He already knew most of the process, so he didn’t waste time watching it from the beginning again, instead checking how much Soul mana he had left to work with

  [190/10920 Soul]

  Not a bad amount, but Dei wanted to turn as much as possible into Soul Strength. He needed another way to give Fendrascora more efficient Soul mana. Now that he didn’t have his Projection ability, the trickle he gave her was rather inefficient. Perumah didn’t struggle with the same issue, but Perumah wasn’t reliant on his Soul mana to heal.

  Soul Strength was the best way to get more efficient conversion, and it’d help him test what taking damage is like as a half-spirit.

  Moving on, he looked at his Identity as a singular point of Soul mana entered it, willing himself to see through the outer wall of his Identity and into the halls of himself.

  The first effect was a looping instance of himself, where his Identity looked into itself looking into itself, looking into itself, like standing in a house of mirrors. It was disorienting, and he couldn’t actually understand what was happening.

  To help fix this, he broke off most of his mind, making it exit his Identity and do something else. For simplicity purposes, the larger portion of his mind began to exercise- which raised some complications, but he’d tackle those later. For now, studying his identity.

  It’d only been a few moments, so the point of mana still bounced around within him. Now that he could actually see, he knew what was happening.

  Each time the Soul mana hit the looping corridors of Dei, it was re-flavored slightly. It began to absorb concepts from Dei, the idea of a Union being imparted onto the Soul mana. Only a small portion absorbed this concept, and whatever did was no longer fit to be absorbed by his Identity.

  Many other concepts were imparted onto the Soul mana, but only the portion that absorbed the idea of “Union” was not absorbed again. It became an irritant in his Identity, as it was too far from Soul to be useful again, much closer to the Spirit affinity.

  Union concept mana was like a pearl in a clam as the Identity just kept rejecting it, until eventually the mana became something incredibly valuable, namely Soul Strength. Luckily, unlike a pearl, Dei didn’t need to die to extract it. Once the concept of Union was too strong, his Identity just spit it back out, and the process he learned earlier of “crystalizing” a barrier around his Identity took that mana, putting it to use.

  To get more Soul Strength, Dei needed to more quickly impart the concept of Union on the Soul mana, before his Identity could absorb a large chunk of it.

  ‘Now the question is how to do this…’

  In the best-case scenario, he would slightly impart the concept of Union on it before it’d ever entered his Identity, meaning his Identity would absorb exactly none of it, instead simply strengthening the concept. That meant he’d need to edit the anchor point of [Empower Self].

  When he looked into this Skill, he found a veritable library contained within. The Soul affinity gave this Skill enough information for hundreds of thousands of failsafes and situations, imbuing every scrap of that into every single point of Soul mana that flowed through it.

  It felt like a massive supercomputer, running trillions of simulations when activated. It robotically trained each point of Soul mana into some kind of AI until deeper concepts were achieved.

  He found the part of the Skill that dictated the “Goal” of the Skill, of what it wanted each point of Soul mana to become, and saw that there were actually empty slots. Soul had left room for the Skill to grow, and Dei had an epiphany of exactly what needed to be done.

  He called forth his single point of Soul Strength that’d been made so far, bringing it into the Skill. Hesitantly, he slotted it into his Skill, watching as the Skill absorbed it and obliterated the mana itself, leaving only the knowledge of Soul Strength.

  Exiting the Skill, he activated it with one more point of clean Soul mana. He was afraid that he would’ve broken something in it, but… nope. The Skill worked like a charm.

  When it released the Soul mana, now carrying many concepts and traveling towards his Identity, Dei studied it closely.

  Almost imperceptibly, the mana was just barely different. This time, when he saw it enter his Identity, that portion of his Soul didn’t start glowing. Several seconds later, it exited his Identity as a full-fledged point of Soul Strength.

  ‘It worked!’

  The only issue, though, was his new notification.

  [Skill Altered: Empower Self has been altered into Living Barrier]

  [Living Barrier - Level 4 - Soul Affinity

  The slightest scratch would- normally- drain precious information from your soul. Unideal would be an understatement, as this could prove disastrous if vital memories or functions of the soul were to bleed out at inopportune times. To prevent such a disastrous situation, a barrier around your soul-flesh is needed, leading to the necessity of Soul Strength, a far more intangible and meaningless- though still valuable- middle point between soul-flesh and Spirit mana

  Allows one to create Soul Strength from Soul mana at a conversion rate of 1:1]

  He frowned. ‘I… don’t want this. I want BOTH Empower Self and Living Barrier…’

  Scratching his chin, he thought of something. ‘Soul mana is much like a computer, with countless yes/no statements, if/and, logic gates and all that. What if I… What if I hit copy and paste?’

