A white plane quickly corrupted itself as Luke entered it.

Blotches of blue, yellow, and black overwhelmed the Soul Plane. Fractures formed. Blizzards blew. Greed Grew. Defilement Deepened. Worry Worsened. Runes Ruined. Two objects peacefully floated among it all.

One, Luke intimated it as the soul's core, a transparent glimmering artistry. The other, the white and black sphere Ciridia implanted what seemed like ages ago. In this space, there was currently only him, the mindscape painted by his presence alone. Whispers danced upon stagnant sound waves in the Soul Plane.

"Son. Solider. Sinner."

Behind each whisper, a substance-less soul formed for a fraction of a second. Usually as one familiar image or another. Previous sergeants, his father, dead friends. What a trail the Reaver traveled up to this point. Experiences painted the soul, made him who he was.

[Connection to the soul gradually deepens. Restructuring the vessel, adapting it to its current pressures. Techniques become modestly easier to understand]

Earlier Interface notifications also tugged at his attention. Luke mentally dismissed them, promising to review them another time.

Standing among the ruin in his soul, Luke noticed the forces dominating the Soul Plane sank into his being. Specific organs began to feel unnecessary to function. The Spectral Heart unlocked further. He swore Elementalization responded better. The whispers ceased— good. Enough of the pressure of the past. The present gifted enough as is.

Straightening his spine, the Reaver felt each joint pop. The ambient pressure rose as he moved closer to the Soul Plane's core. The white and black sphere peacefully rotated.

"Come, scion."

Luke widened his eyes in surprise—smoothing it over an instant later. His Ice Mantle Cloak wrapped around one side.

Knew she never totally let me go from that netherworld. Did Musai call it a minor realm? Veronica championed that sphere as a gift, but how so?

Luke shelved further thought, figuring the way out of this odd plane was to delve deeper into the core. He paced forward, the pressure doubling with each step. Eventually, he stopped. Over time, however, the pressure lessened minute by minute. Judging by the gradual changes inside, the process shaped him at a microscopic level. There was no real challenge here. Allow the soul to reforge him, then move again.

Whispers returned at odd intervals, Luke ignored them. The blizzard usually harshened each time he did so. Whatever, the Reaver was ice itself. Let it be cold. What ice elemental shied away from snow? Yellow blotches crawled toward the man. Tinges of red in the air swirled in the soul, forming a wide hurricane, using him as the eye of the storm.

Phenomena began to pile upon one another as Luke trudged toward his soul core. The distance stretched itself, pressure cycled. Out of curiosity, he attempted to use any of his abilities, all failed to respond. The two techniques answered the call without trouble. Writing it off as Interface still throwing its tantrum, Luke persevered on the journey.

None of his steps made a sound, not all that surprising, considering the lack of any ground. Luke made the mistake of looking down. Thousands of wailing souls gazed up, a miasma boiled them in undeath. Yellow or black chains dragged them back beneath the growing black tidal waves. Gray runes floated on the water's surface. Upon introspection, each soul struck as intimately known.

It hit him. Every single being I stole from.

The number swelled beyond simple calculation. No doubt the undulating waves troubled any attempt. Every so often, Luke detailed someone still among the living down there. Those in that minority had their eyes closed.

Like Calista Pyrite.

Ripping his gaze away, Luke felt tendrils of black, yellow, and blood red cling to him. An overwhelming sameness saturated him. The tendrils return to the source, nothing to fear, but everything to understand. Losing track of time, this realm chipped away at Luke. Making his body better suited to survive, thrive, and regenerate. Each step to the soul felt like leaving the path of humanity and returning to the origin.

Seasons passed in this soul realm. Once a cycle of four finished, another began. Dozens must've carelessly formed and dispersed. By the thirteenth process, Luke stood within arm's length of his soul core. Everything else around it was colored, torn, affected, ruined. But here?

Here was unassailable. Worldly worries nothing on the path, an experience, a definition, a step, a reminder, a return. Luke reached toward his soul, urged by instinct. Time froze in place. The outer soul ceased to generate its various effects. Luke sighed.

"Come out, won't you?"

A reverse vortex formed on the black and white sphere. A ghostly pale arm came out. It grasped onto the air, treating it as if it were solid. With a tug, the rest of the presence came out, a white haired peerless beauty in withered robes. Her heterochromic red and white eyes that saw into the soul—literally.

