The room was rubble — the stone crumbled and cracked from Kai’s assault. Dust and cracked stone littered the orange energy cell that confined him. He had spared nothing in his rampage — the once sturdy walls, the ancient pedestal, even the duplicitous manuscript of the soul transfer technique had been obliterated under his wrath.
Hunched amidst the wreckage, Kai held onto his robes, his knuckles a stark white against the rough gray fabric. He cradled Relay in his lap. His eyes were shut tight as he wrestled with the waves of anxiety. Initially chaotic, the rhythm of his breath gradually synchronized with his body's gentle rocking.
My soul space...it's gone.
Every attempt to shift his awareness into the comforting expanse of his soul space now triggered a vortex of vertigo and sickness. The warm lifeline of his soul tether had been severed, leaving him cut off from the steady influx of energy. And the most isolating of all was the deafening silence that answered his desperate attempts to contact Relay.
Gnawing loneliness consumed him, followed closely by a creeping fear of failure.
His eyes snapped open once his breathing normalized. His fists uncurled from his robes to rest on Relay's golden fur, an unconscious gesture, as he took in the pulsing orange prison that trapped him.
With a grim determination, he released a flurry of golden motes. Evolving into ethereal winged creatures, they shot towards the vibrant energy walls. Their impact created deep, bell-like tones, but they bounced back, defeated by the invincible barrier.
Like tireless explorers, they traced the confines of his prison, searching every nook and cranny for a possible weakness. Once they had exhausted their search, covering every surface, joint, and edge, Kai summoned them back. There was no gap or weakness; the orange energy cube was fortified and impregnable.
He rose from his crumpled position, a lone figure amidst a chaos of dust and stone fragments. The chamber was deceptively large for a child his size — seven times his height in every dimension. He commanded his motes to morph into a flock of industrious birds. Their wings fluttered in a frenzied dance as they tirelessly worked to push all the wreckage aside.
The cleared space allowed him to construct a wooden floor and a comfortable bed from more motes. He tenderly placed Relay onto the soft bedding.
His footsteps echoed eerily as he padded to the center of the room. He assumed a meditative pose, his trembling hands resting on his knees as he faced the formidable question — what was his next move? One thing was sure, he would not be a captive puppet of the Lou family.
The void left by losing his soul space troubled Kai more than he would have anticipated. He'd become so used to navigating its familiar expanse, experimenting, refining designs, and recording ideas; it had become the epicenter of his power. Without it, he felt an undeniable sense of vulnerability.
Cultivation, also seemed futile, with no ambient qi in his cell to nourish him. He was limited to what he had inside his cores, experiencing a sliver of the hardships an ordinary cultivator faced, their cores devoid of a constant flow. An involuntary sigh escaped his lips. The vague notion of using the death energy to drain the barrier imprisoning him fluttered through his mind, but he quickly dismissed it as pointless speculation. He couldn’t access it as it was locked in his soul space.
Shutting his eyes, he ventured inward, determined to find his way out within himself. Seven cores pulsed within him, each churning out distinct energy every passing hour. His primordial heart core held his attention, its capacity far surpassing the rest, a giant amongst dwarves.
His consciousness was drawn to the symbol of his motes, a translucent golden octahedron. The eight-sided geometric marvel nested within his gold core, inhabited by two specks of light in an unending chase — gold and white in a perpetual dance.
"This must mean something, but what?" The idea sparked a trail of implications, but he shelved it, choosing to explore the other paths first. He examined his other cores, his gaze settling on the crown core — a reservoir of purple energy and the home of his soul crown. The prospect of using his soul form to wreak havoc around him was tempting, but he quickly dismissed it. The freedom of his soul form would not liberate his corporeal body.
However, escaping the barrier in his soul form might restore his severed connection. With little to lose, he attempted it, only to find the barrier as solid and unyielding as in his physical form. The failure stung, but he saw it as an elimination rather than a setback.
Moving on, his scrutiny fell on the enigmatic green energy residing in his eye core. All he knew was its symbol was a rectangle. Summoning the corresponding spirit weapon was an energy drain that yielded no visible results. It was an enigma within an enigma, and all his attempts at understanding it had ended in frustration. He moved on, refusing to give up.
