Chapter 13

  The rest of the afternoon was spent right where I was supposed to be. Helping my mother in her shop restocking the shelves and helping any customers who came in to buy a remedy for their ailments or anything else they were looking for.

  It was while I was eating dinner with mother and father that Adam decided to say something to me, “We need to talk later. After you go to sleep, come find me where we first met.” The puzzling nature of Adam’s request caused my face to scrunch up in confusion which made my parents ask if something was wrong.

  I had to convince mother and father that all was fine and that I was just deep in thought. They seemed to accept my explanation, but I knew sooner or later they would catch on that something was different about me as neither of them was mindless to the slightest degree.

  As I laid down in my bed, I kept thinking about how I was going to meet Adam in that ‘void space.’ The first time I had to nearly die to reach that place and I really did not feel like doing that again. I soon remembered Adam said after I ‘fell asleep’ so maybe that was the key to entering the void.

  Following that logic, I then closed my eyes and slowly let my mind relax and drift off to slumber. It was not long before I felt my consciousness falling into deep darkness. I sensed myself falling for an indeterminate amount of time until I felt my back land softly against a hard surface.

  Opening my eyes I realized that I was in a dense forest that was shrouded in plants I had never seen before. They covered all that I could see around me and highlighted everything with their lush green coloring. The trees that I was surrounded by were covered with a reddish-brown bark that looked extremely sturdy. The radius of these trees was massive. It was no stretch that they were larger than most wagons and the sheer vertical size of them dwarfed the average man by an insurmountable level.

  As I got up from the ground, I began looking around trying to find a direction to travel in. If this was the void where Adam and I had first met, then it had drastically changed since I was last here.

  Spotting a flickering light in the distance I began to trek through the underbrush towards it. The sound of plants being pushed aside mixed with my footsteps crunching against ground as I walked through the forest and, oddly, it all felt familiar and relaxing to me.

  Could this feeling be a remnant of Adam’s soul that still lingered in me even though our consciousnesses had separated. It was something to ponder; an action, it seemed, I was doing quite a lot lately.

  As I hiked headlong through the forest, the light I was following grew brighter and brighter until I swept a final wall of brush out of my way and I stumbled into a clearing within the lush forest. It turns out that the light I was following was a moderate sized campfire that was settled in the middle of the clearing.

  As I walked towards the campfire, I noticed that sitting near it was Adam, but he was dressed differently than the last time I saw him. He was no longer wearing the clothing, I assumed, of what he had on when he died; instead, they had been replaced with a whole new set of garments that was familiar to me. What Adam now wore was attire I had seen on battle mage adventurers.

  Starting at his legs, Adam was wearing brown leather boots that climbed up to his knees. Tucked inside those boots was the legs of his pants which were a dark blue in color. On top of that he wore a coat that extended to just above the ground and continued up to a hood that was pulled over his head. The coat was dyed a similar dark blue but had accents of silver running along the edges of the coat and hood.

  The coat was open on the bottom and closed over his chest with no sleeves, in their place I could see the sleeves of a black shirt that Adam wore underneath the coat. On his left shoulder was a brown leather pauldron which was complimented by similar brown leather bracers on each of his arms.

  The outfit was capped off with a belt that had a silver belt buckle in the shape of a fire adhered around his waist holding a leather book satchel to Adam’s right hip.

  As I got closer to where Adam was resting, I noticed he was sitting in a strange chair. It was comprised of metal tubes that formed the basic shape of the chair and crisscrossed underneath where he sat. The tubes also looked extremely thin and was joined at several joints all along its construction.

  Furthermore, draped across where Adam was sitting was a dark green canvas type of material that was similarly applied to the backside of the chair where he rested his back against it. Seeing all this, my thought was that chair looked like it would collapse if the barest amount of weight was applied to it.

  Sitting across from Adam was a similar looking chair, presumably, for me to rest upon. After moving towards the chair and sitting down I realized that the chair was extremely sturdy and equally comfortable.

  Inspecting the chair closely, I realized that the crisscrossing tubes was for the purpose of allowing the chair to be folded up into a relatively flat piece. For how odd the chair looked I imagined if it was manufactured in Night Glen, adventurers would pay quite a bit to have a luxurious portable chair that did not take up much space on their travels.

  Seeing my intrigue towards the chair Adam just smiled and said, “They are collapsable camping chairs from my world, I figured if we were going to have an extended conversation then you would like to be comfortable.” It was a bit disorientating to see Adam speaking in front of me, instead of just hearing his voice inside my head.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  A fact of my new life that I had already gotten used to and accepted as normal. It caused me to release a small chuckle when I realized that my new reality was already becoming familiar to me. What did that say about me as a person?

  “This place looks a lot different than when last I was here.” I said with a little bit of mirth. “Do you like it? I figured that an empty void was depressing… so… I decided I would make it feel more like home. Well… at least what I consider to be home” As Adam was saying this, he gestured with his hands in a sweeping motion to encompass everything around them.

