Novaris. Sax (June). 905. AGC.

  Nodel. Waning Gibbous??. Day 21.

  The party eventually left Alyx’s magical room once they all felt like they could make it back to the city. It had been a few hours since they entered, and even though Rose still hurt, the warrior could at least walk so the decision was made to head to Wildwood for some proper rest.

  Before leaving the area, the question had been brought up whether they should clean up all the cheese in case it formed another elemental. However, Alyx had reassured the party that he doubted something like the elemental would occur again. It had taken a particular set of events to make it happen, and there was a good chance that whatever magic Tesilim’s pizza had been imbued with had been absorbed and dispersed by the elemental. So, it's cheese would likely not have enough power to replicate one of its kind again.

  The party, happy with the explanation and not wanting to clean up the mess, didn’t complain and moved on.

  It took them a while to arrive at the city, making it sometime after nightfall. Once in the city, the party decided it was best to take the next day off and recuperate properly. And exhausted as they were, there weren’t any other activities, no soul or matter absorption, no fun with a dryad, and definitely nothing but sleep for Rose.

  Nodel. Waning Gibbous??. Day 22.

  Waking up and feeling like a new elf, the first thing that he did was re-summon Drex.

  Drex didn’t look any worse for wear even though he had technically died.

  “You know, Drex, we need to find a way for easier communication. We should check if we have some sort of telepathy, considering you are just an extension of me.”

  “That would have been smart. That fight yesterday would have gone smoother if we had something like that.”

  “Yeah, sorry you died, by the way.”

  “Eh, it happens, and with me, it's going to happen a lot. I run on mana, after all.”

  “True, true. Okay, hold on. Let's see if I can find anything by rummaging through our souls.” Tesilim said as he sat upright on the bed, switching to his usual cross-legged meditation.

  It took him a minute to enter proper meditation, but he was soon swooped inside the space that his soul was in. Looking at his soul, Tesilim could tell it had improved by a lot since the last time he saw it. More mana was stored, and his regeneration was higher as well; even the outgoing mana flowed at a higher rate. Apparently, that was extremely important since it slowed the decay of power because, yes, to his shock, one could actually degrade in ranks after long enough if they didn’t keep their bodies refined. Luckily for a D ranker, it took months and it's not like it was hard to counterbalance since all one had to do was regularly pump pure mana through the body.

  Anyways, looking at his soul, he saw a small ethereal line flying off from it and into the darkness beyond. It was rather obvious what the line was, and Tesilim went and grabbed it. Instantly upon touch, he felt the soul of Drex on the other side.

  The drakes soul wasn’t anything special and only served two purposes. One was to hold the mana Tesilim gave him when the summoning happened, and the other was to keep Drex’s mental energies.

  Feeling the soul on the other end, Tesilim wondered if he could somehow impart some of his own mana regeneration over to his new pal. Or maybe Drex’s soul could somehow be turned into a proper soul. That was a question for Alyx. For now, Tesilim was looking to see if he could establish a two-way mental connection, which, in retrospect, wouldn’t be as hard as he thought. After all, he had direct access to the drake's mental energies in his hand. Now, all he had to do was to open the channel some more and remove a few of the safety features.

  Basically, Tesilim tried to push his own mind through the link between him and Drex. That caused him to hit a wall that was probably set up by the World Crystal. However, Tesilim felt he could remove that wall, so he tried to.

  “What the-,” Tesilim said, surprised when a notification popped up.

  ?? Crystal Notice ??

  Warning! You are attempting to widen the link between you and your Familiar.

  Doing so might have unforeseen consequences.

  Would you still like to widen the link?

  Yes or No.

  ??

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Naturally, Tesilim hit yes. However, nothing happened. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but nothing was not it. Still, he should be able to do what he originally intended and once again pushed his mind through, except now he got sucked into the link and appeared instantly in another soul space.

  The soul space was obviously Drex’s. The drake’s soul was nothing special; it was just a simple orb with two layers, though it still had the multicolored aurora light.

  The outer layer of the soul held the normal arcane mana, while the inner one held the pure arcane mana. Looking at the orb, Tesilim wondered where it kept his pal's thoughts and memories. After all, it didn’t look any different than his, other than the inner core not being split in half, one side for pure mana and the other for chaos mana. It even had the same link floating off into the void.

