By the time I get out of the water, it is late evening. Avoiding the threat of wearing wet underwear kept me lounging in the pond longer than intended, allowing the warm air time to do its job. That and the successful planning session I was able to have. While floating in my pond, I created a flexible schedule to keep me on track toward my ultimate goal of increased freedom.

Mornings I prepare for the day. This involves warm-up exercises, den improvements, obtaining food, and crafting.

Afternoons will be spent training physically. More power will open more doors. I feel the weakest physically, so that is where I will devote a reasonable amount of time. Also, when I decide to journey to the other side of the mountain, I don't want my physical limitations holding me back. The plan is to spend time conditioning, strengthening, sparring with Bones, and clearing a path to the mountain above the waterfall.

Evenings will be for meditating and cultivating. Meditating will entail analyzing past experiences—the little I have—and creating ways to improve my body and soul. Cultivation will be a combination of cycling, experimenting, and practicing.

Since it is already late, I plan to analyze my essences for the rest of the day. Something is restricting my strength. As a high-ranked cultivator, that bear should never have been a challenge. Honestly, diagnosing this problem should have been one of my urgent priorities. It's easy, though, to get caught up in the daily needs so much that I forget to take a step back and see.

Before I dive into myself, I take a moment to reorganize my guards. Currently, I have thirteen scorpses and Bones summoned. Having so many active minions is a constant strain on my core. Not that that is a bad thing. I discovered that putting pressure on my core like this helps to increase my soul's strength. However, with the thirteen scorpses, I have little mana available to use in my core.

For better balance, I absorb five scorpses, including Alpha. Ideally, I would like to keep Alpha. However, the giant scorpion is severely disadvantaged in our forest setting. Plus, getting rid of Alpha felt like five regular scorpses. Dismissing the scorpses puts my available pale energy around fifty-five percent. Plenty of mana to experiment and practice with.

My remaining eight scorpses are commanded to hide in a perimeter around camp. Not only will they serve as a hidden guard unit, but they will also act as a trap for animals. If any large tasty animals get close, the scorpses are to kill them without using poison.

Even though Bones is still working on his project, whatever that might be, my eight scorpses are acting as guards. The added security is going to allow me to do some heavy meditation. Inside my cave, I'm about to sit on a lumpy rock when I remember I don't have to sit on the ground. A moment later, I am relaxing in a reclined chair. Never again will I be found chairless.

Deep mediation is insightful. My soul is made up of cores and channels. Cores remain near my heart, creating and pulling in mana. Channels act as a system to transfer the created mana throughout my body. Complex interwoven routes start from my core and then spread out, running to the major body parts.

I have nine core layers, the innermost layer being my inaccessible core. Each core layer is made from the essence of my body, mind, and spirit. These three essences create the layers of my core.

Maintaining my meditation, I dig deeper into the mystery of my cultivation, inspecting each essence in my core layers, resisting the urge to gloss over the details. In a sense, I need to see my trees amid the forest.

My core layers were created by training my body, mind, and spirit. I had to focus on certain aspects of each category to train these three essences. Though the information appears before me, I cannot make sense of it.

What stands out specifically is that each individual segment differs from the others. While at the same time, certain aspects share similar features. Aspects tied to my body essence have common traits, same with the mind and spirit with their perspective aspects.

Examining my body aspects with more scrutiny, I can see specific features also share common characteristics. I focus on these segments of my core's layers.

Among the body essence, I can visualize three separate—clusters—for lack of a better word. Each cluster has three aspects. Nine aspects of my body essence in total. However, I can't get any more information by observing my body essence, so I move on to the other two.

Mind and spirit aspects are similar to the body. Each aspect shares common traits with its essence. The aspects can also be grouped into three clusters for a total of eighteen aspects, nine for both essences. Unlike the body essences, both spirit and mind essences seem to be complete, offering more detail the longer I study them.

Information unravels before me, clearing up much of the mystery. Each essence has three aspects. Though I can't understand the aspects of my body, my spirit and mind are different.

The three spirit aspects are Talent, Perception, and Refinement.

The three mind aspects are Survival, Wisdom, and Intelligence. This revelation explains the clusters I can sense in my core layers.

The most enlightening information, and possibly a guide to advanced training, is the knowledge I pull from the aspects. Each aspect can be developed to a higher standard. When a certain threshold of proficiency has been reached, perks are obtained.

Gaining three levels in the aspect of survival increased my intuition, fortitude, and adaptability. Wisdom increased my ability to absorb knowledge, memory capacity, and ingenuity. Intelligence increased my focus, processing speed, and creativity.

