To touch the soul is to touch divinity.

  Habert of Marte

  ==Caden==

  Of all the many things that had already happened to me… this might be the most important. It… didn’t seem so momentous, in comparison. I had died, and then moved on to a new world. I saw… me. The true me, the one that survived death to come here. I already knew that, on some level, my status page said as much, and dying and standing over your old body was fantastic evidence. I certainly wasn’t in the same body I used to occupy, either. So, when my status and titles told me my soul had been moved, it wasn’t exactly hard to believe.

  And that was nothing, compared to seeing, touching, it.

  It was the most beautiful, intricate, awe inspiring sight I had ever seen, felt… And that was just the surface. For just this, alone, I wished I could go back home. Wish I could share this. How would the world change, if everyone could see what I had seen? To show those who struggled, who felt that they had no worth, that they were something truly beautiful beyond description.

  There… was so much more than I could even put into proper thoughts.

  I think the proper description is a ‘religious experience.’

  That feeling, from just a moment ago… My soul stretched forever like an infinite plane below me. Feel like I should be… I don’t know. Crying, shouting, singing, shaking, something… If I had my old body, I probably would be.

  Somehow, I don’t think twirling my crystal about through the air would have quite the same feeling.

  The most singularly spectacular beauty I had ever seen was myself.

  Well, that’s damn narcissistic, isn’t it? Maybe I’ll just stare at my soul all day until I turn into a flower.

  I laughed, letting myself just be for a moment.

  It wasn’t just me though. Everyone is like this, equally beautiful. Some knowledge was just… there. I knew, without knowing why.

  Honestly, if some people back on Earth managed to glimpse this, that explains quite a few religions. And why so many of them have a focus on meditation.

  It took a while for me to recover. I wanted to drive back inside, to lose myself in that beauty, but my emotions felt like a frozen pond, transparent ice cracking with the slightest pressure. I was simultaneously drained and overflowing with energy.

  Probably for the best to give myself a break. I can always dive back in another time. Not like it’s going anywhere.

  I… need to get something else done. Focus on something else.

  I looked at my mana, slowly ticking up, with annoyance. And then I wanted to bang my head against a wall.

  I’m such an idiot.

  I still had the feeder stored away.

  Well, those feelings of vast wonder at my incomprehensible beauty sure fade fast.

  There was no good reason to get mad at myself, though. I needed to meditate for a reason. If I wasn’t careful I became tired, frazzled, and then overwhelmed. At that point, it became easy to miss the obvious.

  Need a place for important things… like me.

  I aimed my crystal at a nearby wall, then merged with it almost seamlessly, the stone compressing away and then being pulled back into place as I headed for a large volume of solid stone.

  Even before I arrived, another shard was clearing space away, breaking down stone in the interior and then condensing the stone in the walls until they were dense and impenetrable. A few minutes later, I arrived, hung in the center of an enormous cube. Just need some lights in here, and I can throw a costume party… Complete with myself cunningly disguised as the disco ball. I placed the feeder slightly off to one side, sinking it an inch into the stone so it would be absolutely stable.

  A tendril of stone extruded from the floor, turning it on. I left the tendril there, so it would be simple to turn it on and off with a thought.

  The crystal on the bottom of the feeder glowed, a steady white light gently lighting up the space around it. The feeder started up, the crystal on the top starting to glow, casting additional faint shadows behind me.

  Huh, I completely forgot it glowed. The lights in the prison always overshadowed it, even at night when they were dimmed.

  Overshadowed… not really a good way to describe light, is it? Out shone, I guess?

  It doesn’t matter…

  On the opposite side, I put the my old resting place, the mana drain stand. The white crystal on the bottom of that gently lit another small corner of the room. Around it, I placed various statues of Tam, his spells, and the various shapes I had cast into stone. Hmm, all rough stone. I could polish them now… nah. I can make polished copies if I want, not like I’m going to run out of stone anytime soon… but for now… They are a reminder.

  I placed the chair there as well, as well as the rest of the items on top of the table. I’ll need to absorb more of those later, anyway. See if my new skill helps enough to learn what I need from them. Might not even need to for some of them, since I have various seeds. Who knows if some of those are same type of wood.

