Chapter 133: Chapter 133

“First, change to your base form,” said Irylax.

“Are you questioning me?”

Elise switched to her base form, and while it admittedly felt a bit more physically comfortable than her human form, she was not a fan of the way it looked, and wasn’t too keen on showing others. Irylax was unfazed though, so Elise quickly got over her embarrassment.

“Now, a quick lesson: what did you notice about your aether when you did that?”

“Think. Use your brain. Switch back and forth if you have to.”

Elise was hesitant for a few seconds as she started switching forms. She had grown so accustomed to Oberon’s style of teaching that Irylax’s stricter methods were throwing her for a loop. It reminded her a bit of Greta though, so it wasn’t too hard to adjust, though it did dredge up some memories that left her feeling a bit melancholy.

The first thing she noticed about her aether was what she gave Irylax as her first answer. It was bigger. As she switched back and forth, she realized that she was kind of correct, but that “bigger” was too vague and imprecise of a term. The amount of aether she had didn’t increase; it just became less restrained. It wasn’t contained to her body quite as well, so not only her body, but the air around her was dense with it. Dangerously. If this was even remotely what she was like as a tiny rabbit, it was no wonder that Sophie was never able to resist petting her. It was also no wonder that Freddy and everyone else who could sense aether took such a massive interest in her.

“My body can’t contain it as well,” she said to Irylax.

“Wrong again. Aether isn’t meant to be contained. Unlike mana, it’s not supposed to accumulate in your body. Your soul produces it, and it goes out to form connections with others. It is doing exactly what it’s supposed to be doing, just better now that it’s not constrained by a poorly-fitting form. Though, it’s a bit odd. The difference is less stark than I thought it would be. I believe that we will find out why shortly. Now, focus on your soul?”

“You have {Aether Sense} and don’t know how to focus on your soul?” she asked angrily.

“I’ve only had it for a few hours!” said Elise, shrinking back.

“Hmph. I could sense my soul before I turned two.”

“I haven’t even been alive for a year!”

Irylax narrowed her eyes. “Bullshit. Your soul is much older than a year.”

Irylax stared at her with her terrifying yellow eyes for a few seconds, then frowned.

“I see. Nevermind all that. I will teach you. First, we need to do something about all this aether though. It will obscure your senses. Make a deal with me. I will teach you soul meditation, and in exchange, you will let me join you next time you speak with a deity.”

“H-how do I do that?”

“Let you join me when I speak with a deity?”

“It is complicated, but your Skill will take care of it. {Fey Bargaining} is very powerful. I believe this is an even exchange, and because you are dealing with me, it should use quite a bit of your aether. Now, hurry up and accept.”

“Only if you promise not to do anything that would endanger me during this meeting with a deity.”

“I cannot promise that unequivocally, but I will take significant efforts to prevent you from receiving any backlash. Good enough?”

Elise hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “Yes.”

All at once, a good two thirds of her aether suddenly rushed to the space between her and Irylax. It condensed tighter and tighter until it formed a thick rope of energy between them, then faded. If she focused Elise could still sense that rope there, but it had faded into the background. With so much aether consumed, Elise suddenly felt half-naked. Like she was down to her underwear. It was an odd feeling, especially since she had done things in the past without the feeling.

“Hmm, not as good as I thought,” said Irylax. “Alright. Another deal. I will give you honest and helpful advice on your soul realm in exchange for you allowing me to enter your soul realm once you are able to access it.”

“As long as you don’t cause me any harm.”

“I will make sincere efforts to prevent any harm my presence could cause in your soul. I doubt I will need to though, as your soul is unusually strong.”

“But you’ll still make them,” said Elise. “In that case, deal.”

About 90% of her remaining aether went into forming another rope between her and Irylax, after which she felt plain naked. Her body produced more aether with every second, but it was but a small trickle compared to the ocean she had before.

“Perfect,” said Irylax. “Now, quickly, before you replenish too much, focus your {Aether Sense} inward and locate your soul. Your soul does not exist physically within your body, and rather resides at the center of your being, but you should focus on the physical center of your body as a starting point because otherwise it would be too abstract to comprehend.”

Elise closed her eyes and focused her senses inward. It was odd, especially since she didn’t know what she was looking for, but she managed to find the approximate center of her body.

“Once you’ve found the center of your body, try to find the source of your aether. Where is the new aether coming from?”

Elise started doing the {Aether Sense} equivalent of looking around, but found something was odd. While new aether was being produced within her body, there didn’t seem to be a source. She tried focusing on where the new aether was appearing, but whenever she checked one spot, it seemed to change. One moment, the new aether appeared at her neck, and then next by her left shoulder, and after that from the tip of her nose, then her tail, and so on. And it was always wherever she wasn’t looking.

