Desmond woke up to find himself alone in bed. This wasn’t an uncommon thing for him as Riki always kept herself busy, but it had been a while since he last awoke alone. His 8-hour sleep schedule was a seemingly infectious thing.
Desmond chuckled at his own thoughts, and then his mood darkened as he looked up at the frilly drapes. He really hated this bed! He couldn’t quite place why exactly, as he didn’t mind drapes or floral patterns or vibrate colors for that matter, but somehow all together they were abhorrent.
Desmond got out of bed and cleaned himself up in the bathroom. He then went downstairs and sat on the couch in the living room. He didn’t have any plans set up for today, but there were still several things he wanted to get done before this whole war thing started. So he started taking mental notes.
He needed someone to look after his new house while he was away, and maybe even when he was here as he certainly didn’t want to clean this whole place himself. He also wanted to look for more beast core shops, to see if he could find more purple or gold legacies. Then there were the soul experiments he had planned, but he would need a criminal of some sort for the more risky ones so that he could still have a clear conscience after they exploded.
But all that could wait. The first thing he wanted to do was see if he could remove a legacy orb that he already had. This would give him far more options going forward. So Desmond laid down on the couch and closed his eyes.
***
Desmond opened his eyes and stood up on his soul glass. Coming to the Soul Realm now felt like second nature to him. As Desmond gazed forward he was instantly stunned speechless.
Right there in front of him, slowly pulsing, was a jellyfish! It was a slightly transparent light purple color and was swimming from his left to his right. The jellyfish was massive, easily three times Desmond’s own size.
Desmond froze stiff as he watched the creature swim past him. It seemingly took no notice of him at all as it swam on.
As Desmond looked around he saw thousands of these massive jellyfish, all swimming in the same direction. He was in the middle of a massive horde of these colorful creatures and they completely blocked out his vision of the wider Soul Realm. They came in many colors but the most common by far was a light purple and blue.
As Desmond observed them he noticed that they swam around both his soul and his spiritual body. They seemed to show no hostility towards him as they went and appeared to be completely passive.
“What the fuck are these things?” Desmond asked himself. They were clearly some type of soul creature. But then again, why were there soul creatures?
Maybe the jellyfish were spiritual bodies like him, with their own soul out there and they were just wandering far away from it? This led to many more questions and even more worries. These jellyfish seemed harmless enough, but if there was one type of soul creature then there would be more!
Desmond watched the jellyfish pass for a few minutes expecting them to do something, but they just continued to harmlessly swim on. Soon he lost interest in this beautiful sight and turned his attention back to his own business. The jellyfish were ignoring him so he would just ignore them back.
Desmond walked over to his legacies. He was still getting a full feeling from the four of them. His idea to remove one of the orbs was pretty simple. Just grab it and lay back down on his soul glass. Then see if it came back to the real world with him.
Suddenly, a jellyfish bumped into Desmond and he had to steady himself as it then passed him by. That was odd, Desmond had seen the jellyfish pass through the plane he was walking on and had kind of expected them to be intangible. They clearly had a physical or spiritual body that he could interact with. Was there some way he could use this? More questions with no answers. Every time he figured something out here a dozen new questions would show up.
Desmond turned his attention back to his soul orbs. He grabbed the blue rare orb from among the four and returned to his soul glass. Laying back down, Desmond got a good view of the jellyfish swarm that surrounded him.
The jellyfish emitted a small amount of light that was either blue, purple, or light pink. They were so many in number that Desmonds could literally only see jellyfish. But it was also beautiful in its own way.
***
Desmond sat up on the couch and lifted his hand. In it rested a small blue orb just like the one in the Soul Realm.
[Greater Strength](Rare): +96 Strength.
It had worked!
Desmond stood up and flexed a bit. The blue orb was supposed to give him Strength, so without it, he should feel weaker.
But did he feel weaker? It was hard to say. Maybe a little bit, but it could all just be in his head. Either way, the loss of the blue orb was clearly not a significant decrease to his overall strength.
Maybe if Desmond tested his strength with and without the orb he could get an accurate value for his current Strength stat, but that would have to wait for another day. Desmond laid back down on the couch. He wanted to ensure he no longer got that full feeling before he consumed another orb.
***
After a moment Desmond opened his eyes to a wide starry expanse. The jellyfish were completely gone! It seemed strange to Desmond given how large the swarm was the last time he was here. But then again, he did move to a new position on the couch, and movement in the real world translated to vast distances here.
Desmond turned to go about his business when all of a sudden a shiver ran up his spine. His hunter instincts were screaming at him that something was wrong, very wrong. Desmond instantly laid back down on his soul glass.
As Desmond was slowly submerging into glass he took a look around his soul. He could see his three legacies still floating there. Now he no longer got the full feeling from them like he had expected.
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But then off to the side, something caught Desmond’s eye. It was a large space without stars much like how Riki’s soul had looked, but this one was an irregular shape. As Desmond examined the space he found that near the center there was a large purple orb that stood out in the darkness. The sphere had a black center with what looked like many streaks of purple lighting moving from the center to some outer edge. It looked a lot like one of those plasma ball toys he had as a kid in his past life. However, the very top and bottom of the orb was hidden so it was not perfectly spherical.
Then it vanished for a brief moment before reappearing, and Desmond came to a frightening realization. It was an eye, and it was staring right at him.
Desmond could not tell how large the beast was, as he had no way to know how close it was to him. He kind of hoped that it was a long way away, even if that meant it was really big.
Desmond examined the black space around the eye, trying to get some idea of what this creature looked like. He could make out what seemed like tentacles that were covered in some kind of purple and blue goo, likely remnants of the jellyfish. So maybe it was an octopus or squid? But then there were far too many legs. It had to have at least 30 of them all slowly shifting in the darkness.
