Desmond opened his eyes to a familiar starry expanse that spread out in front of him in all directions. He quickly searched around but found no abnormality in the surrounding space. The only thing that stood out to him was that it was clear that [True Sight] was working within the Soul Realm. He was able to zoom and focus in on the surrounding stars with ease. This gave Desmond a much better grasp of his vicinity.

Desmond turned his attention back to his own soul. He had come here in order to try a few experiments after all. To his surprise and joy when he looked at his legacies he no longer got that full feeling, it was clear he could consume another orb. Whether this was because he had filled in the gaps of his soul glass or not, it was obvious that his soul was healing.

Desmond got lost in thought. Did he have any other good legacies to consume? He had already eaten the two he was most excited about. There was the Strength orb he took out, but he would have to look through the orbs he had to find the best one. Or he could try and eat the beast core that had the purple legacy inside it and see what that did. His current theory was that it would provide him with a random relevant legacy, but theories need to be tested.

Desmond would worry about that when he left his soul. For now, he wanted to try and interact with the 6-story tall ball of yellow and blue fire that he believed represented the core of his being.

Desmond rotated his plane of axis and approached his sun. He noted that the thin blue mist that had been surrounding his soul when he first looked at it had almost completely dissipated. Even though he was approaching what looked to be a large ball of fire there was no increase in heat or discomfort.

Desmond reached up his hand and placed it on the surface of his sun. There was some impedance, but it was subtle. His hand could pass through the surface of the sun with almost no resistance. It was like placing your hand into slightly warm water.

After keeping his hand inside the sun for a few minutes as a test, Desmond determined there was no danger. He slowly put his head inside the sun and opened his eyes.

[True Sight] prevented the bright light from hurting his sight, but he could only see yellow or blue depending on where he put his head in.

Desmond pulled his head out and walked around the sun slowly inspecting it, but unable to find any other defining characteristics. It was time he took the dive.

Desmond moved up next to his soul and gently pushed his way through the barrier. It was a strange sensation, not that unlike being underwater. But there was no pull towards the surface, gravity still kept his feet planted firmly on the axis below him. His goal now was to see what was at the center of his soul.

Desmond took careful steps as he slowly moved deeper into his soul. The resistance made him feel like he was walking in slow motion. As he got closer to the center, the color he was seeing changed. It went from the yellow or blue of his mana to a soft teal color.

This was a strange occurrence since Desmond thought the color represented his mana. So why would teal show up?

It still felt the same as the yellow or blue color so Desmond pressed on. His curiosity drove him to push forward. He passed through several other color shifts as he neared his core. From teal to a soft green. Then to a color Desmond could only describe as a bright blood red and finally into a fiery orange.

When Desmond entered this orange color he knew he was getting close to the middle of his soul. From the outside [True Sight] had provided him with the diameter of his soul, which was just under 18 meters. So now he should be only a few meters off.

As Desmond approached the center there was no change. He could still only see the fiery orange color. He didn’t know what to expect in the middle of his soul, but he was anticipating something to be there.

The fiery orange color mostly blinded him to his surroundings. So Desmond reached out to where [True Sight] told him the center of his soul should be.

As Desmond had been hoping his fingers touched a hard crystal-like object in the center of his sun. A reverberation ran through his entire being when his fingers first made contact, this caused his whole soul to shake. The sensation faded as quickly as it came.

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Desmond still couldn’t see anything but the oppressive orange color so he explored the object with his hands. It felt like a smooth crystal in roughly the shape of a sphere and maybe a bit bigger than one of his fists. It honestly felt a lot like a beast core, which was slightly concerning.

Sentient species and beasts were generally differentiated by whether they possessed a fleshy mana core or a hard beast core. But it was clear that at least Desmond also had a hard crystal-like core inside him. Well, at least inside his soul, so he wasn’t sure if that changed anything. Was this something everyone had inside them? What did this mean about the difference between humans and beasts? Sometimes he really felt like a toddler wandering around in the dark. So many questions with no answers.

Desmond examined his crystal-like core for a few more minutes before slowly making his way out of the other side of his soul. He noted the same concentric rings of color on his way out. It was clear that the colors were like layers of an onion wrapping around his soul. But what did they mean?

Desmond used an Empower Technique and watched as mana flowed from the surface of his soul to the tether attached to it. The mana then quickly traveled down the tether, through the glass plane, and then to his chest. This tether attached to Desmond just below the heart, right where his mana core should be. He could feel the mana spread from his core throughout his body as the Empower Technique took effect.

This all indicated to Desmond that the outer layer of his soul was definitely his mana. So then what were the inner four layers?

Wait, there were five layers and one of them was mana. This seemed familiar. If he called it Wisdom rather than mana then it would suddenly make sense. Five layers, and five stats! Was the sun a representation of his stats?

So then what layer was what? The blood red color was likely Constitution, as that just made sense. The fiery orange was perhaps Strength? Hold on, whenever Desmond read about stats they were always written in the same order: Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intellect, and then Wisdom. That falls in line with what Desmond was thinking. Orange for Strength, red for Constitution, green for Dexterity, teal for Intellect, and finally Wisdom takes on the color of your mana affinity.

At this point, it was clear to Desmond that other people could interact with the Soul Realm as well. First, there was the thing in Riki’s soul. Now, something as simple as the order of stats seems to be directly taken from the soul itself. People have clearly researched the subject, so why has he never come across any literature about it? Well, any meaningful literature that is.

Desmond brought his attention back to his sun. So, if this was a collection of his stats then was that blue mist-like fog around it his banked experience? That would fit with what he knew. The blue fog had slowly faded or was absorbed over time. He hadn’t done any training recently but he did hike across a wide area of expanse, then he fought Ace. Many people considered fighting the best way to allocate experience to relevant stats.

Hey, did he just find an answer without any new questions!? Questions like; what if banked experience decayed or faded over time? Damn, he should have stopped when he was ahead.

Desmond looked over to his legacies. He knew the orbs could give him stats but where the stats applied to his soul directly, or did they do their own thing separately? Was the stat increase from [Giant’s Blood] already represented in his sun?

Well, there was an easy experiment he could do to test this. [True Sight] gave him the diameter of his soul at 17.94 meters. Some simple math then told him the volume of his soul was 3023 meters cubed. His plan was simple, consume an orb that gave him stats then look at the change, if there was one.

But maybe there was a simpler way. Desmond played around with [True Sight] a little and found that he could filter out different colors. This allowed him to get an outline of the inner layers of his sun. It was far from perfect, but it let him make out the size of each layer.

From the size of the inner layers. Desmond predicted that the [Giant’s Blood] effect was already applied to his sun. The layers representing Strength and Constitution were simply massive compared to the others. They were easily more than four times the volume of the others which only made sense if [Giant’s Blood] was already affecting them.

Desmond noted down the different diameters of the layers but decided to save the math until after he consumed a stat orb. Desmond moved over and laid down on his memory glass looking out into the stunning starry vista. What other secrets would this place hold for him, or what other dangers?

***

Desmond woke up to the familiar frilly drapes of his canopy bed. He quickly noted that Riki was lying beside him, pretending to be asleep. He knew she was pretending since he felt her stir the moment he woke up and started moving around. She always was a light sleeper.

Desmond looked out the window to see that the last rays of light were disappearing from the sky. He had not been in the Soul Realm for that long and Riki had likely just come to bed. Desmond wanted to keep experimenting but decided it could wait for the morning. He didn’t want to keep getting Riki up, and having a peaceful night with her was just too tempting right now. Desmond laid his head back down on the pillow and slowly fell asleep.