In the world of magic, danger was never limited to the living.
The sa held true in the realms where souls existed.
Even there, things lurked. Among the worst were what Mages often called soul suckers—powerful, bitter souls that had broken away from the proper cycle of reincarnation and now drifted through the soul dinsions feeding on others. So of them still held enough mind to hunt with purpose. Others had long since lost themselves completely and beco little more than ravenous instincts. Either way, they were one of the greater dangers tied to higher ascents, especially for Mages trying to move into circles that touched the soul directly.
Still, Kai had not expected one to interfere during his own advancent to the sixth circle.
He was still tethered to the physical world through his body. In his mind, this should have been a matter of enduring the pain, gathering enough mana, forcing the advancent through, and then returning before the connection weakened too much. But the instant he saw the imp rushing at him with its jagged teeth bared, all of those assumptions broke apart.
Kai moved left at once, and the dodge itself hurt.
A sharp jolt tore through his very being as the tendrils connecting him to his body pulled and stretched with the motion, but he still avoided the attack. The creature did not stop. It twisted in the air itself, tiny wisps of soul-mana gathering under its feet as if it were standing on currents invisible to anyone but him. Its body was thin and ugly, all sharp angles and stretched skin, with limbs just a little too long for its fra. Horn-like protrusions curled back from its brow, and its eyes glowed with a sick pale light that looked half-starved and half-mad.
Then it screeched and lunged again.
Kai shifted right this ti, and the imp missed him once more.
He clenched down through the discomfort, irritation rising quickly now. He still didn’t know why it had appeared so soon after the start of the process. But then, luck had never been sothing he could count on forever. More likely than not, the thing had sensed the strength of his soul and forced its way through from the soul dinsion the mont it noticed him.
The thing was clearly hungry for him.
But Kai had no clean way to simply get rid of it. In this state, he could not cast spells the way he normally would, and there was no chance he was going to release a burst of soul energy just to kill the imp. That might destroy it, yes, but it would also weaken his own soul, and if that happened, the advancent would fail before it properly began.
He needed his soul at its strongest for this. So what was he supposed to do?
The more he thought about it, the narrower the answer beca until there was really only one path left.
Ignore it and focus on reaching the sixth circle.
In the end, the imp did not look like sothing capable of much more than hurling itself at him over and over like a maddened creature chasing food it could not quite catch. So Kai turned back to the real work. He spread the nets again and kept drawing in motes of mana, forcing them through his soul while the process continued.
The imp did not stop.
It kept leaping at him, and in return Kai kept shifting around the anchor point of his body, careful not to pull the connection too hard but still making sure the thing never got close enough to touch him. That should have been manageable.
Except the creature was relentless.
It kept trying and trying, and soon it grew faster about it. Each new lunge ca a little quicker, a little sharper, forcing more of Kai’s focus away from the advancent itself. That was the real problem. Absorbing the mana and enduring the strain of his soul being forced toward a stronger state was difficult enough. Adding the imp on top of that made everything far worse.
Before long, Kai was certain he was wasting much more ti than he should have been. Even if ti moved differently here, it was still passing.
And with every mont that slipped by, part of him kept expecting the sa thing—that Spirit King Vaelthoros might burst into the chamber at any second.
That was a very real possibility.
Kai had no idea how the fight with the fire giant was going outside, and if it ended badly, then Spirit King Vaelthoros would almost certainly kill his physical body first. If that happened, Kai would not even have the luxury of a proper death. He would simply remain here, cut loose as a soul, drifting until sothing found him—perhaps the imp already chasing him, perhaps so other soul sucker wandering the sa dinsion in search of an easy al.
He could not allow that. Not after everything they had already done to get this far.
So even as he dipped lower to let the imp pass over him again, Kai began pulling in far more mana than before.
The effect was imdiate.
