Atesh had spent decades in space if you didn't count his time integrating the fire seed. He had been orbiting around the world in his wizard tower. Thanks to the influence of the elemental seeds, he didn't need to breathe or eat. He was directly nourished by the energy particles from the water and fire dimension. Even without those, he was an elf. This had benefits as well.

[ECHO]: Soul stability is at 99%

Atesh hid a trace of soul in the tower just in case he wanted to return.

It was now time to leave. Atesh left the tower and flew towards the world. As he got closer and closer, he frowned.

"No energy particles?" This wasn't a problem for him thanks to obvious reasons. But what did this mean for the acolytes and wizards that lived in the world? They were bound to not be able to live in this world with their power for long.

SOUL WORLD

In an instant, all of his senses vanished and he only saw souls.

"These souls." Atesh used his sovereign soul to look over a large amount of land; what he saw surprised him. There were souls on different levels. The souls that were elevated looked completely different then the souls on ground level.

"It can't be..."

"These souls look like my prototype for a server..."

Back when Visdre designed a game world. He only had access to two soul fragments at first. He had transformed Visdre's soul into a server. It had become mainly used for processing data. Now he saw that the souls at ground level were normal. But the souls elevated looked as if they were...

"Artificial souls!"

Visdre did indeed make an artificial soul. He had created a puppet body and performed a ritual sending it to this universe. There were some problems with the body, but he lucked out in having a part of him get passed around.

It was through this that he tricked the real Atesh and stole his body. But his soul had gone through so much that it wasn't like how it had been before. It was stronger, faster, and had more processing power!

Atesh's sovereign mind could toggle his senses on or off and even amplify them. He could directly see through materials and his eyes almost had 360 degree vision. He avoided using the full potential of his senses due to information overload. He had learned a few tricks. Like attaching his mind to his will. This made it so he had an almost quasi-divine sense.

But now he was curious.

He was still floating in the sky. But he first focused on the elevated souls. His soul world was cancelled and he focused his vision.

He saw a barrier forming a special dome. It was a floating city! His vision pierced through the barrier. This didn't seem to be a magical barrier. But one created by technology.

He saw an extremely technologically advanced world within. There were flying cars, skyscrapers filled with servers. But these servers seemed to have consciousness. He could see these weird souls overlapping with the technology.

There was also robots maintaining the infrastructure. But his vision wasn't 100% accurate. Because after looking beyond the barrier. The space inside looked greater then then what could be stored within it. It was as if space had been folded. Not just once or twice. But thousands of times.

It was like zooming into a fractal. The more he 'zoomed' using his sovereign mind. The more he found that the space was endless. He saw some pretty insane things. For example, he saw in the hospitals, instead of women giving birth or injured people. He directly saw the heads of people that were cryogenically frozen. He saw the remains of humans in vats and even embryos and vat grown babies.

The details were a blur even with him using the full extent of his sovereign mind. He wanted to take a closer look. But he felt that was probably a bad idea. What he saw didn't seem human, but more so cyborgs and androids. There were hardly any flesh humans. Some of them seemed to have partially integrated with technology. This included a chip in the brain. Most organs had been replaced with bionics. Leaving sometimes only the brain and heart. The entire nervous system had been reworked.

His will infused with his mind felt dizzy merely from gazing at such a mega-structure. The effects of the space compression made the city hard to navigate. But Atesh had very valuable information gathering skills. He couldn't tap into technology or anything like that. But he could rely on his senses to gleam information.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

There was also the ability to see soul and read memories from it. This single floating city was like a isolated civilization itself. It was only a few kilometers across. But inside. There was a continent of structures.

This technology was insane. It was like another world!

But the floating city wasn't completely closed off. There were shuttles coming and going from it. These shuttles lacked a driver. It seemed to be controlled by artificial intelligence. Perhaps this city was built by a super intelligence.

Atesh couldn't see all the cities even from high above. But he could feel the souls. This wasn't the only city like this! But that made him curious. What were the shuttles transporting? From what he saw... it seemed to be black cubes.

Atesh kept his distance.

But he soon saw the condition of the world outside the floating cities. The world was covered in trash. There were mountains of garbage. The shuttle dumped the black cubes onto the ground. Atesh landed nearby as well as he felt souls approaching him.

