With only a small amount of time left until he produced the remaining volume of the transformed concept of air, Martin briefly focussed on the outside.

His vision had been further optimised, now slightly more resistant to the effects of the foggy effect that coincided with the atmosphere itself, though still very much at its whims.

He hadn’t moved much in recent moments, so there hadn’t been many changes there.

However, something that had changed was his ability to breathe. The suction was faster and covered a wider area, but more importantly, his control of the ability had somewhat increased. It wasn’t anything impressive, but he could now.

Now, he was able to control the strength and range with which he attracted the surrounding concepts with more precision, and could slightly alter the shape of the area from its default form of a spere, although it still wasn’t enough to even form something egg-shaped.

Once his control had sufficiently improved, he’d become able to gradually slow down the rate at which the concepts were attracted from the ambient air until they were barely affected, until eventually, after much trial and error, he’d even managed to hold them at a standstill.

This was different to deactivating the ability as, rather than having no effect on the concepts surrounding him, Martin could feel as if he could exercise some degree of control over them.

This proved true after, while still trying to neither attract nor repel them, he’d instead focussed on how it felt controlling the strength that he breathed in with, and had found he could, to some extent, immobilise the concepts within the domain he was linked to.

This took far more effort than simply attracting them, as rather than applying a uniform force across every concept, which occurred passively with the activation of his ability, he had to account for the position and direction of every concept within the area he was controlling. Given this was something he’d already been doing this as part of his vision for several hours, however, it wasn’t particularly difficult.

Aside from this ability, which currently had no use, he’d also found himself capable of certain other currently useless abilities.

The first was repelling the concepts, but the force with which this happened was weaker than attracting them, and became more difficult the longer it went on due to the concepts being pushed out of his effective area forming a layer around it, akin to a bubble, that pushed inwards with more force the thicker it became, which was constantly.

Even alien worlds weren’t exempt from concentration gradients.

The second ability was causing the concepts around him to spin. Because his ability to breathe was centred on himself, somewhat like gravity on a planet, any attempt to move the concepts around him in any direction other than towards or away from him would result in them spinning around him in a disorderly fashion –rotations in three dimensions were difficult when you had barely any control over what was happening.

He’d attempted to find a way to integrate the force breathing provided into the spheres inside his soul, but unfortunately, it seemed to function differently in there, and even if it hadn’t, his control over it still wasn’t good enough to distribute it evenly, meaning it would make maintaining the process far more difficult.

But for now, that wouldn’t be necessary. After recounting things he’d merely learnt on the side and taking a moment to practise, the wait was over; the condensed form of ‘air’ inside him had finally surpassed size he needed.

Preparing for the worst, Martin unlinked himself from the surrounding environment entirely, switching his vision to rely solely on his outer membrane, and diverted some attention away from his most resource-intensive tasks.

He trusted the process itself wouldn’t be harmful; if his soul itself demanded something, he heavily doubted that something would be bad for it. However, from past experience, he feared any change to his soul may harm him if he didn’t maintain the utmost level of caution.

He guessed that many of the things he was currently capable of, like linking to the environment around him, may not have been possible if he still had a body. To limit the side effects that may occur from combining the intentional with the unintentional, he’d cut out all such processes for the time being, and intended to gradually restore them after whatever would happen was complete.

‘That’s enough stalling’

And so, Martin consumed the remaining amount of the sphere of ‘air’ he’d felt he needed before something would happen.

Paying his attention to as many different aspects of his soul as possible, he tried to feel for where the change was occurring. No matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t find anything.

At least, not in the parts of his soul he was familiar with.

Somewhere deep within him, though he wasn’t certain where, Martin felt as if the ‘air’ he’d consumed had gathered back into a ball, then, quickly even to himself, he could feel something manipulating it.

He still couldn’t sense where this was occurring or anything specific about what was happening, until suddenly, it seemed the change had begun in full force.

He felt no pain, only slight discomfort, as a dull static-like sensation spread throughout his entire being; he instantly became aware that something was flowing through him, gradually filling an imperceptible network of capillaries completely imperceivable to himself, but somehow present nonetheless.

Despite the unfamiliarity of the sensation, it felt natural, moreso than eating, breathing, living. It was as if he’d lived his entire life up to that point as an empty husk that only now discovered a method to fill himself.

And yet he still felt so empty. The void he’d been unaware of until now occupied his thoughts, reminding him that it hungered for more. Already he felt empowered. What heights could he reach if he consumed more? If he took in further concepts? If he focussed only on improvement without looking back?

‘But that’s enough of the hypotheticals. It’s fine to let my mind wander, but if it’s in a direction that might eventually lead me to death, I’d rather not consider the possibility as anything more than theoretical. Mental discipline is important.