  The thought was simple. He wanted two Skills, almost exactly the same, but with a tiny key difference.

  Finding the new Living Barrier Skill, he attempted to undo the change first, mentally hitting ‘Ctrl-Z’ on it, but having nothing happen. ‘Perhaps that was a bit too literal.’

  Instead, he imagined it reversing to its former state, but that, too, didn't exactly help. It didn’t feel like he was actually exerting himself, just that he was thinking hard. Normally, that was enough for his internal soul, but this was a process that wasn’t happening just in his soul anymore. Skills involved the System and affinities, he’d need something of substance to edit it, but Soul mana just wouldn’t do. It carried information, it didn’t destroy it.

  Still, he pulled yet another Soul mana out of his [Pandora’s Box] and tried to imbue it with the idea of reversal, pushing it into the Skill, and failing. He sighed, putting it back in Pandora’s Box.

  Mana came in two parts. Energy and Information. He didn’t need energy, only information.

  ‘I need something that carries an idea but has no substance…’ he tried using his Rights, if he could somehow manipulate that, but it didn’t respond in any meaningful way. Perhaps he could if he’d had more practice freestyle manipulating it.

  The only other way he’d ever conveyed information without mana was his Visible Presence, as it showed the world what he was without costing any mana. Was there something he could do there?

  Focusing on a time when he’d used a computer in his previous life and undone a mistake on his paper, he Meditated on the link, getting a small portion of Visible Presence imbued with the idea of ‘Ctrl-Z.’

  With the small ball of Presence, he pushed it towards the Skill… and got a response. His face lit up, but he noticed that the concept of Union was still imbued into the Skill

  ‘I need more. More information, but that was a pathetic amount to be fair.’

  So he did. Meditating using approximately fifteen minds on the same link to produce a significant quantity of Presence at once for a minute.

  He was left with much more, and turned it into a stream,slowly pushing it into [Living Barrier]

  After half it the Presence was gone, the Skill reversed

  [Skill Altered: Living Barrier has been altered into Empower Self]

  Grinning, he did something else, Meditating on two links: ‘Ctrl-C’ and ‘Ctrl-V.’

  After fifteen or twenty minutes, he got a notification.

  [Skill Leveled Up: Meditation (100) -> (101)]

  Taking that as a sign to, for now, stop, he streamed ‘Ctrl-C’ towards Empower Self.

  After the same amount it took to reverse his mistake, he felt the command take hold ‘Huh, it costs the same as it did for me to reverse it. Do all the commands cost the same? I way overdid this then.’

  Moving to a spot in his soul directly next to the Skill, but still part of the empty blackness of this memory from before he was born, Dei sent forth ‘Ctrl-V’ in a stream.

  Again, after shockingly little Presence was used, a new copy of the Skill appeared.

  He felt the new copy of the Skill reach out towards Soul, then the System reached out to intercept the two… but locked onto the original Empower Self, not interposing between him and Soul.

  Dei’s eyes shot wide open and he quickly cut the bond between Soul and this Skill, refusing to allow for Soul to connect with him at all.

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  It did not try again, instead simply retreating and letting Dei breathe a sigh of relief.

  ‘I don’t want a Skill that connects directly to Soul! Even if Soul can help me grow it, I don’t want it if the System isn’t working as the middle man between us.’

  Curiously, he looked at the new, copied Skill. He tried running ten Soul mana through it… and it worked, empowering his Identity and providing a single Soul Strength. He looked over his Interface, but there was nothing different about it, no “copied” Skill to see.

  Right now he had two identical Skills, and he decided to turn his “disconnected” version of Empower Self into Living Barrier, because he was almost positive that if the Skill wasn’t connected to Soul, it would remain stagnant. Without something to help the Skill grow and develop, it would remain unchanged.

  Living Barrier would just become a factory for Soul Strength, he didn’t need much more than that. Perhaps when it leveled up and evolved, he could get a stronger barrier around his Soul, but he’d get the same effect from pouring more Concentrated Soul mana into the Skill. Empower Self would be better to grow, because it was a directly combat-useful ability.

  That in mind, he used his one piece of Soul Strength he’d received from the Skill, slotting it back into the place he’d put it originally, and the Skill [Living Barrier] existed once more.

  Oddly, though, he received no notification. To be sure, he opened his Interface again and… nope, nothing.

  This version of Living Barrier, disconnected from Soul and the System, was completely invisible to his Interface. [Empower Self] was there, and that’s it. Just to test it, he put one point of Soul mana into [Living Barrier], and was rewarded with Soul Strength. It clearly still worked, it just didn’t show up anywhere.

  ‘Curious… I thought I’d at least get an Achievement or something for that, but I suppose I didn’t do anything particularly difficult or impressive.’

