Exploration- Chapter 26

Dinner break then I'm going to write more. I don't know if I'll finish chapter 27 today, but if not early tomorrow.

Chapter 26- Soul Tinker

I didn’t respond for a moment and simply stared at him. I trusted Samvek a lot, but in some ways this was the biggest ask he could come up with. “And what if I’m not comfortable with that?”

“Were you comfortable when you became a Forerunner? Were you comfortable when you were forced to make life and death decisions on alien worlds? Or when you had to squash the resistance of certain elements on Earth who seemed intent on mass destruction?

“Your entire life should be making you uncomfortable. In fact, I know that it does. You wanna know how I know that?”

“Mentor insights?”

He chuckled. “Sure, but no, I know because I’ve seen how much more light hearted you are here. For the first time in a long while, no one is truly depending upon you. Sure Tad can use our help, but even you haven’t developed a sense or responsibility for this world. You will, that’s both the great and the sad thing about you, but for at least the moment, you’ve just been enjoying the freedom.”

“Okay, fair enough, but shouldn’t you be the one asking the obvious questions about how this might affect you?”

“No, because neither of us know the answers to that, but what we do know is what sort of man you are. Look at that description again.”

I read it line by line again, including the other parts that he hadn’t projected, but my eyes kept coming back to one line.

only one who shows restraint may become a Soul Forger

I’d like to think that I’d shown restraint. I wanted power. It was absolutely necessary for my continued existence and for my ability to protect those I care about, but I didn’t want it without limits. That might be the biggest difference between me and the Hell System, otherwise I could have simply seized the power it offered.

“Okay, so you want me to try to enhance you?”

“If you can, but mostly, I want you to learn. The system gave you a quest to learn more, but that shouldn’t be necessary for you so see the need. As you are now, you’re like a child handed a blade with a molecular level edge sent running through town. The chances of chopping off something of yours and or something of someone else is too great. You need to understand what you’re capable of.”

There was no arguing with that. “Fair enough. I’ll do it. But I have a condition.”

He waited for me to expand.

“I want to use Spirit Singing at least as a back-up and to give me a better since of what I’m doing.”

“Fair enough. It is my soul I’m asking you to work on, so I’m not gonna be the one to argue against precautions, just don’t let it prevent you from learning about your Hell System class.”

I nodded and then we both sat down, cross-legged across from one another with our knees touching. I began to sing softly, the sound low and steady, more felt than heard, and the world seemed to lean in to listen. Spirit Singing hadn’t always come easily to me, but I’d been using it for so long and it had become such a core part of my build that it was second nature now.  

The tone settled the space around us, smoothing the jagged edges of tension and fear. Samvek closed his eyes and let his breath slow, offering no resistance at all. The notification I got was alarming but I forced myself to stay on task.

Samvek Rayden has opened his soul to you. All innate resistances have been voluntarily dropped. This is a show of absolute trust. Will you prove worthy, Architect?

Spirit Sight opened naturally as the song deepened. Samvek’s soul came into focus, not as a single shape but as a layered structure of strength, discipline, and scars earned over decades of hard living. I could see where training had etched deep grooves into him, habits and reflexes reinforced until they were as much spiritual as physical. There was nothing fragile there, but there were places worn thin by constant readiness.

 He was truly a man worthy of admiring and I felt a swell of pride that he was my mentor. I realized I likely wouldn’t even be alive today but for his guidance when I so desperately needed it. That alone pushed me to want to succeed for him. His opinion of me mattered a great deal, but more than that, I wanted to repay him a fraction of what he’d done for me.

I considered the words of the system notification. Most of what I’d gotten since arriving in this universe had felt impersonal compared to what I was used to. There was so much estimating happening. I almost glossed past this statement, but something about the personal address pulled my attention.

There was one thing that I knew. The system was always trying to guide me to specific outcomes. At first it had resisted other systems, but then somewhere along the way, it seemed to have come to the conclusion that there was something to be gained. I think it was when I became an architect. After that, the system treated me as a valuable resource.

