With a slight cough to recollect his bearings and bring Fillan’s attention towards him, the overseer meeked out a bright-ish smile and said: “Candidate Fillan Strand, you are a truly heaven-defying talent unseen by the world for thousands of years; as the right given to me by the Kingdom of Garth, I bestow upon you the title of Prince Talent. Congratulations on joining—”

Whatever the old man had to offer, it couldn’t hold a candle to what Fillan could get on his own, so there was really no reason to entertain him. As such, with a leisurely gesture, Fillan simply teleported away from the gathering’s view, stunning everyone present.

“How could someone without cultivation teleport,” the old overseer mumbled in shock.

Whatever the reason, he would need to report the events here to King Graum, and bring back his share of candidates.

Inside a derelict, clearly abandoned cave, Fillan’s now sixteen year old body appeared with a minute flash.

....

“Home sweet home,” he uttered mockingly. “God, I’m always blown away by how much of a dump this place is.

With a thought, the surprisingly thick mana in the cave surged into his body like air into a vacuum, before splitting into different strands each inheriting the information from their designated spell.

The cave which looked more like a dusty moths’ nest, nearly instantaneously, became spotless. The ground took on a shiny luster, while the walls regained their ocean blue color, and the tepid air turned fresh and breezy.

Simultaneously, Fillan’s body radiated a grotesque crimson light, as only squirming from within could be distinguished. After about five minutes, the light ceased, and a new individual emerged.

Like a butterfly from its cocoon, an unfathomably handsome young man replaced the emancipated little boy. Dressed in opulent and flagrant black and red clothing adorned with jade and gold linings, he commanded a certain presence and aura only found in those of extraordinary origins.

Although nothing more than his appearance had changed, Fillan still felt stronger than before, like he was further attuned to the world.

“I. Love. This. Spell. Now I don’t have to run around like a scrawny rat, being looked down upon by weaklings until I grow up. This makes things a lot more convenient.”

The spell he used to achieve this transformation was, creatively enough, Metamorphosis. From studying larvae in their evolution into butterflies, Fillan managed to derive more than a dozen runes that encapsulated and emulated the process. Which he then used to craft a unique, and more powerful, spell pattern.

“I still don’t understand why it counts as an advanced spell,” Fillan thought. “Sure it transforms you, and it does so thoroughly, but it doesn’t seem any better than a simple spell. There’s no way this should be grouped together with Owner’s Eye or Tether Decay.”

“I guess it doesn’t really matter, it’s not like I’m going to be using it in the heat of battle; the limitation is fine.”

Not one to worry about non-issues, Fillan directed his focus towards the actually important matters at hand; his new talents.

“I knew the Soul-Vein project would have great results, but never ever would I have expected this.”

“Now, the only problem is that I don’t know if it reached this level when I finished it before dying, or if my time-loop evolved it to greater heights. I really don’t understand this time-loop nonsense.”

Fillan obviously hosted grand ambitions with the Soul-Vein project, but the result did not really match his expected prognosis. When he designed and pondered the fastest way to gain strength, he thought of various ways to combine the different power systems at play on Graaryll. Whether it was combining magic with cultivation and body tempering or potentially starting a new branch of cultivation directed towards the soul, he considered all of it.

The result he found fit his situation the best was to combine body and soul, or at least turn their aspects similar.

Upon reaching the Blood Engraving realm a person becomes free to use their blood-qi as ink and their body as the canvas, and similar to magic spells, engrave runes, techniques, formations, or laws on themselves. Their skin, bones, eyes, brain, whatever could be tailored to one’s aspirant needs.

A person who cultivates ocular techniques would often prefer, or be required to, engrave certain things on their eyeballs to strengthen them sufficiently, and bestow upon them the necessary attributes.

You could pick and choose runes closely related to fire, integrate them into a formation, and engrave it onto your eyeballs, thus giving you the ability to “innately” cast one or more fire spells.

It was this similarity that piqued Fillan’s interest. The soul was commonly limited to only surface engravings, despite hosting an inestimably deep interior. Even the mana well was only located on the very outer layer of the soul.