Pain tore through him with a violence that almost made him lose focus altogether. Every mote of raw mana entering his soul felt like hot iron being driven into the center of his being. A soul could only bear so much at once before it risked overloading, and Kai knew that well. But there was no clean way around it now. He had to finish this faster. More than that, he needed enough strength gathered up that, when the mont ca, he could spare a sliver of it to deal with the imp before closing the advancent properly.
That was the best way available to him.
So while the imp snarled and threw itself at him again and again, Kai forced himself onward. He drew in more mana, endured the growing pressure, and used every bit of willpower he had to keep climbing toward the sixth circle.
Fortunately, the creature hunting him was predictable.
If he had to judge it, it was a low-grade soul sucker, the sort that existed near the bottom of its kind. Most likely it had simply gotten lucky enough to find a weak point in the dinsional wall and force itself through temporarily. That luck, more than any real cunning, was probably the only reason it had reached him at all. It never seed to understand where Kai would move next. It only kept lunging like a half-starved animal, snapping and screeching and missing by instinct more than strategy.
Perhaps that was the last bit of luck Kai had left. Because if this had been any more intelligent soul predator, he knew the situation would have been far worse.
Like that, what felt like hours passed.
They may as well have been hours for how long it seed to stretch. The imp had already thrown itself at him hundreds of tis by then, each miss only making it more frustrated, while Kai kept building his soul.
A soul, in truth, was vulnerable.
If soone knew how to target it properly, even a powerful Mage could be brought down through that weakness alone. And a Mage could not afford such a flaw, not one who wanted to step into the final five circles, the ones that separated ordinary power from the path toward godhood.
That was why the sixth circle centered on the soul. More precisely, on building the sixth circle inside it.
The change would appear in his astral space, yes, but the true formation would not be rooted in his heart the way the earlier circles had been. It would be born in his soul instead—a vortex of energy, made from a purer and more primal form of mana than anything he had wielded before. Once ford, it would not only give him access to that power, but also spin around his soul like a protective layer.
And with that would co more.
Soul spells.
Not just attacks, but spells ant for scouting, defense, and other things far more difficult than simple destruction. One of them, if Kai rembered correctly, would even let him remain in soul form for much longer with far less pain. Of course, that still would not an he could wander freely too far from his body. If he pushed that too much, he might fail to return to it at all.
Still, the thought of such power—and the need to survive long enough to use it—kept him going.
So he worked.
The imp grew more frantic with every passing minute, but Kai did not give it a single chance to touch him. He kept moving just enough, kept drawing in mana, kept forcing the vortex into shape.
And eventually, it was nearly done.
The power in him was no longer just building—it was beginning to settle into form, warmth spreading through his entire being in a way that felt almost unbearable and yet deeply right at the sa ti.
Then the imp snarled again from ahead of him. And this ti, sothing in the sound made Kai’s focus sharpen at once.
He looked up just as the imp lunged again.
Part of him almost moved on instinct, ready to slip aside and let it miss once more, but the ti for that had passed. The thing had beco nothing more than a persistent parasite trying to wear him down and eat him if he slipped.
So this ti, Kai let it hit him.
For the briefest second, sothing almost like delight spread across the imp’s face, as though it believed it had finally reached the prize it had been chasing all this ti.
Then he acted.
From all the mana he had gathered into his soul, he released a fraction of it in a sharp discharge.
Soul suckers were difficult to handle in many ways, but raw mana was still effective against them, and this one was too weak to survive sothing like that at close range. The mont the discharge burst out from him, the imp’s eyes widened. It tried to recoil, but it was already too late.
The attack struck it point-blank.
Its scream tore through the soul-space around him, and then its body started to co apart right in front of his eyes. It quivered, broke, and then dissolved into small particles of light that scattered outward and vanished.
Kai let out a breath of relief.
He moved lower imdiately, drawing closer to where his body still lay slumped on the ground below. He had no intention of stretching the connection more than necessary now. Once he settled himself near enough, he cast out one final wide net, grabbing at as much of the surrounding mana as he could.
When it rushed into his soul, the sensation turned sharply cold.
