"Forgive me Elase. I, who was once so devoted to your cause, have sinned. Not only am I about to take part in this tragedy, I am about to help facilitate it. I am no longer a victim or even a bystander. I shall be one of the perpetrators. I beg for forgiveness not because I hope I will be forgiven, but because it is expected of me to. I do not feel regret for my actions. Though I do regret that I am straying from your path. I regret that I will not live up to your expectations, the expectations you had for humanity as a whole. I regret not being a better person. I do not regret this, however. I will never regret this. So, I ask you, Elase, long dead and unable to heed my prayers. Forgive me."

-Extract from Chancellor Gustine's Personal Diary

"When you think of a soul, you should no longer think of the abstract concept of one that most people have. The soul is great and incomprehensible at times, yes, but it is by no means abstract. Although the realm it resides in doesn't conform to reality as we know it, the very concept of space itself being broken down into nothing when in it, the realm's loose interpretation of existence contains some notion of distance, though entirely relative. This means that the soul can ultimately be constrained and controlled, beyond whatever unimaginable concept we originally believed it to be. The soul is that collection of soul energy, the energy making up the spiritual realm, ever fluctuating and moving like a tempest trapped inside of a cage too small to contain it," Gulliver reiterated, pacing back and forth.

It was long past breakfast now, with Daniel having eaten and swiftly coming back to learn more. It was different from the boring lectures in the Academy, for this time it felt like it was suited for him. He did not know if there was much use for this information for someone like him, yet Daniel felt drawn in by the allure of knowledge, ever curious and ever hungry for more.

"This will be important to know how soul energy within our soul is transferred out or to it. According to Robert Chalice's Theory on Soul Transfer, which has been confirmed, we are able to transfer energy via a columning method. This works by having the gathered soul energy form a protective passage from the soul room to the soul membrane. The innate soul energy of the membrane then reinforces the passage, forming the transfer column. Finally, the membrane opens up around the column exit, and the soul transfer can begin.

"One of two things can now occur. Spirit energy can exit the soul, becoming soul energy. The way this occurs is via the innate soul energy acting as a catapult for this spirit energy, dragging it out of the soul room and into the rest of the spiritual realm, where it can then cascade if needed. You don't know the Theory of Realm Elevation just yet so you won't understand what I mean by cascade. For now, you just need to know that it does.

"If soul energy enters the soul and becomes absorbed by it, becoming spirit energy, the opposite occurs. Innate soul energy exits the soul area and tries to grab and gather wild soul energy from the spiritual realm. This process is quite dangerous in that the innate soul energy can quickly become detached from the membrane or it becomes weak enough due to it being far from the soul it originates from such that the soul energy dissipates and joins the rest of the spiritual realm. This is often mitigated by using spirit energy to reinforce the innate soul energy to form a better tether. Even with this countermeasure, the risk of detachment still exists and poses a problem.

"Because of the dangers of absorbing soul energy using the columning method, it is not at all widely used and a different method is instead employed. The method is called Spirit Recall. Rather than using innate soul energy tether infused with spirit energy, a spirit energy tether infused with innate soul energy is used. This may not seem like that big of a difference, but it indeed affects massively how the whole system I am going to describe would behave.

"The mechanism of this is the same as spirit energy exiting the soul, the catapult is formed but this time it is formed with gathered soul energy and only infused with innate soul energy. The reason why will soon become clear. The soul energy is then expelled to the outside, but instead of the catapult being retracted immediately, it lingers, and it doesn't let go of the expelled spirit energy. Rather, it expands to clump together surrounding soul energy to the spirit energy it already holds. At this point, almost all the soul energy for the catapult feels no pull on it by the soul due to it being outside of it for so long. This is where the innate soul energy comes into play.

"Some of the membrane's innate soul energy then rushes through into the catapult forming a gathered soul energy catapult as a base, but at this point it is mostly made up of the innate soul energy. The innate pull to the soul this infusion has forcibly drags the catapult back inside the column. The column then seals up again, and soul energy has now just been absorbed."

"Sir... that's a bit much to remember in one go." Daniel murmured, a bit overwhelmed.

