Inspire still gave the impression of an orange glow, which had felt so abstract to Alex in the past. What did orange mean, when it came to mana?

During his Minor Mana Guidance, Alex hadn’t come to any conclusions about Inspire’s coloration. Part of that was his focus being elsewhere, while part was his lack of Sensitivity. Maybe he would even need to unlock Awareness before he could truly understand such complex mana on a particularly deep level.

Limitations born of his still Tier 0 existence seemed to be swept away in the throes of his Grand reward. The reward was the best of its kind and it lived up to the title. Alex was nearly overwhelmed by input as the sensations provoked by Inspire washed over him, he learned more in a breath than his mind should’ve been able to keep up with.

Even this limitation was disregarded as Alex gained a greater understanding. Inspire was… wondrous. It was hard to describe the mana as anything less. He’d felt David’s formation of the mana type, the years of experience and hard work it had required, but the sheer complexity had been too much for him to conceptualize.

Alex let out his breath. The information was too much for him to process immediately, and he needed to slow down before going any further.

Alex breathed in deeply. His physical body was in a lotus position on the floor of the Stirling’s living room. The separation between his body and focus was slightly jarring, but it didn’t feel unnatural. If anything, a reminder of his body helped ground Alex. The grandeur of the moment wasn’t lost, but it was brought under control as Alex used his breathing as a point of focus.

He didn’t have time to waste on spiritual experiences. Especially not when the object of his awe was the mana currently acting like a parasite attached to his soul.

His focus returned to the mana after a few breaths, but he resolved himself to make sure he stayed grounded. Insight was more than just understanding, but hadn’t Alex already experienced visions detailing David’s work? How close had he come to losing control and accepting the full insight of Inspire already?

Inspire was orange because it was mana born of pride. David hadn’t denied the existence of flaws in his character or his being when he created the mana type, but he had based it on a simple truth. David was the man in charge. He was the protector, the teacher, the ruler.

Not by right of birth, consensus, or necessity. David led because he wanted to, and because there wasn’t anyone who could question his authority. In his mind, it was only natural for the strongest to rule.

Alex had never really considered the issue in much detail, but now he took some time to think. In New Chicago, the strong did rule. The Academy was run by the Dean, while the other Imprinted took charge of the Defense Forces and the Adventurer’s Guild. The Civilian Council wasn’t run by a Tier 3, but all of the council members were Attuned.

David was the city’s governor, but he tended to leave running the city to the Council. He’d never actually done any ruling for Alex’s entire life, having spent fifty years roaming the continent.

Alex didn’t find the underlying idea that leadership was the right of the strong objectionable. It didn’t line up with the few months of civics he’d been required to take, but those ideals were rather shallow when they were taught by a retired council member at the peak of Tier 2.

Still, he found the idea of the man ruling the city… distasteful. The qualities reflected in Inspire didn’t feel like those of a good leader. They came from someone who wanted to be seen as a good leader.

It was unfair, but Alex was biased.

Sorting through that had only taken a few minutes, and he could tell that the Guidance was only getting started. He was hesitant to dive much deeper into what Inspire fundamentally was, after the mind-warping experience last time. Not only was it a risk, but learning more about David wasn’t what he was here for.

Alex discarded the other sensations that made up Inspire without deeper examination. The mana wasn’t just a color, but his brief brush with the full grandeur of the type left him wary. There was plenty of fascinating information that could be found in the mana, but it wasn’t information he wanted.

Alex had a decent idea of what remnant will was. He’d never heard the term before, but it seemed pretty self-explanatory. This Inspire mana was severed from its source. Unconnected from David, there was no conscious direction for the actions it took. The exact workings were a mystery to Alex, but somehow the mana maintained a fragment of intelligence and direction. Was it that the instructions implanted into the mana were so complex that they simulated a mind?

Answers were coming, and Alex listened closely. It felt almost like his experience in the density surge before, where his physical senses were cut off. This time, it wasn’t a limitation of his brain, just a result of his already sharp focus augmented to ridiculous degrees by the Trialbringer. He could access his physical senses with just a brief thought, but until necessary they were sealed away in a corner of his mind.

