Chapter 74

It started with a slight twitch in my soul, I tried to stop absorbing soul stones to investigate what happened but I found that I could not. The twitching sensation began to grow and eventually started to hurt, a dull aching feeling, it was then that I noticed something, my soul was shrinking. I tried to move but I found that I was completely paralyzed, unable to do anything but continue to absorb soul stones, so that’s what I did. as the minutes ticked by the dull ache got sharper, an eventually the only thing stopping me from screaming was the fact that I couldn’t move my mouth, by this point my soul had lost a quarter of it’s volume, and I was voraciously consuming soul stones faster than ever. The pain only continued to grow as my soul got smaller and smaller, and the soul stones continued to disappear, but I also noticed something as I was fighting through the pain, my soul was getting denser, substancially so, almost like it was imploding in on itself.

Shortly after I made that observation I blacked out, waking up with the sun. I had no idea how long I was out. I subconsciously notice the complete absence of soul stones, every single one was absorbed by me.

congratulations, your soul has collapsed, let’s see what you do with this breakthrough

‘I feel different, more powerful, it feels good.’ Emotion

‘It seems like something is surrounding the core, a crystalline structure, I wonder what it’s purpose is.’ Logic

‘heh, check this out’ emotion

A stream of soul energy comes out of my soul before wrapping around a nearby desk and crushing it.

‘Holy shit’ logic

‘Awesome’ emotion

‘Do you know what this means?’ logic

‘That we can do more varied types of magic with soul energy?’ emotion

‘That’s exactly what this means! Think of the possibilities! Things that are next to impossible using mana we might be able to do using soul energy’ logic

‘Calm down, we need to figure out our limits first so we don’t get ourselves killed’ emotion

With the time I had till the party I decide to experiment with this new ability. On my way down to the basement I ran into Johanna, who was heading out to help prepare for it. Once in the basement Alfred stops what he was doing, meditating I think, and takes out a relatively fresh notebook to take notes with. After a brief nod to him I sit down and begin to meditate myself.

I first try to spread out my soul energy as much as possible, with underwhelming results. I then take the soul energy I had spread out and condense it around myself, before using it to attempt to crush myself again to underwhelming results, it feels like the kind of like being submerged in a bath. I increase the amount of energy I use until it feels closer to being at the bottom of a lake.

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I realize a moment latter that the soul energy was slowly being degraded into mana, and ambient mana was being taken into my soul and turned into soul energy, I watch the process for several minutes before attempting to replicate it with my internal mana pool, instead of the ambient mana. This takes me a couple minutes to get right, but once I do it’s easy, and too my surprise my internal mana pool begins to fill up with ambient mana at the same rate it normally does, and the rate that my soul energy is replenishing doesn’t change.

I try to match the rate at which I turn mana into soul energy at the rate which mana refills my mana pool, which is pretty easy as all the mana I use in that process is either wasted and added to the ambient mana, or turned into soul energy. Next I try to match the rate that soul energy is being created to the rate it is being turned back into mana, which is significantly more difficult as it is nowhere near as direct, I not only have two very different sources of soul energy coming in, but not all the soul energy I use is consumed upon use. It takes around an hour and a half to get it right, only for me to faulter after ten minutes due to something I have dubbed soul exhaustion. This takes me around an hour to recover from during which time I think about the implications of what I’m doing.

First it helps me to improve both the rate at which I recover mana and the size of my mana pool, second it would help me to increase the efficiency at which I turn mana into soul energy, which is abysmal currently, I would put it somewhere close to five percent, third it would improve the overall quality and quantity of my soul energy, fourth it would help me improve my control of soul energy, fifth it would provide benefits to my physical body due to the constant strain. All of these things work in tandem, the stronger one aspect is the slower it improves but the faster everything else improves and vice versa, allowing me to grow all of those aspects at around the same rate after they have had some time to level out.

This does come with some downsides however, in the short term it will weaken me as I will have to spend resources there that I would normally be keeping in reserve. And it will begin to exhaust me in many ways, especially mentally; I will need to sleep a lot more in the short term until I get use to it. but my soul and my mana pool with also both become exhausted, making it less efficient to use them after a while, but this aspect comes with an upside, that duration will steadily increase. Where my physical body currently is this won’t have very much of an impact on it for a while. Also, it would require some time and practice till this actually became a viable training tool, as I can’t currently do it for very long, and for now while I’m doing it it will require all of my concentration.

“if you don’t mind me asking, what happened?” Alfred

“my soul collapsed, forming a crystalline structure around the core. As a result some interesting things happened.” jack

I spent the remainder of the time before the party switching from discussing soul magic with alfread and practicing this new training method. We shared many of our observations, some of his that I hadn’t noticed myself, the most notable of which had to do with my own soul.

“I noticed how the bands between your mind and soul have begun to get bigger and stronger, and fewer in number, like your mind and soul are somehow merging together.” Alfred

After he mentioned that I took a look at those very bands, and noticed the same thing he did, roughly seven percent of them are gone, and the ones that are left are stronger. I find myself again desiring nothing more than to seal myself off for several years and focusing on improving myself. But unfortunately I have much to accomplish and I can’t stop until I have completed it.

Eventually I bid Alfred goodbye, as he has no desire to participate in the party, and go out to take part in said party.