The next day the high monk called Brin into his office. “Yes, sir?” asked Brin.

“I want to talk to you about what happened yesterday.”

“I’m sorry for interrupting the meeting sir, it just seemed that I had the only way to get the troops there in time, so I had to speak up.”

“Oh, that was fine. Because of your actions we were able to break the siege of the city and drive the demons back to the main lines. You saved thousands of lives. I want to know how you did it, and how you knew you could.”

“Honestly, sir, I don’t know. I just knew that I’d done something similar before, that I had spent over a decade making it work, and had used it to save people. I know that doesn’t make sense, as I’m not even a decade old yet, but I know it’s true.”

The high monk nodded. “Tell me. Do you know what a Reincarnate is?”

“I think I read about them in my studies. Sometimes a person’s memories don’t get completely erased when they get another chance at life, and they remember things from a past life. Do you think that is how I knew how to do that from yesterday, that I’m a reincarnate?”

“It’s the only explanation I can thing of.”

Brin nodded. “If that’s true, then I would have to be a magical researcher in a past life. That’s the only way I could put together such a circle from memory. Maybe even a Precursor.”

“Only that circle wasn’t magic, nor was it based on any principles of magic circle construction that we have learned. And because our magic circle knowledge is an extension of the system the Precursors used, it is unlikely you are a reincarnated Precursor either.”

“But if it isn’t magic, then what is it?”

The high monk thought for a minute before speaking. “Do you remember telling Master Tanno one time that your ability to recover mana instantly came from converting another type of energy you can’t explain? Was it this type?” He held out his hand and a flame sprouted in his palm. I was about to say that that was just mana, when a second type of energy joined with the mana, drastically improving the effect. The fire almost disappeared, turning blue around the edges with a white core.

“Yes, that’s it. What is that. When I try to name it, my mind wants to call it ‘shadow energy’ or something close that I can’t quite think of.”

“That is called Divine energy. It is called such because at one point we thought that only the gods could manipulate it. That was until a god taught us to manipulate it as well. That is the special power which the Saintess is currently being taught to use. And I believe it is the energy you used to activate the teleporter yesterday.”

“Yes, it was. Can you teach me to use it?”

“Perhaps. Your reserves seem to be far greater than any of ours. After you left yesterday, we had the Saintess try to activate it, as she is the only one here who can infuse pure divine energy into objects. We only tried to send a single person, but she was only able to fill it about half way before she exhausted herself.”

“I designed it for ease of use, not efficiency. If you want me to build you one the Saintess can activate and send maybe four or five people at a time, maybe even including the ability to switch destinations, I can do so. It will just take time.”

“That won’t be necessary, though I appreciate the offer.” he sighed. “Very well, I shall teach you what I know. The rest, you and the Saintess will have to learn in the library, as there is no one here with a strong enough soul to teach you. Now this is something that you would normally only learn once you properly joined the monastery, but...”

He explained to Brin that the manipulation of divine energy required one to act from the soul and not the body. It was a difficult thing to learn, but every intelligent being could theoretically do it. Souls were divided into tiers. Every sapient being had to be at least tier one, though some animals had a tier zero soul. About one percent of people were tier 2 or above, about one percent of those were tier 3 or above, etc. The high Monk was a tier 4 soul.

The tier of your soul determined what you could do with the small amount of divine energy in your soul. At tier one you could only transfer it to another soul, usually a deity. This was essentially what prayer was, sending divine energy to the god you prayed to. At tier two you could infuse your body with divine energy, rapidly healing wounds, improving health, fighting poisons and disease, etc. This is what he originally thought my Full Heal effect was, though he now knew that it wasn’t. This was the tier Master Varris was at, and he used this to great effect in battle. At tier three one could infuse their mana with divine energy, improving its power and efficiency. This was the tier Master Tanno was at, though he rarely used this to improve his magic, as his reserves of divine energy were quite low. At tier four one could connect to one or more souls, using the connection to resonate with them, essentially transferring meaning without telepathy or speech. While the High Monk could do this, he rarely did so as he considered it to be far too intimate for casual use. You could also transfer divine energy along the resonance.

Above that, he knew of only a handful of people, a southern monk named Pakku, who could infuse divine energy into magical items to improve their effects and make them bypass defenses, who was a tier 5. Luckily he was a pacifist and only used it to force healing on people who refused. Of course, the Saintess was a tier 7 soul, and they suspected that Brin was as well. He asked that Brin come to the Room of Statues, where the gods could bear witness to a ceremony which could measure the strength of a soul. Brin agreed and soon he was laying on an alter, surrounded by monks and sacred relics with the High monk leading a long, repetitive prayer over him. He highly suspected that all of this ceremony wasn’t necessary, but kept that to himself.

