As he flew, he started missing his Interface to check how much SP had, then felt like a total idiot as he realized it was just a representation for how tired he was. He wasn't just going to drop from the sky- he'd get tired and slow down, slowly drift to the ground, and wheeze like he'd been running a marathon.

'The issue with having the numbers in front of me is that I forget the meaning behind them.'

Now that he had the time to, he explained to Perumah what'd happened, and where they were going. She was skeptical of any of this turning out well, but was interested in watching it go down.

Landing in the front yard of his previous parents, he considered what exactly they were to him now. They didn't quite feel like "mom" and "dad," but it was close. They'd cared for him like he was one of their own, because he was their own at the time, but now there was a slight disconnect.

The connection he shared with them was still filled with care, but they weren't exactly his parents anymore. He'd say they were close to a set of step-parents that truly loved him, and he truly loved them.

Realizing that he was simply delaying, Dei ended his musings and looked around, noting his parents' car in the driveway, alongside his sister's car and her husband's convertible. 'Good, they still live here. Are Sophie and Jack staying over?'

That would be for the best. If he was going to explain everything, it would be for the best if he told everyone he cared about at once. He'd never been particularly close with Jack, but he'd include the man in the conversation. He was, after all, still part of their little family.

Reaching the front door, he phased his hand through and undid both locks, then opened it a crack to allow Perumah inside. When she was through, he simply phased his body the rest of the way and quietly closed it behind him, re-locking it.

Again, he took a trip down memory lane as he glanced around his parents' house, remembering his childhood. A place where he'd only known comfort and love.

He felt out of place, like the blood on his hands soiled the memory he had here. He was no longer a native to Earth.

Shaking off the feeling, he moved into the kitchen, looking at the Doodle Home to check the time and seeing it was 1:42. He would wake his family up in a bit, but he really had to check out what shenanigans were going on in his soul.

He moved into the dining room and clicked the light on, sitting down in one of the chairs. He wasn't afraid of waking them up with the light as all the bedrooms were upstairs, but it was nice to not sit in darkness, despite his Darkvision.

He set his chin on his hand, closed his eyes, and dove below. What he saw was… a mess, to say the least.

His soul in the System was a collection of memories- and this was mostly the same, but not quite. It was not organized chronologically… or at all for that matter. It shared a lot of qualities with his Meditation Skill, where every moment brought up five more into relevance, each of the others bringing five more in their case and so on until he realized it was an infinite web of confusing pathways. There was no possible way to single out a memory, but he could twist the way he was looking at it, zooming in and out. It was some sort of fourth-dimensional impossibility he was unequipped to understand.

Just as he thought that, he was drawn back to another memory which he almost discarded- thinking it was another one of the useless nothings that seemed to love popping up with the new shape of himself. He did a double take though when he realized it was his memory of messing with the Connection lasso, where it seemed to have no ending but always looped into itself while remaining perfectly straight.

'Does Connection originate in a universe like this one, where Souls are more non-euclidean? That's good. Really good. I may learn a lot if I experiment with it using the Earth version of my soul.'

Next he went to check on what the System had inserted, though he already knew- and was correct. There was some sort of subtle undertone across every memory which he might miss if he wasn't paying attention, and he knew it was his Class and Profession, which he'd been unable to see before.

The System held them before, but apparently removing it once he was out of System Bounds would've been lethal. He now had the incredible opportunity to study them like never before, and did a quick glance-over for them, finding that the webs dictating those spells had thinner and thicker parts to them.

Following where they became the strongest, he was able to find the main nodes of the spells, which he hadn't known would've even existed. He thought they would exist everywhere in his soul at once.

The placement of the spell nodes were not random either. He saw several other, far more complex, things next to those nodes- five to be exact.

Curious, he investigated the first one and saw that, like the Class and Profession, it branched out, evenly dispersing itself among his soul. Unlike the Class and Profession though, this one seemed more… perfect. Like the System-made constructs were its failed attempts to recreate this thing. The Class and Profession tried to be perfectly even in dispersing the force across his soul, but this thing actually succeeded.

'I thought the Classes were spells the system attached to my soul, did it use this node for inspiration? But what does this node do?'

Gently, he touched on it, thrumming it as carefully as he could. Immediately, his muscles twitched as a short burst of energy made him want to move, but he resisted.

'This is… my SP! My Stamina! I was wrong again. Not just a representation of my energy, but an actual idea in my soul. I should have guessed, as I encountered the being… idea… thing… responsible for the concept of Stamina when I formed my Disconnect Skill.

'Stamina is something completely within me, but as infinite as an affinity, and this is that thing condensed down to its purest form. Something not even the System could recreate.'

He moved to the next one, thrumming it as well. He clutched his chest as a powerful heartbeat resounded in his ears. It did not hurt, but it shocked him into action. Adrenaline was released, his body readied itself for a fight he knew did not exist.