Ceridia faintly smiled. "Scion. Watch first." Black and white essence flooded from the woman. Standard to Luke, a display of her primary and secondary elements perfectly balanced, entwined, nearly inseparable. He planned a similar path with ice and shadow, although the finer details escaped him.

She tapped a finger on her own elemental product, shattering it to smithereens.

"Inferior."

Luke spasmed facially. "Something that masterful is inferior?"

The First Reaver splayed out her fingers, the smithereens pieced back together into a miniature twister, contained as it danced around the woman's open palm. She skillfully stripped away the black essence, keeping the primary white. It visibly weakened compared to before.

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After furrowing his brows in concentration, Luke said, "This version is better? Its destructive capability is less than the dual-element version."

"With the support stripped away, a Concept can be added instead. Further along your path, you will be allowed to manage an additional element while maintaining a Concept within it. It is beyond your current ability, and thus useless to pass on."

Concept? The instructor at the Hunter's Branch said adding in the secondary affinity you had would be the next step after mastering your first for Elementalization. Was she wrong? Is a Concept better? What exactly is a Concept?

"In here, the Soul Plane, the veil between thoughts and reality becomes permeable. You think of questions, and they reach my Divine Soul fragment."

"You can read my mind here?"

"The exact words are reclusive, the confusion, the questioning, their general direction are wide open to anyone in your soul."

"Why are you here anyway? My soul belongs to me."

Using the hand free from the burden of containing an Essence Twister, Ceridia gestured to the dual colored sphere to her side. "This anchors me to the metaphysical within you, scion. A gift from me, to you. A partial trade of privacy, for guidance, help, and concealment from eyes you are not ready for. Your Brother of Wrath and Sister of Sloth contain a similar desperate measure within them."

Time paused around them. Luke found he could move anyway, except for when he veered toward touching the soul core. He sat down in a crisscross position, noticing everything turned to grayscale outside of about a ten-foot radius around him and Ceridia. He looked up at her. "So, that," the Reaver jutted his chin out at the sphere, "it's part of my soul now? Could've asked permission."

"A term to your release, and a greater benefit than a detriment to you, scion." Circumventing a possible argument, the First Reaver flowed to a different topic. "Concepts."

Luke set his arms on his thighs, listening. He said, "I'll drop the subject. Why did you come?"

Tendrils of gold rose from within Cerida, but it wasn't an element. Something more. The white elemental power changed in nature; it became hungrier, resilient, insatiable. Its potency, once fully integrated, surpassed that of the twin element presentation from before—doubtlessly superior.

"As I've seen through you, and past consumed or killed Essence Reavers, the common practice for the Defiers and other technique-driven members of the four races has gone astray. No doubt the subtle influence of the supporters of the Throned. The Defiling Barrier created centuries prior by us Sinned Seven fails to keep out all the seepage of the divine."

Slowly putting a thumb under his chin with the index finger near his lower lip, Luke said, "People of the four races are going about techniques in the wrong way?"

"Wrong would suggest it doesn't work. The dual path without a Concept is the easier method to reach Master in Elementalization." She ceased the Concept infused twister, causing her robe to flutter. "It is the beginning of an end, without a Concept to widen the foundation of the primary element, one stalls at the Master level for life. Only if you choose to tear yourself back down to the beginnings of Expert can you chance at reaching the understandings beyond."

Shifting in posture, Luke felt the cold embrace of stasis. He said, "Continuing to mix shadow into frost leads to Master earlier, at the cost of embracing stagnation later?"

"A concise way to understand it."

"Then how do I learn one of these Concepts to place into my techniques, and can I do so with abilities? I saw the Pyrite Patriarch do something of that nature."

"He has shattered enough of the chains to do so. The limiting structure strangles your greed born abilities."

"Chains? Limiting structure?"

"Each being born or brought to Ludus is chained to its World Laws, through higher ascension and deeper understanding, can you slowly detach them from your soul." She tore at the space between Luke and his soul core. A crack formed over the veil before the illusion ripped away completely.

The soul lost its transmogrification, six chains wrapped around it, one already broken, and a second cracked to its core. The other four remained untouched, each thicker than the last. Every chain shook as the soul they contained struggled against the constraints. Frost pulsed from the soul, coiling up the chains, before thawing uselessly on the links.

"This, scion, is the representation of the 'Interface' as you fondly call it. A conduit of limitation disguised as a pathway. Powers beyond the creatures of this world operate its principles. I failed in decoupling it from our mortal plane. But its stranglehold is not what it once was."

