Chapter 207: Soul Glyphs

Jade calmed his emotions when he saw that a simple shout of his was so detrimental to the surrounding. He thought 'Living normally is going to require a new level of holding back. I should test out the soul glyphs now. First is the Dread-Smith glyph'.

He had no idea what to do now though, before he just put energy in his soul but now he had no idea if the workings had changed. Jade focused back on his soul realm and moved his consciousness to the planet that represented the Dread-Smith glyph.

The items there were realistic and he could create any item he knew of or just imagined into existence there. He thought 'It seems that the purpose of the place is for experimenting with different ideas without using the actual materials but just a representation of them in my soul. This means that I need a good understanding of various materials to be able to use the glyph properly.

It kinda sucks that glyph has no battle effects like when it was True Dream but I've gained so many other things so he isn't too bad'. He went to the next soul glyph, the Space glyph.

His consciousness entered a wormhole and appeared outside of another, he repeated this again and again until he realized that he would get no other reaction. He thought 'Maybe I have to add energy, next glyph'.

He went to the replica of his body that was the Beyond-Death glyph. His consciousness entered the body and her realized that he could control it. He moved himself around his soul and moved various planets and celestial bodies with it. A daring idea came to him as he thought 'Can I leave my soul realm with this body?'

He decided to try it out and amazingly it worked, he was in a mixture or overlap of the empty soul realm and the material world when he came out. His soul realm condensed and became 3 soul glyphs and his body changed to look like it was made of solid grey light, almost silver, with the dark grey concentric flower pattern representing the Control Mandala on his back.

He could sacrifice parts of himself to move faster than the normal speed like the Soul Parasite could with the Control Mandala and he could see the souls of the creatures in the distance.

He returned back to his body and folded on himself instinctually, returning back to his soul realm. He thought 'Wild!... that was an out of body experience'. The place he had just been to was the Astral Plane, the connecting point between the empty soul realm and the material realm although he didn't know this.

Jade exited the replica of his body and tested the last soul glyph, the Cosmic-Soul glyph by entering the star that represented it. He felt himself turn into different types of existences similar to what he experience when he was Baldr. He felt part of him that had become the radiance of the star and realized that its light extended beyond the confines of his soul realm.

He calmed the storm of chaotic transformations and made the star a normal star shining with light and heat. There was a certainty in him that made him know that he could do more and he decided follow this hunch. He split a small part of his consciousness and suddenly got two perspectives from which he observed his soul realm.

Although the second perspective was smaller and insignificant compared to his main consciousness it was still there and separate. He pushed it further from himself and a small part of the star left with the piece of consciousness. The result was that a mini star was created and Jade moved the part of his consciousness far away from the star.

It was still him so he could feel himself in the small star. Smaller asteroids and planets started revolving around the small star as it left Jade's soul. These heavenly bodies were still attached to Jade's soul with the Control Mandala thread.

The small star and its little solar system went outside the confines of Jade's soul realm but didn't enter the Astral Plane but the empty soul realm. Fascinated Jade left his soul realm and entered the Astral Plane with his Beyond-Death glyph and inspected the star. The star looked completely different from Jade's soul and the souls in the distance.

It was a formless and constantly morphing blob of white sand. Yes white sand not grey sand like Jade and every other soul. Jade wanted to test a few more things so he went back into his soul realm. He touched one of the strings that represented his Soul Mandala and he instantly felt omnipresent in the soul realm. He was experiencing every moment of his life at the same time.

Jade broke the connection in fear that it would adversely affect him but he was fine. After all the evolutions his mind was more than capable of handling the load of reliving his entire life. He connected with the thread again and realized something he had missed. When he teleported to the place he intended to go to after he just evolved, it was because of the Space and Cosmic-Soul glyph. They had worked simultaneously and made his Cosmic Energy, which was highly susceptible to his manipulation, to teleport him faster than his lagging mind could fathom at that moment.

This made Jade think 'So I don't have to bring energy into my soul, the glyph works when I meet a certain condition. The condition can just be a desire, convenient". He controlled the strings and made them grow a new branch. He moved the branch toward the edge of his soul realm, his target, the small star.

He followed the strings that led to the other memories, asteroids and planets, revolving around the new consciousness. He connected the new string branch to the star and instantly understood why the star was white, what made it different from other souls; the consciousness had no connection with the memories that were around it.

The memories themselves didn't have a connection to each other so the consciousness was just confused and unable to develop a persona. With the string still attached to the auxiliary consciousness, Jade reentered the Astral Plane and saw that an illusionary cord connected him to the small consciousness. The cord was white from the end of the small consciousness and was turned grey-silver as it reached his end.

With the cord Jade could control the small consciousness and he sensed that it was making new memories. The new memories were shown as tiny specks of grey sand on its white blob body. The grey particles moved around but unlike the white particles that seemed to have no weight like dust they were heavier like construction sand.

Jade left the Astral Plane and returned to his soul realm where he realized that the memory fragments that the small consciousness had made was not connected to his control string. He swiftly realized that the new consciousness could go out of his control and gain its own personality. It would mean he had created a soul, it would mean he had become a father by just experimenting, this was a responsibility he just wasn't ready for now.

In response to him wanting to pull the consciousness back the Cosmic-Soul glyph swiftly drew the small consciousness in and held it consciousness at the core of itself. Jade reached and the small part of the consciousness united with him and the star that represented the Cosmic-Soul glyph became chaotic again.

The new experiences that the consciousness made just involved the experience of it leaving Jade's soul, entering the empty soul realm, and being connected to Jade. The experiences were just facts to Jade since he had no connection with them but they quickly became more as his Control string grew and a new branch and attached to the new experience. The feelings of fear, excitement and curiosity were attached to the memories as they became more than just facts to Jade. The feelings didn't just come from his main personality but the little one that formed in the split consciousness.

Jade now understood that this was how a soul survived in the void of space. It created these small personas and had them get experiences and returned them to itself. It then used the new experiences to protect the old ones it wanted to keep and lost those new experiences to the void of space. This was what a Cosmic-Soul was.