Something he noticed though was that the mana well, albeit slightly, shifted its location around the soul. It was nothing more than a few millimeters per year, but this itself gave Fillan further insight.

If the mana well, which in the physical body is perfectly set from birth to death, is moving around in the soul, no matter how insignificant the moves, a reasonable conclusion to reach is that the interior of the soul is formless.

Wherever exists inside is like this pot of soup with different ingredients, thus making it impossible to interfere with. But what if this pot of soup was forced into different shapes and containers? Then there could be a possibility for interference. Not the soup itself, but the soup powered container. Which is exactly what the Soul-Vein project was about.

Fillan simply turned to his own blood-veins and made an intricate drawing detailing its every minute detail. He then proceeded to weave, as well as could be done, in the “shallow” areas of the soul.

To do this, Fillan “cut” the index finger of his soul’s right arm, before turning it into very fine threads, which he proceeded to anchor to his mana well and “skin”.

Then, with exquisite precision and care, Fillan weaved the designated threads together, leaving only a very tiny gap inside for…whatever to pass through.

Although they were far from his physical veins, they were pretty similar, with the only main clink being none of them went deep into his soul, just floating in place near the surface.

Unfortunately, Fillan didn’t get to experience the effects of this before dying, leaving him wondering now.

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Normally he wouldn’t, as the previous time-loop results were pretty straight forward.

Struck to death by lightning? Congratulations, you have an improved lightning aptitude.

That was clearly no longer the case. The best example of which was the Karmic Reincarnation Eye.

It didn’t require a turbo genius to understand this thing came about from his Judge of Good and Evil. The reason why, however, left him slightly stumped.

“It might be because the technique needed me to make specific energy veins for it, thus changing my body “permanently”, and therefore carrying over. It’s impossible to know, but that should be the case.”

“The problem—well, it’s not a problem at all—but the weird thing is the new talent seems WAY more powerful than the original technique. Which is obviously good, but also might mean that my Soul-Vein project would have mediocre results without dying.”

“Again, it’s not a problem, but it would suck if I have to die every time I want to improve myself significantly. Sigh, thinking about the unknown gets me fucking nowhere, let’s think about what to do this time around”

“First, is the timeline for this life. I have exactly eight years worth of knowledge about events in the Immortal Realm, so I’ll have to either ascend or die by then. There is no need to continue on borrowed time, since raising my talents is more important anyway.”

“My cultivation technique is still worthless, and from the description of World Origin Body, it seems there probably are none out there that suit my needs, so I’ll have to figure something out on my own.”

“My body tempering talent is still dog water, but I can feel a significant improvement from before, so I should still put a significant amount of effort into it. Maybe it will even synergize with my soul-veins.”

“Then there’s the soul veins. I’ll need to see if I can actually engrave on them, and also try to find out why the index finger regrew. If I can do that, then I might never have to worry about running out of spell space.”

“The first and last one are time consuming ordeals, so I’ll start with body tempering.”

Fillan plans to raise his body tempering level to Blood Engraving again, since it doesn’t take much time, and it has an evident strengthening effect on his talent. And it will allow for some more survivability before he comprehends his own cultivation technique.

He can also get a good feel for how blood engraving functions and how it differs from magic, while he can see spell patterns could be engraved on the body.

With no hesitation, Fillan sat down cross legged on the previously musty ground, and began to sense the qi in the air, and the blood in his veins.

The reason Fillan uses this random cave is due to the unnaturally rich qi and mana found here. It is several dozen times better than the average density found on Graaryll, and only slightly worse than high-tier chambers belonging to major forces.

This also meant that, with his acquired experience doing this, the time it took Fillan to finish the Blood Transmutation realm was nearly halved to a total of ten hours.

However, unlike last time, there was no great surge in strength upon reaching perfection. There was no support from the universe’s laws, there was only a feeling of incompleteness.

“What?” Fillan thought mystified. “Why isn’t it working? My talent is clearly way better; what the fuck kind of nonsense is this?”

Since it refused to complete itself, Fillan decided to try and force a breakthrough. With unpracticed effort, he put his whole mind to the task of making his blood surge as quickly as possible around his body.

Why? That’s a damn good question.

One that doesn’t really matter, since it, of course, did not work.

