Dream entered another round of isolated research. As far as he was concerned, nothing at this point was more important than his own advancement, so he wouldn't emerge until it was finished.
The first thing he did was study a soul. He wanted to try and understand how a class 6 soul worked. According to the things he's read, only a class 6 soul could make contact with and draw power from concepts. Thus, becoming a class 6 was like having the gates of the universe open to you. Nobody with any lesser a soul was capable of making contact with concepts, and they certainly weren't aware of their existence.
However, many months ago, Dream had disproven this fact. A little, at least. He had successfully made contact with a concept after earning its acknowledgment, but he couldn't do much with it. He couldn't draw power from it and he wasn't able to comprehend any more of it. All he had were those two marks he left on them, like little trophies that were good for nothing more than being eye candy.
In this way, he was like the rest of the population under the class 6 realm. But now, he wanted to attempt to reverse the logic of the universe and find the thing that allowed a class 6 to make contact with concepts. If he could do that, then he could use the souls he gathered in order to bestow himself that ability. It couldn't be understated how monumental an achievement that would be. After all, if he was comprehending concepts as a class 5, what would happen when he became a class 6? It couldn't be known.
So he was eager to get to work. Dream quickly chose the barbarian's soul to study first. His was smaller and weaker than the others, and thus less valuable. Dream wouldn't feel much of a loss consuming it for study.
On his workbench, Dream gazed at the soul. It was a golden orb no larger than Dream's hand. It was crazy to think that this small object could obliterate a small planet at full power.
Reaching his hand out, Dream shot out his Will, infusing it fully into the soul. Like this, he received a massive influx of data. He was reading the soul.
The first thing he saw was a huge world of power. When one became a class 5, they formed their soul strings into soul seas, each sea comprised of their being. Then as a class 6, they fused these seas together, combining all aspects of themselves to create the ultimate version of their self. A class 6 soul represented the peak of a soul's evolution, and if it weren't for concepts, it would be the end of one's growth. Basically, a class 6 soul was the fruit of a person's entire potential and power.
And because a class 6 soul was a single thing, not divided into different parts, Dream had a hard time making sense of the powers he was seeing. There wasn't anything like layers of soul seas that he could pick apart and analyze. The soul was an amalgamation of everything. It just was the entire thing. There were no parts to pick out.
At least, that's what he initially saw. As he dug deeper and read more data, he was able to see discreet divisions in the soul, almost like lines in the sand. They weren't obvious, but they were there.
"So mister barbarian didn't have the best advancement. A perfect advancement probably wouldn't have these imperfections. Let's dig a little deeper."
With that, Dream started to study the different parts of the soul. First he was able to find where the consciousness would reside. Dream was actually able to find the barbarian's mind space doing this, or what was left of it. Then, he was able to find where things like mana was stored, where his intelligence was stored, and where his skills were housed.
Altogether, he found 5 divisions, each representing a different aspect of the barbarian. However, this caused Dream to frown.
"The divisions are uniformly distributed across the entire soul. That means that during his class 5 advancement, he was only able to form 5 soul seas. That's barely an average advancement where a perfect advancement forms 10 soul seas. Even as a class 6, he was weak! And I thought I was pretty damn strong!"
Dream let out a heavy sigh. If the barbarian was a weak class 6, then that means Dream's performance wasn't nearly as amazing as he thought. That barbarian was probably as weak as a class 6 can be. After all, how could someone with a barely average class 5 advancement become a class 6? That barbarian probably had a lot of luck in being able to advance more.
After quickly devaluating his performance, Dream went back to studying.
After finding the divisions, Dream went on to split apart the soul. It split into five pieces, and Dream broke one down particle by particle. All the data of the particles streamed into his mind, and Dream slowly gleaned secrets.
For an entire month, Dream analyzed the soul piece bit by bit. Come the end of the month, he had entirely disassembled a single of the five pieces.
At this point, Dream lifted his head, closing his eyes and remaining silent. His mind was slightly chaotic though, processing data alongside Sophia at incredible speeds.
He remained like this for a whole week. Then, he zoned back in.
"There's something there."
He spoke these words. If Melody had heard these words, she would assume that he had merely learned some detail about the formation of the soul. But Sophia knew better. For a long time, Dream had a list of energies that the universe operated with, things like mana, aether, flux, and the like. There wasn't anything outside of these energies that he had ever discovered or come into contact with. Thus, whenever he analyzed something, he always knew the thing's components. It could be said that there was nothing he didn't know about.