In the moments leading up to Alex and David’s resonance, David had lost control to an impulse of his own. A part of Alex had doubted that, even as he experienced the impulses in trials. It didn’t make much sense. How could a mana type that the man had created and then imprinted on his soul be so rebellious? Wasn’t it a part of him, at that point?

It was immediately clear that wasn’t the case as Alex learned more. When the mana had connected with him, it had been acting on its own accord. Rebelling against David’s control to better serve its underlying purpose. It wanted to Inspire, to bring others to the greatness it possessed.

It was a noble goal twisted to foul means. The potential to bring others up behind him was one of David’s main ideas as he developed the mana type, that much was obvious. The mana had seen an opportunity for something grand, and Alex had to admit that it had succeeded. His Achievement was so impressive that it was truly unique in a realm that had supported sapient life for longer than Earth had existed.

How could it be truly unique? Somehow, the answer came to him. Perhaps it was a freebie from the Trialbringer. Perhaps the remnant will behind Inspire somehow understood.

The soul of a Tier 0 simply wasn’t capable of creating a Rare mana type. It was a matter of quality, and Alex’s soul didn’t reach the benchmark for insight so deep. The Inspire mana somehow slid around this requirement by simply connecting to the outside of his soul and anchoring itself to the inside with the insight Alex already possessed.

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If that was the end of it, if Alex could simply push to Tier 1 with a constant weight on his soul before discarding the mana type and starting over, it would be perhaps the best deal he would ever receive. Unfortunately, things were not so simple.

The mana was actively working to Inspire him. He saw now what he had failed to see before. There were tendrils attempting to warp both mind and soul, making the slightest inroads into changing Alex fundamentally enough that he would accept the mana type. The mana had been warped by its separation from David and its purpose had changed slightly. It didn’t just want to make Alex great, it wanted a return to its old normal. Existing as part of a powerful Imprinted.

Mana types needed to match up with your soul or else the consequences could prove disastrous. If an outside influence changed your soul enough that it no longer represented who you were, things could get very bad very fast.

There was a piece of the puzzle that Alex had missed when he learned this information. People changed. Sometimes, especially after traumatic events, they could change quite quickly. It was a simple rule of adaptation, one that his unfriendly parasite was using to try and make him a more suitable host.

His thoughts returned to moments in the past days. Times that he’d come to conclusions or acted in a way that didn’t line up with who he was before the emplacement. The Trialbringer made it easy, even pointing to a few events earlier that day.

The most glaring was the delay. He’d been excited to gain magic and use Guidance for years, and he just didn’t do it yesterday? That made no sense. He should’ve been leaping at the opportunity, even if it wasn’t necessary for his training. He’d made time today, hadn’t he?

Even then, that had mainly been because of his friends. Muhammad had been the one to bring up his Grand rewards over breakfast, and then he’d been reminded again over lunch. Would he have simply continued to delay if they hadn’t pointed it out?

Alex took a few seconds to breathe. He had instinctively attempted to quash the tendrils of mana that were influencing him, but there wasn’t much success to be found. He could resist the influence, but he couldn’t destroy the mana that it originated from. He was still too weak, and the mana wouldn’t empower him to destroy it.

The feeling of revulsion was so strong that Alex almost choked on it. The foreign mana’s attempt to alter his being was disgusting, and he was powerless to resist it as he was.

His plan to figure out whether or not his idea of cannibalizing Inspire to make something he could work with seemed incredibly unimportant, compared to eradicating those tendrils.

Would you like to use your Skill Guidance on soul resistance?

Yes/No

Alex found it a bit odd that the prompt suggested soul instead of mind resistance, but the Trialbringer’s previous attempts to push him towards investigating Inspire’s influence had been vindicated. He decided to follow its advice on this one.

Alex accepted. Immediately a path to victory formed. The tendrils affecting his mind were made immediately less impactful by his knowledge of them. Self-control and making sure to reflect on those thoughts would be enough to slow the impact significantly.

