Dei read over the description of the leaf thoughtfully a few more times.

  [There was once a battle between two beings. The first seeked to guard his people, the second seeked survival. Neither could reconcile with the other, neither seeked to communicate for there was nothing to be said. They clashed, and the battlegrounds they fought upon became blessed with the fury and intent of both. The blood spilled becoming an eternal stain to life, an echo of their struggles.

  In the quiet aftermath, the victor questioned if his spoils were worth their price.]

  It was clear that it was about his battle with the Alpha Lorpee, and it made him slightly uncomfortable with just how much information it had on him.

  When he Identified something, he would detect their “Soul Signature,” which was supposedly different from their soul: it was a less-detailed record of what the soul once contained, such as the instinctual memory of a dead creature rather than its thinking mind. In a word, it was more genetic than conscious, at least that's how he saw it.

  Somehow, this Anchor managed to glimpse into both his and the Lorpee’s minds shortly before the end of their battle. A snapshot of his younger self, captured somewhere within this leaf. This close to the Anchor, Dei could easily gather enough of the Wrath mana into his body that he was able to discern what Fendrascora and Clever were talking about when they said it smelled like him.

  He wasn’t able to store the mana in his Pandora’s box, it still fighting avidly against his control, but simply looking into it was a matter of ease. There were two parts to it, and he felt like he was pulled back to a time long ago as he let the feelings wash over his mind.

  On one side, Pride. The pride of a king, the pride of a protector. There was no doubt in his mind that the Lorpee had a strong affinity to Pride, a Vice. Immersing himself in the feeling, Dei could almost sense the judging eyes of this animal watching him from above, seeing Dei as something below him in both a literal and metaphorical sense.

  The other emotion that captured his mind was unhinged, feral. Dei didn’t realize it at the time, but everything that happened to him with Iora and his mother took such a strong toll on his mind that it was beginning to crack. His Wrath was keeping the emotions at bay, even in this echo of a memory, by directing it at something more productive.

  It insisted he become stronger and face enemies to prepare for those he wouldn’t be able to avoid in the future. That Wrath held his fragile psyche together but beneath the surface, Dei could sense it. He was slipping. He’d given up completely on his Kindness as it only hurt him, and he wanted to hurt others.

  He was lost in being powerless, hiding himself away in a hole because everything outside wanted to kill him. Beneath all the rage, beneath the elation that he’d found something weaker than himself, Dei was afraid.

  He had to pull himself briefly from the feelings, pushing the Wrath mana from his mind as he recentered himself. So much had changed in that time, and the mana made it easy to forget. While he wasn’t the most powerful, Dei was confident in surviving much of what the world threw at him. Even if he couldn’t, he had his friends to rely on, which had proven themselves already when he was debilitated by the Accipere.

  Dei saw the record of who he’d once been, and felt only sympathy. He wanted to go back and console the boy, tell him that it would be okay, but it was an unreasonable feeling. The boy was stuck somewhere in the past, gone.

  ‘Not gone. I’ve carried him with me through it all, and he has grown into what I am now. I never leave my past behind, not truly. I build upon it. It becomes integral to who I am. Though I’ve grown out of that fear, it is still somewhere deep within me, and that isn’t bad. It has become the foundation to all that I am, the core to all that will be.’

  He accepted the fear, knowing that it was what pushed his strength ever forward.

  Without opening his notifications, he already knew he would find that Solidity had reached level one hundred, the acceptance of himself being its entire goal, but he did not check his Skill evolution options, as they were irrelevant.

  Moving back down the branches, he slowly made his way towards his physical body, sitting still and meditating, already knowing what was to come.

  When Dei started his journey, he could only use Projection to leave the safety of his bubble. It was simply too dangerous for his physical body. More recently though, he found that his Projection was too weak to keep up, as it did not benefit from all his physical bonuses. He’d long since decided he would tie that Projection to his body, and now was the time.

  He’d reconciled with himself, both the Identity part of his soul and the Body part of his soul perfectly aligned. More than that, there was even a tangible connection between the two in the form of his Solidity Skill.

  He saw that it wasn’t exactly his entire soul that the Skill interacted with, just the part dictating his sense of self.

