"No one!" said Zack, baffled yet sure of himself.
"No, you dummy! The first one who gives up -- wins." Solgrave groaned into his fist. "Sani is the same way. With no way to kill the other, the only way to end the confrontation is to make the other give up on life. And please don't ask me why an immortal gives up!"
"I'm guessing the same way I just did?"
"Yes, finally!" Solgrave said, clicking his heels together, the vibrations creating a force field that expanded outward, forcing Zack's Sub-Space to stabilize. "Also, even if you can dominate another's 'Will,' both of you are still dead if neither of you can fix the damage you've caused during the disagreement."
"Every battlefield is a chosen battlefield. No ambushes!" Zack mutters, not sure how he knew.
"Correct again!" Solgrave cheered. "Only for stronger users, but hey! You get the gist."
"Can't disrupt the first layer of reality!" Zack nodded to himself, not sure how the first layer to him was the seventh layer for a mortal.
"Soul King's rule number one," Solgrave said, jumping and settling on Zack's shoulder.
Zack felt a slight shift in his realm, with an unknown force assuring him that Solgrave had left and that his eyes were deceiving him. "Trust your realm above all," Solgrave said. "Even in an ocean of lies, only you have the power to change your beliefs. Never forget that!"
"Split consciousness?" Zack asked to confirm his hunch.
"Not bad, kid... seems like you have a brain in there—somewhere—after all."
"I still don't get why you don't answer my basic questions in simple terms?!"
"That's why I said 'not bad'—you're far away from good, let alone a genius."
As Solgrave kept insulting Zack, his ears drooped, his nose widened, and his head turned into a pig, forcing Zack to chortle. "A bit of imagination and turning off a particular emotion has so much potential. Quite an underrated power if you ask me!"
'Kid improves fast!' Solgrave thought to himself, an involuntary smile giving away how proud he felt about Zack. 'Too fast—there might be hope for him after all.'
Zack grabbed Solgrave by pressing his face between his hands. "How did you do that?" he asked, baffled. "My intuition told me you were proud of me, but I couldn't read your thoughts like usual."
"Itachi!" Solgrave squeaked out a reply as his face was being squashed into a pastry.
Zack released Solgrave, realizing the legendary dialogue from the war arc. Solgrave's clone landed on both feet, while Zack quickly skipped away, dazed by his new reality like a lost kid.
"We have to be in contact, kid!" Solgrave warns Zack. "I didn't leave this clone much energy for it to survive in your Sub-Space without assistance."
"My bad, forgot," Zack said before realizing, "Wait! I already knew this somehow."
"Yeah-yeah, this power is weird that way. If you haven't noticed yet, your so-called 'intuition' is also a product of several detective manga which Sani has enhanced."
"I'm Sherlo—"
"—not even close." Solgrave interrupted the thought before it became a truth in Zack's realm. "I get that you've become all-knowing and all-powerful, but let's still be reasonable here; it's for your own good. No cap."
"No cap?"
"I could write a sentence that transcends philosophers, but that thick skull of yours won't let it in, so I'm using your slang."
Solgrave found a way to get under Zack's unemotional skin, even after he switched most of his emotions off.
"Give me a year," Zack said with gritted teeth. "I will surpass you. And make you beg for forgiveness."
"Someone forgot to turn off their ego switch." Solgrave chuckled. "Sani doesn't scale by age or wisdom, kid. It scales based on how much you understand the power. You should already know this, and the fact that you still gave yourself 'a year' tells me that you'll never be able to keep that promise. Hell—I can bet that you'll never surpass me." He grinned, letting go of Zack's pants and slowly dissipating—Zack's realm eating away at the foreign energy. "Seems like I was worried over nothing."
Zack peered at his hands, unable to determine why he didn't stop his realm from doing so, or caught onto Solgrave's hand, forcing him to stay. "I failed another test."
