It had only been a day so far since Eli woke up from his nap and started working on upgrading his soul to level 3. He was making fast progress due to the dense magic around him from the eruption that he was now almost standing in. Using the density of the magic around him he forced his internal magic to be more dense and start leaking out of him as his magic was more dense than his surroundings. Its release was growing more and more violent, tearing into his soul and flesh each time. The pain was still intense but it was nothing compared to his body upgrade so he was managing it for now.
His pace was remarkable since his body took so long and he thought that this was due to his soul being on the outside instead of being accessed through a heart node and his current surroundings. It was unlikely that many people had access to this level of magic in the air since it took a volcanic eruption for his current environment to exist. He just chocked it up to the systems meddling and pushed forward. Whatever its goal, it was going to push him until he broke, then it would just step on his corpse and move on to meddling with someone else.
Since his pace was good and he wasn't at risk of dying or passing out, he pushed a little harder and started thinking about what a soul really was. During his body upgrade, when he improved his brain by melting the old one and forming a new one with stronger magic, he noticed how he was able to stay conscious during that process. He couldn't move his body for the most part or access much of his magic, but otherwise he was still awake.
This led him to think that his true mind was in his soul and his brain was just what it used to control his body and interact with the physical world. He didn't have any proof of this but it was a possibility that had implications that made him chuckle to himself, he was pretty sure he could survive having his head cut off and he could imagine the look on someone's face when they cut off his head and he grows a new one. This would also explain why he was able to use will to move his arms and legs despite taking damage that should prevent them from moving.
Another few hours passed and he could feel he was getting close, however, in these last few hours he had been experimenting with connecting his soul more closely to his body so that if his head did get damaged he would be able to defend himself a bit. There were a few connections he was able to make, one on each shoulder and one at the base of his spine. It would be clumsy as hell but he should be able to move his arms and legs while missing his head. He was very doubtful that this would be helpful, but it was better than not doing anything while waiting for this process to complete.
When it was just about to complete, he could feel the edges of his soul fraying and coming apart. This soul pain was not something he was expecting and snapped his mind into sharp focus, as if all his senses turned off and he was only able to experience the outside world with his magic sense. At first, this dark empty world felt like death, surrounded by stillness and icy cold like nothing he had ever experienced before. The change was so startling that his mind didn't even notice what his magic sense was feeling. This new sensation of being cut off from everything left him feeling profoundly and soul shakingly alone, bringing to the surface much of his fears since all of this started.
Right when he was about to succumb to the despair of being alone forever, his magic sense expanded drastically. He could feel the whole volcano and all the magic powering its ceaseless eruption. Eli was shocked to notice that this volcano was not a geological marvel like it was before the system, as his senses kept expanding he could feel how the system's magic shaped this world and basically replaced a lot of the laws of nature with magical functions. They were similar, but different. He could stop the magic of this volcano and it would just turn off, no lasting effects from the laws of physics like before. It felt like it would just be a switch to turn it off. The physical world didn't exist with magic, magic was what made it exist.
This was a jolt to Eli's world view, since now he had to see everything as a function of magic. Plants and animals, people and monsters, the sun and the stars, all of them were expressions of magic, behind every aspect of physical reality was magic making it so. The realization that the physical world was a facade held up by magic was a hard thing to get his head around since it flew in the face of everything he had experienced so far. As his magic sense continued to expand, he started to lose the ability to understand what he was sensing, the amount of information was staggering and his mind went blank from stimulation overload.
He wasn't sure how long this went on since anything that could be considered conscious thought had left him behind, all he was getting now were images of magic from different places within his area of perception. His magic sense expanded far enough to cover both the coastal and mountain side safe zones as well as half the forest and volcano zone, deep into the earth and high in the sky. When he finally came back to himself, he only had brief flashes of sensations that he didn't understand or even really remember. Left with only a few vague gut feelings, he shakily stood and looked for the system window.
"Congratulations, you have leveled your soul from 2 to 3."
"You have passed the first threshold in leveling your soul, special reagents and/or environments will be needed to level further."
With that finally done, now he would be strong enough to go into the volcano and stop it from erupting this huge cloud of ash into the sky. He was sure that since he had been here for a week or more now, that the safe zone would be covered in ash and he would be the only obvious person responsible. Bethany was going to be mad that he ruined all her work again and he wasn't sure he had his head in the right place to face her wrath again. However, he really wanted to see Tara and check in on Audrey's progress. He went through his messages from everyone to see what to do next since he wanted to recover before stepping into the volcano.