He had reached the limit.
His soul had already taken nearly as much mana as it could bear, and every fresh mote that entered now felt like it was pressing against the edge of sothing that should not be forced any farther. But he kept going. He drove more and more of it into the forming vortex that would beco his sixth circle, feeding it until it finally settled into place.
Only then did he stop.
He waited, watching it closely, holding himself still while the new formation turned within his soul.
If it destabilized now, all of this would still be for nothing, but the vortex only gave off a faint pulse of mana, and held.
He checked the circle once more out of caution, but by then he knew he could not afford to stay there any longer.
So he ended the soul spell.
At once, the pulling sensation returned, only much stronger than before. Kai felt himself being dragged down, and in the next instant the bright, strange world around him vanished into darkness. He dropped back into himself. He felt the mont his soul reentered his body, felt the faint waves of mana catch around his Mana heart as his body adjusted to the sixth circle now ford in his soul and began imprinting it properly into his astral space.
The whole process lasted only a few seconds. It still hurt badly enough to make him cry out.
But it passed quickly enough. A few breaths later, it was already fading. Then, at last, Kai opened his eyes.
For a mont, all he could see clearly was one of the Elder Trees in the distance.
It took him another second or two to fully orient himself, and by the ti he pushed himself up from the ground, he realized the others were all staring at him.
Elias, Killian, and Veridia stood there with three different expressions. Elias looked openly shocked, curiosity and disbelief fighting on his face in equal asure. Veridia looked quieter, but not by much—her gaze was sharp and full of questions she clearly wanted answered. Killian, anwhile, was simply looking over Kai’s body as if trying to make sure nothing had gone wrong with him in the process.
Before any of them could speak, Kai did. “I’m fine,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with my body.”
Veridia was the first to respond. “So that ans you succeeded?”
“Yes. I still need to examine the sixth circle properly later, but it should work.” He paused, then added, “I could feel it burning inside .”
The mont he said that, Elias looked at him as though he had stopped being entirely human.
Veridia, for her part, only gave a small nod, though it was obvious she was no longer able to keep her thoughts to herself. Looking directly at him, she said,
“I still have no idea who you are.”
Kai answered imdiately. “I’m Arzan. No one else.”
Then he brushed the dust from his clothes, and forced his mind back onto what mattered. Veridia and Elias could ask whatever questions they wanted once they were back in their own world. For now, getting out of here was all that mattered.
The castle was still shaking.
That ant Spirit King Vaelthoros was still occupied with the fire giant, but Kai had no way of knowing how much longer that would last. It could be minutes. It could be seconds. The uncertainty sat badly enough in him already, but then his eyes moved over the others, and sothing clicked.
His face drained.
“Where is the Elder Tree seed?” The question ca out sharper than he ant it to. “You found it, didn’t you?”
No one answered right away. Kai’s eyes moved from one person to another. Finally, it was Killian who shook his head. “No, Lord Arzan, we didn’t. It’s not here.”
Elias nodded grimly. “I used a spell to search the entire chamber. Even with the interference here, I’m confident. The seed isn’t present.”
Kai turned and looked around again. And like Elias had said, there was nothing.
Nothing except the Elder Trees themselves. He sent his senses outward at once, this ti using the mana now circling through his soul. A wave of perception spread through the chamber, brushing across every tree, every root, every patch of grass, every hidden corner it could reach. The others seed to feel it as it passed over them. At the sixth circle, his senses were sharper than before—far sharper.
But it changed nothing. He couldn’t sense any seed or any hidden chamber.
Kai’s expression went pale as one thought kept pounding through his mind—all of this had been for nothing.
They had risked everything for this. He had built a plan so dangerous that all of them could still die here at any mont, and in the end, had it truly all been for nothing?
The castle shook again.
This ti the tremor ran hard enough through the floor that bits of dust drifted down from above. Elias stepped toward him imdiately.
“Arzan, what do we do now?”
***
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