Chương 62: Hope?

Liesel didn't understand souls. She had believed she did. She couldn't force someone to observe her soul, let alone offer it another. That seemed heretical to her mind.

"Once you are healed, I will win," Arval said, as she offered her hand again. Her face had healed in a matter of minutes. Was it a function of the Primordial Core?

"Is that your defense?" Liesel raised a brow.

"I wasn't trying to hurt you, because you are ill. Next time, don't expect any mercy!" With a nod, Liesel accepted the offered hand. She had a feeling that if they were stuck here for weeks, she had opened herself to a very troublesome possibility. She would find no joy or distraction beating up an inexperienced child. She'd rather not revisit that situation at all. At least one more spare was all but tacitly agreed on Arval's side.

"So," Arval said, shaking her head, "I can give you some of my soul... I don't know how that will fix your Withering."

"How can you spare your soul? Is it not the core of your very existence?"

"Oh," Arval raised both her brows.

"I mean... Yeah, it is. Sort of? I can break a part of my soul, and the fracture becomes the thing that Souls are made of—the Primordial Energy."

"Fracture in soul should cause Soul Withering, no?" Liesel frowned. She was having a hard time conceptualizing Arval's explanation. An ever harder time imagining treating soul like an expendable resource. It was hard to treat even the physical body as such, even though she was more than willing to harm it to advance her goals.

"Yeah, but if your soul heals itself faster than Withering can decay my soul, it's not a cause for concern."

"You are one step into immortality if you can recover harm to your soul faster than Withering can decay it," Liesel found that suspicious. Soul Healing... The Enlightenment Potion will help the growth of my soul, so that can be classified as Healing for Soul, in a sense.

"Uh, outside of the Primordial Core, it takes like a week to recover a nail's worth of damage," Arval said.

"Here, in the Primordial domains, I am not concerned. Even here, if the Withering passes a certain point, it takes me. Elder Ahura says Soul Severing magic can kill me here. There are like two people in the Caravan who can use that kind of magic, and not easily, so yeah, I am basically an immortal... though, not as quick as I'd like to be."

"Is that a feature of a Perfect Soul?"

"Do you want my help or just ask meaningless questions?" Arval huffed.

"Frankly, I have no clue. Elder Ahura says it's Gurvanam's blessing." Liesel nodded. She didn't find that remotely probable, for no reason other than her conversation with the Reaper. Not that the grander Mythos of their benevolent atrocities helped. The fact that Arval was sharing all her secrets so carelessly was also a troublesome trait in its own right. Was it the girl's act of rebellion against the Caravan and the elder, or was she just not raised to hide things from others?

"Close your eyes," Arval said. Liesel accepted. She activated her Soul Sense, and this time she couldn't see Arval's Soul. For a long minute, it was just silence, and some rasped breath from Arval. Liesel imagined she was not allowed to see Arval's soul because the child was in the process of ripping it in two. Unless she knew a dignified way of extracting a portion of it. Arval grunted. From the boundary around Liesel's left hand, a faint, translucent substance seeped in. Liesel captured it in her soul hand.

She couldn't wield the Control to guide it like she could with her Materiality. The substance didn't act like energy, but mass. Soon there was enough to rival the size of Liesel's own Soul Form. If Liesel had insecurities, she may have felt slightly inadequate. Perhaps six years ago, when those emotions affected her. Now she could soothe her ego, if she felt insecure, by beating her opponent to the inch of their life. Arval let go of her hand. Maintaining her Soul Hand, Liesel opened her eyes.

"You have a very high pain tolerance," Liesel said. Though the child's face was covered in sweat, and the golden ring in her iris was thumping like a heart, Arval managed to keep her face relatively impassive.

"N-not really," Arval forced a grin.

"Is that enough?"

"I would hope so. Thank you for your help, child," Liesel said.

"I will repay it someday." Though she said so, Liesel couldn't keep track of the growing list of people who were helping for nothing in return.

"Just tell me about your world," Arval said.

"That's enough. I don't... Well, that's all I can think of right now."

"You should rest," Liesel said.

"Yeah..." Arval got back to her feet.

"The day I found you here, the Withering was frozen. But when you noticed me, it started withering again. What did you do?" Liesel asked.

