, I’m glad I’m still alive, despite everything. I know my main soul still exists, but for the moment we’re disconnected, I’m my own separate self.

Though looking at how the link seems to be able to host my personality too, rather than just help with thinking to a mind that already has a place of residence, that might change soon...’

Thus, reflecting on the experience, Martin’s sub-soul passed the time until it could fully regenerate.