He had a blue core in his throat slot — somewhere along the line, he began thinking of cores as interchangeable, like drive modules. The spirit weapon for this core was a book listing useless facts he’d learned and the cryptic ability to affect written passages. Still, Kai couldn’t think of any way that might help him.
Within his sternum nestled a pure white core, birthed from the energy he'd refined from Meilin. Its impact was elusive, though it was known to have purifying and refining effects on anything it touched. Its spirit weapon, a white flame, flared to life at Kai's command and surged toward the barrier. Yet, to his dismay, the energies remained indifferent to each other. The flame was recalled, another route extinguished.
Beneath that lurked a black core, its corresponding spirit weapon a nebulous circle or sphere. His attempts to summon it were in vain — no energy was consumed, no result was produced — another dead-end.
The final red core, his blood core, was an invaluable ally for healing and accelerating his recovery, a constant keeper of his health. But it offered no help to his current confinement.
His focus wandered back to the primordial core and the enigma it held. He contemplated aloud, "Why did the two golden motes transform into one gold and one white, just as I completed refining my cells with the same energy?" Kai spawned threads of thought to probe this question, awaiting their return. After a suspenseful few minutes, their findings began to converge.
The most plausible explanation was tied to his body's refinement with his primordial energy, creating a unique physique linked to his primordial core. The mysterious events within the second nuclei of his cells culminated in this core transformation. But what did that imply? The specifics eluded him.
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"It's time to find out," he declared to the echoing silence, a newfound determination coloring his voice.
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"Enough stalling," Kai reprimanded himself. The initial successful activation of his newly coined 'primordial physique' had been so debilitatingly painful that he'd spent significant time augmenting his perceptions, sleeping, and immersing himself in thoughts to avoid the memory. But his distractions were taking him no closer to his much-needed freedom.
Drawing two deep, conscious breaths in his meditative stance, Kai exhaled slowly, centering himself. With his resolve solidified, he began channeling his white energy into his golden core. That was what had sparked his unending torment. His rational mind compelled him to repeat the process while his primal instincts screamed in protest. Despite the internal conflict, he pressed on, and the white mote absorbed the energy greedily as he powered it.
The mote swelled as he fed it more energy, its size eventually tripling that of its golden counterpart. Kai cut the flow.
Pain slammed into him as every cell ruptured and disassembled. His physical sight abandoned him almost instantly, but through his God's Eye Art, he could witness the gruesome spectacle. He forced himself to endure the agony, physically and visually, as his body exploded into a storm of blood and bone, eviscerated at a molecular scale.
Briefly, the pain subsided, leaving an eerie silence in its wake. The shocking realization of being without a body and the impending dread of death surged and threatened to engulf him.
As the bloody remnants descended, white flames burst forth, engulfing what was left of him. The inferno collected his dispersed essence and molded it into a vaguely humanoid outline. The pain reemerged with a vengeance as Kai's body began its excruciating reconstruction, stretching each moment into a seeming eternity of torment. It felt like an unending ordeal. Still, as swiftly as it had arrived, the pain evaporated, leaving him gasping for breath in its aftermath.
Kai crumpled forward, his hand instinctively reaching out to steady him as he gasped in a deep breath. His hand. His gaze flitted over it once, then again, a sense of disbelief washing over him. He sat upright, his body aligning perfectly, and his senses snapped to attention. He scrutinized his hand, holding it up to his line of sight. It was a mature, adult hand, beautifully defined, with powerful, muscular fingers - distinctively masculine, yet...
His hand was an impeccable white. No hint of color variation marred his skin tone. His nail beds, pores, creases, and tendons were the same pure white hue as his spirit weapon. Lifting his gaze from his hand, he discovered his forearm matched the same unearthly whiteness, muscular and radiant from within, lending him an almost two-dimensional aspect due to the lack of contrasting skin shades.
His gaze slid further down, catching sight of his bare form. His robes had vanished, and he swallowed, feeling a new awareness of his physicality. Yes, decidedly adult. He glanced again. Very adult. Kai arose, his body immediately obeying his command. This figure was taller, broader, and more muscular than his former adult physique. He called forth some motes from his core to reconstruct his robes.