"You must have been in the interstice between the Core and the Veins, a place where time almost stands still. Or something like that. That might be why... or the Core decided to freeze it for you until you disturbed me. It's hard to say definitively." Or it learned that you didn't have a favorable impression of me? No, it was playing with my mind before then. Maybe it was a benefit for the Trial then. Arval made her way out of the stone garden.

Liesel waited for a few minutes, expecting another nightmare to unfold, dragging her into another torturous corridor, but it was quiet. As if the realm noticed her anticipation, a cold, dry breeze blew from the north, slowly settling into a gentle and pleasant rhythm. Liesel wished her mind was capable of accepting that delusion. Instead, she tensed because she didn't want to be lulled into a false sense of security. Liesel gathered the Soul Mass, which was like a gelatinous blob.

She brought it beneath her Soul Form and let it go. The blob remained there, like a distorted reflection of her Soul Form. There was no gravity pulling it down. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. It can't be primordial energy in its truest form. That is the power of creation. Soul is but an aspect of Life, not all of reality. Liesel decided to put this worry for later. She could ask about this phenomenon from the Custodian...

if I can have another conversation with him someday. Now the question was how she was supposed to fix the decay in her soul. If Auram were here, I could have asked her to bring me the Custodian's books. They may not have an answer for her situation directly, but there would be something to guide her forward. They were dense books, and she was having some regret for not spending time absorbing information until everything was imprinted in her mind. She pushed the blob a little closer to the Withering section.

The fragments of her withering soul were caught in it. It remained stuck like a glitter trapped in translucent glue. Liesel considered for a moment. She had little information about everything, so she didn't want to do anything that might damage her Soul Form. She pulled a coin-sized energy and brought it to the wound. Carefully, she let it rest a few centimeters away from the soul. It gathered more fragments. Liesel observed it for a minute, pushing it closer and closer until it touched the exterior layer.

She felt a sharp pang of pain course through her body upon contact. Again, she waited and observed the spot for minutes. No harm came to her soul, and the external mass kept gathering the withered fragments. Unfortunately, it didn't dampen the Withering. She dared to bring more of the Soul Mass closer to her Soul Form. She applied it equally along the Withering area. She loosened her Control's applied pressure. The decay grew, and the external mass captured all the fragments.

Unfortunately, this didn't depress the rate of Withering either. Liesel stifled the Withering with her Control again. She slowly extracted the external energy from her Soul Form. The Soul Threads from the Unravelling did affect the Withering's rate, so it was not an inconceivable notion that something else might. If putting a patch from outside had worked, she could've left it there. Then, she'd have the time to understand her new abilities first. But that was not a luxury.

She would not be seeing the morning if she couldn't figure something out before then. Unfortunately, she couldn't imagine anything but replicating the Soul Thread's binding. She hoped that with moreprecision and concentration, the binding would make the Withering inconsequential for the time being. It would again be a desperate extension of her inevitable death, but what else could she do here? And then what? Do I wait until I have Soul Heart and hope that fixes everything?

She wove a thread from the Soul Mass, but it didn't interact with her Soul Form. Liesel had furled the puncture section of her soul inwards to suffocate the decaying area. It had miraculously worked. Now, she dared to unfurl a section of it. She matched it to the raw soul energy and tried to understand the difference. It would seem, despite being as thin as the layer of a bubble, her Soul Form was denser than Arval's, or the natural state of the severed Soul Mass. But why is Soul Mass not affected by the Withering?

Is that a phenomenon exclusive to the Soul Form that supported the life? Since it was unfurled, Liesel also tried squeezing the exposed section with the Soul Hand. Another flare of pain passed. Curiously, the Soul Hand could completely stop the Withering, too. The only caveat was that it was a hand inside her soul. She couldn't use it with the same freedom as the amorphous nature of Control allowed her to. There was only one thing Liesel had in mind that made some sense.

She compared the Soul Mass to the threads and her own Soul Form. The Soul Thread and Soul Form had similar, if not identical, density, but the mass was much lighter. She decided to first bring the mass to the same density as other things. Instead of spending time on the entire blob, she gathered a coin-sized amount and began applying force to it. Since she had a hand, it was like playing with clay on her thumb and index finger.