“Remember, your soul does not physically exist, and therefore, you cannot physically locate it. Stop looking for a physical source and try to find the literal source.”

Irylax’s words didn’t seem very helpful, but Elise ceased her efforts and tried to refocus her mind. At first, she didn’t notice anything. She tried to take a mental step back to “zoom out” from her body, and surprisingly, it worked. It wasn’t quite like she was looking at herself in the third person, but it was almost like she wasn’t the owner of her body. Like she was just a passenger within, allowing her to be a more objective observer.

By not focusing on any physical locations, she was able to get a slightly different sense of what was happening. It wasn’t her body that was producing aether. It was her. It didn’t really make any sense logically, but if she stopped thinking logically, it just felt right. Something deeper than her body was producing her aether, and that was all that mattered. She knew it was there, she just needed to find it.

In keeping with the nonsensical logic that aether thus far seemed to follow, rather than focusing to find the source, she tried to drift further away. The best comparison to another sense for what she did was unfocusing the eyes. By letting go of her concentration and just letting her {Aether Sense} exist without direction, she was able to achieve an even further “zoomed out” perspective, and from there she finally found it.

It was like a small spark, and she could not explain how exactly she was sensing it, or how she was even noticing it. She could barely even feel her body anymore. All she knew was that there was something within her, and it was producing aether, and she could almost touch it.

No, that wasn’t right. Why would she touch it? She was it. She didn’t need to touch it. It would be more accurate to say she needed to let it touch her. It was already at her core. There was just a barrier between it and her conscious mind.

No, not a barrier, she thought. A void.

There was a space between her conscious mind and her soul. But she still didn’t need to reach out and touch the soul. She just needed to reduce the void.

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She wasn’t entirely sure what thoughts were going through her mind, but her subconscious seemed to know what it was doing, so she continued to follow her intuition. Her soul and conscious mind were currently separated by a void, but she didn’t need either to cross the void, or to reach out and touch the other. She just needed to eliminate the void.

That was easier said than done though, and with the thoughts now conscious rather than subconscious, she felt that her progress was slowing down. It took some effort to slow her racing mind, but after a little while, she managed to achieve the same unfocused state as before, and the void began to shrink.

As the void shrank, she felt an inexplicable sense of fear. Like she was doing something that shouldn’t be done. She tried to ignore it, but doubts started to fly through her mind. What if she was doing it wrong? What if she was about to accidentally kill herself or turn herself into a vegetable. Irylax would stop her before that happened, right? But what if she didn’t know what was happening?

With an intense, vertigo-inducing lurch, her focus—or rather, unfocus— wavered, and it all came crashing down. She opened her eyes to find Irylax leaning forward and looking at her with intense curiosity.

“You were very close,” she said.

“I was?” asked Elise. “I felt like- It felt wrong. Like I was doing something that wasn’t supposed to be done.”

“That’s because you were. Properly sensing your soul is not something that the conscious mind is meant to handle before 9th tier.”

“Then isn’t this really dangerous?”

“It can be, but you have me, so it’s not. And nothing will happen when you connect the two. The danger isn’t in forming the connection, but rather in the existence of the connection itself. Usually. You don’t have to worry though.”

“The danger is that generally, until higher tiers, the mind is stronger than the soul, and can influence it easily. It can even influence it subconsciously. In the worst case scenario, your mind will poison your soul, leading to what we call ‘soul demons.’ But you don’t have to worry about that. Your soul is far stronger than your mind, and is more than capable of resisting any potential corruption. Most souls are strong enough well before 9th tier, actually, but the safeguard stays in place for the few who aren’t.

“I tried to explain this to you while you were attempting to sense your soul, but you were in a deep trance and didn’t hear it. Do exactly what you did just now, but this time when you feel the sense of danger, ignore it. I would never recommend it normally, but this time, you must. It is safe, and you need to make sure you understand that.”

A small seed of doubt lingered in Elise’s mind as she tried to re-enter the same meditative state, but she still managed to reach the same state of unfocus where she felt the void between her mind and soul narrowing. The sense of danger returned, and only got stronger as the void continued to shrink. Involuntarily, she was forced out of her meditative state once again, and when she opened her eyes, she was trembling.

“You are progressing rapidly,” said Irylax as soon as Elise was back. “I expected this to be a multi-night process, but it seems we will be able to finish before morning.”

“B-before morning?” asked Elise, glancing at the glass of wine in Irylax’s hand that definitely hadn’t been there before. “How long has it been?”

