Jason and Allayeth continued to meander through the garden of Jason’s spiritual estate.

“This realm is in a constant state of change,” Jason explained. “At first, it was a metaphor. A mindscape I could enter while meditating. I found it after my first direct encounter with the Builder — I’m assuming you’ve read my Adventure Society records.”

“Yes, although they left me with more questions than answers.”

“Perhaps you’ll get some of them. Some day. As I said, it was a mindscape, shaped fairly directly by my essences. After I died the second time I was able to enter the space, just myself and my familiars. Then… other things happened. From there, it became a genuine space, as you see. It also became less rigidly defined by my essences. Their influence didn’t vanish, it just blended together with other factors. I suspect it’s related to how I view them and how that relates to my sense of self.”

“It is,” Allayeth said.

“That was a confident response. You have a lot of experience with dimensional soul realms?”

“No, but I understand how we, meaning all essence users, relate to our essences. Are you familiar with the idea that essences shape who we are?”

“I am. When I first arrived in this world, I met two people with different views on this. One thought that the essences we choose shape us, so she wasn’t delighted with my sin essence. Or my doom essence. Well, she didn’t care for my essences at all, really. The other person, that’s my friend Rufus, held that our essences are what we make of them.”

“Neither was entirely right or wrong. At low rank, our essences are just tools. Things become more complicated at higher ranks, and attempting to engage with those higher truths too early can be detrimental to growth. It's why the Adventure and Magic Societies forbid sharing that information until it becomes relevant at high silver.”

“I've heard pieces of this, from Rufus' mother and elsewhere. From what I can tell, we're talking about exploring essences and how they relate to who we are on a conceptual level.”

“Yes. It seems somewhat absurd to not tell you, seeing this place. Starting around the peak of silver, the traditional method to advance stops being as effective. That’s the balanced approach of training the body, training the spirit, and then pushing them both to the limit by fighting monsters. Advancement slows as you reach that point.”

“At that point? Advancement feels quite slow now.”

“The wall is only the beginning. It gets slower unless you know what you're doing. This is where those without strong mentors tend to fall down because they lack guidance. That's not always true, though. Charist, for example, had no one to guide him but he moved quite smoothly from silver into gold. Some people just know exactly who and what they are. It's the complications that catch us up, so the process favours those who are…”

“Simple?”

“I was searching for a better word. Uncomplicated, perhaps.”

“That sounds worse. It makes it sound like you're calling them simple and think they're too simple to figure that out.”

“You may be right. In any case, they have an advantage over those who overthink things in coming to terms with their essences. It's not that essences alter our identities, not directly. What they do is find parts of our identities and latch onto them. They feed those parts of ourselves, fertilising and growing them until they are more prominent parts of us. You've noticed that essence users, especially high-rank ones, are often overt in their behaviours. Larger than life.”

“I’ve been a little guilty of that since I was an iron-ranker.”

“I'd wondered about that, reading your record. It's a good sign that your transition into and passage through gold-rank will be a straightforward one.”

“Are you calling me simple?”

“All I am doing is stating things that are true. Any conclusion you draw falls at your feet.”

Jason chuckled.

“Are you about to tell me how to reach gold-rank in three easy steps?” he asked her.

“Easy is relative. For example, the transition to gold-rank is the one time that being a core user beats out advancement through training.”

“Oh?”

“When you advance with monster cores, you can just throw money at the problem, buying cores until you hit gold.”

“I assume that is prohibitively expensive.”

“Oh, yes. There's a reason only royal families and the most established noble houses do it on a regular basis. It's often the last gasp of a house before it falls, in fact.”

“How so?”

“Most noble houses start with some exceptional adventurer. Someone with skills like yours but who doesn’t run around causing trouble everywhere.”

Jason stopped short and Allayeth turned to look at him, seeing his expression turn hard.

“I don’t run around causing problems,” he said, his words clipped. “I run around solving them, and I’m getting pretty tired of people seeing it the wrong way around.”

