Chapter 8, Body, minds and soul

“Alright so we’re decided on going with the third option then. Creating our new core and then moving from the dungeon core to the new one before we do anything else?”

“Yeah that seems reasonable. No need to complicate matters during the most crucial step. Remember the steps involved to make this work, Zel?”

“Stop worrying, Ari. You know I do. There is one thing we need to do before we start all this though. We know your old [Soul Manipulation] class skill got transferred with you into our new soul but we don’t know if the level has reset when we melded and it became a general skill instead of class skill. We’ll need it to be as high as possible for this to work.”

“Are you excited Zel? Opening our status sheet for the first time after 50 years of waiting? Go on. You open it this time. I know how much you’ve been looking forward to seeing the changes.”

“Alright. You can start rearranging and compressing the status sheet after I read it over. You know our preferences as well as I do. Here. We. Go!”

-Status-

Name: Zelaria

Level: [0]+

Race: Human

Age: [16] (77)

Strength: [10]

Constitution: [11]

Vitality: [10]

Agility: [9]

Dexterity: [11]

Intelligence: [33]

Wisdom: [29]

Health: [0/0]

Stamina: [0/0]

Mana: [230/230]

Health, Stamina, Mana regen: [0], [0], [29] / Minute

Traits:

Arcane affinity

Twin Minds

Resistances:

Heat resistance: [1]

Cold resistance: [4]

Disease resistance: [2]

Poison resistance: [5]

Arcane Magic Resistance: [3]

Fire Magic Resistance: [2]

Lightning Magic Resistance: [1]

Earth Magic Resistance: [1]

Wind Magic Resistance: [1]

Water Magic Resistance: [2]

Soul Magic Resistance: [23]

General skills:

Identify - [6]

Running - [12]

Sprinting - [4]

Jumping - [5]

Dodging - [3]

Sneaking - [11]

Smoking - [6]

Throwing - [6]

Small Blades - [8]

Unarmed - [5]

Gemcutting - [7]

Lock Picking - [4]

Dancing - [4]

Cooking - [2]

Gorging - [1]

Reading - [4]

Writing - [3]

Multitasking - [134]

Humanoid linguistics - [96]

Manabolt - [16]

Mana Sight - [7]

Mana Sense - [233]

Mana Absorption - [189]

Mana Manipulation - [312]

Soul Manipulation - [67]

Class 1: None - Available [13]

Class 2: Locked

“That is a lot to take in. I can’t imagine I’ve made so much progress while still being 16 years old! I mean, look at those skill levels. They’re absurd.”

“Sure Zel, whatever you say.”

I shoot a mental glare Ari’s way. No matter how unified we’ve become, Ari still thinks my ‘obsession with youth’ is amusing.

“Since everything seems to be in order, no more corruption and all that, we should be good to go, right Ari?”

“Yes. We lost a lot of levels in the [Soul Manipulation] skill when it separated from its class but it should be more than enough for simply moving our soul through a medium.”

Taking a few moments to appreciate this momentous occasion we sit in silence. Once we’re calm, collected and have regained our laser focus I activate [Mana Sense] and [Mana Absorption]. Using [Mana Manipulation] I move a thin tendril of power through the core casing in a specific pattern, brushing against each locking mechanism and priming it.

Once every lock is primed with power I split the tendril and move it both upwards and downwards to each point of the octahedron. I activate the unlocking runes situated at each tip at the exact same time.

There is a whirl of movement as I lose contact with the mana. The inscriptions have taken over the mana from the tendril I guided through the structure, spreading and dispersing power into various configurations. The primed locks pop and slowly slide off their hinges.

We watch in anticipation as the octahedron splits into 4 parts. Each part slowly separates while moving outwards, away from each other, while simultaneously slowing down their rotation and multiplying the duration of each revolution a dozen times over.

The dungeon core itself, suspended in midair through various self powered runes integrated in the crystal, is quite large. It wasn’t as obvious to me when we were in the casing but it has a diameter of about 1.5 meters. I thought it sad to have to forgo the self float and every other fascinating inscription on our own new core but every added functionality would make the core unreasonably large and heavy. Can’t have a head a meter wide. The tradeoff isn’t worth it.

While Ari is focusing on the soul stuff I have to build our safety net. It is a huge, if hollow, core with a diameter of 2 meters. I will have to keep it suspended and centered on the dungeon core during all this time but it is a necessary precaution. We don’t want to risk dissipation if there is a problem with our new core.

Keeping sensing, absorption and manipulation skills active while holding the new giant safety net steady, I start creating our new home. I take it very, very, slowly. I can probably make it in an hour but I take four hours just to make sure that it is perfect in every sense.

Also keeping our new home afloat, I move it ever so slowly towards the dungeon core as we don’t want to risk them touching. Not that it’s supposed to do anything but who knows what might happen. Our new core might get reclassified as another dungeon core or something.

