Chapter 38 – The ratio

Adam and the two twins were standing in front of a fork that divided the corridor into two paths.

Luna spoke up "Young master, it seems our earlier assumption was wrong."

What she was speaking of was Adam's first assumption that this dungeon was a sequential dungeon. He had believed that it would be a straight line dungeon which would have one room after the other till it led to the next floor.

Their current situation arose after the two girls cleared the first room and the trio made their way into the corridor leading to the inner depths of the dungeon.

"It seems so. I can see both the corridors opening up from here so it isn't that one is a dead end. We will have to alter our plans a bit. You and Elaine take a breather while I go explore and figure some stuff out. We will begin our exploration again in 10 minutes." The two had fought and even though it had been quick Luna had still consumed some of her magic power reserves. He wanted her to be at top form from here on out as they would truly be stepping into the unknown.

Adam began by quickly running back and forth through the two paths ahead of them.

"They are both proper rooms. The one on the left contains 4 monster spawns and the one on the right has a 6 monster spawn. The only conclusion I can come to is that after each room the corridors disperse to more rooms till finally all but one leads to a dead end or they all converge at the end." He reported his findings to the two resting girls.

The dungeon's layout was a lot more complex than he had first imagined. This only further fueled his excitement to move further in.

"We still have some time. I plan to go to my soul world to check on the exp distribution." He said after their discussion on the layout of the dungeon.

"We will follow you there young master. The meditation should help me recover my magic power quicker." Luna said and Elaine nodded her head.

The three sat down side by side with their feet folded and closed their eyes.

One of Adam's biggest concerns was experience distribution. His experience to level up was 2000 while the two girls were 1000 each.

This was fine as he was the crowd control attacker and would end up with the most kills usually but then this would lead to another problem.

Elaine was completely defence focused and would rarely get a kill. How would she level up? If kills determined who got the exp, then the imbalance of its distribution would be really hard to correct. They would be wasting energy weakening enemies to feed to certain members of the party.

The amount of time and energy that would consume would slow them down considerably.

Once they entered Their respective soul worlds, Adam exchanged a few words with the girls before focusing on his own task. The girls now had a patch of land in each of their worlds. They sat down and admired the clouds in the 'sky'.

Adam began by taking a look at the cards. Unsurprisingly Luna had received all three exp points from the kills earlier. This was bad.

This was the scenario that he least wanted.

He, however, did not let this get him down yet. He began interacting with his sentient mind to find a solution.

This was a true challenge. His sentient mind was very cryptic about the information it gave out. Reading between the lines and finding the clues in its sentences was something he was getting increasingly used to. The better he got at it the more he understood just how much of a blessing this skill was.

After a few minutes of conversing he was finally able to understand something.

"Of course. I should've honestly guessed it. I feel a little stupid now for not seeing it sooner. How could a soul link be as ordinary as only providing a chatting function when we enter it."

What he had found out was that the soul link as its name suggested was a bridge between the souls of the three. In simpler terms, they were connected at all times. He did not know the range of this connection because he had never strayed too far from the girls recently but that wasn't important now.

As long as they were connected their souls had this bridge. Just like how the clouds were able to transfer from his soul to theirs there was a possibility for transfer of other things that were immaterial like the soul.

Once Adam understood this he began calculating a theory which he then proposed to his sentient mind.

"Does the soul govern over experience points?" This was his first question to the sentient mind. After his experience from earlier where his assumption was proven wrong, he realised that just because a probability of something occurring was high that did not mean that the other probabilities were incapable of occurring. He had grown cautious by nature due to this experience, so he wouldn't get to the point until he was absolutely certain.

He also realized that it would do him no good to always be sceptical and overthinking every situation. He would have to take risks once in a while otherwise his life would end up predictable and boring like his last. This was against everything he wanted this time around. Finding the right balance was his challenge.

'Affirmative. Experience points must travel through the soul to be imprinted in the card and then stored within it.' He got a quick one-line answer.

"Perfect! You are also able to affect to an extent the other two soul world's since you were able to form cards in their world. So this should be easy. Can you stall or halt the experience before it is stored and imprinted on the cards?"

'Affirmative. Action within bounds of capability.'

He immediately put this conversation on hold and began relaying the good news to the two girls.

He substituted his sentient mind with his own capabilities in the explanation he was giving. To be completely fair the sentient mind was, in essence, his second brain so to speak. So he didn't lie.

The girls got as excited as he was as they understood what he was hinting at.

If he was able to stall the experience points then what was stopping him from distributing it to whichever soul world he wanted it to go to. Stopping or stalling the experience points was equivalent to controlling the flow of the experience points.