So the question here, was what was it trying to guide me to now? I had to assume that it didn’t waste words, so by calling me Architect, I felt like it was implying that there was a way for me to use my occupation here. The problem with that was that, I was an Architect of the System, specifically meaning the Heavens System. We weren’t in the Heavens currently, so how would that apply.

I did what I generally did in a situation like this. I filed it away, but at least I didn’t save it for future Silas. This was something that was going to be relevant, but I was just going to have to wait for more clues. If it was important enough the system would guide me.

As I sang, faint flashes of color flickered at the edges of my vision. At first I thought it was an afterimage or some quirk of the Fey System leaking through, but the lights returned again and again. I’d seen the same with the various magical items, but always out of the corner of my eyes. This time, they seemed to be responding to spirit singing in a way they hadn’t back at the inn. Maybe it was a matter of concentration. There was definitely more spiritual energy on floor 277 of the Endless Dungeon than there had been in Basetown.

I took stock of what I was seeing. They were small, quick, and curious, never staying still long enough for me to pin them down. Each pulse seemed to respond to the rhythm of my song, brightening when the harmony held and dimming when it wavered. Their movement, even the way I was thinking about them made them seem like living beings.

I didn’t try to reach for them. Instinct told me that forcing attention on whatever they were would break the delicate balance I was building. Instead, I adjusted my singing, testing how changes in pitch and cadence affected Samvek’s soul and the space around us. The colors drifted closer when the song was gentle and steady, then scattered when I pushed too hard. Whatever they were, they felt alive. It was like they were fragments of souls rather than complete souls.

The Hell System side of me stirred a quiet pressure urging efficiency and extraction. I could sense how easy it would be to take, to pull strength directly from Samvek’s soul and add it to my own. My mind didn’t linger on such a thing. I’d happy create a bond between us but wouldn’t take from my friend without giving as much or more in return. I leaned harder into the singing, using it as an anchor to keep myself from slipping. To deny that a temptation was rising in me would have been to deny that I had a class from the Hell System. I’d accepted it as a trade-off thinking the upside would be better than bad parts, but I’d always known that temptation was going to come with it. Asmodeus didn’t strike me as a charitable benefactor, even if he might keep his word.

The space between us felt charged but stable, like a held breath that wasn’t yet released. Samvek remained completely open, trusting me without reservation, and the weight of that trust settled heavily on my shoulders. It was very much up to me to first learn and then prove what I could do.

I began to map Samvek’s soul carefully, layer by layer, letting Spirit Singing guide my perception rather than forcing conclusions. There were clear anchor points where his sense of self was strongest, places where loyalty, duty, and restraint had fused into something nearly unbreakable. There were also stress lines, not weaknesses exactly, but areas that had borne too much weight for too long. They hadn’t failed, but they had thinned, stretched by constant vigilance and the refusal to ever step back.

The Soul Forger instincts pressed harder as I observed those places. I could feel how easily I might reinforce them by drawing power from elsewhere, or worse, how simple it would be to siphon from Samvek directly and smooth those stresses by theft instead of craft. The class made those paths feel natural, almost obvious, and that scared me more than the complexity of the task itself. Power without friction was dangerous, especially when it came wrapped in temptation.

I adjusted my singing again, shifting tone and rhythm, watching how Samvek’s soul responded. When I softened the melody, the stress lines eased slightly, not healed but supported. When I pushed the harmony sharper, his core brightened and tightened, becoming more focused but also more rigid. The flashes of color reacted to these changes as well, clustering closer when balance was struck and scattering when I leaned too far in either direction.

That told me something important. Whatever those flickers were, they weren’t passive. They responded to harmony and imbalance the same way a living thing would. I didn’t understand them yet, but their behavior reinforced my growing certainty that souls, systems, and whatever this world called sprites were all part of the same spectrum rather than separate categories. That realization made me slow down even more.

I took another moment to simply observe, resisting the urge to act. Samvek’s soul didn’t need reshaping, and it certainly didn’t need extraction. What it could benefit from was reinforcement, not by altering its nature, but by helping it bear the weight it already carried. First though, I needed to understand the cost of touching another soul, both to him and to me.