“Ari. It’s your turn now. It is exactly 5 centimeters between our new core and the dungeon core. I’ll try keeping it steady while you move us over.”

“Alright, no pressure, I can do this. Don’t lose your nerve Ari. Get ready Zel, I’m starting… now.”

It’s really difficult to keep everything objectively still and not relative to my own position. Especially as I have been manipulating mana in a stationary position all this time and the challenge of ignoring my own changing position and keeping the cores steady in their place is almost too much.

Ari pushes and pulls our soul gently through the largest mana channel carved through the core, going in all possible directions before finally making it towards the dungeon core shell. From here she has to use a forceful push to break through the last piece of core and move into the open.

As our soul leaves its confines it begins to expand. Thinning in the reduced ambient mana pressure. It isn’t enough to disperse us since we have the safety net to keep the ambient mana levels around the core at a much higher level than outside.

Acting fast Ari pushes our soul hard through one of the tiny channels going into the new core's inner sanctum. It feels like being stretched and squeezed through a straw and I almost lose my grip on [Mana Manipulation] when my consciousness joins in being squeezed along with our soul.

We luckily manage to make it through without incident. The many mana paths we carved into our own core are straight with square angles and not organically squiggly like the dungeon core’s. It helps me a lot in keeping my focus and not getting dizzy.

I feel our soul shaping itself back into a perfect sphere. Taking up every bit of available space in the inner sanctum of the core without feeling cramped like the pathways. Our calculations had been spot on in this case. Even a little generous as it feels like we have room to stretch our proverbial legs a little.

“That was terrifying Zel. It felt like my control was slipping when our soul thinned in the open air. We were lucky the ambient mana we pumped into the safety net was enough. A little less and we might’ve dispersed thanks to my grasp slipping.”

“Yeah it was pretty intense. But don’t worry about it now. If we’re lucky we’ll never have to do anything like this again. We can modify this core from where we are now in the inner sanctum, and if it ever breaks? Well we're dead then no matter what we do unless the ambient mana just happens to be insanely high in the place of our death.”

Leaving the job of keeping our new core afloat with [Mana Manipulation] to Ari I start dismantling our safety net. As the mana structure is broken down the giant shell loses its physical presence and dissipates into the ambient mana.

“We did it. Holy shit we did it!”

“We’re free? Oh how I’ve missed this feeling. We can finally leave this place and start our new adventure.”

“It will probably take us a little while longer, Zel. Unless we want to live in a floating ball of crystal we will have to learn how to operate our new mana body.”

“You’re right of course. We need to start working on our mana body right away. I can’t wait to get out of here.”

Not giving it another thought, Ari floats our core away from the dungeon core and into a corner. There, lying on the ground next to some glowing foliage, we start constructing our body. We start from the core itself as planned. Creating the skull around our core, the spokes crisscrossing around it, lying against the thick coating of kinetically absorbent material. And then everything else comes all at once.

Mana flesh, mana sinew, mana tendons, mana skin, mana hair and mana organs all manifesting into the physical in an orderly fashion with the starting point of the head. Our eyes are already being assembled and attuned to our specific golden shade of irises as the mana tendons in the legs start growing from the mana bone, being covered by mana flesh a few seconds later.

Our circulatory system and nerves are also being manifested and integrated in perfect synchronization with their neighboring parts. As this is our first time occupying the body as this is taking place we take it slow and steady. Making sure everything is manifesting correctly as this is our pride of 60 years of work. The first time has to be perfect and it appears that The system approves of our dedication.

Ding! Soul has been permanently anchored to [Soulcore].

Ding! A vessel compatible with [Soulcore] has been found. Initiating imprinting processes.

Ding! Vessel [Manabody] has been imprinted on [Soulcore].

The change was immediate. I feel how instead of just being physically present in our core, the core is now a part of us. It’s a part of us as much as our minds are and it’s also interfacing with our soul in a similar manner.

“This feels so weird. Is this how it felt being connected to the dungeon core?”

“Yup it felt exactly like this. Except there was much more to the dungeon core than ours. More functions, features and restrictions. Those were all a part of me at that time but here we have a clean slate. The only thing our core has at the moment are mana channels for delivering power from our soul into the [Manabody].”

“And what’s with that name? Did The system name the body or did we?”

“No idea. It might just be named like this for us and show up with another name if another person did this. I don’t think anyone really understands how The system does anything.”

“I guess that’s true.”

“Why don’t we take another look at our status? I’ve finished cleaning it up and we should take a look at our new traits.”

