“Wow, the qi over here really thinned out. You feel that, mate?” asked Balls.

  “Yeah,” replied Dan. “I just formed my core.”

  “Crikey! Why’d you do that, mate? You couldn’t have cleared all your channels yet. No way.”

  “I didn’t. I told you, I done this before.”

  “Oi, you’re still sticking to the story that you won your world’s second Game, mate? That’s just bullocks. I would’ve heard about that, now, wouldn’t I have, mate?”

  “Depends on how long you been stuck in here, I reckon.”

  After blurring and vibrating for a few moments, Balls said, “Got me there, you do, mate. Want to see the picture I drew on the ground, mate? It’s a bowl of spicy noodles. It looks delicious. I dipped my balls in it, so don’t try licking it or none of that. It’s just a picture in the dirt, so it won’t taste like nothing anyway, mate.”

  Dan got up to go look at the picture. It was hard to see in the dark soil, but Balls was always very excited to show off his art, so Dan played along. “Looks great,” he said.

  “Thanks, mate. Wish I could eat it. I hope you ain’t screwed yourself too bad by forming your core before clearing everything else.”

  “I reckon we’ll see,” replied Dan.

  Balls had said that though he could cycle and invoke mana techniques when he fully cleared his channels, the mana would only interact with the world in an amount relative to how corporeal he was.

  Dan would have to be partially corporeal to have his invocations partially interact with the world, and fully corporeal to apply their full effect.

  But, while incorporeal, an apparition’s mana could fully affect another incorporeal apparition.

  Dan understood everything he was told, but it didn’t make full sense. Such as at what percent corporeal he could be detected by non-apparitions, certain apparitions the rules didn’t seem to apply to, why some non-apparitions could hurt a fully incorporeal apparition with their mana, and a million different other examples and exceptions.

  Guess I’ll figure it out as I go along, he thought.

  Getting used to being an apparition was strange. He felt no pain at all. He was used to being in a good deal of it. Being pain-free felt wrong, like he was cheating.

  Emotions seemed to come easier and stronger, but differently. He didn’t even feel the usual bad feeling he felt around others when near Balls.

  Before he died, Dan had two completed revelations – ‘hate’ and ‘obstinacy.’

  Not too long after he killed Bonnie, without him even trying, a new concept resounded in him and stuck in his Spirit Nexus as a starting piece of his third and final revelation – ‘onus.’

  He didn’t work on it at all. Not only would working on a third revelation before finishing the second take far longer to get anywhere with, but it reminded him of the terrible thing he did. Terrible, but necessary.

  He wished he had never been put in the situation to begin with, but now, knowing his math was right, that Bonnie’s sacrifice meant eight billion others lived, including billions of children, tremendously lightened the burden he carried.

  That final small piece of a revelation meant he’d probably receive a different mana-type now.

  He really liked magma. He had learned how to do amazing things with it. It fit him well.

  And he really liked his old Class too. According to Balls, Dan was starting from zero. If things worked out in a similar way, he could get offered the same Class, but that Class was tied to his mana-type.

  Apparitions worked differently. Since vortexes could also become corporeal, or more corporeal, and level up, same as the damned when they became undead during a Rapture. Balls assumed things worked similarly for all apparitions.

  Balls had an intrinsic ability that controlled his corporeality. He also said there were a few other surprises waiting for Dan too, but he’d have to wait to be corporeal enough to interact with a Profile Reader to find out. And there were neither Profile Readers in the area they were stuck in, nor ways to gain Orbment Fragments.

  Dan could level up, but the more he leveled up without first becoming corporeal, the more he’d be stuck as an incorporeal entity. But Balls knew of certain powerful incorporeal entities that could interact with the world around them. It was assumed these beings somehow ascended without ever learning to become corporeal first.

  If Dan couldn’t find a way out of the Shining One’s personal collection of damned, and he had a few ideas he wanted to try, then he’d have no choice but to level up and ascend as a ghost.

  He had casually asked Balls about apparition types. There were a handful or rare types other than regular damned, lost souls, and vortexes but his companions never mentioned wraiths.

  Dan knew that was what he was. A wraith. He wasn’t a lost soul or a vortex or anything else. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he knew that for certain.

  Until he got married, he had gone to church every Sunday with his family, but he was never really all that religious. He never read the Bible or put much thought into God or faith. He knew his family’s church was Evangelical Protestant, but he never knew how that was different than other forms of Christianity or even other Protestants.

