Taking the time to observe his surroundings before the end of his journey, Martin took note of any useful information.

Something he’d noticed a while ago was that the solar system here seemed to consist of only the single, monumental planet, and a distant –given how even here, the prevalence of concepts associated with stars (other than light) hadn’t significantly increased from the time he was far out from any solar system- star, that nevertheless filled a large portion of the sky. Even trying to imagine its size baffled him. And that was saying a lot.

In fact, now that Martin thought about it, if any of his estimates were even close to being correct, he would both have had to travel far faster than he thought he had and been much closer to this planet than he’d realised. Since it had looked similar sized to other planets from his starting point... Martin could only imagine what sort of behemoths lurked in the corners of this new world.

Even the planet’s singular moon far, far outscaled the sun. Despite all his processing power, it would still take Martin a while to get used to the proportions of the new world.

Scale aside, another important thing was that the density of concepts in the ‘air’ had increased even more. This helped Martin travel even faster, although he was now building up a small reserve to somehow shield himself in the event the planet’s atmosphere would create some sort of resistance to his soul.

Alongside the increase in regular concepts, the strands of them had also become increasingly frequent. Still uncertain as to their exact functioning, Martin continued feeding them into the space in his soul that desired them. He still hadn’t noticed any changes stemming from it, however.

Other than that, Martin hadn’t noticed anything more. For now, that wasn’t important; he was getting closer and closer to the planet. It now covered a large portion of his field of view, obscuring roughly one tenth of his three-hundred-and-sixty-degree field of view.

Looking at where the distortions of the planet -reminiscent of an illusion, mist, and heat simmer alike- seemed to begin, he was rapidly approaching the atmosphere. He began to slow down enough that he’d come to a full stop a reasonable distance from the furthest he predicted the atmosphere began exactly.

In the meantime, he prepared his sub-soul to explore it. This was purely to test whether he’d be able to survive exposure to anything that might have been in the atmosphere that he wasn’t yet aware of, as the constant obstruction of any exact details about the surface kept reminding Martin that there almost certainly was something like that.

Right as he stopped Martin stopped at the intended point, the sub-soul emerged from within his inner confines, unlinked itself, and dove deeper, towards the atmosphere.

As much as Martin would have also explored the surface before arriving, he hadn’t yet tested the maximum time or distance that his sub-soul could be disconnected from him, and whilst he planned to do so right before entering the atmosphere, his sub-soul had briefly reconnected to tell him that it couldn’t absorb strands of concepts whilst disconnected.

This meant it could function by itself for a certain amount of time, but could eventually get somehow overwhelmed by their concentration, since it couldn’t selectively choose not to breathe them in, and still had to breathe to be able to move.

Thus, the plan on briefly dipping into the atmosphere then coming back out was born.

‘That’s not quite a ‘plan’, but it’ll do’

Approximately three minutes after the sub-soul had unlinked itself, Martin’s main soul saw it return and attempt to re-establish the link. Seeing it’s memories of its brief excursion, Martin confirmed that he would not, in fact, explode, dissipate into nothingness, or perish otherwise upon simply touching the air.

‘That sounds much worse when put that way, but there’s no harm in being overly cautious when you’re not sure you’d be able to repair any damage to yourself’

The transfer quickly complete, Martin learnt that entering the atmosphere felt more like plunging underwater –and not in the sense that he’d suffocate if he tried to breathe. If anything, the ‘air’ there was much thicker, meaning the journey had to be cut short before absorbing too many strands of concepts.

That wouldn’t be much problem to Martin, so he re-absorbed his sub-soul, made sure it was emptied, built a small stockpile of concepts, and finally stopped hesitating and entered his new home.

Immediately, he felt what the sub-soul had experienced; somehow, the air around him became thicker, making it harder to move. It was only slight, but this was the least dense part of the atmosphere, so it would only get more severe. This also seemed to be independent from the concentration of concepts in the area –although those had never provided any resistance to him in the first place- meaning he’d either encountered a new force, or a new type of matter that he wasn’t able to sense.

‘I can feel the effect on me, but I can’t tell what’s causing it. I’ll have to take time to uncover it later, because for now I don’t have any ideas on how I’d go about sensing it.’

Travelling further down the atmosphere, Martin felt the resistance against him intensify, although only slightly, and the concepts become even denser. New, or previously very sparse, concepts entered him, with the highest concentration of ‘air’, followed by ‘breath’, some similar ones, then a massive drop with concepts found everywhere like ‘space’ or ‘time’, then minute quantities of concepts that would have been found on the surface, like ‘earth’.