-Status-

Name: Zelaria

Level: [0]+

Race: Human

Age: [16] (77)

Strength: [10] -50%

Constitution: [11] -50%

Vitality: [10] -50%

Agility: [9] -50%

Dexterity: [11] -50%

Intelligence: [33]

Wisdom: [29] +95%

Mana: [330/330]

Mana regen: [57] / Minute

Traits:

Arcane affinity

Twin Minds

Soulcore

Manabody

Resistances:

…

General skills:

…

Identify - [6]

Mana Sight - [7]

Mana Sense - [233]

Mana Absorption - [189]

Mana Manipulation - [312]

Class 1: None - Available [14]

Class 2: Locked

“Focus on the traits, Zel.”

“Ah, right. Sorry.”

[Arcane affinity]

An affinity for manipulating mana without a naturally occurring elemental structure. Lessened ability to manipulate naturally occurring elemental structures.

[Twin Minds]

Your soul houses two minds working in symbiosis. Increased ability to multitask. Increased risk of developing a self centered worldview and self obsession.

[Soulcore]

A crystalized mana structure anchoring and interfacing with a soul. Adaptive structural reinforcement powered by the soul. Wisdom -5% minimum. Regeneration penalty will adapt to structural load without an upper limit.

[Manabody]

A magical construct created to mimic a biological lifeform as closely as possible without wasting power on processes the inhabitor deem unnecessary or unwanted.

Results of inhabiting this vessel:

Refinement and conversion of anima to mana. Physical Attributes -50%.

Mana enriched soul. Wisdom +100%

“Damn, even our status says we’ve become self-obsessed. Or self centered. Whatever. It’s not like we’ve been able to counteract it with us being stuck here for over 60 years.”

“Yeah I know right? But look at this, Ari! The regeneration bonus on our new vessel looks amazing.”

“Yes, I see it. I wonder how badly the penalty will affect us. It’s kinda surprising it even gives us the ability to benefit from physical attributes at all. I guess it will make it better though? We didn’t count on having any use for our physical attributes going forward but maybe putting a few points into constitution would make our body more stable?”

“You’re right. We’ll have to experiment with that. But I still think we should focus heavily on our mana capacity and regeneration. With more power we could regenerate any lost body parts or temporarily increase our combat effectiveness to a much greater extent.”

We spend a few moments lying on the floor keeping [Mana Absorption] going to fuel our body while discussing various strategies for spending attributes in the future. We agree that spending all our future attribute points into [Intelligence] and [Wisdom] until we can sustain our body's needs without any skills is a priority. After we’ve accomplished that we can think about other attributes.

With that out of the way we turn our entire focus towards our new vessel. We took a lot of inspiration from our old biological body in creating this. It looks exactly the same as our old one but the inside is vastly different.

The biggest difference is the lack of a brain. Having two minds in the same soul helps with this issue. Ari has taken it on herself to act as the ‘brain of the operation’. She thinks that’s sooo funny.

Her job will be very much like the one she had as a dungeon, except with more freedom to act and improvise, working as the foundation of our interfacing with the body.

I will be the operator. Doing what I’ve been doing all my life before dying. I will navigate, interact with and change the world around us. Be it fighting monsters or exploring a lost civilization I will be the one in charge of our course. Ari will of course have the ability to make suggestions to the actions I take but she will mostly focus on keeping our body running in the beginning.

There is alot going on in our body after all. She will need to translate my thoughts into action. Contracting mana tissue to move, breath, speak and fight. Keeping our mana heart pumping and regulating the flow of mana blood through our veins and tissues. Adapting the production rate of mana blood cells in the mana spine marrow during different workloads. Or just doing something as basic as keeping our balance.

Every physical process will be under her command while only transferring the signal inputs from the mana nerve back to me. Pain, pleasure and other signals from the mana nerve will have to be calibrated and tested to reach optimal performance.

We lay there on the stone floor while Ari is practicing the different processes needed to keep the body from deteriorating. It’s mainly drawing our generated mana from our soul down the wide channel going down our spine, managing the production of mana blood cells and flexing the mana tissue of our heart.

With this we make sure mana reaches every cell of our being and refuel the structure with new power. It doesn’t take Ari long to get a grip on multitasking the various processes and we move on to the next one.

After the power circulation is stabilized Ari moves onto the mana nerve. Without the information gained and transmitted through the mana nerve our [Manabody] will be nothing more than a stationary waste of power. She starts with sending pulses from our [Soulcore] and waiting for their response. Collecting and analyzing the data they’ve acquired from the mana nerve.

More and more pulses of mana leave and return through the nerve while Ari analyzes and decodes the information. It isn’t before every pulse leaves and returns with a delay of 150 milliseconds that Ari starts translating and transmitting the information to me. It has taken a couple of days of constant operation for Ari to reach this stage.

I would have cried in happiness if Ari had been able to read my consciousness while keeping our body running. I was feeling something for the first time in over 60 years that wasn’t pain from damage to our soul. It wasn’t anything fancy or anything. Just the feeling of the stone our body lay upon while being forced downwards by gravity.