“It doesn’t matter how long it’s been. Again. You should be able to make it this time.”

Elise glanced at the windows to verify that it was still dark out before she closed her eyes again and focused on her soul. This time, when the sense of danger came, she resolutely shot it down. She wanted to sleep tonight. She had no idea how long it had been, but if it was longer than it felt, then the last thing she wanted was to continue failing. The sense of danger was no match for her desire to be done with it, and she was able to mute it until finally the void was just a sliver.

She expected something grander when her mind and soul connected, but the result was a bit lackluster. The void vanished, but the two didn’t merge or anything. Instead, they just stuck together like two bubbles. Together, but distinct and separate. That was only until she tried to look closer though.

Now that they were touching, focusing didn’t keep her from sensing her soul. Instead, she could sense it better. It was just right there on the edge of her mind like an unlocked door. All she had to do was enter. She metaphysically reached out to open the door, but then paused.

How long has it been? she wondered.

As interesting as this was, now that they were connected, she could go back whenever she wanted. She didn’t know how long she might spend within if she entered now. It was better to go out and ask Irylax again.

“Why did you stop?” asked Irylax when Elise opened her eyes.

The wine glass was gone as if it had never existed, and Irylax as now laying in the chair with her legs up on one of the armrests. There was no sunlight coming through the windows, thankfully, but Elise was now certain that it had been much longer than it felt like.

“I wasn’t sure exactly what I should be doing,” she said.

“Enter your soul,” said Irylax. “It’s that easy. Once you go in, the deal we made will pull me in with you, and then I will be able to instruct you further.”

Elise nodded, then went back into her meditation. This time, it was no trouble at all to access her soul. She had connected it to her mind, after all. It was right there. She could feel it even without unfocusing her mind. All she had to do was go into it. She no longer hesitated to open the door to her soul, and then her world spun and suddenly, she was in her soul.

Her soul was… weird. Disjointed. She was in a small room full of things that she recognized, but none of which were things that belonged together. She was fairly certain that the room itself was her old college dorm, but rather than two smaller beds for her and her roommate, it was taken up by the huge bed that she had slept in at Oberon’s castle. Her old phone was on the nightstand next to it, but the case was made of stone and covered in glowing runes. Instead of the plain white ceiling light of the dorm, there were candelabras with familiar glowing magic stones lining the walls in the same style as the ones from the dwarven kingdom. Her old college desk was at the foot of the bed covered in an assortment of books both from Earth, and from this new world.

She looked down at herself and found that she was in roughly the same state that she had been in when she was in Maggie’s soul realm. Her body was white and featureless. She didn’t even have fingers. The only difference she noticed was that the mark on her chest was gone. Based on the patterns she had noticed in her eyes after evolving though, she had a pretty good guess where it had gone. She didn’t have a mirror to confirm though, unfortunately.

“What an odd soul realm,” a voice boomed from behind.

Elise whipped around and looked behind her to see a massive yellow eye peeking through the doorway to the room. The eye then swirled like a whirlpool, pulling the yellow, then the whites, then the black scales surrounding it in toward the iris. This continued for a full ten seconds, growing steadily more intense until the last of what Elise assumed to be Irylax’s massive form was pulled within, at which point the spinning reversed and out spun Irylax’s much more familiar human form. Without clothes, of course.

“I- I don’t know,” said Elise, still a bit in shock at what she had just witnessed.

“This is the only part of your Soul Realm that has a proper shape,” said Irylax. “That is nothing unusual. It usually takes quite a long time for a soul realm to take proper shape. The fact that you have anything solid at all is strange, actually. Though from the looks of it, it’s not very stable.”

“No, it’s not…” said Elise. “This is…”

She trailed off, not sure how much she wanted to explain, or how much was safe to explain.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Irylax, shrugging. “These things are important to you in some way. Subconsciously. Generally, the first places that form in a soul realm are places where the host feels comfortable. It seems that yours is a little confused at the moment, but having anything solid is a good sign.

“But that can wait. Your soul realm is a project for the long term. What’s more urgent is your soul shape, and it is your soul shape that is causing your problems.”

“Yes, problems. It is normal for a monster’s soul to not reach its final shape until later evolutions. It is normal for your aether to be in flux while your soul figures itself out. It is not normal for your soul to still be in such an amorphous shape when you have so much aether. It’s especially not normal for you to have this much aether and the Rune of Fate and not have at least a somewhat firm soul shape. The Rune is channeling aether at random right now, which is chaotic and bad. With so much aether acting so irregularly, it will cause problems if not taken care of soon. So, let’s fix that.

