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I watched in mild amazement and enjoyed the last stretch of the flight before touching down in front of the mirror. Then, my and his body separated and I started walking on my own, proving that I could be independent before our minds linked again, and I found myself following his will.

"You and your guardian are as one," Brindle said. "Her body is your body when you’re linked; your intentions are her intentions when you are not. Do not bind yourselves with the shackles of obsession like Real did; respect your guardian for what she is, and love her as such."

"Okay…" I whispered.

Brindle waited a few seconds as if to let me speak and then said, "Give her a name to accept your orders, and we will begin."

"Kira," I said without hesitation, accepting a name that felt strangely natural to me.

Brindle couldn’t hear me, so he waited a few minutes before he touched my chest, and we assimilated once more. He then sat and said, "We will now chant."

An overwhelming sense of understanding, power, and knowledge that seemed so clear but I knew would disappear filled my mind. So I focused on it with every ounce of my being, trying my best to memorize the profound secrets Brindle was loaning me.

2.

Elana and Kori watched Mira in the real world, watching her guardian’s body shape and reshape itself, sharpening her wings and developing strange features like claws and then melding them away. The human body then transformed into a massive elk with eight razor-sharp antlers and bright white markings on its ghostly body.

"What type of bullshit is this?" Kori asked, exhaling after a shot of blue poison. "She was given a guardian, not dozens of them."

"It’s just one soul," Elana said. "He’s teaching her how to shape it."

"And she’s just casually learning spells that advanced?"

"I doubt it. It’s more likely that he copied part of himself into the guardian’s soul, and now it’s imprinting it onto Mira directly."

"That’s even more unfair!" Kori cried. "I mean, I’m genuinely happy for her. She’s my girl. I’m also tired of ’godding,’ and I don’t really care how strong my peers get. But come on. There’s advantages and then there’s… this."

Elana smiled thinly, glancing at him. "You’re just mad because she used your bow better than you could at that time in your life."

"Damn straight I am," Kori said, taking a thick swig of the liquid.

Elana smiled genuinely and reached out her hand. "Give me some of that."

"No," Kori said childishly, hugging it to his chest. "It’ll kill you. What man would I be if I gave my other girl something so irresponsible."

"Call me a girl again and I’ll end your suffering."

"Would you kiss me first?"

Elana’s chest bubbled with flustered anger, and she turned back to the screen, refusing to answer him.

Kori smiled, but he didn’t push his luck. He turned back to the screen, watching the soul morph into different shapes, emphasizing wings that tested the range of their capabilities.

"Seriously though," he said. "This has to be against the rules."

"Arguably," Elana confirmed. "But it’s in a gray area. Patrons have no restrictions on the means and limits of what they teach their disciples. And even if he augmented the guardian, it’s fine as long as it’s only a guardian. And that’s assuming the gods can prove it. It did make it through multiple independent reviews."

"Good point…"

Suddenly, there was another shift, and all the aura in the soul well sucked into the guardian.

Elana stood up and screamed, "What are you doing? That’s going to kill you!"

There was over a month’s worth of raw soul force that sucked into the guardian—and Mira hadn’t yet assimilated with it. Once she did, it would rip her body and soul to ribbons, and she doubted anything she could do would stop that.

3.

The first part of the simulation was unbelievably fun—freeing even. The spell Brindle gave me allowed me to shape the soul to my needs, imprinting vast information about the inner workings of these animals and their bodies. It wasn’t enough to ask for it to create an elk; I needed to understand the inner workings, the pieces of clocks that made them tick, their muscles and heart and circulatory system, all the way to the last details. In the future, I would be able to use soul scans to do this work, but for the present, Brindle taught me a few, the ability to create wings and a spirit elk, a partial homage to my childhood.

While I was learning this, Brindle’s assimilation allowed me to feed my guardian with the soul well, absorbing every last bit.

I was excited about it at first. But as it shone brighter and the intensity of its pressure started bearing down on my chest, I began to feel fear.

