Immense satisfaction. That was the best description that Caeden could give for how he was feeling right now. This had been an axe dangling over his neck for over a month, waiting for something to go wrong.

Worse, he had been essentially sidelined on training until he'd got to this point. Not that he was arguing. It was too risky for him to start stressing his shrouds when it could result in catastrophic damage to their universe.

The fact was, he needed to strengthen his soul before advancing any further. Now, it seemed he was at that point. In fact, if he had to guess…

The panel of Forged Infinity flashed, and words started to scrawl across it. Caeden chuckled; right on time.

Hey, kiddo. If you're reading this pre-recorded message, it means that you've managed to complete the integration of your Sharp shroud. Congrats, good job, and all that. If it works out the way we hoped, you should have stabilized your soul to the typical level for a single-shrouded adult. That should prevent any egregious damage from accumulating on your soul.

Fair warning, this is no reason to get complacent. Your Physical Enhancement shroud is probably still at a low integration level if you followed our plan, which means that it's still susceptible to breaching if put under excessive strain. But, you should be able to freely operate as you were before we met, especially with Sharp.

Going forward, focus on bringing up Physical Enhancement, as we're still not in the clear. You can-ERROR.

Caeden frowned. The message stopped halfway through, with bright red letters interrupting it. Before he could even begin to wonder what was going on, the message started up again.

Ahh, shit. If you’re reading this, Forged Infinity detected something erroneous in your soul after the Sharp integration was complete. If you’re not on one of the ships from the CMS station, please get to one as soon as possible. I know you took one at time of writing this message, so hopefully, that won’t be too difficult. If you were smart, I think you’d have taken it everywhere with you since all those etherships are top-notch.

It seemed Caeden was fortunate that they’d chosen to take Hearthhome with them. Though, as the researcher’s message stated, they would have been stupid not to. It was centuries ahead of current standards in etherships. And that was considering CAs standards, which were much higher than other countries. Most nations didn’t even have ethership production, and those that did were far behind the pioneers of the Central Authority.

Since he had been meditating in one of the rooms aboard the Hearthhome, there wasn’t anywhere for Caeden to go. He was confused about what exactly was supposed to happen. Was there some manner of equipment onboard that he was unaware of? Something to help diagnose whatever had apparently gone wrong with his integration? It didn't take long for him to get an answer.

The screen flashed again, drawing Caeden’s attention back to it.

Great, you’re on a ship. Follow the arrow, please. See you in a bit.

The confusing message vanished, leaving Caeden looking at a blank screen. “What arrow? What do you mean, ‘see you in a bit’? I thought you didn’t come to this world.” Caeden muttered to himself. The first question was answered almost immediately as the floor beneath him started glowing bright red in the shape of an arrowhead, which darted off a moment later, leaving the room and trailing a brilliant path across the wood floor.

“Well, ok then.” Caeden sighed, getting up and following the path. While he did, he tried to parse what exactly was going on. Something had obviously happened, as indicated by the researcher's second method. Something to do with his shroud integration. Caeden was half-tempted to go find Cat and get her to take a look if only to satisfy his curiosity. Not for the first time, he lamented his own inability to perceive his soul directly.

That, above all other things, had felt like the biggest limitation to his progress. All told, Caeden felt like the integration process for Sharp had gone surprisingly fast. Some of that was due to prior progress he'd unknowingly made simply by using the shroud and especially by reaching Incarnation with it. And some of it was due to his extreme familiarity with the shroud, compared to Physical Enhancement.

Which made it all the more frustrating to not have any kind of real feedback on his progress. Sure, he glowed a bit more during meditation as he went, and he had the dial from Forged Infinity to guide him. But that lacked any of the visceral, sensory feedback because he could neither view nor feel his soul. Unless, of course, he ruptured it, at which point it became very easy to feel all the pain.

All of that had made it difficult to form any sort of ‘meditation best practices’ for integration efficiency. The percentage points on Forged Infinity were too imprecise when his gains from each session were less than a percent or a percent and a fraction therein. Sure, one session took him from 65% to 67%, but how much was that worth? Had he been on the verge of 66% from his last secession, or had this one been particularly effective?

Then there were his deep meditation sessions, the ones he could neither replicate at will nor instigate with any regularity. In these, he would routinely jump five or more percentage points. So, clearly more effective. But what about those sessions actually made them work better? Was there some kind of threshold, or was ‘depth of meditation’ some kind of scale that affected his integration speed?

If Caeden could feel his soul during his meditation, he could have answered these questions, parsing what worked from what didn’t. Instead, he was left with continuing as he had been, blind to any improvements he could have built on or inefficiencies he might have been able to fix.

Luckily, his gains with Sharp had come so fast and easy that none of it mattered much. He thought. It was hard to know, which was the main frustration. But the main point remained; he had brought Sharp to this point in a couple of months, which was more than fast enough for his purposes.

They had been getting down to the wire, though. Caeden and Lily had agreed that it would be optimal for him to hit 100% before the first youth combat events. If he experienced a major jump in power, like the researcher had indicated, it would be easier to disguise if no one had seen him fight yet. A sudden jump a couple matches in would bring down some questions as to whether or not he was cheating. Something it would be hard for Caeden to disprove without revealing things he really didn’t want to.

But Caeden’s concerns about efficient integration became much more important now, with the objective shifting toward bringing Physical Enhancement up. He had no illusions about his second shroud; it would be much harder to make any progress in a timely manner with it compared to Sharp.

