Whispers from Within

Surprisingly, the more advanced spiritual senses actually made things more difficult, rather than making them easier. In small ways, of course—I'd still managed to take down platform five, so I was clearly more capable with it than without.

But that didn't change the fact that it was really confusing. Instead of seeing like you normally would, but just in every direction, you can see everything in three-dimensional space including yourself. So, the spiritual pressure that was sent through my surroundings, and eventually came back, or not coming back at all, slowly gave me more and more information to work with.

At first, if I were to simply walk into a room, I'd almost instantly get a picture of myself in relative space within the room, the major objects and how far away the walls and ceiling were. In less than a fraction of a fraction of a second later, I'd have the spiritual energy that had been within the little nooks and crannies of the room which would come back and signal to me a bunch of things that I clearly wasn't consciously calculating.

Now, I'll be honest, I set all this up in the heat of the moment and I have no idea why its working so well. I can only assume that this is the way you're supposed to do spiritual senses and the people who've figured it out keep it to themselves, but either way this is a super powerful tool.

I think I may be helped by Grayhom, residing in my soul, and probably working on what would effectively be a module for this information to be calculated in outside of my conscious mind. It'd probably be more impressive if I were interpreting this information in real time, but I wasn't. It was an innate thing, where most of the new advancement in the strange form of 'sight' really came down to finding new ways to delineate and capture new information from the same process.

If I had to put it into an analogy, it was as if I we simultaneously using echolocation and sitting in a web that'd report any new movement and chain reaction back to me, but also it being malleable like you'd expect from a gargantuan slime monster.

Confusing and far over my head with its complexity.

Effectively, I was now receiving nigh instant updates on movements within the radius of my 'web' of spiritual pressure, receiving hyper detailed three-dimensional information from wherever the slime could get its tendrils in, and then also getting large-scale information about the space I was in by using the new and improved spiritual pressure version of the echolocation.

I could see why Tessai had told me that I needed to use spiritual pressure for spiritual senses, rather than spiritual energy. One was far more difficult to control that the other, with spiritual energy being the raw form and spiritual pressure being a by-product or a derivative of it, capable of 'moving' much faster and being far more malleable to work with.

Of course, spiritual pressure isn't as practically powerful in a combat situation, but for utility purposes like this it was perfect.

I don't know how 'fast' spiritual pressure actually moves, or if that was even a measurable effect, but it 'moves' faster than spiritual energy when used for the same purpose, i.e., echolocation. However, I also legitimately cannot discern a difference between actual sight, namely the speed of light plus whatever lag time the eyes and brain introduce, versus this new spiritual sense.

Though, it still wasn't perfect, and it had its own flaws. On the superficial end, I couldn't discern colours, aside from the white and blue that signified if the spiritual pressure had encountered significant spiritual energy in its travels. On the more worrying end, a sufficiently powerful spiritual pressure could interfere with the travel of the spiritual pressure in its echolocation format, or the web that I have for nearer targets.

I'd just have to combat that by having an even more significant amount of spiritual pressure to diminish the effects of the stronger spiritual pressures.

I lifted myself from the rocky platform carefully, not quite trusting the newfound sight despite it being logically superior to my last version. But I'd done all the testing I needed, and now was time for me to continue up the path of metal pegs, hoping that I wouldn't need to spend so much time on the next challenge I faced.

The path of pegs, while demanding, was significantly easier with my new movement technique. There were a few risky steps, but other than them I made smooth progress. My hyper accurate senses helping make my steps even more precise as I was able to conceptualise the three-dimensional space around me for hundreds of metres.

Interestingly, that meant that I got a good look at the next platform, jutting out from the side of the massive and incredibly straight pit I was climbing out of slowly. The Hollow, glowing blue with spiritual energy, was the real interest point.

It didn't look super special, other than it was clearly the strongest Hollow I'd ever fought, in terms of pure spiritual energy. Otherwise, it was fairly normal and run of the mill.

To the naked eye, that was.

With my new spiritual sense, I could see the seam within the beast, running down the body of the Hollow like a biological zipper. While I couldn't look inside it, the gap far too narrow for my spiritual pressure to invade, I knew there probably wasn't anything in there.

Finally, after a few more minutes of careful climbing, I came to stand across from the suspiciously still form of the Hollow. It stood at a respectable height, probably twice my height, but that was hardly uncommon in Hollow biology. Its body was wide in every sense of the word, filling as much space as it could with its frame, and its mask was proudly displayed on its chest, lacking a humanoid head.

Yet I took one look at the Hollow and realised that it was a fake. The false mask was just as much a part of its carapace as any other section you could see on its outer body.

"Are you going to do anything?" I said out loud, my voice echoing grandly in the deadly silent tunnel, but the Hollow still didn't react, electing to stay entirely still instead. Was it waiting for me to something, or attack it?

I obviously wouldn't be attacking it physically, with the seam running down its back and hiding whatever was within the false body it was showing me. Instead, I chose to begin with the best ranged attack I have. The blackhole technique.

It wasn't the best that's for sure, but unless I learned kidō, or specifically hadō, I was shit out of luck until I found something better to use. I began to focus on the blackhole technique, which dulled my senses pretty significantly, but the nearest source of spiritual energy was the Hollow, and I began to immediately pull from its reserves.

