"Don't let anyone in, not even your dead parents, because that's just the source, 'Sani,' luring you into itself. It doesn't like anomalies, no, sir!" Solgrave said, waving a hand. A pile of junk appeared out of nowhere, cluttering Zack's Sub-Space. "Here's an example of what happens when you do let someone in." Solgrave then questioned Zack about a foreign rule, something Zack vaguely recalled Bazuka whispering to Pinky.
Zack had no way of answering something he'd never read about. At least, that's what he thought, until he found the words spilling out of his mouth: "A true core cannot be turned."
The implications hit hard: Of course, that's why he forgot about his birth parents. That's why he'd adjusted to the mortal world's illusion of reality, disconnected from the supernatural. It all made sense now.
Solgrave asked another rule, and Zack answered without hesitation, followed by another sudden realization: "Modifications done to a soul return to a default state if the external force disappears." Zack nodded, confirming it to himself. It made perfect sense and yet sounded completely absurd.
'This explains how, during the monster fight, the air turned to liquid and the ground into a trampoline.' His overflowing Sub-Space—the clutter Solgrave had dumped in—was speaking. The "junk" was helpful after all.
Another question. Another strange answer. And another epiphany:
'The body is nothing but a trap where energy resides, and once you tamper with the energy, you change the body's functionality, appearance, and features.'
"That's how one turns a 'tube light' into a 'fan'!" Zack exclaimed.
Inanimate objects had weaker boundaries than living beings, so changing a body required finer control and more power, and if the person believed that, the barrier loosened. And if a soul had already been tampered with, the changes became drastic.
"AKA—a broken soul, like my own!" Zack concluded.
Behind Zack, lightbulbs began blinking—literal ones—his ethereal space visualizing his inner thoughts as if it were a Pictionary sketchbook.
Solgrave waited for all the blinking to stop, watching the last glowing idea dim with satisfaction. "Now," he said, a menacing grin spreading across his face, "you get how simple it is to save information, remember stuff, and all that, just by me dumping copies of the rules into your head." He stepped closer. "But I'm yet to drop something essential. What is it?"
Zack tried—and failed—to match his grin. "My epiphanies?" he guessed.
"Smart kid!" Solgrave snapped his fingers. "You might be useful after all...!"
"Gee, thanks. I guess."
"What, according to you, is the greatest flaw of this amazing power?"
"Dying?"
"No, numbnut!" Solgrave said, slapping Zack and making his head spin as if they were in a cartoon skit. "You've got the imagination, 'and' the wits. Now combine the two, for god's sake!"
"By the way... who is our god? I mean, in this state?" Zack asked, pointing to his body that kept changing forms on a whim.
"If power is god, then we're all gods! Now answer my question before you trail off into useless trivia."
"Wow," said Zack, saving the question to ponder later. "Let me see…" He tackled the problem using several techniques he now remembered vividly—applying all of them at once, grinding through the process with sheer force, thanks to Sani. "Limitations...! I can't grow if I can't learn!?"
Without any warning, Zack's entire soul space lit up—brighter than the sun, scorching both his and Solgrave's eyes. "Oops!" he giggled, restoring his sight, only to find a furious Solgrave glaring at him.
"You do realize I can pulverize your actual body out there, right?"
Zack was confused for a moment, and then the implications hit; however, this time around, Solgrave created a barrier before Zack blinded them both.
A soul has maximum control over its Sub-Space when within a protective barrier, but if the soul wants to stay in 'both' the Soul Space and the mortal realm, things get tricky to say the least.
Anyone tapping into this power has to split their consciousness into two halves—one present in the real world, the other inside their Soul Space. This technique allows their bodies to stay intact while safeguarding the core from intruders.
"Your control over power is greater 'inside' than 'out', but to enforce conditions from the Sub-Space into the mortal layer, you need a medium. In this case, your own body."
"At my current stage—a 'Wisp'—I can't... wait. I'm a Wisp. What—" Zack's thoughts derailed as Solgrave dodged bullet trains, materializing and charging within his Sub-Space. Solgrave pummeled Zack's soul, snapping him back on track.
"If I lose connection with my outer body, I'll be lost forever… Just a ghost. A soul, drifting through both realms until the Source claims me." Zack realized, muttering to himself. "I can avoid it by taking—"
*SHRRED!*—Solgrave sliced Zack's form into tiny fragments before he could finish the thought. "Figure it out soon," he warned, then disappeared from within Zack's soul.
Zack was alone with all the information required, the technique, and the knowledge of how to combine the two—everything he needed, left behind in the heap of junk Solgrave had dumped into his Sub-Space, now part of who he is. He created a 'Sub-Space' within the 'Soul Space'—a place to safeguard his core, while the rest would serve as an 'Overlay.'
With a slow, deliberate wave of his hand, Zack willed a house into existence—a grand structure, shifting and morphing, its walls blazing with unformed thoughts. He barely let it settle before tearing it down, reducing it to flickering dust.
'No. Something simpler,' Zack told himself.
He plucked a dead bulb from thin air and made it glow through sheer imagination.
A brick within the rubble transformed into a miniature Builder, recreating Zack's old room—the one from the Templetons—by plucking a memory and turning it into a blueprint.
It was the only place Zack had spent a whole year in hiding. And while everything until now could've been a creation of his delusional mind, he was certain that the boring time spent in that room of lies had been real—every minute detail burned into his memory.
Zack maintained his room like any other teenager: cluttered, messy, and suffocating. That's precisely how his Sub Space turned out. With a flick of his fingers, he rearranged it—not with hands, but with intention. Now, each step held a memory.
The lamp and study table were more than furniture; they contained every book, every piece of knowledge he'd ever absorbed. Sitting there, he could recall anything, from childhood lessons to secrets he had barely grasped and even books he had yet to read.
The photographs on the wall whispered of the Templetons. A single touch was all it took to relive those moments—every meal, every stolen laugh, every fear-laced night.
His fluffy bed was sacred. It held the memories—and cradled every emotion—of his birth parents. Lying down, he could feel their presence, their warmth, the loss, their love, his reason for surviving this ordeal, his mission for this immortal life, and his anchor to immortality itself.
The shattered window held something colder: every stranger he had met since his departure from what he once believed was reality, every fleeting encounter—their faces and voices—suspended in the fractured glass.
The glass itself was a reminder. A monument to the day his world shattered, when he had become the sole witness to the destruction and reconstruction of their universe.
This 'Sub Space' was no longer just a room; it was his archive, his soul's sanctuary. Yet the room would still be categorized as a mess—a deliberate one, and unlike any time he'd cleaned before, now, every object had a purpose.
Looming over it all—where his favorite posters once hung—were the laws of the Soul Snatchers.
The immutable rules of the Soul King.
A reminder.
A warning.
Now, all Zack had to do was step into the 'Sub Space' nested within his 'Soul Space', and he could play any memory, add a new one, switch off emotions, amplify them, and essentially live forever in a matrix of his creation.
He could relive memories countless times, unaware he was caught in a loop, simply by focusing on the 'Sub Space' and the memory in question; this left his physical body completely exposed, and came with the terrifying risk of becoming stuck in that memory… for eternity. Immortality would keep his body alive, while the very barriers he built to keep others out would end up trapping him inside—while Sani kept him oblivious for however long his willpower blazed.
"F'ing F's sake… what did I get myself into?"
———<>||<>——— End of Chapter Fourteen. ———<>||<>———