Lurona city [southern shores of Fuminao Legacy Kingdom], local time [1794.01.16]

“Firstly, Nether—as a form of energy—is the same in nature as Mana. My original was the first to confirm it – the interaction between the Soulscape and Netherworld is responsible for just about the same reaction. The difference between Mana and Nether stems from the difference between our spatial triplet and the Nether spatial triplet. Both are of the same nature, but that says little about the adjected singlets and matter distribution. Even less about dominant energy forms – even if most are universal for spatial triplets, you just need one additional singlet to skewer that. Also, manifesting Nether in the spacetime of Corora is only possible thanks to the Soulscape constructs similar to the one we are now occupying.”

Okay, she got me hooked, he had to admit.

“Secondly, we understood their means of infiltrating other worlds, “she started, then smugly waited for his reaction.

He tilted his imaginary head.

Sighing heavily, she dramatically grabbed her forehead with one hand. “Were you even listening? What is the difference between a world and a reality?” she asked and he finally understood.

Noticing his disbelief, her smugness returned somewhat. “That’s right! Their spatial triplet wasn’t originally in this universe! The Soulscape – our major entis singlet – seems to be the very same one as in almost every universe in this cluster, and probably beyond.” She nodded to herself with pride, crossing her arms. “That’s why I said its number of connections with other dimensional sets is reaching a stabilization point for a doublet. Anyway, the Netherfolk managed to reach us through it and connected to our timeline. A process utterly impossible to implement by force, but the timelines are expansive by nature. All they needed to do was to initiate the expansion. Although, the details of how they did that stays a mystery.”

Isn’t that really bad news? he asked himself, his hackles standing up… only for him to quickly calm down. It took a moment, but he remembered what Aisha had told him during the trek down the Torrent mountain range. The System came here specifically because the Nether showed up. There was no way the Onjis didn’t have this information already.

Obvious to his distracting thoughts, Mavis continued. “Thus, the reason we can’t easily imitate their method of transferring into our dimensions is threefold,” she said, crossing her arms and flying even higher. “The ones that transfer here don’t possess a physical body in the same sense you do. They are actually closer to the being of pure energy, like me!”

He nodded, allowing her to take the high position while he plopped back on his non-existent backside.

“Their Soul Arts are much more developed! We aren’t able to navigate the Soulscape like they seem to be able to do. The Soulscape was the only connecting point at the beginning, so it definitely played a role. And they basically live off of consuming the information from the Soulscape. Which is… arguably, very strange,” she scratched her head. “But it’s very probable that their adjacent reality is of a strange set combination. They had to have a timeline there before ours had expanded to include their world. And, as you can imagine, two timelines in one reality is never a good idea. Who knows what is happening there? Or maybe they just became feral at one point or something.” She shrugged helplessly but quickly regained her energy. “Anyway, the final reason is, we don’t have means of possessing a physical body on the other side. Energetical being or not, without an anchor we can’t see what is happening there, even if we manage to navigate the Soulscape successfully. This stems directly from the fact that they are not native to this universe and we don’t know anything about the physicality of that exact world. This simulation was created to close that gap.”

A very bad premonition started to stir in Zeph’s mind. The trepidation of what awaited him in the future started condensing way before he could consciously understand the whole reason.

She smiled, then theatrically twirled in the air before spreading her arms wildly. “And, at last, thirdly! We know for a fact that those Netherbeings don’t possess the Will!” she said triumphally before adopting a more subdued posture. ”Or, they lost it in during the transfer…” she mumbled silently that part. He could still understand her clearly, though. “But that’s where you come in!” She pointed at him with a sudden burst of positive energy. “With the nature of your Will, you can easily keep it in working condition and even use it in their dimensions!”

“Wait, that doesn’t add up,” he stopped her. “I don’t have access to my Will here, don’t I?”

“Um… that’s the unexpected complication I mentioned earlier…” she said timidly. “I would happily allow it here—especially because of how dependent you are on it—and test what influence it could express in this space… but this simulation is very fragile from the perspective of the Soulspace. Your Will would shred it to pieces in seconds.”