  Reminded of all the seeds and eggs stored away, I started pulling those out to examine. They were in no particular order at moment, and I needed to use them. I brought out just the seeds, and there were dozens of different types. Should find a better way to store these… Or rather, make something.

  I started by creating a series of tiny stone boxes, amusing myself by letting out my artistic side. With my ability to precisely shape stone, it was a simple act of will between visualization and reality.

  I wish I’d had this ability in ceramics class. Man, I sucked at molding clay by hand.

  Even perfectly fitting, and functional, hinges, as well as a simple sliding lock, were no trouble to make now. As I sorted them, I made a different box for each type of seed. The first box was solid obsidian, topped with a delicate stone flower; the leaves and petals were razor sharp, so thin that light passed through, making the flower look like solidified smoke. The other boxes featured other designs inspired by nature, or just pure geometry. Fractal patterns contrasted against landscapes from Earth, and animals from my past life. The materials varied just as much. Clear and clouded gypsum crystals, sandstone, basalt, marble, and more were matched and blended to my designs, each complementing or contrasting to fit the pattern.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Some types only had a single seed, or just a few. Those were put into tiny boxes, stored away once again. Some types of seeds had a dozen or more. A few of these seeds were set aside, crushed, and then I absorbed the remains; the rest of those seeds were stored away. Make sure I can grow them, just in case I don’t have enough of the pattern. A couple of seed types actually had hundreds upon hundreds of seeds. I divided them, crushing half, while the rest were stored again. The super numerous seeds were all tiny, and based on the impression their patterns gave me, I was fairly certain that they were all different types of wild grass.

  Now what do I do with the eggs? Most of these belong in the water. Cannot just store them in boxes.

  I would need to recreate the environment they lived in, if I wanted to be sure they were not damaged when I brought them out of storage. Probably could do that now, but it would probably take more mana than I want to spend. All that organic material and bacteria… I would wait and see what the next few levels gave me. Assuming I could level, it should be easy enough to get the mana from the feeder now that it was running. Leveling might give me better tools to work with too.

  For a minute, I debated what to do with the various enchantments I had stored away. Optimally, I wanted to understand what they did, and how. However, I also wanted to absorb that silver metal. Well… I know what each one did, just from experience. I can store them back away, if there are any problems. I raised a pillar of stone a good distance away from myself, placing the beam array into the far side, away from myself. After a moment, I could clearly see the threads scanning an area the size of my old prison.

  Fuck… that area is so tiny. Glad it’s working fine, I guess.

  Next, I put the rune array that generated the cylindrical barrier some distance from the other enchantment, setting it into the floor. I could feel it trying to do something, power flashing through it, but it was erratic. Still have the runes I removed from it. Pretty sure I know where they went… best to be sure. I consulted one of the statues I had made, checking the placement. After, I carefully slotted the missing runes back into place. The enchantment snapped back together, activating fully.

  Should look into that later.

  It was interesting that an enchantment could be disassembled, and then put back together. Wonder if taking enough out of one would collapse it entirely? Something I would consider and experiment with in the future… far away from my core. These things had a ton of mana.

  Wouldn’t have messed with any of them, if I hadn’t been desperate.

  I glanced at the statues of Tam for a moment. It won’t happen again.

  Now, what to do with the four that prevented aura growth?

  Well, I already knew I wanted to study them, but I really only needed one since they were identical. As far as I can tell, at least. If I decided to do any experiments on the structure of enchantments, it would be good to have extras though. For now, I would eat one, keep one out to examine its effects, and store the other two for later experimentation.

  I needed to make that other purchase first though. Otherwise I might waste something I couldn’t replace.

  A moment later there was a notification, and I had 180 less AP.

  Done with that, I started to absorb one of the four arrays. I tried to absorb all of it, at the same time. Hopefully that helps me understand it as a whole. It was consumed with exquisite slowness, the whole structure shimmering like a mirage. As I consumed it, I started to understand the metal first. It felt almost like a crystal, and I could feel the rigid structure firmly held in place.

  Woven in and around that structure, mana was firmly anchored into place. Mana knotted and twisted itself up around the metal. The runes… they were not just symbols, they were words, or… commands. They were not just two dimensional, either. They had a three dimensional structure that projected outwards from the rune. I felt a vague understanding of how these things were related. The order of the runes, the locations, the relative size, they all mattered. One symbol repeated, but the mana structure it produced was different each time.