‘The fact air and earth are concepts in and of themselves means air here is quite literally made of air and the dirt is made of dirt. I’m not sure how I feel about that, but I feel it’s quite funny, for some reason’

Going further, the resistance on Martin continued to increase further, but still only to the point where he was using negligible amounts of energy to push himself forward.

Even further down, the resistance slowly increasing, Martin began to make out the surface better. It was still heavily obstructed from him –if his sight had been clear, he’d have likely been able to make out even the grains of sand from here- but he was getting a better idea of where various biomes were.

Further still, Martin spotted something that relieved him greatly: a bird. The trees had been one thing, but the confirmation of advanced life gave him hope.

The fact the bird was flying far higher than should have been possible, and was far enough it was mostly obscured by the atmosphere –meaning, big enough to be seen from so far away- slightly took away from the moment, but Martin enjoyed it as a small victory nevertheless.

Getting ever closer, the planet now obstructed all but half of Martin’s field of view. That meant it covered the entire space ‘ahead’ of him. The fact he wasn’t even close to the surface yet beat into him something he was already well aware of.

Martin continued down at a steady pace. While he was going slower, he’d already travelled much further than any star’s diameter into the atmosphere and still wasn’t even half the way down.

The resistance against him was significantly stronger, but still only required him to use about 10% more force for the same effect.

The concentration of concepts in the air had increased to the extent he’d had to start expelling some sideways to avoid stockpiling too much inside of him. Simply turning down the rate of absorption had been an option, but Martin had put practicing ‘breathing’ until he could reproduce each step of the process independently as a priority. He knew the ability to manipulate the concepts around him, even in a small capacity, would be instrumental moving forward, unless he managed to find a way to regain a body.

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The frequency, length, stability, and variety of the strands of concepts around him had also greatly increased. Martin still hadn’t had any problems with them, and whatever part of his soul was absorbing them had so far had no problems regardless of quantity.

Additionally, Martin had encountered more birds since the previous one. These seemed to be smaller, but given how big the previous one seemed, that meant almost nothing.

He’d so far avoided flying too close to any of them; if he’d managed to get to this level as a soul in what was still less than a day meant that a creature who lived at least decades, but given the birds’ size, likely far longer, could have gone far, far, beyond his greatest comprehension; the fact he hadn’t awakened to his soul in his world didn’t mean it was difficult to do so in this new world.

Finally, the surface, whilst still very foggy, was becoming ever clearer, to the extent Martin was beginning to plan for where he’d touch down.

Whilst the number of choices was great, and various circumstances associated even with what continent to choose equally so, Martin decided to choose the one that he felt the largest quantity of concepts coming from, for the simple reason that if he wasn’t able to acquire a body, it would be the best place for experimentation, and if he did get a body, he’d likely be able to gain some form of advantage by using the current manipulation abilities he already had.

With that, Martin continued downwards for a while, then decided to circle the entire planet to find the general location most dense with concepts. He’d specifically been slower going downwards to adjust to the resistance against him better, but that had no longer been the case when going sideways, allowing him to complete the rotation in far less time.

With the continent he’d head towards –this one was the biggest, with several large biomes covering unfathomable expanses of land- chosen, Martin continued his descent, deciding to specifically target the approximate area between a plain and a forest. Either by coincidence or some factor Martin wasn’t aware of, the forest happened to be the same one that contained astronomical tree that he’d spotted before deciding to head to this planet.

In fact, it was far enough away that he could no longer see it through the distortions in the atmosphere. That hadn’t been a problem when looking from above, but now, Martin only knew where it was because he’d passed it on his circumnavigation of the planet moments earlier.

‘Speaking of, I saw quite a few interesting things during that’

Those ‘things’ had mostly been more birds, but also several large forms that he presumed were animals, but he couldn’t make out clearly.

‘The fact they were visible at all would have meant they were... perhaps a bit bigger than I’m used to’

That was the main reason Martin had chosen the place he was currently heading towards as his ‘start location’; it was far removed from planet-to-star-sized predators.

And any of the larger oceans. He didn’t even want to talk about those.

Freeing himself from the train of thought, Martin focussed on his journey once more. Now, he was closer than ever to the uncharted lands below. He still wasn’t close enough for even the largest mountains back on his own planet to be visible, but that moment was approaching.

The resistance against him had increased significantly –it seemed he’d begun to enter the denser parts of the atmosphere- meaning the force he had to use to move was now double what it had been at the beginning.

The density of concepts in the air more than compensated for it, so it hadn’t been much of a problem. In fact, coupled with the fact his maximum ‘breathing’ range had also increased meant that he now had a significant stockpile within him, which he could technically expel at will, but decided to accumulate for some time to experiment with it.

The stockpiled concepts floated aimlessly within his soul, now far denser than the ambient air outside due to the sheer scale Martin was absorbing them at.