“Ah, okay…” he said skeptically. “Before we go back to the topic of Will-less Netherbeings… I think I understand where I am. But it’s the highest time you tell me what I am. How did you even manage to stop my Will from entering?”

“Eh, I am just distracting it,” she said casually, waving her hands to her sides.

He couldn’t believe what he just heard. “Are you serious?”

She sighed before landing in her chair with a soundless plop. “I am already executing a full simulation of the Nether space. Imitating a harmless conflict on the surface level isn’t that difficult if your consciousness isn’t involved. The Will outside is still yours, but not really reactive to what you are thinking right now and thus giving no feedback. Not attuned. You know – new body, new self?”

What? That’s… ridiculous. “Okay, new question. How can I have my consciousness separated from the rest of my being?!”

“You aren’t mistaken,” she said with a nod. “There is no such thing as physical consciousness. It can’t be simply transferred. I will, once again, simplify the explanation, if you will?”

“…Yes, sure.”

She nodded again and took a pose of a teacher sitting behind her desk in a class. “This is a bit more complicated topic. You are, indeed, isolated from your body and Will at this time. But your Soul is different. As I said earlier, its current state is a complicated matter. I expanded it into this simulated space.” She waited for him to fully focus again before continuing.

“It means that I have connected to your core Soul—the part existing from the start and before your enhancements—and forcefully shifted parts of it into the Nether-compatible form. While doing that, I imprinted a temporary processing unit into them. It is the very reason you managed to shift your consciousness here. Your body is unresponsive as of now.” She corrected her non-existent glasses. “But even if the description is simple, the execution not so much. First of all, it seems I and my original had missed something vital when modelling Terrien’s brain activity. It was one of the reasons you… don’t have all your wits about you.”

Looking somewhat apologetic, she moved to take a seat beside him before continuing. “I had to slow down then disable your brain, distract your Will, and ever-so-slowly bring your fading focus to the new processing unit operating in your Soul. One that you had never used. All that in time before shutting down your brain entirely. I expected a great deal of memory loss, but you finished it like a champion,” she smiled at him honestly with her characteristic, ominously black mouth.

“That was the resilience and integrity test. Resilience of your body and psyche and integrity of your mind, with the Soul acting as a proxy and base for both.”

He shook his form, trying to imitate the shaking of a head. “I can’t feel my Soul at all. There is no influence that I can find.”

“Well, what would you expect? It’s obvious that System’s enhancements won’t work – I only linked to your core Soul… Okay, I will explain that in detail in a moment.” She sighed, feeling his accusing gaze. She was omitting a lot, after all. “Either way, you normally use Will to interact with your Soul, don’t you?” Without waiting for an answer, she pulled forward. “But if you take into account that your current body is now made out of parts of your actual Soul, I would say you are doing pretty good!” She smiled at him.

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Huh? How is it possible I never noticed? She even mentioned it a few times already… I need to focus more. “You mean, those strange transformations and movements I pulled off out of nowhere were all…” His voice petered out as he weighed the words to describe what he had experienced.

“Natural to every Soul construct.” She helped him. “And even if it shouldn’t be a part of the simulation, it’s impossible to block the inherent nature of what you are without heavy repercussions. Instead, I used that property to test your relative strength in manipulating both – your Soul and the Nether-bound space – alongside your compatibility with the prototype of the Nether-compatible body that my original had designed.”

It took him a minute to process and stop all distracting thoughts that suddenly started plaguing his mind. The most infuriating part was, he didn’t understand the Soulscape. His perception of that ‘space’ was merely an interpretation – a projection of his mind. Worse, without access to Will, his perceptibility of this dimension was majorly crippled.

Thankfully, he still remembered what he had learned from Gru, as well as his past experiences relating to Soul perception. As so, he could see the logic in her words.