Though, despite my attitude, I really was mentally affected by all this for a moment. Currently, it seems to be caused by the act of changing rather than what changed, but I’ll ensure I monitor myself for behavioural abnormalities for the time being.

For now, I’ll do as promised and try to feel for my pulse. I feel there’s been plenty of changes that occurred simply from whatever just happened, but looking at most of them would require me to link back with the outside, something I’m not confident about until I can prove a certain conjecture that comes to mind.

Ironically enough, that would also be the best tool to understand the current situation’

As Martin had said, understanding something about the underlying cause would provide more informative results than a study of the effects. Especially when some of those effects were likely to go unnoticed until he learnt of how to find them.

Not being able to resist his curiosity, Martin directed part of his consciousness to study the more obvious effects of the transformation whose effects were still reverberating through him, leaving a more thorough investigation of the details, and began to feel for his heartbeat.

On one hand, this was far simpler than he would’ve expected. On the other, the results weren’t nearly as informative as he would’ve liked.

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Rather than a comprehensive awareness of any part of whatever a soul’s equivalent for a circulatory system was, his mind suddenly became flooded with the knowledge of a vast array of capillary-like structures spreading throughout his entire being.

The intricate network spread throughout his soul, paradoxically combining the infinite nature of his soul with his ability to sense general locations within it, forming a bizarre amalgamation of the physical and the metaphysical.

In some parts, he could feel a small, almost insignificant rhythm, cycling the volume of ‘air’ he’d absorbed as lifeblood, stretching it infinitely thin to cover as wide of an area as possible.

However, this covered only a small region. A majority of the vessels ran dry, stagnant to the point they’d narrowed shut.

‘I understand why this might have been too much for my sub-soul to handle at the time. Even if it’s a vague outline, this is already a huge amount of information to process.

...Still, it’s not too much for me in my current state. Apparently, this isn’t something I’d become constantly aware of after noticing it once like my membrane, so I’ll have to dedicate some part of my consciousness to both feeling for it and potentially analysing what it might be.

In fact, I should be able to do so indefinitely. At this level, even my sub-soul should be able to. The best explanation I can think of for why it was too much was that it was formed by forcibly tearing part of myself off, which is likely to have put this entire system in disarray.

If nothing else, it would explain its inability to consume the strands of concepts. If that same ability is used to consume the larger versions of concepts, and those go directly into here, then damage to the system could have also damaged whatever part of it is responsible for sourcing those concepts.

Speaking of, I can’t sense the presence of any of the strands I’ve consumed. I assume they must have gone somewhere, but that place must be separate from this one. The fact they use the same mechanic to consume matter suggests they should be linked in some way, but for now there’s no definites as to what that might be.’

Martin felt slightly embarrassed by the fact he’d likely made a mistake when creating the sub-soul by forcibly tearing his soul apart –though this appeared to be inconsequential for his main soul, given how he couldn’t feel the damaged area- but ultimately accepted that he’d had no better choice at the time, given his condition and uncertain situation.

Instead, he chose to focus more on the situation at hand.

‘There are several factors to consider here. Most notably, the existence of an entire circulatory system for my soul prompts a lot of research. Specifically, I don’t know what the exact effects of it are now that I’ve seemingly activated it, I don’t know what might happen if I add more of the concept of air into it, and I don’t know what might happen if I choose to add other concepts either.

The first should come to me with time, and the second isn’t exactly a worry, since the fact this is a system naturally built into my soul suggests it shouldn’t be harmful, at least –whether the concept of air acting as my blood, I’m worried about whether it might affect my personality, but I have no way to tell for now, so I’ll act based off what I find.

The third I can somewhat test soon. I could probably find a way to extract the concepts in their new state from the spheres while limiting damage to them, and after that I can test to see with what happens when I try to combine them. Ideally, they’ll still repel each other like the concepts in their base state do, but that’s not something I’m willing to assume with so little evidence.

Even then, how they act normally, and how they act when manipulated in the way they are when they go through my circulatory system might be different, so for now, my best bet is to delay anything unnecessarily rash until I manage to establish contact with the settlement on the surface and see if they know anything to help.

On that note, I still haven’t reconnected to the outside world, and I still haven’t found a way to link to the same space as a living being. The latter is going to be essential if I want to get within several kilometres of anyone without having to risk my soul being obliterated.

Though, linking to the same space as a living being aside, I can’t even tell if linking to the outside world at all is going to be safe. Now that I’ve somewhat made this new matter part of my being, there’s the possibility I’ll be able to sense it in the environment. I’m confident it’s there –and a large amount of it, at that, because, looking at how the concepts within me behave and comparing it to the world outside, I’m beginning to see some key differences that match up with some of what I’ve learnt about the new form the concepts take, even in these few moments.

