Naath woke up snapping awake in almost a panic. After a moment though, he quickly remembered that he had already safely retreated into a tree with Brutus. Naath let out a breath of relief and went to look over to check on Brutus. However, when Naath tried to move he found his body refusing to listen at all. No matter how hard Naath tried to move any part of his body aside from breathing and blinking he couldn't do anything. Naath started to grow panicked however right at this moment he heard a voice.

“Little brat this is why you need your soul sense active at all times understand?! You would have recognized the threat of that bear in an instant. But instead what happened? You almost got yourself, Brutus and I all killed! I've placed a special lock on your soul, now until it reaches a certain level you won't be able to move a single finger! Once you can hold up your soul sense 24/7 the soul seal will remove itself. However, if you cannot manage this basic task you will never regain control over your body back!

Don't worry I won't let you die, if that happens so will I, however, you will never be able to use your body again if you don't do this.” If Naath could still move his body he would have stiffened entirely, he had a thought and tried to circulate his true void arts. However, his body was completely unresponsive, after he tried to run his true void arts the rune let out a “hmph” Naath realised that the rune was serious and he grew angry

“What gives you any right to take over my body?! Remove this seal now! If not, I will keep another promise to never strengthen my soul sea again! You depend on me not the other way around!”

The rune’s voice rose and a trace of rage came from it. “Okay brat fine, be like that, but I will not remove this seal! You want your body back? Are you frustrated at not being able to help yourself? Then work harder and become more powerful than me! I am only able to use your soul sea to seal your body because you are so much weaker than me! YOU WANT FREEDOM WORK FOR IT!!! I'VE BEEN TRAPPED FOR TENS OF BILLIONS OF YEARS BRAT!!!”

Naath’s anger was swept away when he heard that he asked “billions of years? Senior what do you mean?”

The rune spoke up again saying “you want to know? THEN GET STRONGER!!! At the level you’re at right now would be hunted down like a wild animal by those after me if they knew! They would torture you for weeks to remove me and then kill you off like some piece of spoiled meat! I’m not letting up on this, from now on brat I will guide you to the bare minimum. Clearly, I have been too kind to you in the past and you have lost your respect for me, or perhaps never had any? Either way from this day forward until you find out what lies beyond cultivation of the body I will be relentless in training you!”

Naath went silent and let out a deep breath, one of the few things he could still do. With the rage of not having his own body under his control, he began to circulate the empty soul method. His mind started to become completely clear, only the thought of regaining his body remained, only the unrelenting anger of losing what was his. Naath detests the idea of anything that is not his choice happening to his body, he didn't care about injury in combat, that was a given.

But he firmly believes his body is his and his alone! The rune in Naath’s soul sea felt the pure unrelenting rage and was actually startled. He realised he had touched Naath’s bottom line. However, he firmed his resolve to train Naath in this way, if it was his bottom line, if he was angry then good that would motivate him to train that much harder. As the rune watched he realised just how true this was. The clear soul method was one that would empty the soul of all energy first. While the soul was void of any energy the energy that was ejected would be absorbed back in.

However, it would be absorbed into the walls of the soul sea rather than into the soul sea itself. This expanded the soul sea at a rapid pace, most times this would cause a person's soul energy to become thin and weak. However, the rune had long since noticed that Naath’s true void arts seemed to be able to compress Naath’s various powers passively. He knew this method that would cripple most people’s soul energy and ability to progress as soul masters would not phase Naath even slightly.

Instead, it would strengthen him at a ludicrous rate as the rune was witnessing now. As he lived in Naath’s soul sea, he saw something that shook him to his very core. Naath’s rage-fueled circulation of the empty soul method had emptied all of the energy in his soul in only five minutes. The border of his soul sea was absorbing this energy in simply ten more minutes Naath had completed one empty soul method routine. The only big weakness of this method to Naath is that he has to wait for his soul sea to refill with energy naturally.

However, to Naath this issue was non-existent, his true void body seemed to passively absorb energy and tried to keep Naath’s energy full at all times. However, it would not compress the energy in his bones for him, that was a process Naath could only do consciously. Naath still had to manipulate the energy, however, his body would always try to keep itself topped off. Most soul cultivators would need hours to refill an empty soul sea. However, Naath only needed 30 minutes for his soul sea to be filled again. Of course, this was just because he was only beginning to soul cultivate and his cultivation in this area and the energy available to him was small.

After 12 hours Naath had already run the empty soul method 24 times. His soul sea had now almost doubled in size, the rune in Naath’s soul sea remained stern and ignored the shock he felt. He only saw this as a good thing for Naath however it was also best he stopped here.

He spoke up saying “alright brat if you run the empty soul method any more you might damage your soul sea.”

Naath snapped back at him “I refuse to stop! Not until I get my body back! It’s mine and nobody else's I refuse to allow anyone but me to control it!”

Once again there was an unrelenting rage laced in Naath’s voice, in fact rather than slowing down his circulation of the empty soul method it sped up. Now every hour he was running it 3 times rather than two. The rune was trying to suppress its shock when it saw this. He knew he had touched Naath’s bottom line but he did not expect Naath to be this furious and unrelenting.

The rune after it’s shock, looked around noticing that there was no sign of any damage to Naath’s soul sea due to the rapid expansion, and smiled thinking ‘I guess I can push this brat harder than I thought huh?’ Naath without realising it was gritting his teeth and every vein on his body was popping out.

All of the elders watching him saw this and began to wonder what was happening. They could clearly see Naath was fighting with his all to resist something. Naath back on his tree was running the empty soul method at breakneck speeds. He was also simultaneously pushing with all of his effort to move his body and free it from this restriction. This is what was causing Naath’s veins to pop out. After pushing with all of this effort for a total of three days inside of Naath’s soul sea a “crack” sounded.

The rune turned towards this sound and when he saw the source he was scared witless. The seal he had placed had started to break apart!

The rune thought ‘This brat broke it through willpower alone?! What the hell is this freak?!!! Even a high-level soul master would struggle to break this seal without doing what the restriction asked! Yet without even using his soul energy to attack it, he has broken it?! What a monster!’

Naath felt and heard the crack as well and a sinister grin appeared on his face.