"Well, you're going to have to get used to it then. Right now I'm trying to rush through almost the entire first year’s content with you just to get to the point where we can do something with you."

"But, I only missed around a month or two of Academy?"

"That content is useless to you. It benefits you in no way at all and so I need to go straight to beginner soul mechanics. To be honest, you might need some intermediate level content too. We'll get there when we need to though. For now, you need to persevere through this so we can get to the needed level for you."

"Can't I at least take a break?"

"...Fine, go on a break. However, if you don't come back soon I really will let, no, make you fall in the river next time."

"Y-yes sir..." Daniel squeaked, running off, though not too enthusiastically just in case Gulliver had a problem with it. When he was mostly sure he was out of sight, he sprinted straight to the fishing shack, making sure to greet Eni who was manning the store, also attracting the attention of a customer browsing the bait section. Daniel also found Havie in the upstairs storage room, most likely having just come back from helping out in town, and made sure to say hello to him before rushing up to his room.

Bringing out a notepad and quill, Daniel noted down all that he could remember from what Gulliver had just taught him. Though his artistic capabilities weren't too good, he could manage a good enough diagram to help visualise the entire columning process. Even if it took him the entirety of his break, he made sure to jot everything down.

"Daniel! Gulliver is downstairs looking for you!" Daniel heard Eni call up to him. It seemed he had lost track of time and rushed back downstairs before Gulliver got too angry. Fortunately it seemed he hadn't been waiting long at all.

"Sorry sir, I lost track of the time."

"Make sure to be near our spot early next time. Anyways, I will be borrowing him again, Eni."

"No worries, Gull. Don't be too harsh on him though." Eni said, hurrying me along, "You best be getting going then, Daniel, try to have fun."

"See you later Eni!"

As Daniel ran up ahead of Gulliver towards the now cemented meeting spot, they both didn't notice the sinister smile creeping up on the face of the man browsing the shop behind them.

* * *

For the third day in a row, Daniel had wasted his break from his teachings with Gulliver on writing everything down. At first it was just minor notes but that quickly snowballed into large lengthy paragraphs of memorisation that drained Daniel almost completely. Today was trying to memorise the process of awakening a Node. First forming a soul link, then sending a small shock of soul energy into the dormant Node and finally guiding the reaction soul response from the Node into a permanent link between the main soul and the Node. The process was then repeated several times to solidify this link and make it secure. And yet again, just as he was about to finish writing everything down, Eni called up to him, sending Daniel rushing back downstairs to follow Gulliver who was waiting in the store.

"Now, though the lessons have been rushed so far, we're going to slow it down a bit" Gulliver announced, as he and Daniel walked to the usual meeting spot, by where Anya usually plays, "Partly because both you and I need a break, and especially you in order to digest everything that's been taught, but also because of something else."

"Sir?"

"This something is going to require your full trust in me. You will have to be with me every step of the way and listen to my every order, regardless of how ridiculous or simple it may sound."

"Sir, what's going to happen?" Daniel tentatively asked, now plenty more hesitant in going with Gulliver than before.

"I'm going to perform a Soul Link with you. You remember hearing about that, right?"

"Y-yes... but why?" Daniel couldn't help but say, now noticing that Gulliver was leading him a bit further away from the normal place, finding himself in an out of the way area near the back of Anya's playing area.

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

"My own curiosity. Nothing to worry about Daniel. As I said before, you just have to trust me on every step along the way." Gulliver iterated once more, sitting down on a particularly grassy patch of ground and gesturing for Daniel to sit down, "Come on, sit down with me."

"Sure..."

"First order of business is just to get comfortable, or as close to comfortable as possible" Gulliver ordered Daniel, the two facing each other as they sat down on the grass, a bit of dew wetting their legs.

Though Daniel struggled to get rid of the nervousness wriggling around inside, a familiar tactic came back from the days he still refused to properly remember. Tuck it up and bash that feeling until it was no more, all in fear of his wrath. It worked surprisingly well.

"Now, I want you to just maintain the state you are in now and try not to fall asleep." Gulliver said, strangely noticing the exact moment when Daniel had stopped feeling nervous. "Just stay calm and as still as you can."

