Chapter 8: Soul Perfection and Soul Unification Stage
"I… I am still… I am still alive. I have become tougher than I thought." Waking up from her passing out, Lindiwe feels weak both in body and spirit. She struggled to sit back up while balancing with her only available right arm.
Gobble-gobble-gobble
Like a starved gluttonous creature, Lindiwe plucked the divine caramel and stuffed it on her face like a pig.
"Whew! I could never get tired of this treat. Divine caramel and purified cheesemellow are worth dying for. So refreshing, so delicious," Lindiwe felt her spiritual energy within recover like crazy, and her body quickly recovered from exhaustion and internal injuries she received when her Nascent Soul was attacked by the weird spat of a tadpole-like creature.
"What the heck were those spooky things? I scared them away. I can't believe I scared the evil away. I didn't know I could be this scary."
Lindiwe recovered all her power, and she felt a bit different than before. "There's something different about my aura. It has turned from gold to red. Don't tell me, don't tell me I have become an evil vampire-like, like those scary evil women in movies. No, my heart still beats. I am still myself. I am one hundred percent myself, and there's no slight ripple of evil in me."
For some reason, Lindiwe radiated with beauty, and she felt really powerful.
"Now that I have the power to create and manipulate elements..." Lindiwe took off her torn clothes and sat naked in a lotus position. She clothes her eyes, and boom, a fake left arm was created, and boom, her right leg became whole.
"I created a fake arm and a fake leg. I have truly become awesome. Now, it is time I create clothes." Lindiwe closed her eyes, and her body was covered with a beautiful dark red dress with black flowers, red high heels, a black headdress with red ribbons, and red roses pinned as decorations. She created an outfit that complements her new kind of aura.
"Wow! These fake things feel so nice, but they are a little bit costly to sustain with my spiritual energy. As long as I have Amaru close to me, I am not that worried about such a trivial matter. As for my torn clothes and the damaged breathing space suit, I will put them nicely as mementoes of what I've been through and where I hail from. I should never forget my origin and what I stand for."
Lindiwe created a temporary mirror with water elements, and she was stunned by her appearance. "Oh my, I've become even prettier. Is this the result of cultivation? What happened to the colour of my eyes? My iris turned red. I look so mysterious and beautiful. I am cute."
With a smile, Lindiwe waved her hand to dispel the mirror, and she sat in a lotus position with her eyes closed and her mind concentrated. She looked so majestic and divine as she was trying to break through to the ceiling and enter the next stage of her evolution.
"I have to get strong. There are evil and weird aliens lurking in the Eternal Gormandizer. It looks like I will have to take this cultivation thing seriously. I should be strong enough to scare everything away that comes with ill intentions."
Surprisingly, the breakthrough to the next stage didn't have any dramatic effects this time. Lindiwe could feel the changes in her body and soul, but what she realised the most was the changes in her nascent soul.
"Like I expected, it looks like my thoughts were spot on this time around. In this new stage, I have to grow the Nascent Soul to maturity, or the same level of growth as my original soul. This is easy enough. I will just chow down the divine caramel to raise the Nascent Soul's growth with rapid speed."
Gobble-gobble-gobble
Boom!
After a missed number of eating the divine caramel, the Nascent Soul grew from the early phase to the peak phase with no difficulties. It looks like protecting Amaru from the evil filth was indeed a good choice for Lindiwe, as she could never experience this level of growth on her own.
"Wow! This stage is awesome. My strength, speed, and senses have increased sixteen times, and my lifespan has increased from four hundred and sixty to six hundred and thirty. I am officially an immortal being. I am the first human with a life expectancy of more than six hundred years, and the new abilities I gained at this stage are awesome. I gained the ability to summon spiritual beings from other planes of existence and the ability to release elemental domains. This is unbelievable. For experience and memory's sake, I will name this stage 'Soul Perfection Stage'. My nascent soul has fully grown, and it is now identical to my real soul. I have become strong, but that is not strong enough compared to those ugly, weird, and evil spectres. I have to attack the next stage immediately."
Concentrating on breaking through the newly reached ceiling, Lindiwe could feel that the next stage came with danger.
Boom!
Lindiwe gritted her teeth as she successfully broke through to the next stage, but what happened next nearly sunk her heart. Seven metres above her head, a dark cloud purely made of spiritual energy formed to attack her with a bolt of lightning for no reason.
"Who did that? Why is the cloud with no consciousness hostile towards me? What is going on? Is the spiritual energy fed up with me for entering this stage? How did I provoke you to be hostile? Am I taking too much spiritual energy, or are the heavens punishing me for my inhumanity and the pursuit of power and immortality?"
Boom!
Lindiwe released a lightning domain, and the barrier blocked easily three times the strikes of lightning from the dark and gloomy cloud above her head that struck three times.
"Oh? The dark cloud gave up this easily just after three strikes. It must have been jealous that I have Amaru as a friend, perhaps?"
Lindiwe didn't bother anymore about the jealous and gloomy cloud, and she focused her attention on the newly entered stage.
"What a weird cloud. Oh, what do we have here? What do I have to do in this new stage I just entered? Hum! I see, I see! I have to join the Nascent Soul and my real soul into one entity. Will I still be myself after that? If I want to get strong, I have no choice but to follow this direction of my evolution."
Gobbling the divine caramel like a starved pig, Lindiwe lost count of how many times she ate before reaching the peak phase of this stage. Luckily, the divine caramel melts and gets absorbed once it gets inside her stomach, or she might have gained more weight to look like a literal pig.
Feeling that her two souls had successfully merged after a while, Lindiwe couldn't hide the joy on her face. "Awesome! I have reached the peak of yet another incredible stage of my evolution. Fortunately, I am still myself even after the merging of souls. In this stage, my strength, senses, and speed have increased twenty-two times. With a single fist, I can collapse a huge building or lift a train with one hand. The stage comes with awesome perks; I now have the ability for short-range teleportation and a minor possession ability. With minor possession ability, I can abandon my body and possess the body of a person weaker than I am, but my cultivation will reset and start over from the Spirit Sensing Stage. Who, in their right mind, will do that? It was not easy, even with the help of Amaru, to reach this far. How can I take over another person's body and start everything from scratch? Whatever, but this stage has a huge surprise: my longevity has increased yet again. My lifespan is now three thousand years. Yep, three thousand years of lifespan! Am I going to live that long for real? This is unbelievable."
Lindiwe was still dumbfounded by her new lifespan, and she almost forgot to name her newly entered stage: "In this stage, the matured Nascent Soul merges with the original Soul to achieve the longest and most unexpected lifespan. For memory's sake and experience, I will call this stage the 'Soul Unification Stage'. With this strength, I feel like I can fight head-on with those evil creatures. Now that I have short-range teleportation, it could be useful in a battle against those evil spectres. It is a good thing that I can know from within what each stage does, or else I will still be clueless about everything. Now I wonder if I could still send my soul out of my body as a drone to spy around since my souls merged."