  Tam’s obviously a fucking master to make this so fast.

  And this was a magic that I needed to master, myself. I had no ability to do incantations and hand waving. However, this was magic that I could create directly. The incantation probably provided another layer of information, a way to direct how the symbols related to each other. However, unlike Tam, I could see the mana directly; I might be able to build the structures of mana myself.

  Or just learn to build things with enough detail that I don’t have to worry about that. Not like the material costs mean as much to me. Just costs more mana.

  Finished absorbing, I could vaguely understand a part of what was happening. The shape of a symbol reinforced the idea behind the commands, but my understanding was fuzzy. I could make the metal with no problem, at least; that pattern was solidly known now. I considered for a moment. I knew that I would likely need to absorb the same magical object more than once to understand it. Especially when I am just figuring this shit out. My absorption skill had specifically mentioned that would apply for enchanted items.

  And I do still have three more…

  I checked my mana. It had increased by about twenty, between Exsan and I. I wasn’t surprised to gain mana from it, the runes had been infused with immense amounts of it. However, the absorption had taken a long time, so it was obvious that it had proven difficult for my abilities. Twenty mana was a decent chunk, for me, but compared to the amount that was in the runes… I had only barely done better than breaking even. I had likely gained, and spent, hundreds of mana taking it apart.

  At least it still increased my mana. Eh… might as well go for broke. I pulled out another one, starting to absorb it. It was just as slow as the first, but when it was done I felt on the brink of an epiphany.

  The blinking light of a notification distracted me, so I willed it open.

  

  Huh, first time it’s asked me something like this. I guess this is a little more involved than most skills. Of course, learning a language is an involved process.

  Obviously, I did want to learn it, that was not even really a question. Just need to make sure I’m safe first. I scanned through my aura. Nothing new seemed to be going on and I was in a completely self contained room.

  Well… just in case, I dropped my core down into the stone, until I was several meters deep. I quickly hardened a shell of stone around me. That should protect me well enough. If not, I probably wouldn’t have been able to do much about it anyway.

  I picked yes.

  My mind filled with symbols, and time became meaningless.

  Many became like old friends, I knew them intimately. I knew what they did, how they acted. Others appeared and became slightly familiar. And it continued on and on. Knowledge flowed and my mind felt stuffed with relationships of symbols, spacial proximity, modifiers, exceptions, alternative shapes, and more. Eventually the flood dropped to a trickle and finally stopped.

  I became aware of the world once more.

  I pulled up the notification that was waiting for me.

  Huh, looks like what Tam was making were actually emblems. The symbols were actually called runes, so I had gotten that right, but wasn’t sure if I had actually seen any enchantments. And I would obviously need to look at the spells I had transcribed into stone, again.

  I looked at the simplest emblem here, a copy of the one I had just absorbed twice, absently moving my core back to into the cube. I could understand various parts of it now. I picked out the basic symbols for mana, connection, and light among the runes. The modifiers on the runes were more complicated though. I was fairly sure that the modifiers were what produced the gentle white light it made when it absorbed the mana meant to create aura. However, I couldn’t be sure. And I was fairly sure, from context, that one of the runes after mana specified the range it applied to.

  Unfortunately, I now knew enough to understand exactly how little I understood. The other emblems were even more indecipherable. Mana showed up in all of them, naturally, and I could see symbols that could mean earth or stone depending on the context. Other than that they were like gibberish.

  I felt like a caveman with a club, staring at a crossbow. And that was just the simplest emblem. I could see a little of how it functioned, and I might be able to operate it with a little knowledge. However, I didn’t understand how or why it worked. The other emblems might as well be a car or television. I knew they worked, but had no real idea why.

  Not what I should focus on at the moment.

  I had rudimentary knowledge of the language now. It was not enough to be performing any miracles with it yet, but I knew enough that it might be possible for me to make a few useful items with it. Even without any monsters, I might be able to make a decent trap dungeon… with a lot of time and effort.

  Suddenly words sounded in my head.

  ‘Language. Words. Order. I see. Know. I Exsan. Core is self. You Exsan not Exsan. Who?’