Once they were finished Brin felt a massive amount of mana surge into him from all of the relics. He felt like he was split into two, a physical Brin and a non-physical Brin. Of course that was true. Not only did he know that souls were real, but he remembered going through something similar. Was it eight years ago? Nine? Surely it wasn’t more than a decade. He was now no longer fully connected to his body, so he reached out and found that he could move independently of his body. ‘Please don’t move your soul too much.’ Brin felt from somewhere. He instantly knew it was the High Monk using his Soul Resonance to talk to him. ‘If it is out of place when the ceremony ends your soul may not properly reconnect to your body.’

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He knew that wasn’t true, that he could force his body to rejoin him no matter where he was, but he let it go. ‘Fine. I’ll practice later on my own, though.’ Brin told him, laying back down and trying to align with his body as accurately as possible. A few minutes later the ceremony started to end and he felt his soul start to reconnect to his body. Eventually he found it hard to tell where his soul ended and his body began. There were a few places where they were out of alignment by a fraction of a millimeter, and he focused on those places.

“It may take a few days before you feel like your body and soul are fully connected again.” the High Monk said as he lay there. “Just take it easy and things will adjust. Focusing on the pleasures of life, instead of the spiritual may help as well.”

“That’s fine. I can fix the problem.” Brin said. He ordered his body to rejoin his soul and it subtly shifted, reconnecting himself but also causing him great pain. “Ouch.” he said, quickly healing himself. “Next time I’ll shift my soul to match my body. The soul is far more flexible.” He noticed that every monk other than the High Monk and Father had left.

The High monk looked at him in surprise. “I didn’t know you had the ability to independently move your soul and body.” he said.

“Neither did I until they were separated. So, what did you find out?”

The High Monk bowed. “You are a tier eight soul. The only beings I know of that tier are demigods and gods, and I am not so conceited as to think that a god resides in my temple.”

Father stepped forward. “I haven’t told you about how I came to adopt you yet. I was praying one day to Xirkos for a purpose in life, when They took me to Their domain and handed me a child, you. They told me to watch after you, to raise you as best as I could as if you were my own son. So I adopted you. Now that situation makes sense to me. If Xirkos had a child with a mortal, and something happened to that mortal, they would need someone to raise the child. I am honored to be trusted by the Supreme One with the raising of their child.” He bowed to Brin.

“Please get up, Father.” Brin said. “Even if I am a demigod I’m still a child and your son. I need you to be there for me. To teach me, not to grovel before me.”

“Truly wise, oh great one.” said the High Monk, bowing to Brin as well.

“Don’t you start bowing either. If you can’t find it within you to treat me as a student, as you promised to do, then treat me as an equal, a fellow scholar in the study of the tiers of the soul and divine energy.”

The High monk nodded. “I can do that. So, let us begin your lesson. Please meditate. Feel your soul and the energy within it. The divine energy which you have already used…”

A week later Brin was sitting in the library with the Saintess, reading papers on the soul, divine energy and the theory behind it. “So, I haven’t figured out how to infuse divine energy into this knife yet.” He dropped the Fire enchanted blade on the table. “Have you figured out what power we should have at tier six?”

“Two possibilities. One is that you can do the tier two thing, but on others. The other is that you can do the tier three thing, running your spells directly off of divine energy. I seem to have two reputable sources, one from an elven god about three thousand years ago, and one from a saint around two thousand years ago. Both could do what they claimed. I am inclined to believe the saint, that it is the tier two thing, as the god could probably do both of them.”

“What if it’s both?” Brin asked. “I can think of how to do both of those things if I wanted, and I’m only tier eight, so only one higher than the saint.”

“But the god might have been tier eight and the other ability just be the one for tier eight.”

Brin sighed. “Then there is only one way to solve this. I’m going to teach you both.” And two weeks later Brin’s idea was justified. It turned out that the actual ability at tier six was to directly manipulate pure divine energy instead of having to mix it with mana, and it was a simple step to go from that to either infusing it into others or directly manipulating it into spells. Once they figured out how to do that they spent hours throwing divine energy spells off of the mountain. The barrier around the training field only prevented creatures from leaving it, not spells, so they were able to throw ridiculously powerful and efficient spells for several minutes before even Celest’s meager reserves were depleted.

“You know, the power of those spells kind of remind me of stories of level fifteen spells, how they had many secondary effects, only combined with how Holy magic can bypass defenses. Did we figure out how to use holy magic without drawing on the power of a god?”

“You know, I think we did.” They laughed at this fact. It was no wonder that saints were said to be on par with priests and prophets. All three could use divine magic, only the Saint drew on their own energy, not the energy of a god.