It was a lot of squeezing while observing the color and the tension to make sure she didn't overshoot. After half an hour of insistence, a beckon from the System dragged her attention back to reality. [Authority +1 Authority: 1-->2 Control +2 Control: 25 —>27] It was expected, but that wouldn't help much. Liesel thought at first. What would one additional Authority do? Her assumptions were shallow, either because she was losing her sanity or was exhausted beyond the point of even basic calculation.

Her Authority had doubled, and she could feel the additional power in her limb almost instantly. After another ten minutes, she had slowly transformed the energy into the same density as her Soul Thread. From the coin-sized mass, she pinched a tiny amount and applied it to the surface of her Soul Form, around the darkened section. It was absorbed almost instantly. That might seem fine at first glance, but her Soul was still withering. The mass had been wasted.

The next attempt was applying the energy directly at the edges where the Withering existed. It was consumed, and Liesel tried to use a little more mass, but even that was instantly dismantled. The Soul Threads could resist this fate, so naturally Liesel was tempted to try it next. She furled the punctured soul back, and sealed it with her Control. With her Soul Sense, she focused on the Soul Threads binding the puncture.

Now that she could see how easily the Withering could destroy the Soul mass, they were extremely impressive. After spending a little too much time on the Soul Threads, Liesel began her process of replication. All of this would be so much easier if I could use Soul Unravelling on a demon or animal. She stretched out two strings from the remainder of energy and twined them into a thread. It took a while, but she made something akin to a thread.

She stabbed the thread into the Soul Form, just beside where the actual thread stitch ended. It pierced the wound without resistance. She looped it around and tied the first knot. Another wave of agony flowed out of the wound as the binding squeezed, but this was far more bearable. She had her expectation set just right. The thread lasted six loops, barely a centimeter in width. So it seemed inside her mind. She returned to the Soul Mass to apply pressure and weave more threads.

[Authority +1 Authority: 2—>3 Soul Communion: + 1 Soul Communion Lv. 1 —> Lv. 2] Liesel exhaled. Her head was pounding by the time she had the second string. After another few minutes of misery, she managed to extend the stitch from six loops to twenty-nine. It ran along like stitching around a large laceration. How much was this going to help? Better than nothing. She repeated the process another time, gained another point in Soul Communion, and extended the bind. The Authority remained at three for now, though.

With each new string looping around the puncture, the Withering slowly dwindled. She had consumed almost all of her mass just on it. After that, she dared to unravel the System's woven thread, which was very loose compared to her own. She redid it and filled the gap with another thread from the Soul Mass. After this, she could count a couple of fragments that escaped every second. Liesel exhaled, opening her eye. She had refrained from checking the effect of her binding with the System's estimations.

She wanted to keep her entire focus on the only thing that seemed to be working. [Soul Withering 49. 22% Estimated Time Remaining: 400Hours, 14 Minutes] Liesel rubbed her eye and stared at the window, stunned. She had not expected such fast progress. She could preserve the rest of the energy to weave more threads when the Withering spread. But she had another option. She allowed her Soul Form to absorb the Soul Mass. When she did that, her Soul seemed to grow ever so slightly.

It was a few millimeters away from the Rune Cage. She checked the system window again. [Soul Withering 46. 11% Time Remaining: 611Hours, 54 Minutes] It was enough time that even with a three-week wait, she could leave the realm, find a demon, and use Soul Unravelling on it. She was quite sure her Soul Form could also consume the unravelled soul. She might need to convert the unravelled soul into Soul Mass, but with her new ability it didn't seem far-fetched. She shifted her mind away.

Slowly, she relented her Control over the Withering area. The Withering didn't exacerbate. Liesel breathed a sigh of relief. The stitches were painful, but at least the burning-hot pain born from the constant and tiring use of the Control was gone. Her mind felt lighter. A part of her had naively hoped that she might be able to stop the Withering with just the Soul Weaving Skill. Why would she even think that?

Liesel wasn't sure, except for desperation, but looking back at it, how could she have hoped to escape her death so easily? But she could see a path now, after the conversation with Arval. It didn't feel as hard in theory, but how that would look in reality was an entirely different question. It's only been a few hours since I left the cave. Yehia and others might only know now... She lay down on the stone bench, looking up at the night sky. It's fake.