“Did some of the fumes infiltrate my bloodstream? Because I don’t know what kind of moron potion is brewing in my body, but I am damn sure there is nothing wrong with my body tempering, so why is this happening?”

“It’s obviously not a bottleneck either…”

Then, like a slap to the face, a strange notion hit him.

“Does it have to do with my soul veins?” he wondered. “It did clearly state that it granted innate control of blood and soul, and the ability to fuse them with mana.”

“The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. I mean, it doesn’t really, but it’s all I’ve got.”

With haste, Fillan turned his focus towards the soul, which despite its changes, barely looked different. At certain areas you could spot vein-like protrusions on the soul’s surface, but other than that and the radiant soul patterns, it looked ordinary.

Fillan was not one to be fooled by appearances, especially since he was told to his face by an enigmatic and unfathomable measuring orb that something extraordinary had happened here.

With a deep breath, Fillan switched his sense of perception from the physical realm to the spiritual, and attuned fully into his soul.

What once felt like a lifeless husk riddled with tattoos, now had a breath of life to it. It possessed a kind of vigor and order that calmed the seething chaos within.

Something that was impossible to even attempt sensing, became nearly detectable. Not fully, but it was still a great step in the right direction.

Within the vigor, Fillan felt the familiar sensation of surging blood, but it was something unidentifiable to him.

It was a gray, nearly gaseous liquid flowing with enormous speeds through his soul veins, circulating between the different parts of his soul’s surface and the mana well. The amount was something to scoff at, not even enough to fill a single straw, but that did not diminish its presence.

“Hmmm…Maybe it’s because I lack the proper depth on some of the veins, but the liquid feels really turbulent and unstable. Or maybe I need to continue with “humanizing” the soul with organs, bones, and flesh?

“This liquid definitely does have a name, but I don’t see any way I can get it, so I’ll just call it soul-liquid…It will do for now. Hopefully the true name is more inspired than what I came up with.”

“How the hell would I go about fusing it with my blood though? That might not even be what I’m supposed to do.”

The biggest problem here is the tiny amount of soul liquid and its unstable nature.

Fillan didn’t doubt for a second that if that liquid left his veins, it would dissipate in a manner of seconds.

“Getting mana into the veins shouldn’t be too difficult, but I don’t have any control of the soul-liquid, so I don’t see how I can fuse them. The biggest component of the Blood Transmutation realm is clearly having a decent grasp of both blood and qi; if either side is lacking, there will be no room for cooperation.”

“Plus, even IF I managed to do this, how would blood come into play here?”

“It should be theoretically possible to fuse it with the soul-mana-liquid, since it’s a known thing, but my stupid ass already turned all my blood into blood-qi. Everyone knows fusing mana and qi is impossible.”

According to legends, a grand immortal god descended upon Graaryll a few million years ago. He was not labeled as such do to the ignorance of the people there, it was a true powerhouse from a higher realm, and as such, he possessed great wisdom.

One of the ancient elven mages asked the immortal god about why qi and mana were irreconcilable. Sure, they could exist in the same areas without conflict, but if anyone dared to fuse them, a cataclysmic reaction of unfathomable proportions would ensue.

The immortal god answered that the common consensus in his realm was that both mana and qi were origin substances. They existed before in complete harmony, until for whatever reason, they were forced into fusion.

The reaction then gave birth to the current universe and everything in it. It would then stand to reason that if mana and qi were fused again that it would result in a pocket dimension at the least, and another universe at most. But that is not the case.

Apparently, the first fusion changed something intrinsically about both energies. Their harmony was broken, and could seemingly never be restored again.

The immortal god proclaimed that all the universe's laws kept the energies from returning to their true nature, and only the complete shattering and dissolvement of the universe will ever be able to change this standstill.

Thus, eager to return to what they once were, mana and qi, when fused, will try its all to decimate as much as possible.

It’s easy to say no one on Graaryll ever dared attempt to fuse qi and mana after hearing that explanation.

“I definitely huffed something coming in here, or maybe it’s Metamorphosis that’s fucking with my brain; why would I ever finish the blood-qi fusion when I know I’ll need blood for the soul vein fusion?”