"The souls seem be... normal?" Atesh noticed that these souls weren't after him. They were going for the black cubes. Soon he saw malnourished people touching the black cubes and they expanded shooting trash out everywhere.

One person had a metal pipe shoot through their head. They dropped to ground to death in the next instant. Despite this, nobody stopped searching the trash. The shuttle went back to the city.

Atesh looked incredibly out of place here. He looked straight out of a fantasy. Green eyes, elven ears, and an immortal temperament! While he was surrounded by people that looked as if they had a foot in the grave. Despite this... nobody noticed him!

This was him using sovereign soul to subconsciously manipulate the nearby souls to avoid him. He walked towards the new pile of trash.

He reached for a man that had gotten some spoiled food. The man froze, everyone ignored this and continued to search the trash as if their lives depended on it.

Atesh saw the man's entire life timeline appear in his mind. The focus in his eyes vanished as he collapsed to the ground.

Atesh hadn't meant to make him braindead. His soul was just too fragile! He was careful, but the person couldn't handle it.

"Hardly any useful information at all. Well, I know that those cities in the sky are humanities havens."

Atesh used his connection with the fire dimension to turn the man into ashes. His form then started to shift into the man.

He was using sovereign comprehension to pull this off. His real form hadn't changed at all. This was an application of the ability. A sort of soul mirage.

But he learned some very bad things from that man.

"I am now Gou!"

What he learned was that humanity had gone through a technological singularity. The birth of artificial intelligence had led to humanity's level of existence ascending. But the super intelligence classified normal humans as insignificant existences.

It was only the newer generations that got to experience the bliss of 'heaven'.

The humans that weren't integrated with the system. These trash scavengers were their descendants! The super intelligence didn't even see them as a threat. So it left them to their own devices. Not only did normal humans not progress. But they regressed to a poor state.

Gou was pretending to be a 19 year old man that was raised in this harsh environment. Atesh needed to avoid a few things. For example, cameras.

The reason he needed to avoid cameras. Is because the super intelligence wasn't likely to be affected by his sovereign soul.

It was the sort of illusion that only worked on normal humans. Those who had bionic eyes or looked at him from a mirror or camera footage. His disguise couldn't cover it at all!

Gou abandoned his identity as Atesh for now. He wasn't an elf that was thousands of years old. While his body remained so. His identity would take over the man he had inadvertently killed. Only for a small period for him to verify his information.

He 'returned' to his home.

Gou lived with four other people. They lived together to support one another. They weren't biological family.

Everyone had simple names.

This group was made up of five people.

Gou

Jay

Lo

Zhar

Ta

Everyone was male except Lo.

All of them were fairly young.

Atesh had inherited all of Gou's memories. So nobody noticed anything wrong with him... at first. But as the days went by. They noticed their luck had improved. Or the luck of Gou had become heaven defying!

They took turns leaving their scrap hut buried in a trash mountain to guard their devices and food. Despite being surrounded in trash. The trash was quite high-tech. Even these humans that had regressed had generators and had electronic devices.

Atesh had no need to sleep. So as he 'slept' he was building a framework in his mind.

Atesh used his mind infused with his will to observe the havens.

More importantly. He observed the souls of those in haven and hell. He even thought of creating a technique. He planned to reincarnate into humanities haven. But then he truly thought about this. He would be giving up his body which he found quite valuable. He would also be giving up his freedom and the element of surprise!

So that got him to thinking.

What if he became the leader of the humans? What if he built up a new society of wizards? Then, once he had become powerful enough. Steal the technology from the super intelligence!

His sovereign mind could detect danger. He had thought of soul searching the extraordinary souls in the haven. He had thought of brute forcing his way. But every single time he had that thought.

He felt danger. His intuition told him that was going to lead to a dead end. The technology he had seen from what he could see was highly advanced. He hadn't even seen the weapons or any criminals in havens society.

He didn't want to test their blade on himself.

As the saying goes. If you know yourself and the enemy. You have nothing to fear for hundreds of battles!

He must learn what he is dealing with.

He must build up his organization. But he must also avoid getting killed in the cradle.

"Let world domination begin!"