Allayeth had been slowly acclimatising to Jason’s strange world with its domineering, ubiquitous aura. Suddenly she felt all over again just how small she and her power was in Jason’s realm.

“I’m not going to force you to pretend you think otherwise, Lady Allayeth, but if you can’t, I’ll thank you to go. I get enough of people telling me what I am out there; I have no obligation to allow it in here.”

A portal rose from the ground next to them. They looked at each other for a long time in silence.

“I’m sorry, Jason. You always seemed comfortable with your image. You certainly play into it enough.”

His stern expression morphed into a troubled frown.

“I'm sorry,” he apologised. “I hate people using their power to oppress me, yet I keep doing it to others at the drop of a hat. And you're right in that the way I've conducted myself as an adventurer has understandably engendered certain impressions of me. I just wish that people would look past the way I do things and look at what those things are instead.”

“With respect, Jason, that is a desire shared by almost everyone ever.”

Jason blinked, then laughed, breaking the tension. Allayeth did not fail to notice that the world around them felt a little less oppressive.

“Come on,” he said, resuming their walk. “You were telling me about adventurers and noble houses.”

Allayeth took her place walking beside him, still following the creek. They had moved from the rainforest-style garden into a more cultivated area filled with roses. The flowers ranged from vibrant red to dark blue, with various shades of purple in between. The flowers all featured sharp, prominent thorns and their aroma was sweet but with a faint coppery tang.

She judged that this part of Jason’s realm was heavily influenced by his blood essence. She let her senses taste the affinities of the aura hanging heavy around her. It was sinister and hungry, but bursting with life and something else she had trouble placing. She examined it for a moment before realising that what she was sensing was immortality.

Her research into Jason confirmed that he had returned from the dead multiple times. It had also uncovered that the Builder himself had claimed that whatever power Jason used to resurrect had been expended, at least until he reached gold rank. What she was feeling now made her think that either the Builder was lying or the Builder was wrong.

“I’ve upset you,” he said, seeing her caught up in contemplation.

“No,” she told him. “This place leaves a lot to consider. About power and how much of it is tied up in essences. About you.”

Jason nodded.

“I am increasingly drawn to the conclusion that essences are a veneer,” he said. “The soul is the real power and essences are just tools to let us express that power. The fact that even gods and great astral beings are helpless to breach a resolute soul shows us that. I'm not sure that a soul has any limitations.”

“You should advance to late silver as quickly as you can, Jason. I suspect that your passage into gold will be swift and smooth.”

“Maybe I can beat the record,” Jason said. “Dawn said she trained a woman who reached diamond-rank before she was forty. I don’t think the Builder counts because he was a messenger.”

Allayeth stopped dead.

“The Builder was a messenger?” she asked.

“You didn't know that? His name is Zithis Carrow Vayel. He was a sixteen-year-old diamond-ranker when the great astral beings recruited him to replace the old Builder.”

“Where are you getting that information?”

“I move, from time to time, in rarefied circles. You know this.”

“I know that gods come to speak with you, even though you aren’t a priest. I know that you held a meeting with the Builder and the World-Phoenix and convinced the Builder to abandon his invasion early. I know that there were a lot of questions about the exact relationship between you and Hierophant Dawn.”

“And yet, people can’t stop messing with me,” Jason said. “They see the people I deal with, and instead of backing away, they see my silver-rank and covet that which is mine.”

“Are you truly surprised? Power is everything in Pallimustus, and you have more power than anyone realises. The hints of the power this realm represents are enough to drive people into a frenzy. You know this or you wouldn't have played the game of inviting Charist and myself to see it.”

“Yes, well, you called my bluff and won that game.”

“Did I? You could destroy me in an instant.”

“But will I?”

She glanced at Jason before looking away. Her aura senses told her more about him than her eyes did in this realm. She felt unconscionable power, a savage will perhaps too ready to face challenges to its authority. An iron fist, but one that was held open, shielding those underneath it. She was unsure if the aura of a benevolent tyrant was something to accept, run from or fight against. But that was a fight she did not ever want. There was an unflinching resolve that underlay all of it, like an infinite, invincible wall. Her instincts told her that this was the core of Jason Asano. This was how he stood strong in the face of gods and fought off the power of a great astral being.