  The string drawn between the two reminded him of his Meditation Skill, but he knew it was a fundamentally different connection. Solidity involved strengthening something within him, while Meditation focused on drawing power from the outside.

  In order to tie his Projection to who he was, he’d need to do something else. It wouldn’t be a simple evolution of his Skill like how the System offered them, so he didn’t bother checking the options. He’d evolve the Skill in another way, using advice given to him by Aloran.

  Aloran said that Dei’s soul should mostly be healed, now it was only a mental block that stopped him from taking advantage of the Leviathans' stolen power.

  Connection was more than just a simple Skill, it was the piece of a greater whole. The Leviathans dictated all souls, their rights infallibly controlling those beneath them. What he needed now was to take that strength, take that right over his own soul, and use Connection in a way that would be approved by whichever Leviathan it was that had its eyes on him.

  Once more he found himself afraid. This was a risk, a massive risk. Not only because he might unravel his soul if Aloran was wrong about it being healed, not even just because he might make a mistake and permanently cripple himself in another way by improperly tying his Projection to his body, but also because if he didn’t do it well enough he would be struck down.

  ‘Speaking of…’ he thought to himself.

  Dei’s main mind was still in his projection form, so he made himself tangible once more for both Fendrascora and Clever, though it seemed they had no issue with spotting him in the first place.

  “I’m about to do something pretty dangerous, I want you both somewhere away from me if at all possible, in case it goes wrong.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Looking alarmed, they both suggested a different course of action.

  “Why not do this back in Aloran’s cave?” Fendrascora suggested.

  While Clever adamantly told him “Not leaving!”

  He quickly explained to them that he was going to start trying to garner the Leviathans attention, surprising them that he was doing this so soon. He’d been translating Aloran’s words for them through it all so they knew what he was talking about, but he’d just found out about it.

  “Clever, buddy, I know you want to stick near me and you don’t have to go far, but just stand a few… hundred feet away. You can watch from a distance.”

  Dei thought he would fight on that point, but he instead got “Oh that's it? Yea yea! I thought you wanted me to go all the way away. Ok!”

  Both his Projection and body smiled at the Korgonda, and he stood up to move. He didn’t want to remerge his Identity just yet, because he had something of a plan about what to do. If it didn’t seem to be working, he could always remerge his Identity and try again, hopefully not irritating the Leviathan too much.

  When they were a suitable distance away from the Lorpee cave, he dug a hole into a particular section of the wall that was thinner than the rest, because it led into the underground river. The “Great River” that Fendrascora had called it, and where all the aquatic life this deep below lived.

  Fendrascora needed a body of running liquid, composed mainly of water, to exist. She was apparently still rather weak from her debuffing titles, but he just needed her to sit in this one particular section until he was done. Even if he failed though, Dei thought she’d be able to survive on her own in the Great River- even if she would not have as much of an easy time.

  Half of her body, still made of his blood, went into the Great River, the other half sat on the dry land with Clever, and Dei made both his bodies walk a good distance away from them both.

  When he felt like they were a bit safer than not, he sat down. There was nothing in the area, so he felt about as safe as he was going to get. Next, he tried doing something he hadn’t before.

  Normally, when his Projection touched the physical body, it would snap back into place.This ended up being something of a problem though, as his Identity was a bit more difficult to discern if it wasn’t actively separated from him. Still, he needed his Identity to align with the rest of his soul and body if he wanted to tie it in properly.

  To that end, he dropped back down into the Spirit Realm, them willed himself to not rejoin with his body, as he phased into it.

  His physical self was still, not wanting to throw the projection off, and he felt himself succeed. In the same vein to how his Projection could phase through walls, it could move through its own body as well.

  Keeping himself separate, he lined up with his physical self as best he could, getting everything in place. When he felt like he was mostly indistinguishable, he looked inward and saw that a large section of his Identity floated overtop of a particular section of his soul.

  Keeping one mind on that, Dei began doing something he really didn’t want to: pulling out some of the Connection stitches from his soul.

  It was all a singular string which he did not want to break, so he found a middle part of it and just began to follow along, slowly moving along the glowing pink cracks and occasionally pulling at the spell Soul used to repair himself.