Desmond looked back at the purple eye as he fully submerged, glad that for whatever reason the beast had chosen to just observe him.
***
Desmond quickly got up from the couch covered in a cold sweat. He didn’t know how strong that creature was, but every fiber of his being was telling him not to fight it. He made the snap decision that he was going for a jog now. Movement in the real world hopefully put a large distance between his soul and whatever that thing was.
Could it attack his soul even if he wasn’t there? Logically that shouldn’t be possible. If there were things like that eating people's souls then Desmond would have heard something about it by now. A few dead could go unnoticed, but that thing looked like it could leave more than a few bodies in its wake. It was more likely that it hunted the jellyfish, and didn’t target souls for whatever reason. But Desmond was still going for that jog.
Desmond put his armor on and went to leave, but stopped at the front door. He pulled out the purple [True Sight] orb from his spatial ring. This is the one he had decided on consuming if he could remove the rare Strength-based orb.
Desmond put the orb in his mouth and swallowed. It would likely take an hour or so to kick in. In the meantime, Desmond would put some distance between himself and that thing.
***
Desmond was walking through a wealthy shopping district near the heart of the city when his eyes started bothering him. He quickly closed his eyes and moved over to the side of the street where he leaned against a nearby wall.
When Desmond opened his eyes again the discomfort was gone.
Did this mean that [True Sight] was active? But what exactly did it do? The description of it had been vague. To see the unseen.
Desmond focused on a shop sign across the road and almost instinctively his vision seemed to zoom in so he could read it. The sign itself was unimportant but the small letters on it had been way too far away for Desmond to even try and read. Now he could see the store hours with ease.
Desmond found that zooming out was just as easy. The zoom feature seemed to go off his intent, but he would need to find a high vantage point to really test its limits. The crowded street didn’t give him many good zoom targets.
But that could wait. The thing that Desmond really needed was the ability to see mana. It was the first thing that came to his mind when he acquired this legacy.
Mana sight was not a rare skill among mages. It fell into the same category as telekinesis and force dispersion, where all awaken could learn it
given enough time and dedication.
This field of magic was generally referred to as core magic and was the first thing aspiring mages would learn, due to its simplicity. It had its own set of simple runes and was generally thought to be weaker than elemental magic. But it certainly had its uses.
[True Sight] seemed to work off his intent, so Desmond focused on a hunter walking across the street. Mana came from a person's mana core which was located below the heart.
Slowly, Desmond’s vision changed and his world was consumed by color. It was so blinding that he had to close his eyes again.
Technically, there was mana in everything, even just the surrounding atmosphere. So Desmond needed to adjust how much mana he was seeing. He opened his eye again and gradually adjusted his sight, filtering out the low mana concentrations from view. Soon a whole new world opened up to him.
The real world became slightly transparent and inside every person on the street there was color. In the case of the hunter he was staring at, the color was a deep blue. It was most focused just below the hunter's heart but spread throughout the individual's whole body following the circulatory system. Desmond could vaguely follow this color into the hunter's organs and muscles but it was more concentrated in the arteries and veins.
But what was most surprising was that even darks had a significant concentration of mana. The hunter obviously still had much more mana inside him but the darks on the street were at least comparable. Was the only difference between darks and awakened mana concentration? More questions without answers.
Desmond was starting to get looks from the people passing by him on the street so he decided it was time to move on. He began walking down the street while experimenting with his vision ability.
***
As Desmond neared his house he recounted a few things he discovered about [True Sight]. It seemed to give him far sight with an unnatural ability to judge both distance and size of what he was looking at. It also gave mana sight which Desmond was still experimenting with, as well as infrared sight.
It didn’t allow him to see through objects, but with mana sight, he could kind of get around that as long as what he was looking through didn’t have a lot of mana.
But his most groundbreaking revelation came when he tried to look into the Soul Realm with his new vision.
Desmond looked at a passing young woman and activated soul sight. Right where her mana source should be there was a dark purple crystal. This was her soul!
An awakened’s soul appeared like a sun, while a dark's soul showed like a smaller dark-colored crystal. Desmond could even see her soul glass orbiting the small crystal.
Desmond looked down at his own soul. It was a large yellow and blue glowing orb hovering right below his heart, right where his mana core should be. This only made it clear to Desmond that mana and the soul were intricately linked.
Desmond continued his walk home comparing the souls of those he passed. This street was close to the Winten Campus so Desmond passed quite a few awakened students on the way. Desmond was able to confirm that he could even see other people's legacies with soul sight. Though he couldn’t see what they did, he was able to tell their rarity and number.
As Desmond rounded a corner a specific individual caught his eye. There was a person walking down the street towards him that didn’t have a soul! Desmond didn’t have enough experience with soul sight to know if this was a common thing or not, but it felt wrong.
Desmond swapped over to mana sight to confirm that the person did have mana flowing through them, but it also somehow felt wrong. Like it was too weak and still even compared to the other darks. Was this person even a human? But the other races should also possess souls, right?
Desmond continued down the street and quickly found another person with no soul, then another, and another. Soon there were more soulless people walking around him than real people. By this point, Desmond was convinced that something was horribly wrong.
Was this targeting him? Desmond didn’t particularly feel threatened by these soulless people, they just felt wrong. Why were there so many of them here and not anywhere else he had walked?
Many important people lived in this district since it was so close to the Winten Campus, so maybe he was stumbling into some kind of assassination attempt? But they felt a little too weak to be assassins. Maybe it was some type of magic experiment gone wrong?
Then Desmond saw it. A blinding white soul that was no smaller than his own hovered right outside the front door to his house. There was no body to go along with the soul. It just seemed to float there in space. Suddenly so many things made sense.