With a silent nod, Daniel finally rested, a feeling that he felt like he hadn't felt in years. Though he couldn't stop the intrusive thoughts of those terrible memories flooding in, for once, Daniel could shut them out. And just as he felt like nothing could go wrong, a sudden sharp shock reverberated through his entire body and all went dark.

With Daniel now relaxed, Gulliver could begin the process for the soul link. Soul energy began to gather at his fingertips, some of it even cascading and forming a visible cold mist around his hands. Partially solidified shards of soul energy also appeared in the air around his hand, sending rays of reflected light everywhere like small mirrors.

With a deep breath, Gulliver shut his eyes and prepared to enter his Mind Space. All of his senses vanished, the presence of the material world completely disappearing from his mind, leaving him totally alone with only his own thoughts to keep company.

However, with a single command did his dark world flourish with colour.

Dream

The psychedelic hues of the cognitive realm bombarded Gulliver, finding himself barely able to think for himself under the disorientating mental pressure of all the living beings around him. Trying to gain focus, Gulliver slowly and deliberately phased out one mind's thoughts at a time, starting with a small child's, then a plant's, and so on until it was only his own and Daniel's that remained.

Images of a dark room filled with blood forced themselves onto Gulliver, seemingly originating from the boy in front of him. If these thoughts were so powerful despite being transmitted unconsciously, how terrible must those real memories be? Gulliver didn't dare comprehend. He had work to do.

Focusing further, Gulliver removed the intrusive memories from his Mind Space, until all that was left were the ripples of reality themselves, created by the imprint that consciousness has on the cognitive realm. Following where these ripples dissipated, Gulliver found what he was looking for; the spiritual bridge. Where the cognitive imprint makes an impression on the spiritual realm.

Letting the material realm seep in just a bit more so that he could feel his body, Gulliver reached forward, both in the cognitive and physical realms. Moulding the soul energy around his finger tips into a tiny blade, Gulliver readied himself and began insertion.

Simultaneously, Gulliver stabbed Daniel with the blade of soul energy and entered his mind into the spiritual bridge. With that sharp disturbance in Daniel's soul from the stab, the spiritual bridge dilated slightly, allowing Gulliver to see a small gap in the fabric of the cognitive realm, a gateway large enough to slip into Daniel's own spiritual realm space. And so Gulliver entered.

All the splendour of the cognitive realm vanished once more, leaving Gulliver's consciousness floating in a large space, spanning all around him for what seemed like forever. There was no light in this place, only an all-consuming darkness, rather than nothingness. It was here that Gulliver saw a small speck in the distance, glowing with the white glow of soul energy. As it wasn't his own spiritual space, Gulliver was forced to shift towards the entity in the distance rather than force it to shift to him. With the shift, Gulliver went from absolute darkness to almost blinding bright, being placed so that he was facing an ever fluctuating shape of geometrical nonsense and impossibility, or in other words, a soul. Daniel's soul.

The soul's outer shell, its membrane, was fractured, the cracks in it briskly sealed with what looks like a foreign darker soul energy. The evidence of severe and constant amateur spirit healing. It seemed that The Inquisitor hadn't bothered to get a good spirit healer for Daniel when he was torturing him. However this wasn't what Gulliver was looking for during the short fraction of a second he had during the soul link, forcibly spread into hours in the spiritual realm.

Examining the entirety of the soul, Gulliver hungrily looked for any sort of spiritual connection to another entity whether that be the most tenuous of spiritual links or evidence of an internal node. This can't be it. There can't be nothing! There has to be something! This is David's boy, is it not?!

Even more frantically now, the calm and collected front of Gulliver disappeared as he manically searched for anything that could give a hint of a node.

But there was nothing.

Nothing at all.

Just a scarred and damaged soul, too weak to do anything at all...

Gulliver let go of his grasp on Daniel's soul, realising that he might have accidentally damaged it if he handled it too roughly. Crestfallen, Gulliver shifted back to where he had come, the ever encompassing darkness letting that bright damaged soul become a mere dot in the distance. All he could do now was wait, wait for the soul link to end and apologise to Daniel for wasting his time, and give Avos the bad news whenever he returned.