On a soul-deep level, things were a bit more complicated. Alex’s Connection wasn’t yet in the realm where he could draw runes on his soul, which would’ve trivialized the issue. Even exhibiting direct control over the mana in his soul would allow him to repel the intruder easily, but how could his physical mind control his ethereal soul?

The answer was simple. It couldn’t.

Instead, the Trialbringer was introducing him to a topic that wasn’t taught until you reached the peak of Tier 1, with most choosing to avoid the practice as it wasn’t truly important until Tier 2. Being your soul, instead of your body.

As a human, Alex was a physical being. He’d never perceived the world on a non-physical level. Even his soul attributes were ultimately a measure of his body’s ability to interact with mana. Gaining Sensitivity didn’t make his soul more sensitive, it made his body more sensitive to mana.

This roadblock made controlling your soul an insurmountable challenge for most. It was simply too alien a way to… not think. Your mind wasn’t involved, so it wasn’t thinking.

A normal Skill Guidance would’ve never been enough to push Alex any meaningful distance down a path that was normally only traversed over years of meditation or in life-or-death situations. Circumstances were in his favor today, though. The Trialbringer had been fudging the numbers for him from the start, pushing him towards a specific path that would make his battle to keep his soul possible.

Today, Alex was already undergoing a Grand Mana Guidance that happened to afford him an awareness of the soul that transcended his physical limits. More than that, he had a Rare mana type filled with memories and impulses that was actively trying to push him towards greater heights.

Alex wasn’t dragged into the vision of David’s past. He barged in uninvited. Inspire made no effort to resist his encroachment, but Alex’s control of the vision never slipped.

It was different, feeling something from the perspective of this warped remnant of the man instead of the real thing. The experiences themselves were skewed, presumably because the mana was. This memory was strong though, and it was close enough to the real thing for Alex to find what he had been pushed to look for.

David’s exact circumstances were unclear. There was no reference to use to understand it. There was no feeling of fabric on his skin. No mild smells from himself or his surroundings.

There was no wind blowing against him, no mild discomfort from the chill temperatures of an October day. He saw nothing, tasted nothing. All of the existence that he’d known until this point seemed hidden from his incredibly powerful senses.

For all of that, the world had never been so vibrant. For an instant he was formless, and a sense of wrongness threatened to overcome the wonder. He instinctively knew how to return to his own form, but even after he fixed it he gained the realization that he could morph his soul to wishes.

Formless didn’t work, but he could make alterations that did.

The newness of the Ethereal Plane, now that he could actually experience it in full, sparked a series of outlandish thoughts and ideas. None of them seemed impossible. For all that the world had changed when the Trialbringer came, this was a larger change in David’s mind. There was a whole world of possibility before him.

An entire plane of existence that he could now experience.

Alex brought himself out of the vision, disorientated at the sudden shift back to physical reality. And it was physical reality, for all that his focus was still on his soul. He was once again experiencing sensation through his five magically augmented senses.

It took him several minutes to sort out his thoughts over the experience. It was alien in an odd way, and Alex was effectively overdosing on supernatural experiences. He believed that the Trialbringer wouldn’t guide him to insanity, no matter how ridiculous what he was about to attempt felt.

Alex made his first attempt to abandon physical sensation and experience reality on the Ethereal Plane. He failed miserably.

For all that David’s own experience had shown him the ropes, it was too much to expect for him to be able to immediately grasp the skill. It was ultimately a matter of mindset, and knowledge of how it had worked for David was more shortcut than cheat code.

Alex wanted nothing more than to dive into his next attempt, but the minutes he’d spent recovering had also let him gather his thoughts. He had something else to focus on, how could he live with himself if he screwed up this chance at figuring out his later plans?

Inspire wanted to push him to greatness. To regain its former glory. If that meant giving him power, then it would give him power. There was some complexity to be found, some ability for strategy, but that was just self-preservation.

It was unfortunate, then, that Alex’s plan involved tearing it apart.

It was even more unfortunate that he had no more success with experiencing the ethereal for the rest of the afternoon. By dinner time, Alex was happy for the reprieve.