Now that they had figured this out, making the tier five ability work was easy, as they could just use pure divine energy to power the dagger instead of having to work an odd mixture of the two into the mana circuit. They learned to use the mixture too, however, as it might be necessary at some point. Maybe it was more efficient at low energy levels?

“So,” said Brin the next day as they met in the library. “Can you tell me what the tier seven power is now?”

Celest thought for a moment. “I was told not to tell anyone this, but the tier seven ability is the ability to consecrate objects.”

Brin was shocked at this. “I thought that only gods could do such a thing.”

“I did too, which is why I’m not allowed to tell anyone, but I have learned to infuse a tiny fragment of myself along with my divine energy, into an object. I can then extend my senses or my power through that object, just like the gods can do with their consecrated statues. I’ve only done it with combined mana and divine energy up to this point, but now that we figured out how, I should be able to do it with pure divine energy. Furthermore, as the items are considered Sacred Relics, they will have all of the abilities such objects have, like being immune to pure mana spells, and amplifying any mana spells cast through them by one the object accepts. I actually consecrated the wand I used when I first met you, though I only got a ten percent or so power boost. My guess is because it used a combination of mana and divine energy.”

Brin watched her deconsecrate her wand and consecrate it with pure divine energy. After that he tried the same thing with a pair of gloves and, after a few tries, managed to succeed. Now he had a cheap pair of goatskin gloves that were also, somehow, sacred relics. The other monks would hate this if they found out. Thankfully, they would also believe the lie that they were merely enchanted with a spell enhancement effect, and that he bought them from a merchant in town. Even if he hadn’t been to town in over a month. He should probably visit the town on the next rest day.

“So, Brin. Now that we have everything figured out, what can you tell me about the tier eight ability?” Unfortunately, Brin didn’t know the answer.

Five years passed as Brin and Celest studied and practiced together. The war still continued, but the demons hadn’t managed to break through the lines again, so they were able to live their lives peacefully.

A few things happened during that time. First, Brin and Celest passed their Adventurer certification and went out whenever they felt like it to kill monsters and sell the valuable parts of their corpses. Neither of them needed help, as they were among the strongest adventurers the city had, but they still went out to kill monsters together the day before every rest day, earning enough coin to buy some actual gear, not just the hand-me-downs from the monks and nuns. Brin had deconcecrated his gloves, instead consecrating a silver ring. It was much easier to convince the other adventurers that someone had put an amplification spell on a ring with a small mana core on top.

Second, they had continued their training and before long even Celest could defeat almost all of the orphans that trained there. She, of course, used either physical enhancement powered by divine energy or the tier two version of it, but she got good enough with it that by the time she was twelve she was regularly beating Dwarves and Minotaurs at the adventurers guild in arm wrestling.

The third important thing was that Brin discovered how to see souls without tearing them from the body. To insure that it wasn’t a fluke or the result of some special ability, he taught his father and High Monk, and within a few weeks they could both see their own souls. With another week of practice they could see the souls of people nearby them, though their range was always inferior to Brin’s.

Shortly after his twelfth birthday some of the twelve, thirteen, and fourteen year old boys came by his room on a rest day. “Hey Brin. Do you want to come to town with us? I promise, it will be fun.” The boy had a strange smile on his face and his soul had a wicked grin.

“Depends. What are you going to do?”

One of the boys leaned close to make sure that none of the girls or nuns heard him. “We’re going to the brothel.” he whispered.

“Ah,” Brin said. “In that case I’ll pass.”

“Seriously?” the boy asked. “What, are you into guys? Because I’m pretty sure they have some of those too.”

“No, I’m into girls, it’s just that you guys really need to learn to see souls. I’ll teach you if you want.”

“And what does spiritual abilities have to do with renting whores?” asked one of the fourteen year olds. Brin could tell he was just acting tough for his friends and was actually curious.

“Imagine you’ve got a woman in bed, naked.” All the boys nodded. That’s exactly what they wanted. “Now, imaging that she removed her makeup and behind it was a rotting corpse, infested with maggots. That is what the souls of most of those women look like. Even the best look malnourished to the point that they might die at any time.”

“Now I want to learn to see souls even less.” one boy joked, and the others agreed.

“If you really want to find a decent woman, go try and seduce one of the nuns of Aranya. Lots of the monks here do just that, though they don’t tell us about it. How do you think they keep getting pregnant?” Sure, the nuns didn’t have the healthiest souls, but slightly to plump or too skinny, or malformed was far better than they would find at a brothel. There was only one woman here that Brin was interested in, a woman whose soul was as beautiful as her body. That was the Saintess. But she had sworn a vow of chastity that would last until her wedding night, a symbol the signified her devotion to let nothing stand in the way of her mission. And she was destined to marry a prince or duke, not a monk or even demi-god friend.