I let the song taper off just enough to give us space and opened my eyes. Samvek was still there, still open, still waiting, and the calm on his face made the decision feel heavier rather than easier. I drew in a slow breath and said quietly, “I think I know what I want to try, but I need you to understand something first. I can’t be sure what this will do, only that it won’t take anything from you unless you allow it.”

He didn’t hesitate. “I allowed it the moment I sat down,” he replied, voice steady and unguarded. “If you need my consent again, you have it. Do what you think is right.”

It was too serious of a moment to laugh, but I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. “I couldn’t have been a man growing up in the US in the 2020’s without receiving multiple lectures about ongoing consent. Better safe than sorry.”

“Then you are safe.”

“That doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences,” I said. “For you or for me.” I felt the vitae within me stir at the thought, heavy and finite in a way mana never was.

Samvek smiled faintly. “Every worthwhile thing has a cost,” he said. “You’ve paid enough of them already. I trust you to choose which ones are worth paying.”

That was enough. I nodded once, more to myself than to him, and let the singing rise again, softer this time, shaped by resolve rather than uncertainty.

I reached inward and drew on vitae deliberately. This ability was from the Hell System and the currency there was vitae, life force taken by violence, not mana. It was more potent than mana, but less versatile and harder to restore, at least based upon what I’d seen so far. Not that the Hell System didn’t use mana, it did. It was just that the most vital things depended upon vitae.

The drain was immediate and unmistakable, a cold pressure blooming behind my sternum as the reservoir dipped. There was a reluctance to give it up, like I wanted, no craved every bit of Vitae that my body could get. Even parting with only 5% of my reserves made me feel like I imagined a junkie would after a week-long detox.

I guided that flow with Spirit Singing, shaping it gently so it wrapped around Samvek’s soul instead of piercing it. The Hell System instincts urged me to push harder, to make the change permanent and profound, but I refused them and kept the touch light.

When the vitae made contact, Samvek’s soul responded like tempered steel under a careful hammer. There was no flare of power, no violent reaction, only a gradual densification along the stress lines I had mapped. The thinned areas thickened, not by altering what he was, but by reinforcing what already existed. It felt less like adding something new and more like restoring balance that had been eroded over time.

The vitae began to seep into his soul and I could see it strengthening. I opened my eyes and looked at his face, but his eyes were closed and he was lost in deep concentration.

The flashes of color intensified then, clustering close enough that I could almost sense curiosity in them. They brightened as the harmony held, drifting in slow arcs around us, then pulsed once in unison as the forging settled. I didn’t try to grasp them or name them, but their presence made the moment feel witnessed in a way that set my nerves on edge. With each flare of vitae though, they would back off before seeming to become curious again. It was like the power was too hostile for them.

Now, that I felt I knew at least a little bit about what I was doing, I felt Samvek’s soul strengthening and so I did what I always do. If 5% of my vitae could enhance him like this, then what would 10% or 20% do. My mentor deserved the very best and if I could find a way to strengthen him further, then that would be amazing.

The first of the notifications started to pour in.

Samvek’s soul has been augmented.

Resistance to spiritual attacks and Hell Mana have been increased by 15%

Will +250, Perception +150.

That was good and all, but it was ultimately a rounding error for someone as powerful as Samvek. Sure he didn’t have my bloated stats, but he was still doing good for himself. So, I wanted more. As I looked, I saw how body and soul were connected. Perhaps it was the golem molder part of me, but I felt like I could do more for him.

As I pushed a combination of spiritual singing and vitae into his body, another notification popped up.

System Access to voluntary subject, Samvek Rayden, has been given. Special attention will be paid to the modifications you make. Note: some things can’t be undone.

That notification alone should have been enough. It would have been for most people, but I kept pushing. Good things always came when I pushed and for too long, I’d felt the power gap between me and Samvek shifting. I wanted to do as much as I could and if being an Architect of the System was good for anything then it should be good for helping my friends.

As I pushed the vitae into his body, he started to spasm, but we locked hands and he hissed, “Keep going.”