He had messages from everyone and was happy to see that they had been sending them everyday even if it was just to say everything was going well. Bethany said they had five new recruits and were pushing them hard in training to see if they would be helpful or harmful to bring aboard. Tara gave daily progress updates and would say she loved him before bed each night. Audrey would just say she was progressing and no issues each day. Stevens seemed to be doing well on the task he had given them and Eli was about ready to stop reading until he saw his last message from yesterday. They had left the other safe zone bringing a crafter with them, but the leader of that safe zone had someone following them. He was worried that if Eli wasn't there when they got back in three days, that there would be trouble, especially since they didn't live in the safe zone.
Having three days left until he felt he really had to be back home he decided to not stop the volcano just yet and not respond to his people. He needed to get used to his new upgrades in combat before whoever was following Stevens and Cody followed them back to their home. Leaving at speed, Eli cracked the ground with tremendous force when he pushed off collapsing a lot of volcanic rock into the volcano where the ash cloud had been coming from. This made the ash cloud come out over a wider area instead of just one spot but Eli didn't see how that made a difference since everything was already probably covered in ash.
Moving south toward the larger volcano Eli went over what he needed to work on and what he was going to do for the next 48 hours. He wanted to be comfortable with his abilities and know their new limits. If people are following them to attack him, a simple show of force might be all it takes to stop them. However, he needed to know what he could get away with so he just needed to fight, he decided that he would spend this time fighting near that bigger volcano dragging fights out and getting used to his new and improved self. The bonus would be that he can get a few levels, he didn't think that he needed more levels but everyone under him was stuck behind his level, so more levels couldn't hurt.
He got there in about an hour of running and he noticed that, again, the area had expanded. This wasteland hellscape area was going to take over the whole zone if he didn't do something, the only problem was, he wasn't really sure what to do. The obvious answer was that he would figure it out if he went to the volcano, but he wanted to do that with some of the people from his group. The boss or dungeon that was in that giant volcano would be excellent training, and he was going to walk his people through it if it killed him. So instead he went around killing mutant dinosaurs for several hours, hoping one of those territory king minions would come like the lizard man thing he had fought before that got him that scarf thing that Tara wore now.
Not rushing his fights, but instead really using them to hone himself, it took him almost a full day before he saw one the king's minions. It was a level 80 dino man that was taller and wider than Eli and was holding what looked like a giant cleaver made of bone. From the look of the handle and how the dino man tensed when moving it, it could be used one handed or two handed. The minion had no hair and scaly red and purple skin, yellow eyes with slits and ridges down his spine and tail coming all the way up to small points on top of his head. Eli stood, focused his will on his resistance and motioned for the dino man to make the first move, it growled and leaped into action.
This was a fight where Eli wanted to test his resilience and pain tolerance as well as combat ability while injured. It was dangerous to test these things while fighting alone, but he could feel the hesitation in this monster's magic, it knew it couldn't win so it would be just trying to get a lucky shot in and not thinking tactically. Which should make the fight easy enough that being hurt shouldn't be life threatening. The minion charged in for a quick and decisive slash across his chest starting near his neck, Eli dodged enough that he took most of the hit but it missed his neck. Its next swing was chained into that one and cut across his belly before he had even finished dodging the first attack.
They both took a step back, Eli cast his light spell and pulsed life magic from his node through himself in case there was some kind of poison he didn't notice. The minion looked at his weapon in confusion, as if something else was supposed to happen besides cutting him but it didn't work. To keep the monster guessing he held the cut on his chest and tried to act like he was in pain, but that he was trying to hide it. Eli knew his acting skills left something to be desired but it didn't hurt to try on these monsters, some were smarter than others, and if he had to guess, this guy was an 'others'. After a minute or two of taking strikes and dodging to make them little more than flesh wounds, he was done playing with his food and the minion went into a frenzy, wildly swinging his weapon and even attempting to bite him.
There was nothing left to do but to summon a cudgel and practice his balance by parrying and attacking. This only lasted for about thirty seconds before the monster realized it was being played with and decided it wanted to run. Eli blinked in front of it and used a smash to crush its head in, as well as most of its torso. He was going to need a greater challenge if he wanted to improve his fighting further and the only place he is going to find that is closer to the mega volcano itself. He turned toward it and took off, only having about a day left to go and still wanting to get more levels in, he crushed the ground in with each giant step, even killing a monster that he stepped on. He was desperate to give his people more room to grow and to improve himself enough to protect them and serve as an example.