Seeing that the two girls had already figured out what he was implying Adam spoke up: "As you two know I require twice the amount of exp because I have to level two classes. However, I still suggest that we split the experience equally. Even if I fall a few levels behind I should still be able to keep up with you two." He honestly said what was on his mind.

"Young master!" Both girls yelled at him in unison. The sounds transmitted straight to his mind and shook him to his core.

Adam was surprised. This was the first time that he had seen them both get enraged at him simultaneously to such an extent.

"You truly are looking down on us. Do you think we would feel bad if you took twice as much experience as us? Then should we feel bad that we sisters are taking two shares of experience individually?" Elaine was truly huffing with fury.

"Young master we are already a party. Mistress also did her best to get our skills in balance. Something as small as this should not be allowed to ruin it." Luna was a bit calmer but even her eyes contained a burning fury deep inside.

She continued: "we are one unit. If we level, we level together or we don't level at all! Unless… Unless young master has never truly seen us as trustworthy." Tears were clearly welling up in her eyes but she held them back.

"Ah!... That's not… what I meant… I apologise." He was truly at a loss this time. The girls were right. He had undermined the bond that had been created between them. He was treating them like strangers just now and he felt utterly guilty about it.

"It was my fault. I will never again propose something so stupid. Let me fix this up. I shall set everything up and create a distribution of 2:1:1 is that okay?" Adam gave a heartfelt apology and asked.

"Yes." They both replied.

Adam then apologized a bit more till the two girls completely calmed down. He then began a long conversation with his sentient mind.

To sum it up. These were the arrangements he made:

The current experience points that are already allotted could not be tampered with as such the next 6 points would be equally distributed between Elaine and Adam.

This, when done, would bring the total tally to:

Adam – 6 points, Luna – 3 points and Elaine – 3 points.

After which the points would then be distributed in a 2:1:1 ratio every time the points reached or exceeded the 4 point mark. Any extra's would be stored till they accumulated to 4 points only then would they be distributed to the 3 cards.

Breathing a sigh of relief Adam took a step back and sat himself down on the lush and green grass that was everywhere in his soul world.

"Are you done, young master?" Elaine asked.

"Yes…" He explained what he had done to them.

"Yay! Let's go back and head into the right side corridor now! 6 goblins? Easy!" Elaine could not hold back her excitement.

"Calm down sister. What will we do with her? Anyways, young master, have you looked into how you formed the connection with us in the first place?" Luna asked. She was curious because Adam had mentioned how he himself had no idea how he had initiated the whole soul link during a few of their training sessions while no one was around.

"About that… I've never really gotten the time. We have been so busy lately. Should I look into it now?" He was just as curious if not more curious than Luna on this phenomenon that had occurred.

"We have already spent more than the 10 minutes that we had allotted for our break, to begin with so… I don't mind waiting a little longer." Luna replied.

"What?! No more of this boring waiting! Do it later! Come on!" Elaine was the only odd one out.

"Majority has decided. Sorry, Elaine but you are going to have to wait patiently." Luna said with a slightly awkward smile. She was used to her sister's impatience and knew how to deal with it.

"Fiiiiinnnneeeeee. Make it quick though. If the young master doesn't finish in 5 minutes ill go in alone!" She said impatiently.

"Haha, I'll make it quick don't worry." Saying this much he receded back to his soul world and started interrogating his sentient mind furiously.

The innocent sentient mind was pushed into a rapid-fire questioning.

Within minutes Adam had figured out the root cause of the soul link. Three main components had led to the event:

1) The girls had an unguarded mind that completely trusted him.

2) The purity of his soul gave it an invasive and almost contagious nature towards impure souls.

3) The girl's bodies were in a state of complete fatigue at the time and as a result, was subconsciously craving energy. His soul is a form of energy that fit the bill as well.

These findings did not bode well. If he unintentionally touched the heads of someone like the sisters at the lodge it would give away his secret. The head was where the sea of consciousness resided so it was the easiest place to form a connection with.

'It seems direct physical contact with strangers should be avoided at all costs. I should wear my gloves at all times when I step out from now on. It might look a little wonky but it's my only option.' He decided and then explained the situation to the two girls.

"Okay, we are done here. Time to go back to exploring." He said and excited his soul world.

Back outside Elaine exclaimed: "Finally! You two are so slow."

'When did this girl become so sassy?' Adam and Luna thought the same thing. He found it really cute. He went ahead and tugged on her right ear and rubbed the inner furry part.

"Stop the sass. We were doing important things." He said sternly but with a hint of playfulness.

"Okay. Okay! I won't do it again." She pushed her little tongue out and smiled.

The three made their way into the right corridor.