“No,” she said. “I don't think you will. But I'm afraid of what happens when you change your mind.”

“Me too,” he admitted softly. “What happens when you leave this place? Are you going to sell me out to Charist?”

“If I said no, could you tell if I was lying?”

“Yes. But honestly? I could probably compel you to both speak and speak truthfully.”

“You would torture me?”

“No. I would rebuild your physiological makeup so that you were incapable of doing otherwise. Binaries are quite vulnerable in that regard, which is something Carlos Quilido is researching.”

“Binaries?”

“People whose souls and bodies are connected but still discrete entities.”

“So, almost everyone in existence.”

“Yes. I won’t do that, by the way. I don’t really know what I’m doing yet, and after I put you back together you would die the moment you left this place.”

“Why would you even tell me you can do that? Aren’t you afraid it will lead me to kill you the moment I get out of here?”

“I hope you don’t. I don’t think that would be good for my diminishing ability to trust.”

The scent of the flowers filled her nostrils, reminding her of the power of immortality they held within them. She suddenly had the feeling that killing Jason Asano would be a very bad idea.

“Now,” he said, “we keep getting distracted. You were telling me about noble houses.”

“Right,” she said distractedly, reorienting her thoughts. “Noble houses. They are usually formed when an outstanding adventurer is given a title for some great service to the local authorities. In the lifetime of that adventurer, they tend to flourish, but there comes a time when the adventurer is no longer around. When the founder dies or reaches diamond-rank and steps into the background, the family must make their own way like a baby bird leaving the nest. They have to fly on their own or hit the ground hard.”

“They need more successful adventurers to stay relevant.”

“That or several gold-rankers. Some families have amassed so much wealth that they can just pay their way to maintain a cadre of gold-rankers through cores. Adventurers are better though. They produce wealth instead of consuming it, and are more respected. But when a family is flagging, their coffers near empty and their highest rankers being silver, they sometimes throw all their remaining wealth into having at least one gold-ranker.”

“But one core-using gold-ranker won’t reverse their fortunes.”

“No,” Allayeth agreed. “Yet I have seen so many try anyway, desperately clinging to the fading remnants of long-dead glory.”

“How far can a core user go? We started talking about this because you said absorbing monster cores was an advantage for reaching gold rank.”

“Yes, because it doesn't require that shift in approach from blindly fighting monsters to coming to grips with the complexities of self-revelation. But, once they reach gold-rank, they stop dead. Once you reach gold, cores will no longer let you circumvent the need for self-exploration. You can make some progress with cores, but there aren’t enough cores on the planet to get you to diamond.”

“What about diamond-rank cores?”

“I don’t know. If absorbing one didn’t kill you, then maybe. But there aren’t enough of those going around either, and I’ve only heard rumours of people checking. Not many would waste the power of diamond-rank monster core when you could use it to forge an artefact. That kind of magic item is worth many times some core-using gold-ranker.”

“So, core use is ultimately a dead end. That’s why the artefact Purity left behind is so important.”

“Yes. It could change the landscape of the world. But some core-users manage to advance effectively, namely craftspeople. Unlike adventurers, they push their limits by pushing the boundaries of their craft, instead of fighting monsters. Their sense of self-reflection often outstrips that of an adventurer because of their focus on their craft. That self-revelation allows them to extract viable amounts of advancement from cores, giving them a path to diamond. If anything, I would guess there are more craftsperson diamond-rankers than adventurers. Like the woman whose attention you have been fending off for the last few weeks. Did she make your cloud flask?”

“She did.”

“She’s interested in the unconventional modifications you’ve made?”

“She is.”

“What are you going to do about that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Perhaps I could join you when you finally meet with her.”

“I would appreciate that.”

She frowned.

“Did I just become one of the powerful people that always seem to be hanging around you?”

“I don’t think of them that way,” Jason said, “which is one of the reasons they choose to hang around.”

“Then what do you think of them as?”

“Friends.”