“What you are doing right now is soul meditation. With me in here, its effects are diluted, but when you are alone, you will find that you will be able to be more attuned to the core of your being. Simply existing in here will help to solidify your soul shape, but now that you have connected it to your conscious mind, your thoughts can also help shape it. It will be a bit of a tedious process, but you should be able to consciously mold your soul the way you want it to look.

“Generally, for most monsters, their soul shape is fairly easy. It usually looks like a less detailed version of their current evolution, and slowly grows firmer as they travel further along their path. But for you… Well, your secrets are your own, but your soul is obviously anomalous, and bears very little resemblance to your species.

“Your goal should be to unify the two. They go hand in hand. The shape of the soul influences your evolution path, and your evolution path influences the shape of your soul. Unifying the two is the key to unlocking Unique and higher evolutions. That is my first major piece of advice to you. Unlike most monsters, you are sapient, so you can think with more than just instincts. What do you want to be when you reach 9th tier? If you can gear your soul shape toward that, your evolution path will also follow that, and you may achieve a lesser version at earlier tiers. It is all up to you though.

“You should, at the very least, try to stabilize your soul shape. Right now, it is too unstable. Again, your path is your choice, but you must at least try to settle on a better direction. Whatever you have in mind right now is clearly not good enough.

“As for your soul realm… Well, this is more complicated, but I promised to give you honest and helpful advice. Yours is clearly nowhere near ready for working on your Domain, but you can start experimenting with it. This is your realm, and you control it. You can create anything you want, if you have the proper control. Once again, it will be a tedious process to become proficient at it, but it will help. I recommend trying to change the existing things, since you have them, rather than creating new things. It will be much easier.

“Other than that, you can create rules for your soul realm. You can also remove them. Right now, you have the rule of gravity enabled, which is normal. All creatures exist in gravity, so it is natural for them to bring that rule to their souls. You don’t have to though. Trying to remove gravity, or perhaps making it go a different direction would be good practice for applying rules to your soul. More complicated rules can come later.

“I believe that is all I can give you for now. You grasped the initial concepts much more quickly than I believed you would, so I expect you to make relatively rapid progress on these tasks as well.

“I wish you the best of luck, and you had best get your aether under control as soon as possible. I do not want my apprentice anywhere near you or the trouble you will draw in your current state, but I can’t stop her either. At least you have your suppression Skill to curb the worst of it. Should your suppression skill fail though… You will not see my apprentice again until you fix your problems. Understand?”

“Good,” said Irylax, nodding. “Now, it is time to go to bed. You have a couple hours before morning, so I would recommend sleeping. Also, get out of my room.”

With that, Irylax vanished, and a moment later, Elise exited her soul as well, returning to the floor of Irylax’s room.

“Go,” said the dragon.

Elise didn’t need to be told twice. She switched back to her human form, bowed in thanks, then hurried out the door and down the hall to where the Grays had shown her the room that belonged to her. She flopped onto her bed with her head full of thoughts on her soul. Irylax’s lesson had been highly informative, and also highly worrying. She had already learned the hard way some of the bad things that came with uncontrolled aether. Her first few days in the new world had been rough. Now, she had more aether than ever, and she was certain that the only things stopping her from creating chaos wherever she went were the fact that she tried to avoid being in her base form, and that she now had the suppression Skill. She also suspected that Oberon had been doing some things in the background to help save her from herself.

Either way, she needed to figure out her soul shape, which unfortunately left her with some similar problems to what she had before. She needed to figure out what she wanted to be, and even now, she wasn’t sure. She only knew what she wanted to do. At least Irylax’s words had given her some inspiration though. Mainly the part about the soul shape affecting evolutions.

Does that mean that if I make my soul human, I’ll be able to evolve into a human?

It was an interesting question, and not one she had any way of answering, but it was a fun thought experiment. Even if she couldn’t turn into a literal human, she could turn into something human-looking, right? Whatever the case, she felt she already had more direction than before. She didn’t know exactly what she wanted to evolve into, but she did know what she wanted to look like, and that was not like a skinwalker.

She fantasized and theorized about what her future evolutions might look like if she got her soul shape under control for a few minutes before she suddenly stiffened in her bed as she came to a realization.

Wait, didn’t Irylax say I had “a couple hours before morning.” She didn’t mean “a couple” like two, right?

She pushed herself up to look out her window, and was horrified to find that that was exactly what Irylax meant. The sky was already starting to turn gray.

She pounded her pillow with her fists a few times, then sighed and got under the covers. She was already going to need to go to class registration day tired. No point in making it worse.