Walking up the secret corridor into the my own palace was an interesting experience to say the least. My father told me not even he had taken this passage before.
The guards and Uncle Vili left at this point, but I still noticed extra security around the castle now.
My parents and I slowly walked into the courtyard. My mother slowly walked in front of me and sat on the ground with a meditation like position.
My father then just sat next to her in a similar format and gestured for me to sit in front of them.
"Loki, we are so proud of you for what you've done the past year and a half. Now it is time we introduce you to the proper was to grow stronger. I will now teach you the method to use mana to see your soul. I will then follow up with the delicate manner in which you can become closer to nature and grow with it. Your father will also teach you the method to make your soul stronger through destruction," my mother said.
"Remember, you are to not share these methods with everyone else. Before we start, are there any questions," my father said.
I did have one question about this and it was important.
I asked, "Will me learning this prevent me from learning other arts the change the soul?"
My mother thought for a moment then said, "yes and no. You see Loki you can usually learn multiple arts. There are some arts that are incompatible like the druid arts and the necromancer arts from Hel. Besides those two, the other arts are fine. In fact you are going to learn a crafting art soon. The only problem comes in when you have to many arts. Too many arts can do more harm than good. Splitting your attention and even the potential crippling of the soul are known to happen when you dabble in too much."
"Luckily for you, we've researched it and looked at live examples. We know that the way your soul changes due to these three arts are very synchronized and will help you a lot more and build a very stable foundation". My father joined in.
"Okay then I have no more questions I'm ready", I said.
"Okay open your mind we will now transfer this information with our souls," said my mother while lifting her finger to my head.
My follow closely mirrored her as well. A white ghostly glow then formed in their fingers and suddenly several thought appeared in my head.
It wasn't like seeing memories but more like remembering the words in a book. I instinctively also know how to look at my soul. I just make a mana connection from my soul to my own life force in my head.
Let's analyze these methods....
If I didn't have proof that the soul existed I would never believe this bullshit of increasing the soul's power let me tell you that much.
[im tired of saying it....LANGUAGE]
Then don't!
I woke up from a trance a little later that afternoon to see my parents gone. I quickly rushed to my study eager to document everything I learned. It's imprinted in my brain but I need to write it down to dissect it.
______
Okay here we go. My first impressions without any experimentation is that both methods are literally suicide.
Understand that the soul is an extremely delicate thing. On Earth, there was many explanations for what the soul was. The source of memories, the source of all emotions, the source of all desires, the source of all the original sins, a spirit form of you, a gaseous substance, or a type of sphere. Regardless of the explanation they were all a little bit right yet extremely wrong.
The soul is corporeal yet incorporeal. It is technically the spirit form of someone and does contain their memories but it isn't their source of memories. Memories are imprinted into by a type of connection in a shell. It is located in the core of the brain. It is spherical with a constantly shifting gas in the inside.
That gas is my essence while the outer layer is what's called a soul shell.
The shell is present in every single body and it is what connects a person to their essence. If the essence doesn't match the shell then that body is incompatible to the soul.
When someone dies that shell with the essence leaves like a stork to deliver the essence to reincarnation.
This was some of the stuff discussed in the two manuals but also some deductions I've made on my own based on my experience.
[you are mostly correct. You aren't incorrect enough to hurt yourself so I'll allow you to continue this line of thinking]
Thanks?
Anyways, that essence is everything that makes up you. It contains the values you grew up with over time and the memories you acquired.
Your values and how you behave are based off your genetics at first and then are subject to change based on how you were educated.
You can think of it like and empty hard drive. It's empty at first, but then you plug it into a computer and the base settings of the computer are imprinted on it. Following that by downloading anything or deleting anything you slowly change those settings.
The only thing the essence comes with is two things. It's connection to mana and will. Will is everything you desire and drive to push you forward.
Souls have a will that's carried over no matter what incarnation their in. It's what drives a person. Will can be good or evil.
That's why the Buddhists thought desire was at the root of your core being. Unfortunately for them I can't understand the ramifications of removing your will from your soul.
I also know that this is likely an incomplete explanation since I have many more unanswered questions.
In any case these manuals make me do something to the essence that's tantamount to suicide.
Artificially change the essence. The changes to the essence these manuals make will make a strong architecture using the essence as clay.
The warrior one is fairly simple. I overload the essence in my shell slowly with man in order to strengthen it. Apparently mana can act as a substance that strengthens souls.
Basically it's a forced evolution of my soul. From what this manual is saying, it's also extremely painful.
Strong warriors actually have their gaseous soul condense thereby increasing its power and my own will power. At its strongest, my essence would be a large spherical diamond taking up most of the space in the core.
In all honesty, this sounds like what the inner alchemy Taoist cultivators were trying to do in ancient times. Most of them died for it.
The druid manual is even more harsh. I have to surgically alter the shape of my shell and essence. The shell would develop holes in the top with a light film to keep the essence just inside. Then I would shape my essence into a tree like shape with branches reaching into those holes. I would then be allowed to access more of the nature network using the branches. Of course this process is done slowly and my essence is turned into a seed first. I will then water the seed with mana.
As crazy as that sounds, I will be doing both these processes at the same time. My parents included some extra information like how to share memories with people like they did. It's only usable when I gain control over my soul. Souls have my imprinted memory so this isn't far out of the wheel house.
They also included notes on the experience of how some people cultivated both methods.
They would first complete one part of one manual, then complete another part of the other. Slowly step by step they would change the soul using both methods.
The end result being a diamond tree soul essence.
Completing one manual then the other is possible but there's one problem. It's extremely painful. Sometimes a soul can't withstand that torture and breaks.
I don't think I'll have that problem though because my soul will be strengthened internally with the warrior training. I just have endure some pain though.
How bad can it be?
[Welcome to hell...]