The Hollow's reaction wasn't instant, like I'd expected it would be, but it actually took a while for it to even move. Its ribbon, however, gave away its plan to move before it made any physical movement. When I'd taken a good portion of its spiritual energy into my reserves, somewhere around five percent of my own reserves, it chose then to rush me.

I imagine the thought process was that whatever attack I was launching at it would require enough of my attention that I might not react in time, and it might have if I weren't already aware of its seam.

The bulky Hollow ran towards me like any hundred other Hollows before it had, it reeled back its punch and prepared what would probably be a decently powerful wallop if it'd ever intended to actually connect with it.

Its actual goal was to get me to dodge underneath its slowly moving arm and go its rear, a significantly more advantageous position to be in for me. So, instead of following along, I kept to its front side stubbornly, even pretending to have a try at breaking its false mask.

Of course, it jumped on the slightly disadvantageous opportunity I'd presented it. In a split second, the bulky Hollow shifted morbidly underneath the exposed areas of skin and quickly turned itself inside-out as its arms reached towards me to grab me in a deadly hug.

I retreated quickly, but it was only by virtue of my new spiritual sense that I got the full picture of the Hollow's exposed, true form. Out of the zipper on the back of the Hollow's false body a many tentacled thing burst forth with blinding speed. The Hollow screeched with an ear-piercing pitch as more and more of its true body, a mass of spear-like tentacles, vomited forth from was effectively a skin suit it used to trick its prey.

In my mind, it was probably one of the ultimate forms of the ambush Hollow subtype, probably only significantly beat out by Hollow who were of a higher power level in general.

Thankfully, I was effectively its hard counter, my senses to its attack and my cat and mouse fighting style to its burst aggression. With the surety of my steps influenced by the precision movement technique, I danced in between the speared tentacles with ease, a total mockery of just how difficult this would actually be if I'd been limited to the sight of my eyes and my ribbon sense.

With the Hollow far from being intelligent or powerful enough to mess with my spiritual senses, it was effectively no contest. There were no attacks that he could hide from the sight, no setup that could trap me, and so it became a game of me slowly moving closer and closer to where its true mask lay.

Ingeniously, or luckily in the case of the Hollow who'd likely had no choice how its body had formed, the true mask was placed in the centre of the mass of tentacles, much like how the beak of an octopus was placed. The fight ended with me grabbing the Hollow's mundane ribbon and slamming my fist down into its small oval mask.

I stood there for a moment, staring at the Hollow's body as it all fell limp and deactivated until it either regrew its mask or was purified. The fight had been… intoxicating. It was far from a true challenge, like the first ambush Hollow I'd fought, but it would've been incredibly dangerous if I'd challenged it before I'd developed this crazy spiritual sense, probably putting even more holes in me than I already had from the last fight.

I moved on with haste, the distinct feeling that I was hitting my stride present in my mind. I was starting to truly realise the potential I had and build on the small things I'd sowed as seeds in training for weeks upon weeks. Now, all of it was slowly coming to fruition, being far more than the sum of its parts.

The adrenalin began flowing, the promise of the fights ahead only beaten by the ticking timebomb of Suzumi's warning ribbon.

---

The tearing sensation was all that filled Suzumi's mind. The minutes stretching into hours as her soul itself was being torn apart and slowly and haphazardly restructured by the infinitely complex kidō that surrounded her, formulated into true physical form by the chalk they were written in.

At some point, her thoughts had separated from the pain wracked state of her physical mind and receded into a more lucid state. Almost as if she were viewing herself from the third person, an out of body experience.

The sensation of having your soul be manhandled in such a way was horrific. Especially when something so integral was being removed so unrefinedly, like as if your heart were being removed from your chest with a rusty steak knife instead of a sterile scalpel.

The pain was unimaginable, only progressing further and further past what Suzumi thought was even a possibility. She had been told that there would be pain, even using the exact word she had just used; 'unimaginable'. Though, true to its description, the pain had been far past anything she'd experienced.

She didn't know how much time had passed yet. It could have been minutes or hours, or even days, and she would be none the wiser. Tessai hadn't let up yet, carefully managing the Soul Freedom Ritual, making sure that everything was on the straight and narrow, though if anything went wrong Suzumi didn't even know if it was possible to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Not after this.

And that's what worried her.

She had full faith in Tessai. He was a meticulous man, and if anything truly went wrong, then it would have been something out of his control or unforeseeable with this approach. Though Suzumi desperately hoped that this was the breakthrough that Tessai wanted it to be and had severely warned her that it might not be.

But the seeds of doubt had been sowed sometime during the course of the Ritual, and they were growing and growing, from seeds, to sprouts, to saplings. And now, if Suzumi paid extremely close attention, she could hear something.

It wasn't loud or all encompassing, but the soft sound could be heard. As soon as she had heard it once, she was fixated on its progression, the sound slowly becoming clearer over time and absorbing her absolute attention, demanding it.

It was a whisper.

"I wonder if she can hear me now." Suzumi gasped, her voice instantly going shaky with the pure chaos contained within the quiet words. There was a pregnant silence, and Suzumi could swear that she felt a smile grow on her own face.

Then her mouth parted, her throat and lungs working against her will in the most private place of her own mind.

"Ah." She felt herself say, the word coming out without the shakiness she felt, filled with the grim glee of the whisper, "I'm awake."