'This is my HP, my Health. Following the pattern, this one will be…"

And indeed, he moved to the next one, thrumming it and getting a harmonious singing from every cell. While SP and HP were expected, this one called him to study that reaction more deeply.

MP was… certainly something. It was mana, information, power. But it was more than just him, it was a connection to something deeper. The top scientists of Earth studied the laws of physics in depth, but they could only observe. One could never touch those laws. They were laws. MP changed that.

It was the backdoor, the way to surpass impossibility. It existed within him, yet he was almost positive it held a close relationship with the plane between Mental and Magical, the Laws of Physics plane.

There was an issue with it though. It was… missing something. It felt too quiet. MP was supposed to hold a harmonious connection to the universe, but it felt so very isolated.

It would do its job still, it could tap into the place below mana, but nothing came back out. This sector of the multiverse, where Earth resided, was known to be lacking in Mana, and now he saw why.

The beings that governed the laws of Physics just… didn't like it here for some reason. Their consciousnesses sat elsewhere. Dei remembered the System saying that some universes had utterly lethal mana levels, and those had to be where these consciousnesses sat, pouring MP through the cracks in reality and flaying anything that tried to exist.

'I have to try! I have to try and find them before I return to my little demon box. Before going back to Avium, I MUST try and seek out one of these lethal MP universes. Imagine the Profession EXP I'd get, and how much I'd learn about Meditation and MP in general!

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'And I'm curious.'

He'd need to dive far deeper into MP to get anything else, so he moved on to the fourth stat, expecting it to be his Soul Strength but getting surprised when it was some sort of… oddly shaped… thing. Wheel? Compass? No, it was a gyroscope with infinite rings, all perpetually spinning around each other, giving him a headache.

'What the hell am I looking at?'

Similar to the others, it had veins that were evenly dispersed through his soul, but it was clearly something new.

Hesitantly, he touched it and, with a featherlight touch, thrummed it.

He gasped in pain as a hundred thousand unknowable visions flashed before him. He felt, saw, smelled, the Gods just outside of view. He knew they watched more than him alone, they watched all that was and everything that would be.

He saw the face of five respond to his call, greeting him as an old friend but quickly shutting him out from all the rest.

Opening his eyes, he wiped the tears away with his hand, seeing that he was crying blood.

Taking a few moments to breathe deeply and calm his pounding heart, he understood what that ring was. Intimately. More than he should.

'That is the gateway to all affinities, completely unregulated. Not only that, but it serves as the anchor for all my spells, except those made by HP, SP, and MP. Each spell I make with an affinity draws me closer to it, changing my personality by pinning it in a certain position. The System left me one last gift though- it took all my existing Spells and pinned them somewhere in the middle of the gyroscope, neutral, making my personality far more solid than it should be, harder to influence. I think I had nineteen Skills before, so I have nineteen spells that will serve as my bulwark to resist personality influence from affinities. I don't intend to make any spells here, but it is wonderful to have that shield.'

He took a short break to wash his hands and face of blood. Experiencing unregulated affinities was not good for his health, as the blood seeping from his eyes, nose, and ears would testify to. A little time under regeneration spells though, and he was no worse for wear.

Sitting in his chair again, he moved on to the last item, believing it would be Soul Strength. That was, after all, the last unaccounted for temporary stat, like his HP and SP.

'Wrong again it seems,' he thought as he stared at the chunk of… bismuth? Bismuth was the closest mineral to describe the construct in his soul. It had step-like walls leading down into its center, but he could see no bottom. The steps went far, before eventually darkening to the point he couldn't see any longer.

It was not large at all, perhaps the length of his thumb, but it felt like there was an endless depth to it. Another non-euclidean structure within himself.

Also like bismuth, this stone was incredibly prismatic. Even though there was, of course, no light within his soul, the chunk never ceased its mesmerising display. Changing his mental viewing of it showed him new colors, and keeping the image static made the shifting stop.

What it looked like though was not as important as its function, which he'd have to test in the exact same manner as all the others. After the affinity experiment, he was a bit hesitant to continue like this, but ultimately he had no other leads and even that experiment- though dangerous- was not lethal. For all he knew, this could be Soul Strength. The HP, SP, and MP nodes looked like little lights, but who knew? Maybe Soul Strength was special.

With the same careful touch, he mentally thrummed at the chunk, getting a confusing response.

There were two responses, and the immediate response was much louder than the second, so he focused on studying that first. The primary response was how the bismuth called to him, pushing him onwards with a sense of ambition powered specifically into his biological limit. Dei could see, from the rock, exactly what his sort of… power cap would be. How much his body could handle or… how much this rock could handle. It was Potential. Dei's potential. Unlike the others, this one felt like it was meant to be interacted with, because it told him how much further he could go.

