Chapter 585: Doren

Julius was tired. He had been spending countless hours frantically trying to hold his soul together while simultaneously patching it up. To be honest, he was worried he was doing a poor job of reconstruction and doing more harm than good.

He grimaced when he saw the large, ugly patches where he had failed to completely knit the broken sections of his soul together. It was like he was trying to make a quilt with a bunch of mismatching pieces, but without proper hands to help him.

It was very ugly work, nothing like he had planned in his head.

Drasil was very helpful. If not for the little guy, Julius would not have been able to concentrate so much on the reconstruction of his soul. Still, it was a slow grind, and every inch of progress came at a price.

He was pretty good with pain, but it was starting to become a little too much. It was reaching excruciating levels to the point that he was getting a little delirious. Seraphyne was talking to him, trying to help keep his mind distracted from the pain. It was only helping a little, but at this point, every bit counted.

He experienced another wave of pain, and for the briefest of moments, he felt his hold over his soul slip. It wasn’t for long, but unfortunately, his damaged soul didn’t care about that, and he cursed loudly when he felt the portion of his soul that he was working on fall apart.

Even worse, this created a cascading effect, and the other parts of his soul he had already fixed were falling apart as well. The patchwork he had worked so hard on began to crumble, and he was left with another huge mess.

He threw a blast of aura out into the void, mostly out of frustration and anger. Weirdly enough, it reminded him of the time he had assembled a cabinet from IKEA without any instructions. That had been a truly arduous experience.

He forced himself to take several long and deep breaths despite not needing to breathe in this space. He also did his best to ignore his own thoughts. They were whispering to him that he should just give up. To simply concede to the pain and the futility of it all. There wasn’t even any proof that what he was using was the right method. He was mainly just floundering in the dark, hoping that anything he did would help.

However, he subconsciously started to channel his Concept of Will. Drawing on its power to fuel his own resolve and stubbornness. He wouldn’t give up. If it was a waste of time and effort, then he could simply complain about it in the afterlife. For the moment, he needed to buckle in and get to work.

***

That was only the first of his many irritating failures. Admittedly, some were his fault, but most of them were just a combination of his bad luck and circumstances. The only thing that kept him going was the fact that he was making headway. His soul looked better than it had when he started.

But he quickly realized a massive problem. Drasil wasn’t going to be able to keep up this pace. In fact, Julius was already astonished that Drasil was still going strong despite having used so much of his life essence.

It was one of the few times when Julius was actually glad for Drasil’s gluttony. The little guy had quite a store of life essence.

Upon realizing this, Julius quickly decided to take a break. He didn’t know if Drasil needed time to recover his life essence or if he needed Julius to infuse life mana into him to refill his depleting stores.

The other issue was his own life mana. His healing skill didn’t really require all that much to keep him stable. But healing his soul required much more. It wasn’t like he wasn’t regenerating any mana whatsoever, but his damaged soul clearly had an impact on the regeneration rate.

He was floating in the void as he waited for his mana to regenerate. It was a snail’s pace compared to his usual speed. He did some quick estimating and let out a dejected sigh when he realized how much more time he would need based on his current progress.

It was looking bleaker and bleaker the more he tried.

He was trying to motivate himself to keep on going when he felt a sudden disturbance in his soul. He was expecting the worst and had already exhausted his willpower in the framework he had built around his broken soul. He couldn’t afford anything happening to what he had already worked on. That would be devastating.

However, to his bafflement and shock, he felt a presence appear in his soul. It was a familiar presence as well. Not Cain or Freya, he would have recognized their auras immediately, but this one felt vaguely familiar.

His main question was how this presence even managed to get inside his soul in the first place. He didn’t think it was possible for someone to enter such a personal place. Was his soul in such a dire state that anyone could just walk in uninvited?

“Who’s there?” Julius asked loudly in the direction where he sensed this presence.

He heard a light chuckle echo throughout his soul space. “Ah, it’s quite impressive that you managed to sense me at all,” the voice said with an amused laugh.

Julius frowned because he recognized that voice. It was a voice that he hadn’t heard in a while, and it was certainly not the first person Julius expected to hear from. His shoulders sagged, and he turned away with a disappointed sigh.

“Hey! What kind of reaction is that?” Doren said in an offended tone, appearing before Julius as if materializing from someone’s soul were an everyday occurrence. Which, to be fair, for someone of Doren’s supposed skill, was likely nothing too spectacular. However, it was important to note that Julius noticed the man looked far more tangible than his own form.

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“Did Cain and Freya call you?” Julius asked as he kicked an imaginary pebble.

“Yeah. They were worried about the injuries you sustained and asked if I could help,” Doren said with a nod.

“So Freya wasn’t able to heal me on her own?”

Doren shook his head. “She probably could have healed you all on her own. In fact, her mastery of the healing arts is better than mine. I merely have more knowledge in unique situations like this, and she wasn’t confident that she could heal you without damaging your identity or your foundation, which are both very understandable concerns.”

“And what did you ask of them?” Julius asked the powerful man.

He knew that he should be more grateful for Doren’s help at all. After all, he knew better than anyone how bad the current state of his soul was. However, he had talked to Cain and Freya about Doren several times. During those conversations, they made it well known that if Doren were to ever make a deal with Julius again, he should be wary of the consequences. The man didn’t make deals that didn’t help his own goals.

“You too? Why does everything think I have a hidden agenda?”

“…”

Julius didn’t respond right away and looked at Doren with a probing look.

Doren glanced off into the distance before looking at Julius’s blank face once again. “Okay, fine. I might have something I want from your masters. Which, by the way, congratulations. I knew that Cain would be a good fit for you to learn the intricacies of kinetic energy, but I didn’t think that they would take to you so well. They both seem very attached to you.”