In the end, he decided to ask what bothered him most. “I had an impression… that separating a consciousness and its Will should be impossible…” he said, shifting his focus to the side and down to look at her.

“That’s why I said I am merely distracting it. Your consciousness is responsible for creating it… No, that’s misleading…” She massaged her forehead as she was thinking how to spell it.

“To be sure we are on the same page, let me state what should be obvious. Any being or construct capable of more than simple information processing has the ability to produce Will – a prerequisite to ‘forming’ a Soul. Normally, your brain would be the main source, but I disabled it. Because of that, your perception of Self shifted almost entirely into this simulation. This Soul-forged body of yours is the only working replacement. The only compatible and computational ‘organ’ you have access to. But that doesn’t mean you are fully compatible with it – especially the Will part of your being. Remember, you were out for almost three days before you ‘woke up’.”

She glanced at him and he nodded in understanding. It was something he knew about to some extent – the relation between Soul, Will, and physicality. He was unconscious for days – meaning, he was physically unable to think at all.

“Your Will regeneration was non-existent until then, and it’s still very slow. The more you interact with this space – thinking while using this body – the more and the better attuned Will you are producing. But… it’s ways away from the avalanche outside that is trying to collapse this whole structure. Such low levels of Will aren’t noticeable and the unattuned part immediately joins your swarm outside. So it’s not like you are stripped of Will,” she said with understanding. “It just feels like it. A little. Without the side effect of damaging your personality.”

He sighed. If not for his limited cognitive ability, he was sure he would have an existential crisis right about now.

“Say what you want but… doesn’t that mean that I am, practically, dead now?” He asked philosophically while looking into the void surrounding them.

“Practically, no. Your Soul is still connected to your physical body. Technically, yes – you are using only your Soul to process information while not possessing a stable form. That would categorize you as an Undead or Soul construct.”

He sent her an imaginary stinky eye. “Gee… Thanks for the strictly technical diagnosis that has nothing to do with my feelings.”

She giggled, knowing full well that his emotions were mostly absent or muted.

He looked back into the void, parsing through what he have learned. It took him only a moment to notice the connection, there was a glaring problem. “No way! That would mean I would become a real ghost in the Netherworld if I transferred, doesn’t it? You have formed my simulated body from my Soul alone in here.”

“Weeeelll…” she bobbed from side to side. “If by a ghost you mean an independent, structurally-sound, and thinking Soul entity compatible with the basic spatial triplet of the reality, then yes? You would still have to Soul-expand or Soul-link to something on the other side before truly manifesting, though…”

A flashback from Aisha’s explanations about the Undead flooded his mind for a moment. What emerged from the deluge was a primal scream of an eureka moment. “You can do THAT?!”

She giggled again. Once again guessing what he was talking about, she started explaining while swaying from side to side in her seat. “If you mean Soul-dependent immortality, then yes… I am quite surprised you never heard of that. Some Undead of that kind exist on the higher strata. Most probably artificially created, though.”

That made him pause and revise his memories once again. It didn’t take long this time.

“Ugh… you’re right. I already knew about Soul constructs capable of processing data. Aisha even mentioned once the Draugr Lords, back when she was giving me examples of the Undead. It’s just… I think I have never seen it as a possible method of immortalizing oneself… Have never projected the idea of a full-fledged unliving being without a body that once was a person. The kinds of you or the Onjis should at least possess a body formed from energy…”

She nodded in understanding. “Yes, yes. But such a being has to start somewhere. You can’t have Will without a body capable of thinking. You can’t gain a Soul without a Will. You can’t have a thinking Soul compatible with the reality without going through those steps. All in all, even artificial unliving—as you have called them—Soul entities need to be anchored in the reality. If they aren’t, they would simply drift away in the Soulscape and lose the connection to the timeline at some point. Will itself wouldn’t suffice to keep them unliving… it’s a negative feedback loop. Undead are kind of an outliner here, but the conditions on Corora don’t support their existence well. Or rather, at all.”