But this was classified as 'something'. He didn't know what it was.
He had discovered something new.
"It's... something of the soul. Perhaps its primary form of existence. Or maybe its energetic source? I've never seen it before. But when I observe it, I can sense something familiar. It feels... like it isn't actually real. Like a concept."
Dream mumbled to himself. This thing inside the soul gave him the same feeling as the concepts he touched, something real but not tangible. He couldn't touch it, but he knew it was there.
At the same time though, if it were only a concept, he wouldn't even know of its existence. It seemed both physical and ethereal, intangible but manifest enough to where Dream could observe it.
This made him think of something.
"Perhaps... this is the bridge? Class 6 souls are made aware of concepts by bringing their being together. But something has to be added during the process of amalgamation, something that opens the tunnel for conceptual observation. It doesn't just happen. Perhaps this is that thing. If I'm right..."
Dream stopped there. Suddenly, he waved his hands, and the four other soul fragments burst apart into a glorious golden fog.
Dream's cosmic form released as he let loose the entirety of his Will. His Will infused into every particle of the souls. When he found a particle that was merely a standard energy like flux or mana, he tossed it away. When he saw semi-intangible particles though, he gathered them.
Like that, over the course of another month, Dream sifted through the entire soul, pulling particles from the air that were no larger than subatomic particles like protons. Surprisingly, as he found more and more, picking out these intangible particles became easier, and he gathered more.
After the month, he stopped. On the ground was solid energy that came in forms like aether or mana. And in Dream's hand was a small golden fluid in the shape of an orb and about half the size of the palm-sized soul it had come from. The fluid seemed to constantly drift out of existence, and without Dream's Will constantly infusing into it, it would have long since disappeared, never to be seen again. Much of it did disappear when he had first started collecting it, and this was now all that was left. Only he was able to keep it in this dimension through his constant observation and contact with it.
"It's like it's subject to quantum phenomena, wanting to disperse when it's not being observed and grounded to the universe. Or it's not and it's just trying to ascend to a higher dimension where it belongs. Anyway, let's see what happens when I truly interact with you.
Saying that, Dream extracted the tiniest portion of this golden fluid. Then, he brought it into his soul, specifically his mind space.
Upon the golden fluid entering though, Dream's mind space shook. Without him doing anything, the golden fluid shot toward the two stars at the highest height of his mind space, the marks he had left on those two concepts.
When the golden fluid touched the marks, white cracks appeared around them. These white cracks spread ever so slightly through Dream's mind space, only through the area around the marks. They stopped there, the golden fluid consumed.
*Crack!*
The next moment, Dream's mind space in its entirety saw a single large crack appear across it. This wasn't created by the golden fluid, but the absurd pressure brought about by those white cracks around the marks. Dream felt his body momentarily lose control of itself before he was subjected to immense pain.
"Ah, that actually hurts."
[Are you okay?]
Sophia asked cautiously. She hadn't spoken out when Dream was bringing the golden fluid into his mind space because nothing she said could stop him from experimenting like this. Now that his mind space sustained enormous pressure and cracked, she could only do what she could to help.
Dream nodded blankly.
"Yea... These white cracks though. They're..."
[What?]
"...It's the gateway to concepts."
Dream spoke with a bit of wonder, completely forgetting about the pain.
"When those white cracks appeared, I could feel the door to the concepts I touched open just a bit more. I was right. That golden intangible fluid is the gateway to concepts. It's the bridge, connecting the soul to conceptual space where concepts could be touched, comprehended, and wielded. But..."
*Crack!*
Just as Dream drifted off, Sophia was shocked to see another large crack appear in his mind space.
Dream smiled wryly.
"I think the concepts are too much for me to handle. The power, my soul can't wield it. My mind can barely sustain itself due to the fact that I've already been exposed to concepts before."
[Huh?! Then what the hell do we do?!]
*Crack!*
[Ahh!]
Sophia began to seriously panic when another crack appeared. Dream sighed.
"I'm on a clock now. I guess there's not much else I can do."
[Wait, is this seriously how you're going about this?!]
"Well what other choice do I have? I'm commencing my advancement!"
Dream spoke outwardly. The pressure mounted every second, and there was only one place he could go to that could solve his problem.
The Legacy Space!
After Dream spoke, he was suddenly prompted by the system.
[Archon Legacy: Emperor]"I choose Emperor."
Dream made his choice. Then, he was given more prompts. Last time, the prompts came through Sophia. But now, because he was under the Wanderer System, that wasn't necessary.
