Coming out of the bathroom with a towel around his hair and a brand new Shihakushō was good, he felt refreshed for the first time in the 3 nights he'd been here.
``Where did that come from´´ said Hayate, pointing at the towel as it was clearly not from this underdeveloped world. ``The system´´ said Lucius, not really caring about Hayate's doubts and caring a lot more about his hair being wet.
``Does it sell that?´´ asked Hayate, clearly curious about it. ``Yeah, it sells toiletries, food, clothes, skills, items. Tons of things in there to buy´´ said Lucius, drying his hair with the towel.
``Why does it sell all those things?´´ asked Hayate. Lucius could see the curiosity in his eyes. ``Because someone complained about it´´ said Lucius, folding the towel and putting it into his inventory.
``Wait, wait WAIT!! You can complain to the system?´´ asked Hayate, clearly amazed? Astonished? Something that Lucius did not care to classify. ``Yeah? Why do you think we have so many Quality of life functions on it? When I got the system, it was a whole lot more bare bones than right now, quite the updates it got, ask it if you don't believe me´´
``You're not making sense right now, it's not like I could just ask the system what version are you right now and it will answer-´´ Hayate got shut up by the emerging panel, Lucius thought it clearly was the system answering the question Hayate just did. ``What version are we on?´´ asked Lucius, not really curious after all updates came all the time and usually went unnoticed.
``Sometimes i forget i can just ask it for things, It says V.91284.5602.09, it's kinda long for a version number´´ said Hayate, clearly reading it directly from the panel. ``Hmmm, last time I checked we were on V.84521.8620.13, kind of a long way we've come´´ said Lucius, sitting down on the bed in a lotus position. ``Time for shenanigans´´
``What kind of shenanigans?´´ asked Hayate, clearly distrusting of whatever Lucius would do in the room. ``An upgrade to a skill and possibly the return of one of my signature skills´´ said Lucius as his breathing slowly evens out.
``What do you mean by that?´´ the curiously and very punchable Hayate asked. ``Don't talk or touch me for a while, if everything goes right ill be back in an hour or so.´´ said lucius already feeling his perception of the outside reducing itself and focusing on his inside. this was [Meditate] the skill was simple it helped with passive resource recovery, or thats what it did in paper, if someone looked deeper into the skill they would reach their soulplane or soulspace. It also helped with comprehending concepts, but that was for far later.
One moment, he was in the room with Hayate beside him, and in the next, he was in a large empty plane, grayish walls and floors, nothing much in there. That was his soulplane or soulspace. It truly differed from being to being. For now, he needed to obtain what he needed and get out, as this place wasn't useful to him for now.
What he needed was to remember, to remember every spell, every exploit, everything about his adventures and the life he'd lived on his first ''playthrough'' for that he needed to search within himself and sort through everything. But the mind is feeble and with time all fades, but the soul is eternal, and all experiences and memories are stored in a layer of the soul. So he just needed to get control of his self, of his own existence. To regain that part of himself that he was missing, and he didn't even feel like he lacked it.
His will commands this place, but his will isn't a part of him yet. It's a part of his soul, but his consciousness isn't integrated fully with the soul. He sat down and felt around him, not for something different but for something that felt familiar, something that felt like it belonged. It was hard as it scurried around, always there at the tip of his fingertips, yet it always moved before he could take it. It was like trying to find happiness while conforming to society, impossible. Yet he knew nothing was truly impossible. It only seemed that way, as you didn't have enough power to change that.
He knew himself, he knew he was stubborn and petty, he wasn't a model citizen by any means, but he was neutral to everything unless someone close to him was affected or related to the problem. So he stopped trying to fish for it and waited, it would come to him, he knew it would, as it was his soul, and as every single soul in existence, their instinct was to complete themselves. He could feel it, it was curious and slowly approaching. He just needed patience, and everything would be done. If he knew this, why did he try to grab it by force the first time? Because he was stubborn and because he needed to at least try.
It was done, the piece of himself that he was missing was in front of him, he just needed to grab it, so he did. The rush of power and that instant click he felt as his being felt the piece go into place like a missing piece of a puzzle you didn't even know you needed, it was done. Now to the next part. His soulplane trembled as it demolished itself the feeling of weightlessness was instant and so was the feeling of falling, he willed himself to fly and so he could now fly and now he needed to remake the soulplane and infuse everything with will and with a snap of his fingers a bright sun rose in the horizon and a island slowly formed and rose to the sky, the island was massive and barren for a moment before a lush forest grew and a mountain rose from the island and from it a water fall that slowly diverged into 2 streams creating a lake and river to the edge of the island.
