New Path

The pain was excruciating. Every copy of my soul Loki senior messed up, the more pain I was in. I know they were copies but since they were linked to me in a very esoteric way, I felt the pain.

The problem with different abilities is that the more I change my soul, the more I change it from its original form. Sometimes changes are beneficial but too many changes is no different than mutilating the soul which causes it cease functioning.

A good analogy would be concrete. Concrete is fairly hard and compact and good under compression, making it a good building material but it has low tensile strength which is why rebar is used in conjunction with concrete to increase its tensile strength. Tensile strength is the maximum stress a material can withstand while being stretched or pulled. which means concrete is extremely brittle and cannot withstand a lot of dynamic force. If it were a concrete parking garage with no rebar to reinforce the parking garages tensile strength, the movement of cars in it can cause the concrete to crack.

A soul is similar to concrete in that the essence can technically be very compact but too many unilateral training methods will start making the soul essence too brittle. Making techniques that stack on top of each other, which is in essence reinforcing the essence with rebar, allow the soul to withstand the pressure of multiple techniques and give there subsequent abilities. This is the reason Druid and Warrior techniques were compatible since the essence was shaped and condensed.

Loki senior, as a person who made his own unique training method and the father of magic casting, knew this was trying to figure out what mixtures were possible and where were there incompatibilities to iron out first before attempting to consolidate all the manuals.

Starting with an arcane caster, they affect the soul by etching their known spells on their soul shell. This allows them to instantly cast the spell with no wait provided they have the mana. Every known spell takes up a certain amount of space on the shell and the amount of mana you have limits the amount of spells you can use. There are distinct ranks of spells based on the mana they expend and the high end of that list extreme mana costs. Loki got around the increasing intelligence cost by building a pseudo shell surrounding the original shell that acts as a mana tank that condenses mana as you rank up. This allows the caster to increase their mana exponentially more than their intelligence would suggest.

Unfortunately, the same spots these arcane spells are etched in on the shell, druids place their connection holes that their inner tree uses to connect its branches to the environment. This was only the first hurdle.

The second problem came when looking at knight training. Knight training had auras which are similar to expandable warrior reinforcements that had no actual strengthening effects on the body. Also this aura was imprinted on the body not the soul just like reinforcements so synchronizing these two abilities was an idea Loki senior had as they weren't necessarily incompatible. He believed he could easily edit my reinforcement to accommodate an aura.

The problem came in when soul essence. The ability to reinforce is a result of the soul essence being condensed which somehow allows the body condense or strengthen itself as well using mana reinforcement techniques. There's a link here I don't quite understand besides what Loki Senior said that since the soul is the core of your being, the body will adjust to be compatible with it. This is still compatible with Auras though as the knight training does something similar.

The problem is that instead of generally condensing the soul essence like a warrior which matches the druid training, Knights condense their essences into an item like shape which is incompatible with Druid training as druids shape their essence into a tree. Knight's weapon or armor like shape essence allows them to imbue whatever equipment in that shape with their mana abilities. In all honesty, Knights and warriors would be compatible and I would have no problem training in it if it weren't for my druid past.

The arcane caster-druid and the knight-druid incompatibility were the two main problems we had to deal with to consolidate everything as ranger training only had two novel things that were extremely compatible already. The first was their nature sense which used the body instead of the soul to sense natures connection. They did this by picking up environmental mana bouncing of their internal reinforcement and using that to somewhat link up to the environment like an echolocation. Nature's language does something more advanced by just linking with the mana network which allows for communication soo I consider the results of nature's sense very inefficient but the mechanism interesting.

The second thing they had which was very compatible, was to increase the strength of their only pet which was as easy as linking the essence of my soul to the sigil representing the contract on the shell.

Solving everything slowly, Loki senior had a great idea. Instead of making my essence condense into a weapon, keep my weapon as a tree so that nature's mana was my weapon allowing me to imbue my mana into the environment. Linking it with the charms of the ranger, I'd be able to use Druid magic in conjunction with my aura skills and reinforcement to give me something similar to a dragons ability. Loki guessed the synergy of reinforcement, auras, nature's sense and the mana of the environment around me would make a powerful combination.