  Now, he could quote exact verses from the Bible.

  He watched every version there was for the Exhibit: History of the Game, but that wasn’t to learn more about other religions, it was to try and make sense of things and see if there were any hints that helped him win the Game.

  He had heard of the Torah. Now he knew of the Talmud, Tanakh, Mishnah, and Midrash. He had heard of the Quaran. Now he knew of the Hadith, Sunnah, Qiyas, Ijma’ too.

  He knew far more about Hinduism and Buddhism and a bunch of other religions.

  This new knowledge only made sense if he was right. He was God’s new champion. His mission to destroy Hell was a divine task.

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  Dan expected it to take a lot longer to clear his channels to the point they were at when he absorbed the vortex in the Game. Without pain, it went quicker than he thought it would, though it still took a great deal of time.

  Once he finished, he started looking at the damned to see if there was a way to tell how powerful they were. If there was a way to tell by looking, it was evading him.

  Though he was never great at sensing how powerful others were, he could kind of sense something. He no longer could sense anything. He wasn’t sure if this was because he was starting over from zero and just couldn’t yet, or if he had to be corporeal to do so.

  He went around reading plaques to see if any gave a clue. Soon after, Balls wandered over and asked, “What’re you up to, mate?”

  “I’m trying to find the most powerful damned I can.”

  “Why?”

  “See if I can absorb it.”

  “What? You gone daft, mate? Oi, you can’t absorb no apparition.”

  “I done it once before.”

  Balls vibrated and blurred for a long moment before saying, “It can’t be done, mate. Still, I really want to see you try. Mostly so I can point at you and laugh, mate. It’ll be slightly more entertaining than looking at the bowls of spicy noodles I draw in the dirt, now, won’t it be, mate?

  “Except all these damned are the same level of power, aren’t they, mate? The exact level is no power at all, mate. Not true for the first layer since a lot of them get sent to Raptures. And not true for all those here either, is it, mate? I can feel them here and there. Not the other things. The living things. I mean apparitions that feel more powerful.”

  Curious, Dan asked, “What tier are you?”

  “Me, mate? I was tier 13 when I wandered in here, I was, mate.”

  “Can you bring me to one of the more powerful damned?”

  “Oi, mate, of course. Seeing as how we’re best mates and all now, and how much you enjoy looking at the spicy noodles I draw, and all your entertaining lies, I’d be a right dongin if I didn’t. Follow me, mate. This way.”

  As Dan followed, Balls asked, “You ever sing, mate?”

  “Naw.”

  As he continued walking, Balls turned to look at Dan. “What? Never? Oi, that’s real weird, mate. I love me some singing. Want to hear a song I just invented?”

  Dan didn’t, but he said, “Sure.”

  In a voice Dan had to admit wasn’t all that bad, Balls started singing.

  “If Walla ever cheats on me, I’ll kill the guy that did it. And then I’d visit his dumb grave, and dip my ballsack in it. Life can be brutal. I love me some spicy noodles. And I love to draw my doodles. Oodles, oodles, oodles. Oodles of my doodles.”

  Balls turned his head to ask, “What’d you think, mate?”

  “You’re real talented.”

  “Thanks, mate,” said Balls as he looked around and changed directions. After a short distance, he stopped in front of a damned. The plaque had no dashes or dots on it. It only had one word. Kharus.

  Balls said, “This is it, mate. Notice no sins or originating world’s listed?”

  “I seen it. Mean anything to you?”

  “Not at all, mate. I can tell this Kharus is higher tier than I am, he is, mate.”

  Dan had no idea how he had sucked the Sortilege vortex into his core. He had never tried anything like that before or since.

  He sat down and got into the position his gathering technique required. His legs and ankles folded in front of him and his back straight. He cleared his mind and stretched out his arms until they were inside one of Kharus’ legs.

  His index fingers and thumbs were forming an L-shape. Once he was ready, he touched both fingers and thumbs together, forming a rough diamond shape, and began his qi gathering technique.

  For about 60 years, Dan was progressively starved of the artificial qi of the Game. The air only had whisps of it in it, and he had to master grabbing onto those whisps.

  With the thick, potent, and real qi suffusing the environment Dan now found himself in, he had to modify the qi-starved technique he was so used to.

  But that wasn’t the case now. His hands were the focal point of the technique, and with his hands inside Kharus, there was no rich, potent, and real qi suffusing everything.