Dream entered another round of isolated research. As far as he was concerned, nothing at this point was more important than his own advancement, so he wouldn't emerge until it was finished.
The first thing he did was study a soul. He wanted to try and understand how a class 6 soul worked. According to the things he's read, only a class 6 soul could make contact with and draw power from concepts. Thus, becoming a class 6 was like having the gates of the universe open to you. Nobody with any lesser a soul was capable of making contact with concepts, and they certainly weren't aware of their existence.
However, many months ago, Dream had disproven this fact. A little, at least. He had successfully made contact with a concept after earning its acknowledgment, but he couldn't do much with it. He couldn't draw power from it and he wasn't able to comprehend any more of it. All he had were those two marks he left on them, like little trophies that were good for nothing more than being eye candy.
In this way, he was like the rest of the population under the class 6 realm. But now, he wanted to attempt to reverse the logic of the universe and find the thing that allowed a class 6 to make contact with concepts. If he could do that, then he could use the souls he gathered in order to bestow himself that ability. It couldn't be understated how monumental an achievement that would be. After all, if he was comprehending concepts as a class 5, what would happen when he became a class 6? It couldn't be known.
So he was eager to get to work. Dream quickly chose the barbarian's soul to study first. His was smaller and weaker than the others, and thus less valuable. Dream wouldn't feel much of a loss consuming it for study.
On his workbench, Dream gazed at the soul. It was a golden orb no larger than Dream's hand. It was crazy to think that this small object could obliterate a small planet at full power.
Reaching his hand out, Dream shot out his Will, infusing it fully into the soul. Like this, he received a massive influx of data. He was reading the soul.
The first thing he saw was a huge world of power. When one became a class 5, they formed their soul strings into soul seas, each sea comprised of their being. Then as a class 6, they fused these seas together, combining all aspects of themselves to create the ultimate version of their self. A class 6 soul represented the peak of a soul's evolution, and if it weren't for concepts, it would be the end of one's growth. Basically, a class 6 soul was the fruit of a person's entire potential and power.
And because a class 6 soul was a single thing, not divided into different parts, Dream had a hard time making sense of the powers he was seeing. There wasn't anything like layers of soul seas that he could pick apart and analyze. The soul was an amalgamation of everything. It just was the entire thing. There were no parts to pick out.
At least, that's what he initially saw. As he dug deeper and read more data, he was able to see discreet divisions in the soul, almost like lines in the sand. They weren't obvious, but they were there.
"So mister barbarian didn't have the best advancement. A perfect advancement probably wouldn't have these imperfections. Let's dig a little deeper."
With that, Dream started to study the different parts of the soul. First he was able to find where the consciousness would reside. Dream was actually able to find the barbarian's mind space doing this, or what was left of it. Then, he was able to find where things like mana was stored, where his intelligence was stored, and where his skills were housed.
Altogether, he found 5 divisions, each representing a different aspect of the barbarian. However, this caused Dream to frown.
"The divisions are uniformly distributed across the entire soul. That means that during his class 5 advancement, he was only able to form 5 soul seas. That's barely an average advancement where a perfect advancement forms 10 soul seas. Even as a class 6, he was weak! And I thought I was pretty damn strong!"
Dream let out a heavy sigh. If the barbarian was a weak class 6, then that means Dream's performance wasn't nearly as amazing as he thought. That barbarian was probably as weak as a class 6 can be. After all, how could someone with a barely average class 5 advancement become a class 6? That barbarian probably had a lot of luck in being able to advance more.
After quickly devaluating his performance, Dream went back to studying.
After finding the divisions, Dream went on to split apart the soul. It split into five pieces, and Dream broke one down particle by particle. All the data of the particles streamed into his mind, and Dream slowly gleaned secrets.
For an entire month, Dream analyzed the soul piece bit by bit. Come the end of the month, he had entirely disassembled a single of the five pieces.
At this point, Dream lifted his head, closing his eyes and remaining silent. His mind was slightly chaotic though, processing data alongside Sophia at incredible speeds.
He remained like this for a whole week. Then, he zoned back in.
"There's something there."
He spoke these words. If Melody had heard these words, she would assume that he had merely learned some detail about the formation of the soul. But Sophia knew better. For a long time, Dream had a list of energies that the universe operated with, things like mana, aether, flux, and the like. There wasn't anything outside of these energies that he had ever discovered or come into contact with. Thus, whenever he analyzed something, he always knew the thing's components. It could be said that there was nothing he didn't know about.