For one, the idea there was a type of matter imperceptible to me interfering with the movement of the individual particles of concepts would explain the distortions I’ve gotten so used to seeing. If it’s true, though... there’s a lot of this new matter out there, and it’s only going to get denser as I go down.

More than that, the fact I couldn’t feel it impact my soul despite developing both a sense for my membrane and a sense for feeling things in the same space as my soul means that either I’ve been avoiding some major signals, or this new type of matter has entirely different properties to what I’ve seen from concepts so far.

If the amount is large enough, I can’t tell the exact effects it might have on me. To be honest, I’m not even fully confident I’ll be able to withstand the effect that concepts seem to have on the mind alone.

...well, I’m not going to undervalue myself that much; I’ve grown several orders of magnitude since that experience with my sub-soul, but if there’s even a slight possibility, I’ll have to take time to look for the least hazardous step forward.

And it’s not like I can use my sub-soul to test for that, either, because I still haven’t found a way to fully repair the damages it suffered earlier. I can only guess what’s wrong with it, but if I’m right and the circulatory system in it is damaged, and the damage that won’t heal is somehow related to it, that might mean I can’t repair it for a while.

I don’t know whether I should create a new one or carry on using the one I currently have, since the damage to it isn’t particularly impactful...

There’s just too much to worry about for now.’

While Martin was stuck in deliberation, a pair of watchful eyes observed him from afar.

A healthy, handsome man wearing ornate clothing stood only a few kilometres out, his feet planted firmly in the air as if it were no different from the ground far below. An expression of interest adorning his face, he watched the soul before him struggle with idle curiosity.

It’d recently turned night, and as he’d been idly observing the stars before entering cultivation for the night, he’d noticed a lone soul enter the bounds of his spiritual sense.

This was unusual, since souls would usually enter bodies by means other than simply raining down from the cosmos, but it wasn’t entirely unfounded, with plenty of individuals having the means to reincarnate themselves or eject their souls from their body for whatever purposes they might have had.

In fact, the man had assumed the latter, thinking this was merely a rogue soul cultivator either accidentally or purposely unaware of where he should and should not enter.

The true curiosity had begun when, deliberating whether he should let the cultivator go or let him be, he’d taken a moment to observe him for longer.

First, the soul was far smaller than a soul cultivator’s would be, but displayed no signs of using a size-altering technique.

Second, it seemed capable of manipulating qi in its most basic form, something that usually required reaching levels of power he couldn’t sense from the lonesome being, but at the same time showed no signs of being able to use even the slightest hint of the regular qi surrounding it.

Third, it had somehow decided to use this most basic qi as a method to propel itself, something that was admittedly used in later cultivation stages, but only as part of a much larger process. At this level, it was closer to a joke.

Fourth, it appeared to have developed its own form of spiritual sense that worked in an unnecessarily complex way, enough that the man found it even more amusing than its movement technique.

Finally, it had also somehow managed to form a soul clone of the lowest quality –so low that it shouldn’t have been able to be operated- yet still managed to control it. The man, despite all his years of cultivation, had no clue how the soul he was observing had managed such a thing.

And so, with that, he’d decided to spare the soul that he’d taken notice of on a whim and decided to observe it from a closer vantage point, hoping to answer some of his questions about its bizarre actions and unbalanced direction of development.

And yet, only more questions arose.

It had been one thing when the soul had seemingly sent its sub-soul to investigate the area, only for it to be severely damaged the moment its ‘spiritual sense’ came into contact with one of the birds in the area –this being despite the fact higher level beings had flown through it without any issue.

That was still explainable by the nature of how this soul’s faux spiritual sense worked. However, the fact this would only happen if the user was at an extremely low cultivation level –and the fact the soul seemed unaware such a thing would happen- sparked even more questions as to how the soul had managed to survive even this long without simply falling apart.

What had really brought about the most questions was how the soul, seemingly lowly in all aspects other than its bizarre ability to manipulate qi in its basic form and a connection to a dao the man didn’t recognise, had suddenly cut off its spiritual sense, stopped absorbing the ambient qi, then somehow infused qi –completely regular air qi, not that in its base form- into itself.

There was always the possibility that this soul was, in fact, the reincarnation of some high-level cultivator, but then its illogical actions like almost destroying a fragment of its soul would be entirely unjustified.

No, if he was right, whatever unexplainable circumstances its origin might hold aside, this soul was a genius at cultivation. And not a regular one at that. Not a regular one in the slightest.

This wasn’t an opportunity the man could pass on. If he could secure such an existence for his sect, whatever it cost...

A soft smile crossing his lips, a man far older than his appearance might tell looked up towards the heavens, his head slightly bowing in thanks for their providence.