  It was an interesting application of his abilities which made him think of how [Meditation] lost its original capabilities as well, and he sort of wanted to try copying and reversing it to its previous versions. Something to try when he was experimenting with that Skill.

  Almost done with this Skills experimentation, he quickly poured fifty Soul mana into the invisible [Living Barrier] Skill, getting fifty Soul Strength out. He now had to test what exactly his new Soul Strength actually did.

  [Soul Strength: 51/192]

  “Fendrascora” he said, getting her attention “I supposedly have a barrier of mostly-Spirit mana around my body, wanna test it out? Take a couple swipes?”

  She gave a verbal shrug then used one sharp tendril to swipe at the air around him, of course, getting nothing.

  “Ok that’s on me” he said with a laugh “I mean it’s like, skin-tight, I think? Take a chunk out of my skin.”

  She attempted to gouge out a piece of his bicep but his skin was still incredibly tough, so she could only scratch him slightly. That scratch, though, revealed the white beneath. Rather than bleed red, he felt a small portion of Soul Strength drain from him, and the wound quickly closed.

  [Soul Strength: 51/192]

  ‘I’m a little tougher than I thought but that can only be good.’

  He saw Fendrascora swipe the air, absorbing the small amount of mana that’d leaked out. It wasn’t enough to even make a full point, which was something he knew could happen but rarely saw.

  His next test was to see if deeper gouges would reach flesh, but he genuinely did not think Fendrascora had the strength to do so.

  “Okay, so, you can just keep doing that and draining Soul Strength while I keep testing my Skills.” he told her

  Giddily, she said “Thanks! This mana is even better than the last!”

  And wasted no time, forming tens of tiny water blades and opening cuts all along his arms, after moving his Praerel leather clothing out of the way of course.

  He couldn’t feel it at all, but it was quite the sight to see his arms covered in white slashes. It would be good training for Homeostasis too, he supposed, as that was the Skill dedicated to repairing openings in his Soul Strength.

  [Connection] was the next in the list to experiment with, but he didn’t have a way to produce more and he’d already done a lot of experimenting with it recently. He didn’t want to manipulate what was already tied into his body, unless he already had some kind of plan in mind, so he skipped it.

  [Solidity] was next, but he’d already experimented with that, so he ignored it too.

  [Fortress of Denial], an interesting Skill which he had used exactly ONE time, but got it up to level thirty six during that time. He pulled up the Description again.

  [Fortress of Denial - Level 36 - Fortitude Affinity

  Control. You fight it, you demand it. Your entire life, you’ve exerted control over yourself, and resisted the control of others. In every instance where others attempted to control you, you have denied them their goals. The only one to control yourself is you. More than any person, affinity, or magic, your body is yours alone.

  Creates a Domain of Denial where all intent is muffled, making control over all magic more difficult.

  Variable mana cost.]

  There were also the three hidden clauses of the Skill from last time he’d used it: the Domain only extended to his Skin, no further beyond. It worsened his control too, not just the control of others, and it inhibited his perception of mana outside his own body.

  The last clause didn’t matter anymore after he became a Slaughterer, so it was the first two he had to worry about.

  Pouring a trickle of MP into the Skill, he felt the domain activate at a low-level, just barely hindering the “intent” of all magic within him.

  Now that he studied it closer, he noted that it protected the area that Fendrascora was in, suppressing all mana within it, but Fendrascora herself didn’t say anything or even seem to note any difference.

  Curiously, he used one of the fourteen highly concentrated points of Fortitude mana, feeding it to the Skill to heighten the effects immensely.

  He felt his mana-sense within his body clear perfectly, seeing several different types and gaining an understanding of many.

  Flesh, Blood, and Flow were there, of course, but there were some lesser-known ones such as Beast, Passing, Water, Dark, Earth, Kinetic, Air and many, many more.

  It didn’t feel like the Domain increased his perception, it just… cleared out some ambience, so to speak. There were natural forces of the world manipulating all the mana within him subtly that compounded with all the others, causing his view to blur slightly. It felt like he suddenly put it all under a microscope, letting him see closer without actually moving anything around without removing it from the microscope first.

  He found that this would be a wonderful tool for studying himself more closely and potentially figuring out what different mana types did, such as Passing.

  He’d seen the Passing affinity once before on some random insect. It used this affinity to make things age super quickly, and he saw that Passing was representative of this concept.

  Passing lived by the mantra “everything ends eventually,” and it caused several things in his body- the most obvious being his aging.

  More than that though, any process that had an end, a small amount of Passing mana was created. Each breath and heartbeat produced it and, oddly enough, his digestion too. If it had a beginning and end, Passing was present.

