Whilst the sub-soul was performing its own tasks, Martin’s ‘main body’ hadn’t stayed still.
He’d anticipated that, even if the sub-soul was successful in its task, broadcasting one’s consciousness into a sea of thoughts would require heavy adaptation before being able to do so without any side effects. Even more so when such side effects involved potential corruption of the mind or soul.
And so, over the period of just over an hour, Martin performed some tasks he hadn’t yet had time for.
First, he checked for any side-effects of soul damage that he might have previously missed. He found nothing wrong, with the minimal loss in processing power having recovered almost instantly, and, after using just a fraction of his immense processing ability to replay the entirety of his life from beginning to end several times over in a matter of seconds, found that his memory also had no gaps.
Choosing to remain vigilant, he dedicated a small part of himself to monitoring for any less obvious changes, such as anything regarding personality, opinion, or attachments.
One thing that hadn’t recovered, however, was the membrane surrounding his soul. Unlike the interior, the exterior of him seemed both finite and irreparable.
Naturally, sacrificing a microscopic part of it to guarantee his safety was something he had zero regrets over, as it was essential in guaranteeing his long-term safety, but it was something he wanted to avoid if possible.
Starting from that thought, he tried to check if he truly couldn’t recover his membrane; although the loss was ultimately inconsequential, gaining the ability to heal his membrane would open the potential for far more in the future.
Aside from healing from this and any damage to his soul’s exterior caused by a potential hostile entity in the future, it would allow him to create a potentially infinite amount of sub-souls –although he was currently hesitant about using the method if it wasn’t necessary- or to grow his soul.
One would allow him to remain effectively immortal as long as any part of him survived unless he was targeted by an attack that could directly damage his existence –something that Martin suspected was possible, given the existence of the cosmic entity his link to which had managed to modify it, the principle behind which he couldn’t grasp in the slightest.
The other would... well, he wasn’t certain, but he guessed it couldn’t be negative. Since changing the shape of his soul hadn’t influenced his thoughts whatsoever, it was unlikely to affect that side of things, but with how limited his understanding of souls still was, he was excited to see the effects nonetheless.
And so, the experimentation had begun.
The first step was making himself more familiar with it. For that, he tried focussing more of his attention on it, feeling gradually increasing amounts of it at once.
He could feel the constant collisions of the tiny fragments of concepts against it, but they were significantly dampened, to the point they felt like the distant pitter patter of rain heard when trying to sleep on a stormy night.
He’d still checked for any adverse effects, but finding not the slightest hint of being overwhelmed, and knowing the impacts had to his knowledge not managed to impact him in any way, he’d gradually increased the scope of his membrane that his attention was focussed on until he focussed on its entirety.
Although halfway through he’d guessed his mind would start to become affected by the concepts by the time he focussed on three quarters of his outer edge, he hadn’t felt any sign of it when approaching that point, so he continued without issue after ensuring he wasn’t deluding himself.
Either he’d been wrong in his estimates, or his resistance to outside influence was growing in real time. Considering the many variables that could have caused it, Martin suspected the latter.
As the process had gone on, Martin had started developing a basic method of sight that –assuming these concepts weren’t random and in fact originated from things linked to them- allowed him to see all around himself.
Unbeknownst to himself at the time, Martin had come to the same conclusions both times and both had developed a method of different method of sight based on them... although one with significantly less difficulty.
By the time he’d focussed on the entire outside of his soul, he had a full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree vision of the outside. It hadn’t been his goal, but he took a moment to admire the sight –a sea of stars drifting sleepily through the shores of the cosmos.
Not yet satisfied with progress regarding the edge of his soul itself, Martin intensified the attention he inserted into it, his vision becoming clearer with every moment; the factoring in of the concepts other than light and void, existing in far smaller amounts, brought his sight to something more than human, seeing the world around him for everything it was made of rather than what light showed of it; the ability to make out increasingly minute differences in the concepts and their intensity opened his eyes to the world of the imperceivable –all forms of radiation, energy and more were becoming increasingly clear to him.
Other than the ability to see the world in ways that constantly continued to put him in awe, Martin had managed to sense something else. Previously invisible to him, possibly because he’d never actively tried to picture it, he could now see the place the inside of his soul met its boundary.
He could’ve seen it much faster if he wanted to, but he’d intentionally avoided thinking about it to check whether he could perceive parts of his soul simply by directing enough of his focus close enough. It turned out he could.
The connection between his interior and exterior didn’t seem special at first. The material that filled his soul seemed to meet the equivalent of a brick wall, and that was it.
Deciding to steadily increase the focus directed at the barrier –with his available resources increasing every second, it wasn’t a problem to do so- Martin continued to observe it with more scrutiny.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
And with that, he found a small detail, but one that changed everything; impossible to notice at first, the soul material made an impossible increase in density as it approached the wall.
In other words, the outside of his soul was the same material as the inside.
It seemed inconsequential, but Martin could manipulate the inside of his soul. He knew he could make more dense or less dense areas, although not nearly to the density his exterior seemed to be.
The fact the inside and outside of his soul had different properties meant –in a somewhat distant future, since his level of control over his soul would still require huge amounts of improvement to reach even close to the level required- he'd be able to reform his soul in its entirety. The possibilities almost scared him.