Deciding that trying to do something with them seemed like a worthwhile pastime for when he was descending, he first tried to actively move as many of them around independently of each other with his soul as possible –this wouldn’t help achieve anything with them; Martin just wanted another way to practice his level of soul control, and pushing physical objects, no matter how indescribably small, would be better than nothing.

Next, he tried to reproduce the effect his breathing had on them to move them around without having to manipulate his soul. Whilst he’d somewhat learnt to do this, it was only to the extent that he could very lightly sway concepts in a general direction at a scale of several hundreds of metres.

In other words, he was far, far from being able to manipulate even small clumps of concepts, much less individual particles of them.

Despite that, he continued to practice. This was his most slowly progressing ability, to the extent he was afraid of exactly how long it might take to develop it to a functional level, but it was also the one with most potential. The applications seemed limitless.

Working on both these processes in the background, Martin still found himself with excess particles within him. Deciding he’d do so carefully, he finally began to do what his soul had begun to do by itself at the moment he’d first breathed using it and gathered the concepts to the ‘centre’ of his being.

He still wasn’t certain as to the exact purpose of this, but he was willing to find out. While he’d given the excuse that he didn’t want the concepts to be gathered too densely within him, with recent experiences, he’d confirmed his tolerance to be high enough for some basic experiments.

Since his soul was functionally infinite, Martin had to personally guide every individual particle into his centre region himself or rely on how his breathing seemed to passively do so, but to a much smaller extent than he could do so ‘manually’.

A nebula that could likely have stored all the knowledge of the world –his old one, of course- began to form, condensing into a form of cloud. To Martin’s surprise, it seemed to remain roughly stable, still scattering in every direction, but not nearly as fast as it should have.

Intrigued, he began to condense the cloud. The concepts all came closer together, but became more and more excited the further he condensed them, the pressure acting against his will growing increasingly stronger.

Of course, this was still negligible to him. Feeling that he was still unaffected, Martin pushed further, bringing even more concepts from the outside to condense the rough sphere even further.

At a certain point, but still far from when it would seriously become difficult, something changed: the concepts rapidly colliding against each other began a transformation that Martin watched with enthusiasm. Whilst the sphere was a mix of all types of concepts mixed randomly, when clumps of the same concept formed at the densest area, some began to form into strands.

These were no different from the ones he’d initially found outside, now far weaker than what his new environment provided, and would collapse almost immediately due to collisions with other concepts tearing them apart, which whatever property of his soul that stabilised them seemed to have no effect on.

Despite that fact, as long as he carefully monitored the entire process, Martin could still direct these for his soul to... eat? Respire?

He still wasn’t certain how it worked, but the fact his soul had the innate function that consumed them encouraged him to continue doing it.

He increased the density of the sphere further, constantly bolstering its production rate. At this point, it still wasn’t nearly as efficient as simply absorbing the strands of concepts naturally present on the outside, but the process was only in its infancy.

‘This oddly reminds me of a fusion reactor,’ Martin commented.

With that, he drew his focus back outside, where he was now moments from touching the surface.

By now, the pressure had increased exponentially, now requiring almost fifty times as much effort to move as had been required in the vacuum of space, and the air was filled with orders of magnitude more concepts. If he hadn’t been progressing as fast as he had, his mind would have quickly been overwhelmed by them. Luckily, in his current state, he could still manage magnitudes more.

One thing he was concerned about was the presence of another living being within his domain –he would have sent his sub-soul to test it, but with the current density of concepts in the air, it would have quickly been flooded with far too many strands that he hadn’t yet found a way to efficiently dispose of.

With that thought, Martin was reminded of the sphere formed at his centre. For him, it functioned as a way to form more strands to absorb, but in reality, those formed would almost immediately fall apart from the force of the collisions acting on them.

If he could reproduce the same in his sub-soul, he would have an extremely efficient way to dispose of excess strands, that he could then passively release into the environment.

Naturally, he could have also transferred some of the concepts within him into it and simply had it not breathe, but giving a sentient being –for the moment it was separated, it would technically be its own person- a ‘battery life’ went against his morals.

Thus, his plan was set into motion, the sub-soul left his main soul, formed its own core- less efficient than his, but still sufficient if it was being used for destruction rather than creation, disconnected itself, then began to fly to the nearest bird to test what effects the presence of a creature capable of thought overlapping with the domain his mind was broadcast in would have.

In the meantime, Martin’s main soul glanced at the sight below him. Whilst his destination had appeared as the border between plains and a forest, that was from an impossibly large distance. As he’d approached, he’d had to make several more decisions about exactly where he wanted to stay.

In fact, a rather appealing option had presented itself recently:

A city