But this was classified as 'something'. He didn't know what it was.
He had discovered something new.
"It's... something of the soul. Perhaps its primary form of existence. Or maybe its energetic source? I've never seen it before. But when I observe it, I can sense something familiar. It feels... like it isn't actually real. Like a concept."
Dream mumbled to himself. This thing inside the soul gave him the same feeling as the concepts he touched, something real but not tangible. He couldn't touch it, but he knew it was there.
At the same time though, if it were only a concept, he wouldn't even know of its existence. It seemed both physical and ethereal, intangible but manifest enough to where Dream could observe it.
This made him think of something.
"Perhaps... this is the bridge? Class 6 souls are made aware of concepts by bringing their being together. But something has to be added during the process of amalgamation, something that opens the tunnel for conceptual observation. It doesn't just happen. Perhaps this is that thing. If I'm right..."
Dream stopped there. Suddenly, he waved his hands, and the four other soul fragments burst apart into a glorious golden fog.
Dream's cosmic form released as he let loose the entirety of his Will. His Will infused into every particle of the souls. When he found a particle that was merely a standard energy like flux or mana, he tossed it away. When he saw semi-intangible particles though, he gathered them.
Like that, over the course of another month, Dream sifted through the entire soul, pulling particles from the air that were no larger than subatomic particles like protons. Surprisingly, as he found more and more, picking out these intangible particles became easier, and he gathered more.
After the month, he stopped. On the ground was solid energy that came in forms like aether or mana. And in Dream's hand was a small golden fluid in the shape of an orb and about half the size of the palm-sized soul it had come from. The fluid seemed to constantly drift out of existence, and without Dream's Will constantly infusing into it, it would have long since disappeared, never to be seen again. Much of it did disappear when he had first started collecting it, and this was now all that was left. Only he was able to keep it in this dimension through his constant observation and contact with it.
"It's like it's subject to quantum phenomena, wanting to disperse when it's not being observed and grounded to the universe. Or it's not and it's just trying to ascend to a higher dimension where it belongs. Anyway, let's see what happens when I truly interact with you.
Saying that, Dream extracted the tiniest portion of this golden fluid. Then, he brought it into his soul, specifically his mind space.
Upon the golden fluid entering though, Dream's mind space shook. Without him doing anything, the golden fluid shot toward the two stars at the highest height of his mind space, the marks he had left on those two concepts.
When the golden fluid touched the marks, white cracks appeared around them. These white cracks spread ever so slightly through Dream's mind space, only through the area around the marks. They stopped there, the golden fluid consumed.
*Crack!*
The next moment, Dream's mind space in its entirety saw a single large crack appear across it. This wasn't created by the golden fluid, but the absurd pressure brought about by those white cracks around the marks. Dream felt his body momentarily lose control of itself before he was subjected to immense pain.
"Ah, that actually hurts."
[Are you okay?]
Sophia asked cautiously. She hadn't spoken out when Dream was bringing the golden fluid into his mind space because nothing she said could stop him from experimenting like this. Now that his mind space sustained enormous pressure and cracked, she could only do what she could to help.
Dream nodded blankly.
"Yea... These white cracks though. They're..."
[What?]
"...It's the gateway to concepts."
Dream spoke with a bit of wonder, completely forgetting about the pain.
"When those white cracks appeared, I could feel the door to the concepts I touched open just a bit more. I was right. That golden intangible fluid is the gateway to concepts. It's the bridge, connecting the soul to conceptual space where concepts could be touched, comprehended, and wielded. But..."
*Crack!*
Just as Dream drifted off, Sophia was shocked to see another large crack appear in his mind space.
Dream smiled wryly.
"I think the concepts are too much for me to handle. The power, my soul can't wield it. My mind can barely sustain itself due to the fact that I've already been exposed to concepts before."
[Huh?! Then what the hell do we do?!]
*Crack!*
[Ahh!]
Sophia began to seriously panic when another crack appeared. Dream sighed.
"I'm on a clock now. I guess there's not much else I can do."
[Wait, is this seriously how you're going about this?!]
"Well what other choice do I have? I'm commencing my advancement!"
Dream spoke outwardly. The pressure mounted every second, and there was only one place he could go to that could solve his problem.
The Legacy Space!
After Dream spoke, he was suddenly prompted by the system.
[Archon Legacy: Emperor]"I choose Emperor."
Dream made his choice. Then, he was given more prompts. Last time, the prompts came through Sophia. But now, because he was under the Wanderer System, that wasn't necessary.