Why? He's so weak. So weak. Yet all of this was done to him. For what? For what, Ellis? His soul is so meagre it could be mistaken for a dead one! Half destroyed, barely alive. Even so, from all this distance, it was still so bright. So bright with promise. And now it's all ruined. Just for your own selfish desires. I truly hope you have a conscious still, Ellis, so that it would eat you from the inside out for doing what you did to David's son.

Such a small soul, in such a large darkness.

Such a large darkness.

What?

The spiritual realm shouldn't be dark, it should be nothing.

What the hell is causing the darkness then? Another presence?

Yes, it must be, Gulliver wished to himself as he shifted further away from where he was to get a better look, just a shadow from some soul energy Ellis put into Daniel to spy on him. Yes that should be-

As he shifted away one last time, his thoughts were cut short. Yes, Daniel's soul was bright. Unusually bright even for a soul. But it shouldn't be that bright for how little soul energy is in it and how damaged it is. The spiritual realm is a realm of relativity after all. In here, space and time itself is all relative. It's the whole reason you can simply shift around as you compress the large infinite chasms between you and your goal into what feels like only a few steps. The only time something would be so bright is if it was in the shadow of something so big and grand, that it's darkness would swallow everything. Gulliver had only seen such a thing once before. Lucan.

And so, Gulliver caught witness of one of the largest Nodes he had ever seen, a stormy grey soul mass, more than a hundred of thousands of times the size of Daniel's soul, occasionally lighting up with flashes of gold, alongside the unmistakable cracking of thunder. This cannot be, it just can't! What the hell type of Node is this?!

And it was with even greater horror did Gulliver notice something else. The shape of this Node was unnatural. Its shape wasn't the weird and random conflagration of shapes and colours that a soul and soul membrane would have. This is controlled, a perfect sphere. As if it wasn't a soul at all, but a constructed soul room. Gulliver was right. This wasn't any normal Node. It was an Exposed Node.

But there is no Node of this size?! Nodes are supposed to be tiny fragments of God's souls, shattering apart when the god died! Not entire parts! Could it be that an inheritance took place? A part of David's Node falling into Daniel's hands when he was born, compounding with a Node he already had, only making it bigger? But that would only happen if the Nodes are of the same God. The chances of that aren't miniscule but they're still small! And-

It was here that the final piece of the puzzle fell into place. Just like Lucan, just like David, Daniel had a soul of a god. But not just any god. The Node of a god that was still alive. And in this case, it would be Dhalene's Node. An Exposed Live Node. How could Daniel have it any worse? Already it would be hard to control from it still having a will of its own being alive, but it being exposed meant that it would not have a membrane to interact with and the remaining soul room would have no entrance for a link to take hold off!

Magnificent. This is magnificent. Oh Avos... we were right. We were right!

Too in awe of the Node, Gulliver was distracted enough to not realise what a live Node would mean for him. In a time too quick to react to, a sudden blast of golden soul energy shot out from the soul room, smouldering with the essence of lightning itself, coming straight for Gulliver and making a direct impact with his spiritual and cognitive body. It seemed the Node didn't like outsiders interfering with its host. On instinct, Gulliver sent back a retaliatory spike of soul energy of his own, realising his folly too late.

Shit!

Upon impact, a deafening shudder shook the entirety of Daniel's spiritual space. A large enough of a shudder that it would cause the spiritual bridge to contract and shut Gulliver out. And so it did.

Reeling with pain. Gulliver came to consciousness on the grass he was sitting on before, all of his senses still shut out. All except that terrible pain. Trying to collect himself the best he could as his sight returned, Gulliver saw Daniel also flat on the grass, but unlike himself, with blood drooling from his mouth, ears and nose. The spiritual shudder was too much. Hastily collecting Daniel from the floor with the bit of strength he had left after being forcibly removed from the soul link, Gulliver barely caught the whiff of a smell. The smell of burning grass underneath the prone Daniel. The grass was grey and burnt, almost all the way to the ground. Not letting himself be distracted any further, Gulliver rushed to the Avitson Fishing Shack with Daniel in his arms.

But still, he couldn't help but remark that the burn mark on the ground looked awfully like it had been struck by lightning.