  There wasn’t exactly pain when he pulled at himself, but it was violently unpleasant so he stopped doing so. He was initially searching for a weak point as perhaps the thing binding it in place was hidden, but he just couldn’t find it in him to bear the sensation any more than necessary. He’d go about tugging on it later, if he couldn’t find the end with his soul sight.

  Moving through fragmented memories, Dei was surprised to see that there was an actual… depth of sorts to his soul. Perhaps it was mental, but as he went, the memories seemed to grow visually darker. More than that, he saw that the stitches went further and further back in his memories.

  The Soul was a difficult place to navigate, and for just a moment he was able to glimpse how others were supposed to move through it. When Dei thought of one particular part or memory, he could usually find it with a few notable exceptions, such as things that meshed together with others. At worst, he could get into the general area of what he was looking for.

  Now though, it felt like this Connection was a tether. As he followed the string, he couldn’t help but get the feeling he would become lost if he wasn’t careful. As with many sensations involving the soul and Leviathans, he could only liken it to the ocean. He felt like a diver pulling himself down along a string into the depths, and knew he didn’t want to lose sight of his only guide.

  The memories went further and further back. His last conversation with his mom, Their escape from Iora, even the moment his soul fractured was here, but these weren’t the points he was looking for. He still couldn’t see the end of Connection.

  He began to walk along what felt like a treaded path. Iora had been here, and he could see that the Connection went to the same place, both guiding him to a particular location.

  The windows into memories passed him by but he ignored them. He’d already made it to the first six months in his life, where he shouldn’t be able to remember if not for Iora solidifying them into his physical brain, but still the Connection showed no end.

  The darkness around him was oppressive, but familiar. The white path glowed ever brighter compared to the shadows, and he dared not step off.

  Finally, he reached the end of Iora’s path. He could see the ledge she threw herself off of, the point where his memories ended. It was a familiar place, and one he never thought he’d see again- the Void. Despite that, he could see the rope of Connection went taut, something far away he couldn’t see pulling at it.

  Something Aloran said about the taboo topics of souls came back to him: ‘if you run into anything that seems a bit… out there, turn back.’

  His curiosity was piqued, he wanted to keep going, but something in him said that this was exactly the thing Aloran wanted him to avoid. Still, he needed to reach the end of connection, didn’t he?

  Pressing forward, he took his first step off the solid path of his soul and into the intangible white anchoring it somewhere into the Void.

  Or tried to.

  As he mentally tried to move down the path, he felt himself be rejected from going any further. The Void pushed him away harmlessly, back up the path he’d come.

  Trying harder, he threw himself into the Void, but nothing he did could get him even a centimeter in. there was some kind of flexible force, bending around him and pushing back. It felt like the Void itself shied away from him, and there was nothing he could do. It was impossible to move on, but he didn’t fall into despair about failing to use Connection with Solidity.

  If he didn’t take his desire for answers into account, there was something else to consider.

  ‘I’m not moving towards the end of Connection, but the beginning. I took the wrong path. I should be moving closer to the surface of my soul if I want to see where it ends, not deeper below.’

  That in mind, he still wasn’t exactly willing to leave this be. If he wanted to use Connection to tie his Identity to his body then he’d need the other end of it, but Dei’s sense of self-preservation only went so far. He needed to reach the beginning of Connection now that he saw where it went, but he couldn’t find a way to do so.

  That didn’t mean there wasn’t a way though, and Dei thought it might be because his Identity couldn’t handle the Void in his current form.

  When he’d moved through the Void the first time and initially received his Interface, his Race had been called “Human (Wandering Soul),” meaning that he was a variant human potentially designed for traversing the Void.

  If that was true, then it could be that most souls didn’t have access to the Void, for good reason if Aloran’s story on Void Beasts were to be believed.

  And if that was true, he could think of one particular Race with good chances of getting permission: Reapers.

  There was no guarantee, but that was the best thing he could think of. If there was any significant change to his Interface at all though, he would almost definitely come back to try again. Without that, all he could do was turn around and begin moving upwards to complete the original goal of searching himself to begin with, tying his Identity and body together.