White motes emerged from his chest, fluttering around him like a swarm of doves before metamorphosing into a new white garment that draped over him eagerly. The peculiar attire adhered to his form, animated as if teased by an unseen wind. It was as soft as down feathers and tingled against his skin with a sensation of being alive.
Kai's attention returned to his primordial core, noting the transformation instantly. The octahedron, previously bordered in gold, was now wholly comprised of pure white energy. Inside, the golden mote pursued the white one in an unending cycle. The size of the white mote was already half of what it had been.
"So the spirit weapon is transformed too?" Kai's deep voice resonated throughout the chamber with more force than he had intended. Startled by the unfamiliar timber of his voice, he instinctively glanced around to confirm he was alone.
Realizing the voice was his, a hearty laugh erupted from him. He felt phenomenal. Swiftly reclaiming his seat, he assumed a meditative pose and mentally skimmed through his outlined experiments. Initiating the first one, he channeled white energy into his primordial core.
Odd. The white energy refused to infiltrate the octahedron. After multiple attempts, he finally abandoned the idea. Kai watched, a sense of helpless frustration building as the white mote diminished in size with every revolution.
Refocusing on his experimental tasks, he allowed his white energy to surge through his meridians, permeating his flesh for the next experiment.
What was that?
He spun around, his senses alert to a presence behind him, yet found nothing. He felt it again, slowly pivoting his head, hoping to glimpse the mystery when he realized he could still utilize his Mind's Eye Art to see behind him.
Pain tore through him anew just as he was engaging his spiritual sight.
His body exploded into a mist of pristine white.
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Kai moved to the center of his cell. His body felt wrong. Shuffling between his childhood and adult forms over the last day had created a disconcerting sense of wrongness when he was a child. He had spent the majority of his life in an adult form. Adjusting swiftly to his new, smaller body was a feat accomplished readily, but experiencing adulthood again sparked a dormant awareness.
This body felt wrong. Kai expelled a long sigh of frustration. His newly transformed body wasn't right either. On his third transformation, he wore his soul crown to gain a comprehensive view of his altered appearance. He didn’t recognize himself.
His physique was robustly muscular, impeccably symmetric, and seemingly chiseled from pure white. His lips bore the same hue, his hair, every aspect of him was bathed in white. But not the typical pale of human skin. It was the white of untouched snow.
His face was unfamiliar – an exotic combination of feminine and masculine features that would be considered beautiful or handsome. However, his eyes were by far the most uncanny. Lacking the usual iris or pupil, they instead offered glimpses into another realm. Mirroring a distant galaxy, they held the reflection of a star-studded night sky.
It was considerably later, following numerous experiments, that he discerned his eyes mirrored his current location within his soul space. What he initially perceived as behind him was actually his soul space. Somehow, this form had a physical connection to his soul space. How this was feasible, considering he wasn't spiritually linked to his soul space, remained a mystery among many others.
As baffling as it was, his trials verified that his transformed form coexisted simultaneously in the real world and his soul space. It appeared to be an unchangeable condition. He couldn't exist solely in either realm; he was perpetually present in both.
Kai shook his head. The realization that his soul space was a tangible reality existing somewhere was hard to swallow. That wasn't the only mystery. The correlation between his body's connection to the soul space and his purifying white energy remained obscure. He thought he’d grasped the conceptual foundation of Meilin's energy, but he obviously hadn’t.
"I need a better term than soul space," Kai mused, his gaze falling on the slumbering ferrox. "Soul dimension, personal dimension, soul realm?" He tested a few alternatives, gauging their resonance.
I'm stalling again.
Kai's focus shifted to the corner disks of the energy matrix that held him captive. He had devised a plan, and he was prepared to execute it. But, the transformation ordeal was so traumatic that he yearned to return to his spiritual soul space and transfer his consciousness away from the pain.
Channeling white energy into his golden core, he stoked the white mote. He required a substantial energy reserve for his next move. He dedicated several minutes to amassing as much energy as he could muster.
Once it swelled larger than ever, he stopped the flow. Pain wracked his body as he was disassembled. When he reformed, he didn't squander a second. It was time to move.