"Powers beyond? Do you mean the god beasts like Succoria?"

"Succoria is merely one of five closest to becoming free of this playground, Luke. They influence the Edgelands out of fear one could rise to take their throne, and reverse the scales. What is beyond them, I cannot say, but know that they exist."

The Reaver always had a faint dislike of the Interface. He thought it was a mere preference. Could it have been an instinct instead?

"Why does everyone use the Interface if it's a limiter?"

"Lack of choice, and its initial essential purpose. It is not evil, nor is it good. It just is. A rule to the world, that unveils its barbs as you grind to the top of the heap for a way out." Ceridia tapped Luke's temple. "There is much I desire to shed light on, but this fragment within you will need rest soon. Once the stasis ends, it cannot broach these topics freely. Focus on the step immediately useful to you. Choose a Concept and begin the path to integration. The choice should be clear."

"It is?" Luke asked in confusion. Did he even know a Concept? He touched on some when he used Rising West, but otherwise…

It may as well have been an entirely new topic to him.

"What is the Reaver?"

"A class that steals from others to strengthen itself."

Waving her hand casually, Ceridia mended the rip in the veil over Luke's soul core. The chains vanished as things returned to 'normal'.

"It is far more than that. Isolated Greed. Gluttony. Theft. Consumption. You instill fear into those above and chain those beneath. Within the seven sinned legacies the four races inherited, Greed is placed at first or second in its ceiling."

She leaned in close to Luke, her eyes tracing every detail of his face, like a sculptor admiring the art they've made thus far. "You inherited a legacy worth more than this entire earthly city combined, should you live long enough to fully understand and integrate it. Scion, Greed is a Concept. The foundational Concept to feed every other aspect of yourself, none will suit you better, the Legacy demands it."

The Reaver put up both hands in deference, taking a step back. "You don't have to convince me. I'm intuitively sensing that's the case. How can I start off with something like that?"

"You've stolen two pieces of Ichor already. I will convert their diluted Divinity to brand the Concept's basics into your mind." The white-black sphere slammed into Luke's chest, melding with it. Two burning hot drops near the pit of his stomach sizzled and screeched in sermon. Esoteric knowledge imprinted itself, and the two drops completely kneeled to the Legacy of Greed's unwaivering consumption. An unholy teal and black bordered system message took up all of Luke's vision.

[You have stolen a piece of knowledge kept within generations of the Throned and regular god creatures. The Concept of Greed will gradually reveal itself to you]

"Doesn't tell me all that much, and how long is gradually going to be?" Luke muttered.

"Concepts reach the edges of the structure's knowledge, and fusing it with a technique will go beyond its influence. They are, at the core, a power source unbound by laws. Beholden to understanding and linked to racial evolution. To Origin." She tapped on Luke's chest, where the Spectral Heart beat in response. "This will show you the depths to which you can consume, Scion. Knowledge. Affinity. Talent. Attributes. Loyalty. All of it is yours for the taking."

A high-pitched roar reached the depths of Luke's soul. Ceridia's face tightened imperceptibly. "Until the next Scion. Choosing the secondary affinity over fusing a Concept first would be an utter disservice to your efforts until now. A final piece of advice," she prodded Luke's chest again. "When this calls to you, heed it."

Cerdia's Divine Soul fragment wisped back into the black-white sphere. When the final piece subsumed itself into the abyss, the stasis resolved. The roar beginning to build vanished, and whispers took its place. Seeing little else to do, the Reaver touched upon his soul core. An ancient aura blasted out, enveloping every inch of him. Luke felt the metaphysical second chain decay into nothingness.

The various effects in the Soul Plane ceased in any capacity. The black water waves below receded out of sight. Every whisper, thread of red, yellow, and black decay—gone. The Soul Plane became an ordinary white, with the soul core peacefully hovering next to the black-white sphere his progenitor left behind, as an anchor.

At some point, that unholy woman would come again, but this round was over. As Luke's spirit representation condensed down, going into the Soul Core to return to the corporeal world, another system message in a silver border announced itself to the furthest reaches of the Reaver's consciousness.

[You and your companion have completed the Second Ascension. Tap for more information]

Luke naturally couldn't tap shit as the soul core took in the final bits of him.

You got a fast one on me, Interface. I'll see you on the other side.

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