As a matter of fact, Danny had made the exact same inquiry to the demon, to which Tutu just laughed and said: “You have the idiot’s path available to you.”

“The most inefficient and wasteful way of using soul gems is to simply eat them. By doing that, the crystalized soul power will slowly interact with the soul power that naturally already courses through you, losing its solidified state by consequence and releasing the energy contained within.”

“Most of the power will end up dissipating, leaving you with almost nothing to show for it, but a very small percentage of that energy will end up nourishing you, making you… well… better overall.”

“You will become stronger, faster, have better reflexes, think more clearly and also live longer. Everything you can do now, you will be able to do better, really.”

According to Tutu there were way better ways of using the soul gems for empowering oneself than simply gobbling them up.

The demon kind alone had innumerous methods to improve the efficiency of the process. Each clan, tribe or faction having developed their own advantages, strengths and secret techniques through the ages in order to improve their power and contend with both other factions of their plane and enemy races over more resources, influence and wealth.

Generally speaking, the same was true for the other invaders as well, even when considering how different they were from the demon kind.

However, those more advanced methods and techniques were not something Danny could count on. He had no background to rely on, no foundation to speak of, so he could only do it the crude and stupid way.

All civilizations that interacted with astral power and ended up developing their own culture and technologies that made use of it had started from this simple method of eating soul gems at some point or the other. You have to learn to walk before you can start running after all.

Eventually, someone of their race thought it would be a good idea to ingest a sparkly crystal. People were idiots.

There were many cases of poisoning in human history resulting from someone placing something they shouldn’t in their mouths that proved that there were no bounds to stupidity.

Stupidity was universal, democratic and eternal. It cared nothing about race, wealth, background or personal inclinations. It showered us all with its magnificent light. All of us can be stupid.

To be fair, some of those cases might have been the result of intense hunger though.

There is no shortage of dishes on human’s culinary around the globe that take poisonous plants or animals in their making. How do you think our ancestors found out the correct method of processing those dangerous ingredients in order to make it safe for consumption? Trial and error.

Hunger causes people to make all sorts of desperate and irrational decisions. A lot of starved people died from trying out those ingredients until someone finally stumbled upon a way to safely eat them. Maybe that was true for the outworlders as well, though Danny wouldn’t count on it. Stupidity was a perfectly valid explanation as well.

Fortunately for those particular dumbasses from outside of Earth that chose to gulp down the soul gems, that decision ended up working in their favor. It really was a good idea to eat up those shiny crystals.

Danny would now be able to join this select group of people that consciously decided to ingest something that glitters.

Hurray for him!

However, Danny felt a little bit conflicted at the idea of eating up something he scrounged up from the insides of someone’s brain.

Given the spiritual nature of the names Tutu had provided him for the gems, Danny couldn’t help but feel that he was committing some kind of soul cannibalism.

Quite frankly, Danny felt more than a little bit disgusted by the notion of eating a fundamental existential part of someone. Maybe he was gulping down their empathy or their memories of childhood. Maybe it was their feelings for their loved ones or it could be their particular fondness of some kind of food.

Did the soul even contain those things like emotions and memories or was he mixing it up somehow? Where the line between mere brain function and spiritual existence lied? Would Tutu even be able to provide an answer to that question?

Danny wondered if he would be profiting out of the destruction of someone’s base being by eating up a crystal that was formed within their physical remains.

He did not know what to think and couldn’t differentiate wild guessing from possible truths. Did those crystals even contain anything of importance or were they merely byproducts of some bizarre kind of metaphysical chemical reaction?

Regardless of his misgivings, Danny merely inclined his head backwards, tossing the soul gem he had been looking at inside his mouth as he did so.

Danny then grabbed a bottle of water that sat beside him and pushed the thing down his throat with a few mouthfuls of the liquid, just as if it was a normal pill, while at the same time trying not to think too deeply about any moral quandaries and/or implications. Some things were best left unknown.

No matter what the truth was, Danny would still have to swallow the crystals anyway if he wanted to have any shot at surviving long-term. Since that was the case, why bother with questions that he had no control over and that would only serve to complicate things?