"Everyone does," Solgrave said, reappearing. "It's one of the reasons we call ourselves 'Broken Souls'. We are broken in more than one way, and it's also kind of a requirement for the power. Every sane person chooses to become one with that Source."
"Ouch!"
"Doesn't seem so painful."
"So we train our minds. Being immortal, all-powerful, and all..."
"Close. We train our Yizh, otherwise known as willpower, in the mortal realm, and if it flickers, even once, we pay the price with our immortal lives."
"All-in gambit!" Zack chuckled. "How stupid of me to think it had no such backlash."
"Reading manga and living in one are two different things, brat. Welcome to life."
"No offense, but I prefer the seventh layer."
"Figures. That's why you called it the seventh layer. Not that anything is wrong with it—hell, so does Soul King. Why else do you think the first rule exists?"
"Hold on for a second! If every jutsu has a weakness... I can escape your layer of soul around mine!?"
"Sometimes I hate that Uchiha so much, but again, it is such an obvious thing that anyone with brains should've already figured it out."
"Nah! It must be because you have no clue," Zack snickered.
"Oh! I forgot to mention one crucial point: having firm beliefs can prevent you from becoming one with the Source—Sani—From dying. But that also means you'll forever be oblivious to growth."
"You've gotta be f'ing kidding me!" Zack said, his hands automatically reaching for Solgrave's neck.
Zack strangled the energy left by Solgrave, but no matter the choking sound or how red Solgrave's clone got, the energy never dissipated. "Not a clone?" He asks, realizing a fraction of a second later. "It is with a bit more energy than usual. Got better places to be than here, I see."
"Obviously," Solgrave taunted, croaking.
Zack knew Solgrave had to have used most of his energy on that ridiculous counter, which only pissed him off more. "Why, you little pipsqueak."
Zack was sure, in real time, he would've choked Solgrave for an entire day before he calmed down. To make matters worse, Solgrave didn't bother checking the damage and went straight to the next topic at hand. "So, why did you see that huge blast even when you lost our side of reality was the question you really wanted an answer to, right?"
Zack mumbled, turned into a huge question mark, and almost lost control over the power—thankfully moving closer to the mortal realm instead of dispersing into pure energy—never to return. Even the almighty Soul King couldn't have brought him back if Sani had claimed his Soul.
Manipulation becomes simpler than a thought when within one's Sub-Space. The only reason this rule or technique—if one misrepresents the rule as an opportunity—is ranked lower is because of the difficulty of entering another's Sub-Space. Even in theory, one had to influence the 'Owner' to open the metaphoric gates to their Soul, which is achieved by influencing them to trust the intruder. Needless to say, one has to be the biggest idiot in existence to let anyone into one's private space.
"Manipulation from outside is impossible," Solgrave lectured Zack from within his Sub-Space. "But from within..." Solgrave grasped and bent Zack's reality into a ball, reforming it back to normal before handing the controls over to Zack. "...I can make you my forever bitch, capiche!?" He made an okay hand sign and got back a thumbs-up.
Zack reversed his gesture, his thumb facing down, and a frown splitting his face. "Didn't you claim I'm the strongest being in my Soul, then show me I was really in your Sub-Space...? Oh! Is that how I can escape? Wait! Isn't that supposed to be something I figure out on my own? Are you messing with my training?"
"Old souls like myself and the twins had to endure decades of torture to figure this shit out. Simple though it was! Your kind, the Soul Hunters or whatever you want to call yourself, get a free pass, because some dumb motherfuckers are so 'Broken' that they are breaking everything in their path. Be it a Soul, or reality itself. Insignificant though you might be, your folk can help lighten my load."
Solgrave didn't wholly believe the things he told, and being present in Zack's Sub-Space with heightened emotions made his dishonesty apparent to Zack.
"Why—!?" Zack stopped himself from probing further.
Zack was neither ready to face the answer nor did he want their Sponsor to doubt his reasoning, because something told him Solgrave was staying true to his words that weren't even his own.
———<>||<>——— End of Chapter Thirteen. ———<>||<>———