Desmond arrived back at his own soul in a panic. Riki’s memory glass was clearly layered on top of itself, whereas Desmond had put his soul back together in a singular flat plane.

It had made sense to him at the time, as both his current memory pieces and his past life’s memory pieces were the same thickness. He hadn’t come across the thinner pieces from his older lives until he had already formed an image of his soul in his mind. They should have been a sign he was doing it wrong, but he had ignored it.

Desmond more closely observed his soul glass. They were close, but the memory glass from his past life as Allen was ever so slightly thinner than his memory glass as Desmond. Was he fucked?

Desmond stopped and took a deep breath to calm himself down.

Did this even matter? He was able to function mostly normally with a completely destroyed memory glass after all.

Desmond reached out to move a piece of soul glass, only to find that he couldn’t move it anymore. The memory glass pieces had adhered to each other. Was this it healing? He could still easily break it apart and try to fix it, but for the moment he decided not to.

Desmond was finally seeing results. He could consume another soul orb, as he was no longer getting that full feeling from his legacy orbs. So something was working right, and he didn’t want to start all over again.

This would be fine for now. Besides, maybe it was because he put his soul back together wrong that he could even remember his past life?

Desmond pushed these thoughts from his mind. He could come back here later. For now, he needed to go back to the real world and tell Riki about her soul before she got too, anxious.

Desmond laid down on his memory glass and slowly felt himself sink down.

***

Desmond opened his eyes and was greeted by the gaudy white drapes hanging from the bed canopy. He really should have just destroyed this bed when he first saw it.

Looking to his side. Desmond could see Riki cuddled up next to him on the bed, staring up at him.

“So?” Riki asked.

Now, how was he supposed to verbalize what just happened?

“Don’t keep me in suspense here,” Riki said in a calm voice, but Desmond could see the concern on her face.

“I’m pretty sure your problem is fixed,” Desmond replied.

“Pretty sure? That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence here,” Riki said sounding a little angry.

“It’s hard to describe,” Desmond continued. “I crushed this icky black organ thing that felt like it didn’t belong in your soul. Then I put the broken soul glass piece back together into a nice square.”

“I understand none of that,” Riki said giving him a confused look. “So you fixed it, right?”

“Yes,” Desmond replied with more confidence this time. “Do you feel any different?”

“Not particularly,” Riki stated. “There was some pain earlier like I was under a soul attack. But now I feel no different.”

“Well, I can assure you that your soul is very different now,” Desmond said as he stood up. “Looking at it has even given me some ideas about my own soul.”

“Do you have to experiment with it tonight?” Riki asked as Desmond got out of bed. “If it’s soul stuff, then can’t you do it lying here?”

“This may take me a while,” Desmond replied. “And I don’t want to keep you up.” Desmond leaned over and gave Riki a deep kiss. “I have been putting this off for far too long as it is. We will have plenty of time to break our new bed tomorrow.”

Desmond left the master bedroom and went downstairs to the living room where he sat on one of the comfy couches.

He could consume one more legacy orb now and as he saw it, he had two in his possession to choose from. They were the [Living Armor] orb that he got from one of Lucel’s guards or the [True Sight] orb that he picked up off the rell body Deacon had killed.

The [Living Armor] legacy orb seemed to offer him a magic spell which he may or may not even be able to use given his mana issue. It also offered a +1 to earth affinity, which was also tempting to experiment with. Whereas [True Sight] sounded like it could fix one of his major issues. Namely, his inability to deal with stealth and deception tactics. Desmond honestly wanted both of them.

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Could he remove an orb that was already there? He didn’t really need the legacy that was giving him flat Strength. A lack of strength was rarely a problem for him. What he really lacked was utility that would let him use his strength effectively.

Desmond needed to make a decision on this as he had been putting it off for long enough. There would be no better time to experiment than now.

Desmond took out an affinity testing ring from his storage and put it on. He ran a little mana through it and three of the twenty-four small gems embedded in its surface started to glow. One of the three blue gems lit up, indicating his low water affinity. Two of the three yellow gems glowed, indicating his mid earth affinity. He really wished he had a better way to test affinity, but he had to work with what he had.

Desmond took out the [Living Armor] soul orb and observed its soft purple glow.

“Well, there is no time like the present,” Desmond whispered softly to himself before swallowing the small orb.