Better to hope for the best and dedicate his attention towards things his actions could actually have an impact over than to keep pondering over issues he couldn’t possibly begin to comprehend.

After swallowing the gem, Danny waited patiently in order to glean any perceivable changes.

After a few seconds Danny still felt fine, as if he had done nothing. There were no particular sensations to speak about and as far as he could tell, there were no perceivable changes going on with his body.

After a minute with nothing changing, Danny even started to undress himself to see if there was something going on underneath his clothes where he couldn’t see. But even after getting completely naked in the house’s living room, there was still nothing different about himself, both in terms of looks and sensations.

Danny was starting to wonder if one crystal was too small of a dose – after all, the demon did say that eating crystals was an extremely inefficient way of absorbing its energy – when he started to feel a strange sensation quickly spreading across his body originating from his stomach.

It was hard to put into words what he was feeling. It felt like some sort of tingling that was both pleasant and uncomfortable. It was a mixture of an itch that he could not scratch off added by some sort of relief over some issue Danny never really noticed was there.

Although it wasn’t the same, the sensation reminded Danny of what you would feel from removing the scabs from your skin. Even though you know you shouldn’t peel it off, the need to scratch the healing wound and attain momentary relief is almost irresistible.

Of course, Danny had nowhere to scratch at the moment. His whole body was tingling with the sensation, inside and outside. How would he go about scratching his bones, muscles and organs? There was no way to do so, and no matter how much he dug his nails into his skin, there was no release to be found. Danny would simply have to face the annoying sensation head-on and endure for as long as it lasted.

Fortunately for him though, it was not so bad. Even though it was uncomfortable, it was also fairly mild. Danny wouldn’t even flinch at this amount of discomfort.

As the minutes passed by, the feeling slowly started to subside. Danny figured that the crystal he had swallowed previously was running out of juice, and most of its energy must have dissipated already.

Since that was the case, Danny decided to eat another one of his crystals and see if there were any differences from how the first one worked. However, Danny decided to wait for any effects from his first dose to completely pass before gulping down his second one.

That way, Danny would be able to better compare both events and see if there were any changes.

He waited a little bit after the itchy sensation completely subsided – just to be on the safe side – before throwing another one of the gems down his gullet.

It didn’t take long for the effects of the crystal start kicking in. As far as Danny could tell, it seemed that the second crystal took about the same period of time as the first one to start showing its effects.

This time, however, the discomfort was way more intense. His itchy feeling came back with a vengeance and the relieving sensation that had accompanied it the first time around was now laced with hints of a burning feeling.

Still, even with the increased intensity, the unpleasantness was still well under Danny’s tolerance threshold. It would be hard to concentrate in any other activities while the effects of the energy release were ongoing though. Danny would have to plan ahead any future instances of eating those crystals and make sure he was in a safe location beforehand in order to avoid placing himself in a dangerous position.

Danny patiently endured this session while calmly waiting for it to be over as well. After a few minutes, he could already feel the energy from the crystal diminishing, so it probably would not take too long for him to get back to feeling normal.

From what Danny could tell, there was no difference from the first time around other than the increase in intensity. The time it took for the effects to kick in and the period they lasted seemed to be relatively the same as the first attempt.

Also, Danny speculated that the increased discomfort was caused by repeated usage of the crystals without interval. Kind of like when you try too hard to exercise and end up pulling a muscle.

If you wished to increase your muscle mass and get stronger, there was an optimal way to go about doing it. It wasn’t as simple as doing as many repetitions as possible with as much weight you could lift. At some point your body would give in, and the time you spent on repairing the damage done would be wasted time that you could instead be spending on furthering your goals.

To get the best result for the effort put in, one couldn’t just throw everything at the task and hope for the best. Instead, it made more sense to discover where your limits lied and develop a plan of action around that.

Having said that however, in order to make sure that he wasn’t drawing wrong conclusions, there was only one way to be sure. He had to test it on himself… you know… for science…