  It felt dry. Qi starved. Like in the Game. And not like real qi. It felt similarly artificial as the qi in the Game had felt.

  And then he began gathering. Nothing happened at first, but as time when on, he learned the trick of it.

  Kharus was bellowing out tortured screams as all damned did, but as soon as the apparition began to be sucked into Dan, the screams changed into something more frightening and horrific.

  Dan was glad when Kharus was fully inside of him and the screams stopped.

  “Oi! You done it, mate! Where’d it go? How’d that happen, mate?”

  “I reckon it’s in my core.”

  “Oi! What? This’s crazy shit, mate! Are you eating souls? Oi! I hope you ain’t, I do, mate. That’s a no-no. A big one. Ever hear what happened to Lilith when she was caught eating souls, mate?”

  “Naw,” answered Dan.

  “If the story’s true, she ended up right here where we are for a hundred years as a punishment, mate. Souls are for torturing, not eating, mate. They’ll know if you eat it. The high pantheon-types.”

  Dan didn’t think what he was doing counted as eating souls. Even if it did, he was already where Lilith was brought to as a punishment. He had broken out of being a damned once before. He could do so again.

  “I reckon this don’t count as eating souls,” he told Balls.

  “You sure, mate?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “Oi. If you say so, mate. If the Shining One shows up, please tell him old Balls here had nothing to do with any of it. Actually, I’ll go hide. Please don’t say a word about me. We never met. Who are you? No idea. Stanger danger!”

  Balls quickly flew away. Dan wondered, why’d he ask if I could fly if he can?

  He got up and walked back to the area where his and his mother’s plaques were. Then he sat down and began to fully clear his channels and mid and upper cores.

  He lost himself in the task. When he finished, he wondered how long it had taken. He really wished there was some way to note the passage of time.

  Like with the vortex, he could feel something in his core. Since he had no way to gather qi and refine it into mana in his core, he had no mana. He felt within, and verified he had no mana. Still, his core was filled with something. Overly filled, if anything.

  Then he got to gathering and refining qi. This part didn’t go anything like the vortex. The vortex had been a small thing in his core. The damned he just absorbed filled the whole thing plus some.

  Taking qi in wasn’t helping, so he focused exclusively on refining. It went very, very slowly. Turning the apparition into mana wasn’t easy, and it made far less mana than qi would’ve.

  When it was about halfway converted, his core had about a quarter of mana in it, so he began gathering the thick, rich, potent, and tainted qi around him while converting.

  His core filled surprisingly quickly. Far more quickly than even if he was using a beast or XP core. He had to stop gathering again and focus only on refining the apparition.

  When the apparition was fully refined and converted into mana, it felt as if something changed within Dan. He couldn’t tell what, but he felt a sense of relief.

  While still in his technique’s position, he turned his right palm upward and forced a tiny bit of mana out. What came out formed a small diamond.

  Dan wasn’t sure what to think about that. He was hoping for a more powerful type of magma, or something like that.

  But it did make sense. If ‘hate’ gave him fire as a mana-type, and if ‘obstinacy’ was rock, fire and rock equaling magma made sense.

  I reckon ‘onus’ means a heavy and unwanted obligation and burden. Pressure. I reckon fire plus rock plus pressure equaling diamonds makes sense, thought Dan.

  He began cycling his mana through all his channels and cores while hoping what he did didn’t count as eating a soul. The last thing he wanted was another visit from Satan.

  His mana moved through his channels slowly at first. He had to adjust his cycling technique to the viscosity and feel of his new mana. When he tried sending it between his hands, it didn’t work out too well.

  Working fire wasn’t like working magma or lava. But adjusting from fire to working lava wasn’t all that difficult. Different, sure. As he understood things, his fire was kind of a plasma but operated similar to a gas. Lava was a thick liquid.

  Diamond was a solid. Unlike working lava and trying to get it to become a solid, diamond started out that way.

  Most of his knowledge and experience wasn’t much of a help. When he tried to grow a dagger or sword, it made a weird diamond formation nothing like what he wanted.

  Since he helped Chet with his mana-type, he knew steel was easier to work into shapes. Chet never could cover himself in steel like Dan could with fire and lava, but Dan had decades and decades more experience.

  If he had steel as a mana-type, he was certain he could work it with little difficulty. Diamond seemed to be a different story. It just didn’t want to do what it should.

  Still, he was nothing if not obstinate. He literally had forever to master his new mana-type.