  He found that it was much like Void in this sense, but more general, and peaceful. Void was an aggressive swap between two states, like a thunderous punch. Passing felt like a martial arts master redirecting a strike by utilizing their bodyweight.

  He wanted to sit here and study all the different mana types for a while, but his time ran out as the point of Fortitude wasn’t enough to maintain such a pure state for very long. His mind was brought back to the original reason he’d tried to use his domain to suppress all the mana within him- Fendrascora.

  She still hadn’t said anything, and he saw her movement around his body was completely unhindered.

  “Fendrascora, did you notice anything different happening in the last couple seconds?”

  “Hm?” she said, temporarily putting a stop to all her dicing of his arms. “Oh yea, I guess it was slightly easier to move around?”

  “Easier?” he said, bewildered. That was the opposite of what it was supposed to do.

  “Yea! It felt like your body wasn’t fighting against me as much.”

  ‘Ooohh boy, that’s dangerous for me. When we first attuned to one another, we’d entered some sort of pseudo-pact where we would both be able to hurt one another more easily. Now, it seems another facet of this pact is coming to light: I cannot suppress her with my Domain of Denial, only myself. She’s somehow exempt from the effect.

  ‘But is this really bad? Based on the benefits I received when I strengthened the connection between us, she really does respect me, so I can’t imagine a betrayal at this point. Perhaps I can use this… in a time of emergency, if I’m being taken over for some reason, I can suppress everything within my body, then leave it to Fendrascora to purge it all. She’ll be the only one unaffected by the Skill. I wonder why she’s not hindered but I am, if the Skill can clearly exclude certain people. Perhaps the option to exclude myself will be a future evolution, or maybe one of the costs of the Skill is that I have to deny myself control as well. I don’t know.’

  Either way, he’d have to leave himself even more vulnerable to Fendrascora to utilize this part of the Skill. That wasn’t all bad though, so he told her exactly what his Skill was and what it was doing, as well as a potential situation where she might have to save him if he was overwhelmed.

  [Fortress of Denial] was expensive to use and wildly simple, so he didn’t push the tests any further than what he’d already found.

  At last, that left him with a new and unique Skill to test, [Value Sense]

  It was a Skill granted to him by the [Risky Business] Achievement, most likely a blessing from the Business affinity.

  It was considered an Inner Skill, meaning it wasn’t granted by the System, but it was also part of the Business affinity- an affinity he didn’t even have. He opened the description now.

  [Value Sense - Business Affinity

  A merchants worst nightmare is to sell a useless object for cheap- only to later find out it was a long-lost priceless artifact. The only way to prevent such a situation is to study even the most mundane of wares that pass through the doors for any sort of unique marking or identification- and even then, there is no guarantee. Truly, there is no way to understand the value of something completely… unless acknowledged by the master of all wares

  Allows the user to appraise the value of anything in relation to a chosen group, understanding how much that group would be willing to pay, on average, for your target]

  ‘So I can pick an object, then see how much people would pay for it? I suppose everyone has different values of course, so I have to choose which organization or group too, because they would all pay something different.’

  He thought about the GreenGrow Beetles in the cave around him. He’d long-since suspected that they were a wildly valuable alchemical ingredient, so he put it to the test now, looking at one of them curiously, he activated [Value Sense], trying to get a feeling for how much someone in his original village would pay for it.

  “Around eight BIG favors” popped up into his head, making him smirk and shake his head.

  ‘I forgot that the village worked on a favor system. I don’t know if that’s good. How about… can I do governments from my previous world? How much would the US government pay for such a beetle?’

  “Three billion dollars, then either recruitment or assassination.”

  ‘Oh…’

  He could get the value of stuff from his previous world, and such a response from the government was very… on brand. They’d pay him the money to get the bug, then see if they could get more out of him. If not, they wouldn’t give him a chance to fall into the hands of their enemies as a weapon, so they’d try to kill him.

  He also suspected, from the large price tag, that the US government knew what to do with such a beetle, if they had it, which basically confirmed that magic was a known factor in his previous world.

  That meant he’d need to be cautious when he made it back, as he no longer felt like Earth would be as harmless to him as he’d first assumed.

  Next, he tried to see what the Gem Dweller society as a whole would pay for such a beetle.

  “Seven tier four encrypted Greed coins.”

  ‘Again, no clue what that means. Can I change the parameters? How much would they be willing to pay in regular gold coins?’

  “Two billion.”

  So… a lot. These beetles were pricey motherfuckers. It wasn’t like he’d be selling them though, so he just shrugged. They were with him during the start of this all, they were basically his first friends. ‘A little sad to think about, but who cares?’

  [Value Sense] would prove to be his best friend when it came to integrating back into society when he got there, of that he was sure.