  “I have to admit there is something oddly familiar about this setting that puts me at ease.” I replied. “That is good to hear. I am kind of partial to what I have done with our ‘Soul Space’ as well.” Hearing the term Adam used to describe the realm we occupied, I had no issue agreeing with the moniker, as it was a fitting description for the space Adam and I shared.

  “So… what did you want to speak about that required us to meet like this?” I said with a hint of intrigue in my voice.

  “Getting right to the point, well… that’s okay, there is nothing to be gained by delaying what I have to say.” Adam replied.

  “First off,” Adam began, “This fire that sits between us, do you know what it represents?” I shook my head back and forth as an answer. “When I manifested this landscape, I created this fire to be a metaphysical representation of our soul.” As Adam said this, he pointed towards the fire. “And when it originally came into existence it was only knee high… now… it has grown to reach up to my waist. Do you know what that means?”

  With the way Adam had explained it, it was not hard to figure out. “Our soul has gotten bigger.” I answered.

  Adam smiled, “Not just bigger, but more powerful as well.” This caused me to think for a second about what that could mean, as Adam continued to speak.

  Pointing upwards Adam said, “Now, direct your attention to the black void sitting above our heads.”

  Doing just that I was able to glance up through the canopy of the forest and viewed the black void of our ‘Soul Space.’ However, it was not just darkness that I could perceive, dotting the black landscape were ten small pinpricks of light and one light that was slightly brighter than them.

  After seeing what Adam was gesturing to, I returned my focus to him and once he noticed he had my attention again he continued to speak. “Those lights or stars were not there when I started to form this landscape, and I did not place them there.” Hearing this I asked a question, “What does that mean?”

  Adam replied, “Isn’t a funny coincidence that those stars came into existence at the same time that our soul got stronger.” I could see right past the sarcasm he had applied to his response and knew that there was connection between the two.

  Adam then asked another question of me, “Do you see any significance about the number of stars in the sky?” Directing my attention upwards I looked at the stars, but other than the number nothing was coming to mind.

  Seeing my confusion Adam then went on to explain, “Those stars represent the monsters we defeated earlier today.” I then gave Adam my full attention, but something wasn’t adding up, “Wait… we defeated sixteen monsters not eleven, so why are there only eleven stars shinning?”

  “Think carefully. How many monsters did you use your soul-based skills on to defeat and how many were dispatched through other methods?” At once everything came crashing down and made sense to me.

  “Are you implying that any monster or anyone that I kill with my soul-based skills, adds another star to our soul space?” “Not just another star.” Adam answered, “It would be more accurate to say that for each soul you destroy with your soul-based skills, we gain energy from them, in relationship to how strong they were. Which, in turn, is then used to make our soul more powerful.”

  This revelation had left me speechless, but Adam continued talking, “If you need further proof, why don’t you look at your status board and see the changes that have occurred.” Not questioning it, I said Status in my head and what projected in front of Adam, and I cemented what Adam had said.

  Name: Callum Luxeria

  Age: 16 (Soul Age 25)

  Skill: Soul Knight

  Sub-Skills:

  Soul Slash, Soul Shield, Soul Bast, Spectral Sight, Soul Empowerment

  Str: 17

  Agl: 20

  Dex: 20

  Soul: 26

  Seeing that my status board had been split again to represent the individual values Adam and I encompassed threw me off for a second, until I saw what was displayed. I had gained a new Sub-Skill, and all my values had gone up, but the biggest jump was to my soul stat which had gone up six points.

  “For a point of reference, you should see how my values have changed too.”

  Name: Adam

  Age: 16 (Soul Age 25)

  Skill: Grand Sage

  Sub-Skills:

  Mana Manipulation, Mana Perception, Grand Elemental Magic, Scholar’s Eye, Spell Manipulation, Soul Empowerment

  Spells:

  Fireball, Water Arrow, Wind Burst, Sound Wave, Sharpening

  Mana: 33

  Int: 27

  Wis: 27

  Soul: 26

  As Adam’s status board was projected into the air, I could see that his values had gone up too, with his soul stat also increasing by six points. I also saw that he had also gained the Soul Empowerment skill; the same as me.

  Adam then pointed to the soul value and began to elucidate upon the changes. “If you look at my soul value and compare it to yours, you can see that we each gained six points of soul. If we add them together you get a total of a twelve-point increase.”

  “Here one can see a discrepancy with the number monsters you defeated with your soul-based skills. You only killed ten Goblins and one Spine Lizard with your soul skills, so why is there a twelve-point increase between the two of us instead of eleven.”

  “The answer is simple. Because the Goblins were F-Rank monsters, we gained one point of soul with each one you killed. However, the Spine Lizard was E-Rank, a slightly more powerful monster, and so we gained two points of soul from you killing it.”

  “This directly correlates with the stars projected in our soul space as we have ten dim stars and one star that is slightly brighter than them.”

  After Adam was done explaining his reasoning for our increase in strength, in a low voice I asked the only question that came to mind, “So… what does this all mean for you and me?”