It was two days later when Helare finally got to continue the lesson on veils for him. The one she'd started almost two weeks ago by then. It was just just in time too, because Rafe had only a few days left on Primus, by his reckoning.

"To recap, veils were once part of auras, and they are something new. Something introduced by the coming of the system to the multiverse," she explained.

Rafe nodded along, already aware of this particular information.

"There are more theories for how veils work and why. Before the system, one had to be late in the D grade for their aura to automatically form a veil. That's why I told you you shouldn't have seen a veil unless your planet had such strong beings even before integration."

She stopped and examined Rafe, but he kept his hands busy as usual. He did not react to her attempt to fish for information this time. He was getting used to her most common strategies, which was counterproductive given his resolution not to act too familiar with her. She clicked her tongue almost inaudibly, but Rafe could see the silent smile of satisfaction she still wore, although he didn't understand why she wore it.

"Anyway, veils, it is believed, are ways for the Essence to mark their investment. The Essence needs us to grow because the stronger we get, the more Essence we produce naturally."

Rafe stopped his work with his moulds. He'd once heard from Enith about how the Essence formed people and how people formed Essence, but he had never gotten that deep into it.

"Wait a second, teacher," he started. "I know all about how we come from the Essence and about how we are always processing Essence, but I have no idea how we produce Essence. I'm just thinking a foundation in that kind of thing could be useful, no?"

Helare blinked at him. "Huh, yeah I guess. There is a core at the centre of every being made of Essence. Normal people can't see it. Only soul architects can. But there are visible examples of this kind of phenomenon. Cores of planets and cores of stronger, sentient dungeons. These cores burn, they burn with Essence. They are the reason we are alive. They also are the main source of the Essence we produce, although we rarely use the Essence we produce ourselves."

Rafe was following, but he hit a snug at the end there. "Why not? Why can't we use the Essence our cores create?"

The princess only shrugged. "Maybe there is a mistake in how we are created. Or maybe even unconsciously, the Essence knew what it was doing. Our Essence processing organs have a link to the ambient world. Every kind of Essence to be internally processed has to go through this link. But not all the Essence that goes through is processed. The excess enters our soul and has to be excreted."

Rafe let the information sit. Helare knew her student well enough that she stopped the explanation there temporarily. Rafe nodded to her after a bit.

"Well, the Essence created deep in your soul can't be processed because it didn't go through the ambient link. It basically has to be excreted with the unprocessed Essence from before."

She waited for Rafe to nod again, but she hadn't given him enough information to be overwhelmed this time. He only blinked at her, then turned away to fiddle with one of his moulds again.

"Well, you remember I never mentioned any part of excess Essence being part of the aura skill, don't you?"

Rafe turned to her again, his eyes narrowed. He nodded his head in acquiescence.

"Well the excess Essence is the stuff veils are made of. When it is excreted, it is still kind of connected to our souls. That connection wanes in time as the Essence either returns to being ambient Essence or is reabsorbed into our ambient links. Still, the Essence will try to protect its host if they are attacked. Now, if the attacker is much weaker, then the quality of protection on their opponent would be too much for them to get through.

"Essence does have quality grades, you know. A high grade world produces higher grade Essence than a lower grade one, which is why it is graded higher. It also produces more Essence, and is usually bigger."

"So are higher grade people bigger? Like are D grades gigantic? I've never seen a D grade warrior before," Rafe commented.

The princess wrinkled her brow at him. "Of course not. They have larger souls, which is why their aura is automatically stronger. Their souls could crush ours. Also, at such grades they get the ability to see their souls, because the souls are now larger than their vessels, but are still trapped in them."

"Trapped in the vessels?" Rafe asked.

The princess nodded. "Our vessels don't grow bigger. They just get better as we refine them with every evolution."

Stolen story; please report.

"I see," Rafe said.

She had given him a lot to think about. So veils were a kind of insurance the Essence had on its users. The higher one's grade, the higher the Essence quality produced and the more of it. So the Essence, even before the system came, wanted these higher grade people to survive so they would produce more and higher quality Essence. With the system and its need to expand, veils were introduced even at lower grades.

If Rafe were the system, he'd have hundreds more strategies to produce higher grade and more Essence. It had to increase the numbers of people reaching higher grades for one, which explained it disseminating information the way it had, to increase people's chances of advancing. There were surely other strategies Rafe knew nothing about.

Although, upgrading planets seemed an obvious one. That was perhaps the reason for the tutorial sector. The planets that performed outstandingly well in the tutorials would get lots of perks upon promotion. And he was sure one of them was an option to upgrade.

