The room bled into black as I felt myself falling backwards, only to find that I was standing.
I wasn’t in Miflin’s shop anymore, no, I was back.
“Welcome back to your soul-space.” A clear crystalline voice spoke behind me.
I turned suddenly, my surroundings blurring into indistinct colours and impressions, I felt like I was inside the painting of the greatest impressionist, my surroundings flowed with no rhyme or reason I could understand, I never was a great art expert after all.
But in between the chaos, there stood Miflin, she was, for lack of a better term, divine.
She radiated power in a way that the waking world couldn’t express, or that I most probably couldn’t comprehend, but here, her essence was laid bare, her power was as clear as day, a sun before my torch. A brilliant sun that was overshadowed by the great darkness that lay behind her, so big that her presence looked minuscule, so dark that it could smother her light in but a moment.
I took a step towards it, just to realize that I didn’t have feet, actually I couldn’t see, I was feeling everything around me, and the influx of information was getting strange, making me feel nearly nauseous, as if I had eaten too much.
“Oh right, you fleshy beings have quite some trouble adjusting at the beginning, let’s try this…”
After a moment our surroundings changed, the flowing colours and impressions slowed and coalesced, a shifting barrier formed around us, hiding my soul from my senses, while a completely white pavement appeared under us.
In a scant few seconds we were in a blank space, it looked endless to my senses, the white floor giving it a scary quality, having no tiles or any kind of distinction.
“What did you do? I can’t feel my soul anymore, are we still in my soul-space?”
Miflin approached me, her presence blinding my senses once more.
“Of course we are, I just isolated us from the rest of this place, it would be the perfect training ground.”
“How so? And how could you manage to enter my soul-space?”
She smirked at me. “Who do you think I am? Someone like Vix O’Ran would never be able in his lifetime to do something like this, but for me it is as easy as lifting a finger.”
That was actually scary, if she could interact with this space… with my soul with such ease, the damage she could bring upon me would be disastrous.
“You are wary of me, you don’t need to, but it’s good to be aware of the risks. Here within the bounds of the tutorial I would face tremendous consequences if I did something harmful to you, but outside? That would be fair game to anyone with the same capabilities as me, mind you, there are not that many.”
“Well, this reassures me, even if only a little, but we are not here to be reassured.”
“Indeed, I need to start preparing you accordingly, first you should learn to manifest yourself fully into your soul-space.”
“How?”
“Through the use of aura of course, how else?” she said nearly mockingly.
“So you’re not really here…”
“Ah, you caught that pretty quickly, no, you’re right, this is an aura projection of myself, I can enter your soul-space, but doing so would kill you, thus, the projection.”
“Why would it kill me, aren’t you a being of aura?”
“Yes, but I’m much more than what I appear from the outside, my soul would crush yours if I were to enter this place. Actually, just the pressure of my full aura alone would destroy you.”
Damn, how does one go about defending himself from someone like her?
“Didn’t you say that my soul was ancient and powerful?” I wanted to know everything about that, if I could gain more insight into who I was… imagine the power I could gain. But at the same time I was scared that my identity would wash away in the other memories, in the System one could live for thousands of years, what if I gained the memories of my past self and thought about all my life as a mere vacation from whatever I was doing before? These thoughts plagued me, they fought with my curiosity, and still there was no winner in sight.
“Ok, thanks for not destroying my soul, oh all powerful teacher of mine, now how should I go about manifesting myself here?”
“You can be really dense sometimes, don’t you have a skill called Aural Manifestation? It’s actually perfect for this endeavor.” Her tone irked me, mostly because she was right, I could have reached that conclusion by myself.
“Ok, so I can use skills in here, can I use even-”
“Accelerated Processing? Yes, actually after you manifest yourself you should totally use it, it would multiply the time we would be able to train significantly, but you would feel like a used rag after, I’m warning you now.” Why did she sound excited at the prospect?
“Ok, I will tr- hey… how do you know I have Accelerated Processing? I never told you about that skill.”
“I don’t need you to tell me your skills, I can see them from here.”
I took an imaginary breath. “Miflin, I have been in the tutorial for less than two weeks, I have no formal education or inherent knowledge about how all of this works, so don’t make me ask you a thousand questions, please, just explain yourself plainly.”
She huffed, and tapped her foot on the perfectly white floor once. “It’s the prerogative of a student to ask questions, and the teacher to answer.”
“How many times have you actually taught until now?”
“You would be the first!” she said in a chipper tone. For some reason I was expecting it, I suppressed another sigh, at least she was willing to teach me.