After a few tests and destroying a few copies of my soul to figure out how to safely incorporate this idea, Loki senior had succeeded in not destroying my copied soul when changing methods

That was when I had the idea of using the solution to the knight problem to fix the problem with the arcane casters. Since I can use my body to connect with nature using nature sense, I would require less holes in my shell since my body would make up the difference, albiet nature's sense is somewhat weaker.

It's kind of like going from a pure electrical vehicle to a hybrid with some gasoline. There are benefits and losses. We shall see how it feels.

Whether I give up higher level Druid spells I can't tell since I have no idea how much nature sense can make up the difference. Loki assures me that my life school magic and all my warrior skills will remain and my servants of Nature's will largely stay the same. As for the school of elements. Those would be replaced with massively controlled auras from my body mixed with mana from the surrounding. I would lose my precise complicated lightning spells in favor of more wide range aura attacks unless I decided to construct a spell form of that druid spell.

For specific spell casting, I'll have a little less known spells than an arcane caster since I am still keeping some of my druid connections but it's a price I am willing to pay. I can switch my known spells if need be as well, It just takes time to prepare. Normally every Rank after rank 2 would give me three connections on my shell for a total of 18 at rank 9 but I am keeping it one connection per rank with one of the missing connections being made up by my body's pseudo Nature's Sense. Every connection is equivalent to two known spells so in theory I should know four arcane spells.

"Okay I think I got it this time." Senior Loki looked at me who had bloodshot eyes and was biting down a piece of wood.

Loki senior then flicked his finger lightly as mana entered the soul. By causing excruciating pain, he plugged up some of the holes I had made in my shell by force and replaced them with certain crystal looking pedestals. I'm confused as to how he's doing this with his mana but I'm not about to question a rank 9 on that.

With that completed, he then added some runic marks on the seed to allow it to cast an aura and make nature my weapon. He then spent some time analyzing my reinforcement to create a matching aura from it which was simple for him. He then did something crazy which was help me put a second layer of mana over the parts of my body that were reinforced. I have no control here as Loki senior is controlling my body through me using fate. It is a very strange experience as I feel every action is one of my own making but somehow I can tell this isn't how I would normally act. The mana I coated my reinforcement with was very peaceful and linked to my soul essence through a rune he put on my heart that matched the one on my seed.

This rune was very similar to the one dictated on the ranger handbook to allow nature sense but it somehow was linking my reinforcement to the aura activation rune on my essence as well.

He looked at the left over Tranquility-Rage Chain and smiled. "I have and idea Loki Junior and your gonna love me for it."

I have to admit this mad scientist frightened me and it looks like there's nothing I can do to escape based on these ice chains. In any case, I already consented to this so there was nothing I could do, and I couldn't speak even if I wanted to due to the excruciating pain and wood block in my mouth.

"That's right now hold still." He said staring at me with his hand raised.

Suddenly I saw the Rage portion of my Soul chain sever from my heart and then the rage rune disappeared. Then the chain morphed with several runes forming on it until what looked like a round gemstone formed on the end.

This Gemstone formed a link at its end which Loki Senior promptly moved it to link to that ranger like rune on my heart.

Suddenly my whole body started glowing as if something to show my body and soul were accepting the changes. I saw my essence glow Impeccably and my shell ripple like a wave.

Loki senior smiled, "Looks like the changes caused a qualitative effect rather than quantitative like we intended. You soul is already adjusting to the changes naturally and accommodating your new training style. Now we only have a few more things to do to really make it perfect."

Then he quickly forced ambient mana to connect the shell sigils representing the servants of nature to my seed. When completed, it looked like a phantom connection. This is the same as the ranger manual since the point of it is that I send mana to my pet as I get stronger. This is not a big change so it really had no effect on my soul load.

The next few days carried on with Senior Loki making the final touches by creating mana tanks all along my Tranquility chain. They were all basically pseudo shells filled with only mana. There were 9 total and they in concert multiplied my mana by 3x.

[S.L.A.D will now update to better serve its host in understanding his condition. progress 0%]