``This is mine, one down, two to go´´ said Lucius before flying down to a clearing on the island. ``Time for you to open your doors to me once again.´´ He reached into himself, into his soul, and down the layers that make it, and pulled a connection to the soulplane, and as it clicked, it happened, in front of Lucius, a building started to build itself, brick by brick, layer by layer. The grand Heavenly Soul Archives. That's what the system named his skill. A skill made to pull on the stored memories and Records from his soul in the form of books for him to read, it also allowed him to see skills with a tiny summary of every way he found to use them, for or from what skill they evolved, and how he evolved them. Quite useful in his opinion. And soon the building was done. With this, he had done 2 out of the 3 things he set out to do. The third was upgrading his [Meditate] skill. But with what was he going to upgrade it? He could recover his chronomancy-related meditation, or he could try and get the one most mages would and go for a meditation with a faster resource recovery rate, or he could try and get one closer to its intended use, concept comprehension.
But how, how could he even do that? He had no way of forcing something into its origins, so he had to improvise, he had time. What did he know of concepts? Concepts were a tapestry, there were a total of 3 tapestries that make reality: the tapestry of fate, the tapestry of time, and the tapestry of concepts, each one intertwined in some way with souls and the Absolute Rule of concecuences. But how did concepts affect the world? How do they act in the world? The world had layers, layers of dimensions, each one necessary and complementing the other. Concepts existed on the 7th layer, souls did in the 6th layer, the 5th layer is energy, the 4th is time, and so and so. Concepts and souls were only one layer away, he could, in theory, make a skill to pull pieces of concepts into his soul for a limited time to learn better about them. Was it a bit risky? Yes, was he going to do it anyway? Hell yes, now he has the idea and path he wants to upgrade it, now the hard part is actually doing it.
It seemed easy, and it is easy, the hard part is knowing how. Once you fully find the missing piece of your soul, you begin to know where you start and end, or where your soul starts and ends. Standing before an invisible wall, it had taken him quite some time to find it, the Dimension boundary. ``How do I open this? Last time I did something like this, I just brute forced my way in, like with [Retcon Divergence] or [Cannon Convergence] on the 4th layer boundary... I miss those skills´´ Poking at the boundary didn't give anything away, it seemed that he would need to do it again to break through by burning through a lot of energy and doing the idea he has of taking a concept's piece to study and understand.
``I only get one shot at this before i have to go back´´ lucius put his hands on the boundary and sighed deeply, feeling inside himself for the vessel of his energy and drawing upon it he started to infuse it on his hands and concentrate it, slowly blue flames spread all over his hands and the boundary was starting to distort and move erratically, he dobled down pushing the energy to compress even more forcing more and more creating a bigger distortion on the boundary until with a crack that resounded throught all the 6th layer of existance a rift appeared on the boundary, punching the rift until it spread enough to grab both sides with his hands and forcefully spread it open was hard and energy consuming. He had done it, he had opened the boundary, covering himself in energy and springing inside to the 7th layer of existence to search for something that felt familiar or at least common, that was his goal, as he had a time limit. Running around betwen balls of light that somehow felt cold or warm or even cutting was not as magical as one would think, but finally he found it a blue ball as big as a basket ball with white-ish light coming out of it, it felt like it was ancient and new all at the same time, this was time, the concept of time, this was it, his beloved time, now he was going to steal it(temporaly), grabing it was easy, reasuring and old, old with the weight of history, he also noticed that his energy expenditure got alot higher so pushing his energy as much as he could he ran dirrectly to the rift he created, it was already starting to seal itself back but he still could fit even if he jumped standing.
Returning to his soul with the concept of time was not really a good idea, so he had to act fast. Using his will and authority inside of his soul he disasembled the concept bit by bit and inmersed himself into learning slowly falling into the zone and before he knew it he was running on fumes so he had to come back to reality, but before he had a thing to do, moving whatever is left of his energy reserves to restrain a piece of the concept of time inside of his soul and leave the other parts go, he did feel scared until he heard it.
[DING] [Skill Upgraded Successfully], and then he blacked out.