Martin dedicated some of his focus to practicing all manner of soul manipulation and contemplated using his soul’s membrane as a bonus surface to think with, but decided against it, since –despite being mostly convinced the concepts from outside wouldn’t affect him- he remembered how thoughts on denser parts of the soul became louder somehow, and realised doing so would be like setting off a nuclear bomb next to a fine-tuned speaker.
Now that he’d been done with that part, Martin shrunk the pocket of void he was still connected to down to only a few millimetres across; he was still waiting for contact from his sub-soul before experimenting with it, but he was simply making space to practice shaping the outside of his soul.
Maintaining his sight while contorting his ‘eye’ would serve as good practice, and improving his skill in manipulating his exterior couldn’t be detrimental.
He made sure to keep the area the sub-soul was stationed as still as possible, whilst gradually contorting himself into more and more complex shapes. To avoid damage to his exterior, he gave himself ample time to adapt, not increasing the complexity between shapes unnecessarily.
Completely uncharacteristically for himself, Martin decided not to start any new ventures for a while and focus only on his current task until the sub-soul returned.
Right when he managed to fold himself into a fairly impressive depiction of a lotus flower, he finally heard the knocking on the link to the cosmic entity that he’d been expecting. To prove that no corruption had occurred, that ‘knock’ was a flash of his entire life’s memories up to the point his souls had gotten unlinked from each other.
It seemed accurate, so the main soul opened a slightly larger pathway for information to flow; the procedure that had been agreed on was that both souls would gradually exchange information with each other until they both contained the full memories of both sides of what had happened in the past hour.
This wasn’t a safety measure. Martin knew that the moment the souls had gotten separated, they’d become two separate entities. Forcefully overwriting one would be akin to murder, even if it was himself.
Both when he’d first decided on the procedure, and now that he mentally elaborated on its reasoning, Martin felt his link to the cosmic entity deepen.
The main soul apprehensively sent the first trickle of information, trying to simplify it as much as possible to avoid overwhelming the significantly inferior processing volume of the sub-soul.
Moments later, the sub-soul, unintentionally sending a burst of relief at the success through the link, sent its own information, although at a faster rate, considering it didn’t need to worry about the main soul having too little processing power.
Within a short time, the main soul received the full account of events from the sub-soul, its link to the cosmic entity significantly deepening due to both how much it was used and the sharing of the epiphanies the sub-soul had encountered.
Whilst being eager to use the new knowledge, the main soul was unfortunately forced to be mostly dormant whilst the transfer continued to avoid forming new memories faster than they could be shared.
Still, with each moment, the amount that could be sent at once increased, until eventually, both souls contained the same information.
With that, the two Martins finally opened the link sufficiently, allowing their consciousnesses to touch directly, before ultimately rejoining into one.
The process had been lengthy, at least time seemed to only become slower the more Martin advanced, but this was the only way he could say neither part of him had died. It still wasn’t entirely fine with him, but this was the best he could do.
Introspection aside...
‘There’s so much to uncover’
With his experience in facing the concepts outside both externally as his main soul and internally as the sub-soul, Martin decided it was safe to open his mind to the world outside.
Resuming certain operations he’d put on hold during the memory transfer, Martin returned to the shape of a sphere, linked to the space his soul covered, and projected his mind into it, turning his sensitivity to the concepts outside to a minimum out of a slight caution.
Finding no trouble handling it, Martin quickly increased his sensitivity to the same level it had been as the sub-soul. Despite covering a far larger area than it had, Martin’s main soul also had magnitudes more processing ability, especially after the enlightenments the sub-soul's memories had inspired.
Martin fused the two senses of perception that he’d come to acquire. Whilst they were similar in what they used for sight, the principles behind them were vastly different, but he managed it with relative ease.
Quickly, he saw there was a gap where only the sense that read the path of the concepts through the area he was linked to could sense the area his soul was, but with after cross-referencing for a short while and trying to feel for the now nigh-nonexistent ripples the passage of the concepts through the physical realm caused in his soul, he began to fill it in.
Once the process was complete, he’d likely permanently gain the ability to see the area his soul was located, even if he turned both his other senses off.
Which he could do. All his abilities were based on active concentration; the soul has no subconscious mind, after all.
Returning to his further refined sight, Martin marvelled, ‘The world really is a beautiful place’
For a moment, he thought about how nobody is his entire civilisation would have the chance to see the sights, the feelings, that he currently was.
‘Looking down on the lower beings already, am I?’
Smiling, he turned his focus back to the matter at hand.
First, he moved his sub-soul, still in the small bubble of void, back inside his main soul, and dislodged the void bubble into the air outside.
Next, deciding now was the time, he pulled upon the link to the unknown cosmic entity and began to spread the space he was linked to further, outside the space covered by his soul, whilst broadcasting his mind inside of it. He remained careful, knowing the number of concepts he’d expose to would increase dramatically the larger the area became.
Finally, he began analysing the concepts more carefully. Specifically, he was looking on the outside of himself to see if he was giving off any –if he was, it would help understand exactly what the concepts were.
To his disappointment, he couldn’t sense anything that hadn’t been present before, and none of the concepts he’d encountered before had anything to do with soul, cognition, or otherwise.
Instead deciding on a more fruitful endeavour, but still monitoring the concepts more carefully with another part of his consciousness, Martin was faced with another question.
‘How exactly do I move?’