"The time has come," Brindle said. "It’s time to assimilate. We’ll start by scanning your body and creating a clone for seamless simulation."

He chanted, and as I did, I felt a dissociating sensation as knowledge of my body was imprinted upon my soul, teaching it to me by feel in the most abstract sense of the word.

"Now shape your guardian," Brindle ordered.

I did, creating a perfect clone of myself.

"Now channel all the soul aura to its chest," Brindle said. He led my body, chanting as I swirled all the soul aura until its chest had the brightness of a flashbang. I could barely handle it, so I closed my eyes deeper and activated Mental Shielding to keep focused.

"Now prepare yourself," Brindle said. "If you enhanced your soul as I suspected you would, this process could kill you. So it will take every ounce of your concentration."

I felt like I should’ve cried out and complained, but Brindle’s mind was assimilated into my own, and there was an inhuman sense of calm within him, tempering my emotions and mind and guiding me. His spells and experience would yield the same results regardless of how much aura was in the soul guardian. It was absolute—the spell of god far beyond the realm of human understanding.

I closed my eyes further and then began chanting, words flooding in from Brindle’s mind, and then the soul sat between my legs and leaned back.

3.

Elana tried sending a warning message through the guide, but she didn’t make it before the assimilation. She waited in dread as the two assimilated, then stood when the screen flashed with vibrant white light.

Yet when the light faded, she could only stare at the results in amazement.

A nebula of soul force surrounded Mira. It cycled around her at dizzying speed, like a vortex surrounding her arms and chest and head and entire body. Aura entered her body in complex networks that were hard for Elana to follow, breathing in and out.

She was watching a circulation technique, just one of many, but it was vastly more complex than any she had ever witnessed.

"Brindle…" Elana muttered in disbelief. She was witnessing the power power of a true god, a tenth evolution god. Even as a ninth evolution god, the distance between them was incalculable, and no amount of resources would ever change that. Her foundation was too weak and her experience too shallow in the face of such overwhelming might.

Brindle was a god above gods, only rivaled by the likes of Alendrias Dante and other figures across the multiverse who had long reached a level where their power stopped being calculated.

Mira didn’t even scream as she processed enough soul force to destroy a third evolution soul core. She just trembled, absorbed in concentration as she processed it.

"What’s even going on?" Kori laughed, wiping light tears from his eyes.

"I… have no clue." Elana slumped in her chair. "It’s not normal assimilation. I think Brindle’s used this soul guardian as a vessel to reform Mira’s soul core… I genuinely think he’s preparing her to become a god…"

"Oh…" Kori chuckled insanely. "You better catch up. He’s making you look bad."

Elana pouted and folded her arms. She didn’t like to lose, and she refused to let that thing outperform her as a patron god.

4.

It took at least three days before I finished threading the soul well, and most of the time was spent in a feverish, dreamlike trance. It was reminiscent of my time establishing a mana core with Yakana, but it was even more intense, complex, and unworldly.

My soul core unraveled completely, then wove itself back together, knotting into an interlocked ball that fit together like a puzzle, connecting a new ability to experience the flow and understanding of aura.

And my nearan pathways shifted as well.

Something in the guardian’s mind helped calibrate my neural networks and nervous systems. It didn’t affect the way I thought or affect my personality, but I felt like I could think far faster and deeper than before. After that calibration happened, even the most intense moments became far simpler, and my Mental Shielding spell felt weak and irrelevant.

The whole experience was almost spiritual, but at some point, my body gave out, my soul core tightened, and I was forced into a state of unconsciousness for what could’ve been days.

I probably would’ve died from dehydration, but when I woke, I found my backpack’s water blatter beside me, ostensibly from where Kline put the straw in my mouth and squeezed it to release Diktyo water.