“Great, so how are you seeing my skills?” I wasn’t going to get an answer without a question apparently, so I could as well put my expectations away and just get on with it.
“Simple, they are magical constructs that orbit your soul, you have too little perception of the inner workings of your soul-space to be able to sense them, especially with your curse interfering and your messed up memories spilling into your aura and flooding this place.”
“Ok, that doesn’t make much sense… but a couple of people in my group could touch upon the skills and alter their functionality quite a bit, or at least alter their parameters, why can they do it and I can’t even feel them?”
“Ooh, that’s interesting, it can be for a couple of reasons, one, they can be very talented, or two, their soul is pretty much new, and their soul-space is very clear, in any case you would have to work a bit before being able to directly alter your skills. Actually, how did you go about doing that until now?”
“I just forced them. I imposed my will upon mana or life-force and then pushed the skill where I wanted it to go, I know it’s kind of brute forcing it, but it worked until now. I got my Aural Manifestation this way.”
“And you nearly died for it… haa… ok, let’s get to it. You can brute force it right? Do it then, push that skill into manifesting yourself here, now you are a fragment of consciousness, a limited being that can’t even interact with his own soul, give yourself a body, your aura is everywhere here, just harness it.”
Ok, just manifest myself in here, how should I go about it?
I tried to find that supernatural feeling that usually allowed me to employ my skills, aura fell into that category, but I could control it even by myself, if with much more difficulty.
I felt it respond, somewhere in my soul-space my Aural Manipulation skill was humming an eerie tune, a tune that I could direct and control. I was consciousness in this state, and aura was everywhere, so that means that I was literally will incarnate, so if I wasn’t terribly mistaken I could be able to infuse myself into aura directly, the same way that I infused mana or life-force with my will.
I did just that, I willed myself to enter the surrounding aura, priming it, shaping it with my intention, I needed a body. A vessel of aura that could contain my consciousness, I felt myself seep into the aura around me… it was… strange, but not at all painful, or strained, actually it felt like entering a warm bath, I was bathing in the currents of my aura, it was good, it felt right.
The currents of aura flowed continuously into me, shaped by my subconscious while my mind floated in this peaceful state, I couldn’t tell how much time passed, but as I opened my eyes I could actually see, I realized then that I had eyes. Looking down I saw my hands, my arms, I was bare for everyone to see, my form was similar to Miflin’s own, she gave me the inspiration for this vessel, after all she was exactly what I was trying to accomplish, an aura body containing my mind, able to operate in my soul-space.
My form though, contrary to hers, was composed not of that luminous aura, but it was dark grey, with some ribbons of silver and lighter colours flowing in me at all times, and I was too big, clearly too big.
“Finally! Why the hell did you take so long! And what is that form?”
I looked down, past my hands and at the height of my knees stood Miflin, she was tiny in comparison, but her form I realized was much more densely packed than mine, her aura was condensed, more powerful, many orders of magnitude more powerful than mine.
“I don’t know, I just tried what you said, how long was I out? And how do I make myself tiny?”
She threw up her hands as if in exasperation. “It took you a couple of hours. Just let go of all that excess aura, and reach a normal height please, it would make things easier.”
I tried to do what she said, but it was like my new body here didn’t want to let go, my consciousness was infused in all of the aura that was composing me right now, how to let it go? Should I just will it?
I tried and it wasn’t working for some reason. So I went about it another way. I tried to reverse the process that brought me into this situation, I retracted my will from the aura composing my body.
The sensation was strange, I felt myself growing more stable as I let go, ribbons of aura of every shade of grey started escaping me like water from a punctured balloon, little by little my form reduced, until after a couple of minutes I stood just slightly taller than the Aureal in front of me, the same height difference that we had in the real world.
“Took your sweet time, huh? Do you enjoy making your teacher wait for you?”
“It wasn’t my intention, but now I’m getting the gist of it, it should take less time in the future.”
“See that it does, you would have to practice on your own in your spare time, to enter this place, to exit, and to create your vessel, for now this would be sufficient, so we will start with a simple lesson.”
“I’m listening.”
“Master.”
“What?”
“I’m your teacher and you’re my student, you will address me appropriately.”
I sighed, why was she like this, sometimes she was all unicorns and rainbows, then she became dead serious, then playful, now strict, I could tell that she meant what she said, and wouldn’t accept me calling her anything else.
I would relent, it was a little price to pay for her teachings.
“I await your instructions, master.”
A smile spread on her ghostly visage, then she returned to seriousness.
“We will start from the fundamentals, and I won’t repeat myself, so listen closely…”