Caeden had noted that, as his integration increased, it became progressively easier to advance. That was convenient but also alarming. Sharp had already started at 50% when Caeden was made aware of it. Physical Enhancement, by contrast, was at a measly 4%.

For weeks, Caeden had been dreading starting work on Physical Enhancement using his current resources. The gains would be painfully slow if his understanding of the situation was actually correct. He was less familiar with his second shroud, and it was starting from an incomparably worse position compared to Sharp.

Now, he had to deal with whatever was wrong with Sharp on top of the problems surrounding Physical Enhancement. Hopefully, wherever this arrow was leading him would provide a quick and simple solution. Not that he had high hopes for that. When it came to his situation, the researcher had made it clear that even the extradimensional, ancient entity was running blind.

The glowing path led right to a wall at the end of a hallway. As he stepped up to it, the section of wood-paneled wall moved back and up with a hiss of air, revealing a doorway. Beyond it, Caeden saw the familiar, matte color and blank design he’d seen in the CMS facilities. Along with a very familiar glow.

“Seriously, there was a CMS hidden on this ship the whole time?” Caeden half-laughed, half-sighed. If he’d known about this, he would have bugged the researcher about a few things much sooner. Likely, that was the entire reason it had been hidden. The entity didn’t want Caeden bugging him.

With a sigh, Caeden stepped through the doorway.

And immediately collapsed to the floor, vomiting and heaving. A massive wave of vertigo and nausea slammed into him as soon as he stepped into the room, forcing up his lunch and a not-insignificant quantity of blood. Rapidly, worried about the concerning amount of red liquid pouring from his mouth, Caeden sent Physical Enhancement to work. Inexplicably, his intestines and several other organs had small perforations across their surface. Caeden got the lingering sense that the same would have happened to the organs it seemed to miss, like his heart, lungs, and brain, but his shroud had instinctively protected them from whatever caused the damage.

Also, the source didn’t seem pervasive. Caeden was fully recovered moments later with no more damage appearing. It seemed stepping into the room had been some sort of trigger, and the damage wasn't created by some sort of ambient substance or radiation.

“What the fuck?” Caeden coughed, spitting up more blood and phlegm. He took several deep breaths, watching the mess he’d made rapidly disappear under the effects of whatever force kept this place clean. Feeling more than a little pissed at the lack of warning over a potentially deadly defense system, as that was what Caeden assumed had happened, he cautiously stepped up to the spinning, rotating mass that was a Central Management System.

The same as he had last time, Caeden held up Forged Infinity and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

After a solid ten minutes of standing there with his hand in the air, Caeden was starting to feel stupid. He was also feeling a rapidly mounting anger. The researcher had led him here, what the fuck was he supposed to do now?! The least he could do was offer up more instructions if he wasn’t going to respond!

Finally, energy began bleeding off the CMS, shooting toward Caeden and his shrouded weapon. It enveloped him, pierced him, and eventually ripped his consciousness from normal reality into the soul realm. Once more, Caeden could see his own soul, feel it, and move it, ever so slightly.

And once again, the towering grey figure stood before him, orders of magnitude larger than the small form of Caeden’s own soul. It was worth noting that the size difference had decreased somewhat. Without an easy way to distinguish scale in the empty void of the soul realm, Caeden could only guess if his soul had gotten bigger or the researcher’s had gotten smaller. Either way, something has changed.

Hey, hey. Sorry about the wait. I was busy looking at some other things, and I didn’t notice the protocols on Forged Infinity had triggered until a minute ago.

What the hells, dude? I get the whole waiting thing, though it was kinda annoying. But what’s up with the defenses? I nearly died! You at least could have warned me. Caeden let his annoyance be known. He could understand the researcher having other responsibilities or tasks that occupied his time. But not leaving a message about the strange force that turned his insides to mulch was ridiculous and dangerous.

Defenses? What are you-oh! Oh, oh! Shit, my bad. That wasn’t a trap or anything like that. I forgot how wonky portals are in your universe. Shit, that could have gone horribly wrong; my bad.

Portal? Caeden asked, some of his anger leaving with the sincere apology. Caeden didn’t think he was actually in any real danger of dying from whatever that had been. He had a strong defensive shroud, and he’d reached Embodiment. He was made of sterner stuff than that. At this point, he was much more concerned about his integration problems.

Yeah, the portal. The transport gate or whatever you want to call it. You know, the thing on the ship you walked through to get back here.

I don’t get what-wait back where?

Back here! At the CMS where I first contacted you. On the dragon reserve.

Caeden’s mind blanked. This CMS wasn’t on his ship. He’d been transported across a great expanse of the Starry Sea without even knowing it.

I don’t even- whatever. Caeden decided to let it go. Honestly, it wasn’t even top ten of the ridiculous shit he’d learned from this entity. Instantaneous travel across thousands of miles? That was nothing compared to learning his entire universe had been hand-crafted as a fucking petri dish to test shrouds on mortals.

What was this message about me not integrating right? What’s going on?

Right, hold on. I’m looking at the data from Forged Infinity right now. …Yup. Ok. Well, that’s good…Hmm. Oh, how interesting. Oh, oh no.

Caeden listened as the entity mumbled to himself while looking at something he couldn’t see. What ‘oh no’? What’s wrong?

Caeden, it seems we have quite the problem on our hands. And I’m not sure how to fix it.