It took a while to acclimate to my new soul core. I was in a state of healing for about two weeks, and I could barely eat or talk. I spent most of the period leaning against Sina as Kline curled in my lap, feeling like a permanently damaged vegetable that would never heal again. But slowly yet surely, vitality returned to my cheeks, and I started to get used to my soul core’s new circulating.

The timing was ideal. Fall time was in motion, and my skin was permanently studded with goosebumps and razor stubble. It was imperative to build my home before winter—

—so that’s what I did.

I started by accessing my rewards tab, too desperate to worry about the costs. I went to the Skills tab and looked through my options, finding the exact thing I needed at that moment:

"Name: Construction Magic

Grade: Gold

Description: Dronami’s version of power tools, this skill provides spells that replace modern power tools, from drills to lathes, with superior use and functionality. It also offers basic blueprints and instructions for creating structures. This is enough to build a cozy little village. Assuming you’re competent in construction after twenty-four years of calling your father to your house to do simple things like using Draino on your sink and turning the toilet valve."

"I wish I could deny this…" I whispered, nose twitching as I bought it. "Well, it is what it is. Hey Lithco."

Lithco let out a deep sigh from the pits of his soul when I bought it, crawling into the tree house lifelessly. "Unless you didn’t learn anything from learning battle magic," he said, "you shouldn’t use new magic for short term needs."

"If I could learn Separation, I can learn construction magic," I said.

"It took you months to learn Separation."

"Months I learned advanced mana control."

"Mira…"

"Just teach me," I said. "You can laugh when you’re right."

He expressed his disagreement with another sigh. "Since we don’t have specifications to work with, let’s just start buffing down the wood," he said. "We’ll do this with a mana lathe. It’s a variation of mana sharpening that requires you to spin the blade. Most people use a disc to do this, like sharpening a knife with mana sharpening to act as a stabilizer, but we don’t have one. So I suppose it’s time to practice pure mana control."

I rolled up my sleeves, and he smiled wryly.

Six hours later, I was lying on my back, staring at the dark ceiling in the earthy tree in despair, wondering how in the hell I was supposed to learn how to create this lathe. It was like using mana sharpening, but I had to make a cylindrical shape and then spin it rapidly and smoothly, applying it to the area that I wanted with precision—and I couldn’t even create a cylinder of raw mana to save my life.

Kline would do it, whipping his palm around, but he didn’t know what to do with it and didn’t particularly care. So he was just showing off.

"This sucks…" I groaned. "I wish I could just do it with aura."

Using aura was second nature, and ever since I assimilated with Brindle, I felt like I could just reach out into dead space and grab the stuff, turning it into a blade.

But…

Why couldn’t I?

I was able to create an elk from a blueprint!

It then occurred to me that I had never tried, so I gave it a shot, spinning my soul core to release aura. Then, I reached out—and grabbed a blade of it.

"You got to be kidding me…" I turned to Kline excitedly, and he was staring at me, mouth agape. He lifted a paw, and a blade formed.

"Is this a competition?" I asked. I focused on the blade, and I created a combat knife from it, adding details until it looked like a bonafide Bowie knife.

Kline tried, failed, and then yowled prissily, jumping out of the tree in a fury.

"Come back!" I cried, laughing at the same time. Saucy little kitty’s competitive, I guess, I thought in lesser terms. Then I turned back to the blade.

"Something’s not right, though…" I reshaped the knife into the pistol I left in my room before the integration. I couldn’t squeeze the trigger, and it wouldn’t have fired regardless, but it was still eerie. "This’s way too easy… Wait… is this…"

Kira.

It just hit me then that I had spent weeks in recovery, but I had yet to call for Kira. I wanted to, but I was worried I would need a tutorial but merely thinking about her made her materialize from my body.

I stared at her blankly. "Kira" was the same guardian that Brindle showed me—Salan—the same one whose memories I had experienced. She still had wings, broken shackles on her wrists, and the blindfold wrapped around her eyes and her partially transparent hair.

She was the soul guardian of an eighth evolution god, and she was staring right at me.