Funnily enough, it stated that he was at his limit. He couldn't push himself any further. According to his Potential, he was at his biologically perfect, with the only way to gain power from here on out to be leveling spells. Those spells, though, would not be able to push him past the 'stat' limit- only grow his power in different ways.

When he was still Leven, Dei used to work out religiously, pushing his muscles as far as they would go. With the experience he now had, looking back over his previous life, Dei realized he'd been superhuman in nature. The natural, biological limit for humans was fourteen. Leven managed to push his "Physical" stat to around thirty, by Dei's estimates, but that was as far as Leven's body could handle.

Currently, he was far past that, but the question now was how? Clearly, the System did something with his Potential to increase it, but he wondered if that was only something doable in the System or on Earth too.

If it was impossible to increase his Potential, he didn't think there'd be a specific, designated node for it, so it was leaning towards an unknown method for growing it.

Until then, all his stats were set in stone, and his only path forward would be to increase the effectiveness of his spells through leveling them. To do that though, he'd need to figure out how leveling them worked in this world. It was possible, as he'd done it before, but was it simply working the spells like a muscle? Or was it something active? Perhaps both were possibilities.

Back in his previous house, when they first got here, Perumah said that spells were suspiciously easy to make in this world. That seemed like a clue to consider if he was going to power up his own spells soon, so he asked her what she meant.

"I don't think it was a spell anymore," she clarified. "After doing it more, I didn't get a specific ability for mana manipulation."

"What made you think it was a spell?" Dei wondered.

"Because even if I didn't get a spell, I received help and guidance from my affinities. I think they are… a lot more active in this world. It immediately stepped in to show me how to better control my mana, and they usually only do that after you make a spell."

"I don't think it's just them being more active, I think it's because they're unregulated," Dei explained. "Affinities supposedly tend to affect the people using them, but the System protected from that. With that shield gone, affinities are more free to do what they want, including help you at every turn. And manipulate you how they desire if you let them, so be careful when using magic now. I'm pretty sure the System gave us some resistance to the manipulation, but it doesn't hurt to be cautious. I think they only mess with our personalities when we form spells somehow, but you can never be too sure, because I have no idea how this works."

Perumah agreed with his assessment, and they both went silent once more. For a brief moment, he wondered what she was focusing on, but thought there was a good chance that she, too, was studying her own soul. She did have the Heart affinity after all, which was soul-derivative. Perhaps she could glimpse into herself with simply an altered perspective.

His work was not done though, as he remembered there were two responses when he interacted with his Potential, the louder one being that it declared its purpose and his stat cap, even if stat caps didn't technically exist here.

So he went to it again, touching on it and looking for what he missed the first time. It was far more subtle, and took several tries to finally single out what he missed, but when he did, several things clicked into place.

The second response was not something native to his soul at all, but a reaction from his Connection.

It was so thin that he was surprised he'd found it at all, but there was the very slightest line of pure white Soul mana attached to his "Bismuth of Potential." This line dove into one of the holes in the rock, linking it to something he couldn't see. Rather than dive into his Potential to find where Connection began, he went the other way to confirm his suspicion.

Following his bare soul was difficult now, and he didn't just walk along the line of Connection as he had before. He dipped in and out of the third dimension, or perhaps it would be better to say he was always in the third dimension at any given moment, but it stacked on top of itself? Either way, he was much more terrified of his current journey, and he made sure to never lose sight of Connection.

He used to joke about getting lost in his own soul before, but now there was no humor in the thought. It took only a second to withdraw his consciousness back into his body, but what would happen if he didn't know how? The journey was not exactly instant, and he feared that if he subconsciously did not know the way back, he'd fail to return to his body.

Nevertheless, he eventually found what he was looking for. A chasm in his soul, an infinite darkness that he couldn't quite understand, but was much closer to doing so now- the Void.

Unlike on Avium, he actually could see the other side of this Void, very easily. Connection dipped under the Void, into another layer, then back up into the original, never even entering it.

'My soul before, I think it was just me picturing what it should look like or the System hand-holding my human mind. This? This is what it ACTUALLY looks like, unfiltered. Incredible.'

He'd found what he needed to confirm- the long string of Connection gifted to him by Soul started at his Potential, in the center of his soul, then ended at the "Surface," though he'd have to find that surface again in this version to confirm that as well.

Before he could look into it more though, he brought his mind up and out of his body when he heard Sophie's footsteps coming down the stairs. He heard her pause when she saw the lights were on, then walk into the dining room.

When she saw him, she froze, paling instantly.

"Please don't scream, I'm not here to harm you. I have some questions, but those are secondary. I think you'll be interested in the answers instead."

She stood, perfectly still, for nearly a minute. He gave her time to process, not making any movements towards her. He even went as far as to look away, towards the curtains covering the windows so she wouldn't feel pressured.

"Okay," she eventually spoke in a quiet voice, and carefully walked over to pull out the chair directly across from him.

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