  Either way, he had made it to the drake's soul, so they were one step closer to achieving telepathy, at least Tesilim hoped so, especially after the drake appeared in an ethereal form next to him.

  “Hey, Drex, I didn’t expect to see you in here.”

  “Me neither, but I felt something odd happening in my mind, and when I went to investigate got sucked in here.”

  “Huh, interesting. Well, since you are here, might as well try something.”

  “Sure, what do you have in mind?”

  “You see this ethereal line here?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Touch it,” Tesilim said and watched Drex place a paw on it.

  “What do you feel?”

  “Something familiar on the other side. Sort of feels like you and me, which is odd.”

  “Makes sense since on the other side of that is my soul. How about you try to push your conscience through?” Then Tesilim watched Drex make a face he assumed was a face of concentration before the drake vanished from sight. And a few seconds later, he innately felt that there was another familiar presence in his soul space. So, he pushed through the link appearing next to Drex on the other side.

  “What do you think?” Tesilim asked as he and Drex watched his soul.

  “Looks a lot like mine, except for that colorful liquid. That seems very tasty, by the way.”

  “I think all souls look like this, but honestly, I am not sure. And that liquid is Chaos Mana, so it makes sense that you find it so appealing.”

  “Hmm, I see. So, what now?” Drex questioned, his gaze never leaving Tesilim’s soul, though more than likely, the drake was just staring at the colorful mana.

  “Now, you go back to your soul. Then we try to see if we can send messages through the link.”

  “Alright.” The drake replied, touched the ethereal line, and disappeared.

  Seeing the drake leave, Tesilim grabbed the line and felt that Drex was also in contact with it on the other side, so he willed for some words to go into the ethereal link.

  “Hello? Drex? Can you hear me?”

  “Loud and clear, compadre.” Tesilim heard directly in his ethereal brain, and a huge smile appeared on his face.

  “Awesome, awesome. Now, we have to make sure that we can hear ourselves when we are outside of our souls. So, let's get back to reality.”

  “Sure thing,” Drex replied, and Tesilim returned to consciousness.

  Opening his eyes and seeing that Drex was also back, Tesilim thought really hard at the drake.

  “Hello. One, two, three, testing, testing, Drex, can you hear me?”

  Nothing happened, and Tesilim spoke out loud.

  “Hey, Drex, did you get my message?”

  “I haven’t heard anything. Is that why you were staring at me so hard?”

  “Yeah, man, what the heck! Did you even try to message me?”

  “No. I was waiting for you to say something first so we could start.” Drex answered, annoyed, and Tesilim rolled his eyes.

  “Okay, well, obviously, it doesn’t work that easily. Maybe there is more to it. Let's get back into our souls.”

  Once again inside their souls, Tesilim grabbed the link and sent a message to Drex.

  “Drex, you there?”

  “Yeah. What’s the plan now?”

  “Well, we gotta find a way to hear the messages without touching the ethereal link; otherwise, it is pointless.”

  “Sure, how do we do that?”

  “I don’t know. After all, we are connected, and there is nothing blocking our connection. Maybe it's just a self-mental block.”

  “Could be,” Drex answered, knowing he was just a sounding board.

  “Okay, hold on, let me try something.”

  Then Tesilim let go of the ethereal link and will his thoughts to leave his brain. He pictured it as a little floating cloud. He was the computer sending a message via the internet cable and across space. Surprisingly, that work and a small thought bubble left his head and slowly floated toward the line, where it was quickly absorbed.

  Tesilim waited a few seconds later, he heard Drex’s voice.

  “Yeah, I heard that. Did you do something different?”

  From there, Tesilim explained what he had done and how, and it wasn’t long before Drex did the same thing. It was clear that the whole thing was definitely some sort of mental game, and Tesilim just needed to adjust the way his mental energies worked.

  Adjusting his mental workings took some time, but eventually, something clicked. It was like his brain and soul understood what he was trying to do and adjusted to get it done. Once that happened, Tesilim explained the process to Drex, and after about an hour of real-time trying to get it to work, Drex got it too, and telepathic communication between them was unlocked.

  Now, the next step was to see if they could link Drex to the ring. After all, the ring and Tesilim had a connection, and Drex was part of Tesilim, so why couldn’t the drake connect to it through him?

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