But who would get to choose? There was a king on this particular world. A king who had conquered the whole planet. Or so he thought. Rafe's visions had told him the world was too big and wild to be conquered so easily, but he'd play along with the Ma'la's delusions for the time being.

There was also someone they called a hero. The chosen. Filoria's father. Rafe thought he would never meet the man.

It was a pity he would be leaving the world soon. He would have liked to learn a lot about how the whole promotion thing worked. He'd heard from Helare that the hero had been off-world for some time. He was attending something called promotion meetings.

He hadn't found out much about what that entailed as Helare had admitted she didn't know much. She was not that interested in it. Filoria would know more, she'd asserted. Only, Rafe did not like Filoria.

With a sigh, he forced his mind from all that. Another thing Helare's lesson had taught him so far, was that vessels perhaps improved automatically every time someone tiered up. But that couldn't be it, could it? That could not be enough. What about foundations? And, as far as he knew, there was a bottleneck built around the vessel.

At some point, the vessel and the soul would become prerequisites for advancement. They would form bottlenecks of their own. If one only started working on the vessel during that bottleneck, wasn't that a recipe for disaster? It made sense to plan earlier for such things. Noid had taught him as much by teaching him almost everything about the early stages of truths even though he couldn't cultivate truths at the time.

As soon as he possibly could, Rafe was going to find out a way to improve his vessel. He needed to anyway, if he was going to be hunting calamity beasts after his time on Primus and Earth. And once this lesson was over he'd finally open up that soul cultivation manual he'd received.

"So anyway," Helare said. "Pure mages definitely don't have defense specs, and even hybrid classes have a kind of penalty to it. I suppose you already know the defense and offense spec are combined together to form the density spec mages have?"

Rafe shrugged. "I had guessed as much."

"Good," she said. "Good. What I suppose you don't know, is that density doesn't only stand for mana density. Of course mana density is its biggest contributor, but then it wouldn't be able to protect mages automatically and protect the 'Essence's investment'."

Rafe felt like he understood, although he wasn't sure what he was supposed to understand. So the density spec didn't only affect mana density? How was that important to him?

"How does that matter?" Rafe asked.

Helare shrugged. "Do you know, there are ways to improve mana density independent of getting spec points from the system. As well as control and regeneration. Only, when you improve your mana control and regeneration, it shows up on your status screen. When you improve mana density, nothing changes on your status screen."

Rafe nodded, although he'd never tried any of this and therefore didn't know what she was on about. He still didn't see how this affected him, and he told her as much. He was not a mage not was he looking into becoming one.

"I promised I'd teach you how to manipulate your veil, remember? There are tricks for even mages at low levels like us to have somewhat active veils. And a veil you control yourself can do a lot more than one that controls itself, don't you think? In fact, at higher grades that is one of the ways veils grow. They become controllable. Our trick helps you learn to control them earlier."

"I guess I understand. So you're trying to give me information on how mage's veils work because mages can control their veils?"

"No. Not necessarily. At higher levels, once one can see their souls, they can see the Essence that is connected to their souls. That is when people can control their veils."

Rafe was going to nod when he froze. He could see his soul. He should be able to control his veil. Only, did he even yet have one. He was just level fourteen.

The lowest leveled beings he'd fought in the tower were past level twenty, and they had such weak veils a bit of brute force could do them in.

"Anyway, mage veils work differently from warrior veils. They make the area occupied by the mage's aura viscous, like a lake. To attack a mage, one has to swim against the current. It is not an absolute defense. It merely buys time for the mage to fire off a spell or to dodge out of the way of a dangerous ranged attack."

Rafe nodded at that. For a mage's veil to be that strong, they had to be at least a rank above their enemy. Warriors close to them in rank would be able to force through those flimsy defenses in seconds. Mages were very dependent on partying up. Or for people like Devila and Enith, on crafting defensive equipment that could stand in for veils.

"I guess we'll have to start on veil manipulation tricks at a later time," Helare told him with a frown at her desk which overlooked Rafe's forge area.

There was a crowd there waiting for her. Rafe nodded towards them, a gesture telling her to head there. He had a lot to think about, to plan.

He was probably not going to learn Helare's veil manipulation method. There was no more time for Primus. The anticipation and dread formed a pit in his belly, but he ignored all of it. He needed to distract himself.

There was his metal work for the next few hours, then his training with Collab and the others, but what was there after that?

He couldn't afford to have even a few seconds of free time anymore. Thinking about it might jinx his last chance to return to Earth.

Then the idea came to him suddenly. He needed to start his soul cultivation anyway.

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