A man was standing in a place filled by darkness, a great number of whitespecks of light were floating around him. The man rised a hand and one of the floating specks was shot toward it, but the speck of light didn't stop in his hand instead spin around his arm,then his chest and then floated up to the from of his face. The man smile slighty, and all the remaining specks of light flew to the one in front of the man face condensing a ball of light which afterward was absorbed in the man's chest.
No matter how many times passed Akin couldn't get bored of the sensation he got after absorbing soul energy. The earlier perfom was him testing his power, after anothers five years in this place, based in his own estimation, he was able to make some progress in his soul cultivation. Not only his power rised by a huge gap, compared to when he was a simple human, but after some years of analysis and maybe some kind of study he now had a better understanding about souls. And his gain wasn't only in soul power, and soul-related knowledge, he was also able to bring two elements inside his Soul Realm.
What he did before was just an application of manipulating the air around him with the aid of his Spiritual Sense to keep track of every speck of light and the changes he was inducing in the air current. Sadly, the soul power consumption was very high, so he understood that his control over the air was rough but it was still something. The second element he got was ice, even though the soul power prevent him from froze, after he learned how to use it and after he was able to bring the air inside his Soul Realm, he thought he could do the same with the cold in the air. In order to made his experiment he dissipated the soul power shielding him and was throw to the nearly frozen state again. This time, and with the experience from before it took him half the time to create ice inside his soul that with the air but still he needed a year anyway.
The Spiritual Sense was the other great gain he got from cultivating his soul, this was what allow him to see everything in more than 100 meters around him. This could only be described as marvelous, it was like being in every single place at the same time inside of those 100 meters. It took him a while being able to exert full control over this new sense of him, being able to expand it or contract it, wrap or ignore an object but when he able to do so was like a child with a new toy. And, as a child, he tried to scan everything around him, even the souls inside the fire, but as soon as his Spiritual Sense touch the fire it was burned down, adding another level of dangerouness to the fire. This was also the moment Akin gave up in trying to bring some fire inside of his Spiritual Realm, at least for the moment.
After having harvested the remmants of soul in this area Akin needed to move in order to search for more. His body was covered by a layer of darkness and Akin merge totally with the surrounding, this was a version of the Star Cloak and was called Starless Night. And yes, darkness was the third elment Akin was able to use, and the only one he didn't needed to bring inside his Soul Realm, furthermore, and from what he knew, it seemed as he had a high affinity with this element.
If someone with some knowledge related to soul cultivation were to seen Akin undoubtedly he would thought that Akin was in the Soul Reformation realm, the fourth realm when cultivating the soul at least per Hell standards. The soul realms up to this point were called Estimulation, Awakening, Strenghtening and Reformation, being the last one a very especial realm. Even though it was the fourth between the soul cultivation realms it could be crossed in any realm after the third one or not be crossed at all, it could be crossed as may time as you wanted too, as long as your soul could bear with it.
Ideally it should be the fourth realm, in which you would remodelate your soul so it would be more suited to the path you wanted to follow grating you lot of benefits when it came to energy absorbtion, manipulation or comprehension related to that element. It could also allow you to remove some flaw from your soul, as changing your personality or even your sentiments.But the process of reformation was painful, very painful as it was changing what your soul was, it was like having you body smashed in order to change its form. Some people would go mad for sure if they knew that Akin passed the process sleeping soundly.
Virtually Akin was in this realm as his soul and even his soul realm transformed enterely, one being like a universe the other the space where that universe existed. But it was only virtually as even when his soul was totally transformed when it came to soul power, his, was only at the peak of Soul Awakening. After five years of consuming great amounts of soul power constantly it could seemed as it wasn't much but taking into account the particularities about Akin soul cultivation technique, it used the soul power to made the Soul Realm expand beyond the size it should had at his level on every level, it was pretty normal.
Akin didn't knew the cultivation realms, and based in his cultivation technique he was very weak as he wasn't able to build yet even a minor version of his Star Palace but compared to who he was, he was ways stronger now. He wasn't discorauged because as long as he continued to stay here he would became stronger, and after 10 years his body hadn't almosy aged. His only preocupation? What amount of power would he need before going out of here and where he could find any information related to her assasins?
As Akin moved through the darkness, something caught his attention thanks to his spiritual sense he could heard it, it sounded 'Thump'. And there it was again, it was very subtle but he could heard clearly, he recognized the sound, it was a hearbeat. After 10 years Akin finally found a living being.