That reassuring weight was something I had taken for granted. Never even noticed in fact. It was just something my brain made note of and nothing more. At this moment though, feeling any stimulation at all is an extraordinary feat. I send my feelings towards Ari and get a very similar response of feelings sent back. Her experience is a little different than my own but still as impactful if not more so.

After getting a basic enough grip on the received information Ari starts sending out her own. Making mana tissue other than our heart contract and flex in different ways. She doesn’t put any real stress on the tissue as she is merely testing her control over every cell she can reach from the mana nervous system.

When she’s explored every bit of reach the mana nerve covers, contracting every muscle in every way she can and even managing to move whole muscle groups at a time she moves on to the most pressing sensory organ.

The first to be tested are our eyes. Opening our eyelids Ari activates [Mana Sense] to get a reference point. She then rotates our eyes in their sockets while shifting the pupils. Collecting the data the nerves provide her with and using the sensing skill as a reference, she’s able to get a very basic understanding of their inputs.

When she’s done with her decoding and analysis she forwards the information transmitted by the eyes to me. It is glorious. Ari’s still the one moving our eyes and focusing our sight on different things but being able to see anything is almost magical. Well it is magical since it’s all powered by mana but that’s not the point.

With a very basic understanding of how movement, sight and touch work in our new body we start the long process of synchronizing output from me with input from Ari. It’s very difficult in the beginning even though we’re almost the same person as the minute differences between us make the smallest misunderstandings very obvious to both of us.

It’s not easy to give a conscious output of the exact muscle groups, the exact power you want and exact duration of how long you want it to last while getting inputs that your partner thinks you need in order to make your next move.

It’s hardest on Ari though as she has to manage every bodily process while transferring information and receiving instructions. There’s luckily no anger, tension or frustration directed between each other when we struggle as we both share the same soul and in practice, the same will. It’s easy to forgive yourself when you’re trying your best.

We’re reminded of my time on the waystone monolith as we roll, twitch and spasm on the ground. Trying and failing again and again but not giving up. We slowly reach the stage where we're able to coordinate the full movement of one limb. Then we try doing the same with two limbs, then three, four and five.

When we can simultaneously move the neck, arms and legs with the will of me and the ability of Ari we move on to the torso. The torso takes almost as long to get a handle on as all limbs combined. There’s just so many muscle groups on the torso and getting a good handle on the movement in all the directions available takes time.

Then we combine it all, every muscle in our whole body working together, while still lying on the ground. But as they say, you need to learn how to crawl before you learn how to run. And crawl we do. We make our way on elbows and knees across the core room. After getting a handle on crawling comes standing up.

After learning to stand up comes standing still without falling which is surprisingly difficult in long durations. Then standing on one foot, balancing on our toes, balancing on the toes of one foot. We make sure to know how to keep our balance in all sorts of situations while standing.

Finally, FINALLY. We get to practice walking. It’s more of a practice in falling at the start but not that we mind as falling is an art that few ever master. When we’ve learned how to walk we learn how to run and when we’ve learned how to run we learn how to sprint. Then comes jumping. Walking and jumping, running and jumping, sprinting and jumping.

It goes on and on. Always new movements to master. New ways to incorporate muscles that I didn’t even know were used in that movement. It takes us a long, long time before we both feel that we’ve reached a human level of control of our body.

“You know Zel, we’ve been trying to learn to move a body for over 1 year now. A year! It’s no wonder humans take so long to grow up, even with the brain doing the heavy lifting for them it must be at least half as difficult as this has been.”

“Yeah. I can’t remember learning to move in my old body but I know I was clumsy as hell as a child. Always running into things, often table corners. Mom must’ve been terrified to even see me twitch.”

“Well we’ve got a good foundation now. I suppose we got to do more advanced maneuvers next? Getting a grip on the unarmed, small blades, throwing and other skills?”

“Definitely. But before we get to that I have a fun little side project for us to work on. All this movement training has started to get boring with no variation. It’s time to calibrate a few more senses.”

“Zel… Are you seriously going to have us calibrate this now? Can’t it wait?”

“Nope. It’s been to fucking long since I’ve had my sexual tension released. We need to get it done. Now!”

Ari lets out a long suffering sigh.

“We don’t even have the biological processes that make such actions necessary. There’s no tension in our body whatsoever.”

“Exactly. It’s unacceptable. Listen Ari, we need to implement a few of the downsides of our biological counterparts in order to get the highlights of said counterparts. There can be no release without tension. I know you understand this on a logical level but I promise you it’ll be worth it. We need to live a free life, remember? We can’t do that if we close ourselves off in a prison of our own making.”

“That makes a surprising amount of sense, Zel. Alright, we'll start on ‘project horny’ right away.”

It’s probably the most fun we’ve had working on this thus far and Ari definitely lets it go on longer than necessary to merely calibrate. Not that I mind it at all.