The talent aspect improves my ability to use mana, increasing my power, casting speed, and skill. Perception allows me to read and sense mana as well as soul bindings. Refinement enables me to absorb and regenerate mana and increases my soul's durability.

The perks I received from all of the training in essences are astounding. Needless to say, something is not right. Although, from what I gather, it might just be that my body is what is out of order. Of all the three essences, my body feels the weakest. At no point have I felt the benefits of the body pathways. On top of that, there has got to be some reason I can't understand those aspects like I can the others.

It doesn't take much reflection to notice that, unlike my body, my mind and spirit aspects have helped me in my journey without memories. More spiritual and mental strength would explain why using death mana has come so naturally.

That leaves me wondering what…my attention is jarred for a moment.

A detail skimmed over in my assessment works its way back to the cusps of my thoughts. According to my evaluation, at perception rank three, I should be able to soul bind. Not only that, I can unbind what I have bound. I don't know precisely what it means, but I should be able to experiment without dire consequences.

Experimenting not only will let me practice the skills, but it will allow me to see if my spirit is malfunctioning like my body. While I am convinced that my body is predominantly out of order, this will further help confirm that suspicion.

Not wasting any time, I find Bones, who is currently preparing dinner, and start the process of trial and error.

I have no idea what I'm trying to accomplish or hoping to achieve. I'm not even sure it is possible to soul bind a minion. Honestly, I haven't the slightest idea of what can be soul bound or the benefits of soul binding. Sure I have my hunches; however, they are nothing more than guesses and wishful thinking.

Still, even though I haven't a clue what I am doing, the thought process is simple. Bones is my number one asset. If there are any benefits of soul binding, then those benefits should go where they count the most.

Hoping for a breakthrough, I place my hand on Bones and begin cycling. Since soul binding is related to my spirit essence, I know it is tied to my mana. Somehow using my mana, I can create a powerful bond to an item or, in this case, hopefully, my minion.

First, I try cycling mana through Bones. Initially, the attempt is met with resistance, so I double down on my efforts and push my mana through. Forced mana breaks through, except now too much is pouring into my minion. Bones glows with a chaotic pale gray energy.

Suddenly, I see an eerie expression on the skeleton's face. Something is very wrong. I order Bones to run. I'm sprinting in the opposite direction when only ten steps later, I'm knocked off of my feet, followed by the sounds of an explosion. As I tumble around in my den, I see bones scattered everywhere. My head collides into a rock, and a shooting sharp pain bursts from my left eye.

When I wake up, bones are sticking into the cave wall around the explosion's center. Fire is scattered around the firepit, allowing me to see better in the dark cave. Soup will no longer be an option for dinner tonight.

Luckily I only have minor scrapes and bruises. Also, I am missing vision in one of my eyes. I am hoping that is just a temporary thing. None of the bones seemed to reach me though they did get uncomfortably close. Forcing mana into Bones, it turns out, is not the right way to bind. However, a skeleton bomb isn't a lousy ace in the hole.

I dismiss the scattered bones, summon a new chair, and wait for more mana to return. Pumping all that mana into Bones was taxing. While I wait, I continue to meditate on the mystery.

Other attempts turn out to be a lot less dramatic. Most of the time, nothing happens, and I'm met with blank stares from my minion. All sorts of attempts with mana were made to connect my minion to my soul.

Pushing in a bit of mana, pulling mana, tampering with the reserved mana in my core. Try after try, I failed. Still, I kept working on it. It was a stubborn moment, and I was determined to succeed even if I would fail the whole way there.

On the thirty-ninth try, I finally bind Bones. Turns out it isn't so much using mana to bind the minion as it is claiming it with my actual soul. It's weird, and I don't fully comprehend how it works. My soul or essence of my soul can be shared and bound to something creating a permanent connection.

The method was similar to pushing mana into Bones. It was just more than mana that I pushed into him. I can feel a stronger connection with my minion immediately. However, it takes a moment for Bones to adapt.

"What in the actual hell?" Silence is broken, shaking me up a bit. "Hey, I'm going to load my minion with mana." The voice is deeper and richer than mine, with grittiness.

"That's a very good idea—" The voice continues to sound within my soul. "—Not even considering how the unwanted surge of mana would make me feel. Not like that is surprising anyways."

The tone becomes slightly more sarcastic. "Hey, that's an ugly bear. Run towards it. Oh, the bear killed you? Let's try that again. Maybe somehow we will get different results doing the same thing!"