He looked at her with a suspicious glare. “That was an awfully specific comment… As if coming from the mouth of an experienced specialist in the field…”

“Bah! Give it up, kid. You know too little to accuse me!” She exclaimed playfully. “Damn’ youngsters. Why are you always so riotous?” she spat to the side.

“Because it would be a damn shame if you screwed someone’s potential reincarnation while playing with Souls?” He asked monotonously.

“Said a human whose Soul almost dissipated”—she smirked, making quotation marks with her fingers—“on its own.”

That shut him up.

Ah… At this point, the topic is similar to that of an abortion, anyway. I never liked discussing those… he lied to himself. “Whatever… what about the last test?”

“Of perception and resonance?”

He nodded, knowing already that she could somehow perceive that without him moving around.

“In your case, your perception stems from Will mostly, but you aren’t producing enough to cheat like that. In hindsight, I should have predicted it. But I am happy that I didn’t – you are quite capable even without it. Do you see any artifacts in your vision?”

“Definitely. There is a white static obscuring everything.”

“Wow…” She was positively dumbfounded. “With so little Will? Jeez… that thing is powerful…” she said quietly, massaging her chin. After a moment, she relaxed in her cushion, put her arms behind her head, and started explaining. “When perceiving this space through Soul alone, you should see gray, dark, and black. In many new shades, at that. The range and contrast depend on your ability to perceive Soulscape and on your compatibility with this new body. You did very well. The resonance test was passive – it happened when you reached the center of the tetrahedron.”

She turned her head to him. “It measured how well our Souls fit together…”

“Um, before we get to that I have one more question. If the Soulscape is a singlet, why am I interpreting it as, at least, 3-dimensional space every time I see it? It’s just surreal to think of it as a singular dimension.”

“Because you are looking at many parts at once. When you interact with it, it’s like looking at a one-dimensional line from the perspective of a 4-dimensional world. You see more at once than you would have if you were 1-dimensional yourself. Also, the interaction between it, the spatial triplet, and the temporal singlet drastically distorts its true shape. And at the center of that very distortion stands you – same as every other living being with a Soul. It’s like looking at the world through a kaleidoscope, just a multidimensional one. You smear the information all over your perception field,” she explained, making wild gestures in the air. “But it’s even worse! If you imagine it like a linear dimension – like a line on a canvas – you would find yourself unable to look at one point either way. Because in every infinitesimal fragment you choose to perceive, there is an infinite amount of information. The space has no power here!” She pumped her arm into the air, jumping to her feet. “It’s like looking deeper and deeper into a plotted fractal – which is a part of the Soulscape’s nature. That is why it’s impossible to navigate it - you need a relative point of reference. There are no objective coordinates—”

“Theoretically, there should be one coordinate, though?” he interjected and asked naively.

She paused midstride and smirked audibly. Turning to him, she moved her arms behind her back. “Yes. Yes indeed. But you are thinking in math too much.” She tilted her head. “If you want to speak in those terms… There is no point at distance of ‘2’ on the line. Every part of this ‘space’ is made of irrational numbers. No matter how detailed your coordinate will be, you will never be able to input the infinite number required from a proper coordinate.”

Quite enlightening… he thought to himself. Even if not groundbreaking observation.

“And, for your information,”—her dark smile formed again—“you still need more than one coordinate if you want to find a set of data. Say… a Soul of the recently deceased.” Her tone dropped. “You need to find not one coordinate but the whole cluster containing information about them. A cluster that is very finely dispersed all over the dimension. You would need a higher-dimensional context. The interpreted, relative coordinates – like position, depth, and range of a fractal that mirrors your multi-dimensional reality. The time, the place, the being… The easiest way would be to never lose them from your sight. That way, you can interact with what you comprehend ‘en masse’, interpreting the coordinates in real time. But after you lose them?” She shrugged. “Well, good luck.”

“…”

A potent silence fell over them for a moment.

“Back to business?”

“…Yes, let’s talk business.”