The rest of the museum tour passed by in a daze. Instead of focusing on the exhibits, I kept thinking about souls and spatial magic.

After the end of the tour, Mr. Delmont led us to a restaurant, where we had a late lunch. Afterwards, he led us back to the front of the school, before dismissing us so that we could find our guardians. Our homework was to write a three-paragraph essay on the differences between modern alchemy and Zelyrian magic. When I heard about the assignment, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes.

The normal expectations for twelve year old children were very easy to handle as a former adult. Felix, Anise, and I had written several pages of notes while trying to upgrade Anise’s star paper. My own research notes on how to shapeshift my hand were thirty pages long. A three paragraph paper felt underwhelming in comparison.

Once we returned home, I got to work on my new idea. I had a new source of inspiration, and I wanted to make use of it before I forgot.

The Zelyrian museum had inspired me. The Zelyrian soul research itself hadn’t been anything too remarkable, but when I saw the image of a worldstrider’s soul shifting out of its body, I had an idea.

In the past, when I experimented with my spatial runes, I always felt that something was missing. I lacked a core realization that would let me expand my three spatial runes into a proper Ability. I had always found this puzzling, since I had never felt a barrier in my learning quite like this before. The only other time I recalled getting 'stuck' was when I was trying to upgrade an ability past advanced grade.

From my study of souls, I also knew that souls become more ‘rigid’ after they solidified. Water from the ocean of souls was like raw metal. If it was heated up and poured into a mold, it would become a new shape. But once a soul finished forming, it was far less flexible. It could still bend and stretch a little bit to accomodate adjacent species, but there was a limit.

The Zelyrian museum had made me think about the interactions between magic and the soul. I had never been able to understand the strange state I entered when I used three spatial runes at once. But what if my attempts to activate three runes at once just… didn’t quite fit what my soul was capable of? Every time I used all three spatial runes at once, it felt like I was being stretched and warped in directions that my brain wasn’t capable of processing. I felt different, alien, and less human than before. I felt my emotions start to change, and it almost felt like I was being bent into a new shape that didn't fit me.

What if that feeling wasn’t an illusion?

What if I was trying to stretch my soul in ways that it couldn’t stretch? After all, the first thing I knew about souls was that they made me aware of my surroundings. They let me think, feel, and act. The fact that I could use water as my eyes already made me think that my rune abilities to do something unusual. My rune abilities might be built around literally stretching my soul to do things it wasn't innately meant to do. Using all three at once might be trying to push my soul beyond its limit.

I wasn’t sure if this was a valid line of thought - after all, my understanding of souls was shaky. I only understood the basics. I didn’t know if it was possible to have abilities that were incompatible with my soul. But it would explain why I had never been able to advance my spatial magic.

Furthermore, that wasn’t the only piece of evidence.

In our previous world, it had been a well known fact that the Orukthyri had been humanoid once. After the Ortha had experimented on them, the Orukthyri had changed greatly in intelligence and temperament. They had became slightly intelligent monsters instead of people. I didn’t think the Ortha of our previous world had understood much about the soul, so I suspected that the Orukthyri had run into other problems. Perhaps Orukthyri souls didn’t quite fit the bodies they were piloting. This might have been why the original Orukthyri had been so mindless and violent.

Of course, a lot of this was just guesswork. I couldn’t exactly go back to our previous world and check to see if my theory was correct. But I felt that it made sense. And if it was possible for souls and bodies to become incompatible via magic, why wouldn’t it be possible for me to have a similar problem now?

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

When I talked about my theory with the others, Felix and Sallia both thought that I might be onto something.

said Sallia.

said Felix. I could almost hear him grinning over the communication bracelets.

I said.

I grinned at the thought. Thus far, I hadn’t gotten any major upgrades in this world. I had gotten a fair amount of Achievement, so at the very least, I could upgrade my attributes when we returned to the Market. Every upgrade to a keyword ability represented a much bigger increase in strength, though. I would obviously prefer to improve my keyword abilities if I had the option.

I asked.

said Sallia.

I nodded.

I said.

called Sallia. A few moments later, I felt the other two disconnect from the friendship bracelet communication.

I sat back down and got to work.

The next few months, I dove into a long series of experiments. I constantly activated my spatial runes, fell into the same strange, out of body state that I usually fell into, and then tried to find ways to tamp down the side effects. One of my friends always accompanied me, so that I could use my illusion rune.

The process was far more difficult than the minor alterations to my runes I had used in our previous world. I was trying to do something very complicated and delicate, and I wasn’t entirely sure what I was doing.

Luckily, my extreme aptitude for alteration essence made progress far easier than it should have been. After several months of research, I had my first minor success.

I managed to tweak the way my spatial runes worked just right, by cramming the idea of 'humanity' into all three of my spatial runes. When I activated them, I found that the effects of each rune ability were reduced - but they were still usable. Most importantly, instead of having my consciousness sucked into a strange, out of body experience, I remained myself. But I also became more.

Every single drop of water in my surroundings felt like it was part of my body. Every single trace of water vapor became another of my eyes. Every single drop of blood in my body also felt like it had undergone a subtle shift, becoming not only blood, but a vessel for my consciousness. Even if every single one of my rune abilities had weakened, they no longer grated on my consciousness. I could use them in synch with each other in a way I had never been able to before.

Despite each rune providing less, when all three of them syngerized completely with each other they became more. I grinned. The worst part of this ability, and the reason I had originally avoided it, had been successfully removed. I had succeeded

A few moments later, a cascade of System notifications interrupted my excitement.