Desmond waited a few minutes but felt nothing change.

Desmond braced himself. The last time he thought this he was forced into the Soul Realm, but still nothing happened. Did he need to consume the orb with a beast core? No, that didn’t make sense.

Desmond laid down on the couch and closed his eyes. There was an easy way for him to check what was going on.

***

Desmond opened his eyes to find himself surrounded by a familiar starry expanse. He was starting to get used to this mesmerizing view.

He quickly turned his attention to his soul to find he now had four legacy orbs. There was a new purple orb that was much dimmer than his other three.

“This must be the [Living Armor] orb,” Desmond said to himself as he approached.

The tether of mana that connected this new orb to his soul was much larger than the others and Desmond could almost see the mana pulsing down the tether into this soul orb.

Was there a delay before he could use the orb then? Desmond didn’t remember such a delay for the first orb he consumed, but then again his sense of time had been thrown way off back then. Either way, it looked like he was going to have to wait until he could try out the new legacy.

Desmond looked at his three other legacy orbs. He reached out and touched the blue one.

[Greater Strength](Rare): +96 Strength.

This was the legacy he was thinking about trying to remove and replace. He didn’t know how much 96 Strength was, but he could always put it back or replace it with the larger flat Strength orb he picked up if there was a problem.

Desmond moved on and touched the gold orb.

[Giant’s Blood](Legendary): +300% increase to Strength, +300% increase to Constitution, 80% reduction to all external mana use.

This legacy was the source of his great strength but also made his mana use five times less efficient. It was a double-edged sword, but he was never going to give up his Strength. Desmond was also sure that the increase to his Constitution had saved his life more than a few times in the past. His whole fighting style was built around this.

Desmond reached out and touched the red orb.

[Mirror to the Soul](Divine): Allows the holder to exit their soul and interact with the Soul Realm.

This is what allowed him to be here in the Soul Realm, and was what he had stolen from Ben. The more Desmond thought about it the clearer it was to him. Ben had known that the beast's core contained something important. Was Ben able to see the legacy like he could now, or was it something else? There were still many unanswered questions there.

Desmond looked back at his soul glass. He tried to move a few pieces only to confirm that they were now all stuck together. It would seem that the glass was trying to heal itself. As he looked at one of the gaps in the middle of the glass he could tell that the edges were starting to smooth out. Even the gaps were healing, but at this rate, it would take a very long time. Was there a way to speed this up?

“Shit!” Desmond cursed as he looked over at the piles of fragments representing his second and third past lives.

He quickly ran over and found that the glass fragments representing his second past life could still be separated. They stuck together a little but the pieces were thick enough that he could still pull them apart without much damage. He carefully separated the pile and laid the pieces a good distance from one another.

Unfortunately, the last pile representing his past life three was a lost cause. The pieces were simply too thin and attempting to pull them apart just caused them to break. This felt like a setback but thinking about it, Desmond didn’t really have a use for these fragments.

“Or do I?” Desmond whispered while looking at the gaps in his soul glass.

Desmond tore several pieces of glass off the useless pile, breaking them in the process. He then used his hand to crush these thin pieces of memory glass into a fine powder. He moved over to one of the large gaps in his soul glass and poured the powder into it, filling it. The powder seemed to stick slightly to the larger pieces of memory glass, so it took Desmond some effort before he got the gap nicely filled.

“This will work,” Desmond said with a smile.

Desmond simply had to accept that his soul was never going to be like a normal persons, so there was no point in trying. He had given up on attempting to re-layer his soul glass like Riki’s. But hopefully, filling the gaps like this would speed up his current healing process.

***

It took Desmond around two hours to break down the useless pile of memory glass and use it to fill all the gaps in his larger memory glass. He had a little of the powder left over in the end that he just sort of sprinkled over some of the larger cracks.

“Well, that’s about all I can do for now,” Desmond said as he looked up to see that the purple orb was now glowing just like the others. Desmond reached out and touched it.

[Living Armor](Epic): +1 Earth Affinity. Allows the holder to summon living plate armor.

Desmond felt a grin come to his face. He finally had real magic.

Desmond just hoped that the [Giant’s Blood] effect wouldn’t make it too mana-hungry for him to effectively use. Desmond laid down on his soul glass, which still looked cracked but now had no gaps.