The next morning, Tesilim awoke and, after giving Lili a goodbye kiss, left her still half asleep, not wanting to wake her up so early. After getting ready, he went to find Drex, whom he had told about the ritual plans the previous day. They then grabbed a bite to eat before heading to the Temple of Knowledge and Magic.

  Arriving at the temple, Tesilim couldn't help but be amazed by how the building always felt like a giant library. Thinking about it, it was technically a giant library considering the goddesses that the temple belonged to. Goddesses whose aura Tesilim could faintly feel in the air, their energies tickling the back of his mind, almost like they were whispering all the secrets of the world to him. Another thing that Tesilim noticed, now that he had slightly better senses, was how much the mana gathered around the temple. The entire area felt like a place where the energy congregated, making it feel rather refreshing.

  Entering the temple, it wasn't long after he spoke with the receptionist before Alyx greeted them.

  “Tesilim! Drex! Glad you could make it. Are you ready for some rituals?”

  “I guess,” Tesilim answered dejectedly, not looking forward to being an experiment even if he knew that he and Drex were the reason it was happening to begin with. Of course, Drex agreed with him and gave a low growl of annoyance and acceptance.

  “Great! Follow me,” Alyx told them, completely ignoring their tone as he turned around and began heading deeper into the temple.

  Following Alyx, Tesilim couldn't help but admire the temple. The place was a library, with all its books, scrolls, and other scholarly items scattered around. This trend continued as they ventured deeper into the temple, with many rooms branching off, each containing a variety of books, rituals, and scholars inscribing them or participating in them. Granted, the more Tesilim saw of the temple, the more he realized that the place had to be heavily enchanted with spatial magic.

  At first, Tesilim might have believed the couple of rooms he saw were underground, since they had taken a few staircases deeper into the earth. However, some of the rooms he saw boggle the brain, as they were much larger than the entirety of the temple from the outside. Not that Tesilim was completely surprised by the use of space magic, since the inn he was staying at completely defied all logic. Additionally, Tesilim did not have much time to thoroughly question things, as they moved quickly through the temple until they finally reached their end goal.

  The room wasn't the largest he had seen in the temple, but it was still about half the size of his entire room back at the inn. Walking in, the two things that instantly caught Tesilim's attention were the ritual setup and the other scholars. And out of those two things, one took precedence over the other, and he threw a questioning look at Alyx, then at the rest of the ritualists.

  Tesilim knew that keeping his secret was essentially pointless at this time, as far too many people already knew. However, he didn't want to add to those numbers, especially if the people who found out couldn't discover the information any other way. Again, Tesilim's primary concern was about being kidnapped, something that Alyx and Lili had helped him come to terms with. Well, accept it as a possibility, and that it might happen, but in the end, they should be able to get him back. Thankfully, Alyx understood what he was getting at and was fairly quick to put his worry to rest.

  “Don’t worry, all of these guys have taken an oath directly to the two goddesses and won’t be able to talk about any of what they see or learn here.”

  Giving the gnome a nod of approval, his friend got back to tinkering with a tablet, and Tesilim’s attention moved to the ritual. Tesilim did not understand a single thing about the ritual. Alright, that wasn't true. He understood a few of the runes, but not what they did, at least in the context of the ritual. As far as he was concerned, the entire thing was a jumble of runic symbols and materials that could summon a burger with wings or teleport him exactly two inches above a snail. Which basically meant he had no freaking idea about it, and quickly gave up—and right on time, too.

  “Alright, let's begin! Tesilim and Drex get in those two circles in the middle,” The gnome told them, his voice that of an instructor, not giving anyone a chance to question him as he continued giving people orders.

  A minute later, after the gnome felt like he had everything ready to go, he explained to Tesilim what the ritual they were about to do actually did, and in doing so, his friend set the tone for the entire day.

  “This ritual is probably the simplest one and is going to give us a view of your souls as they are. It's technically not required since I can see them just fine, but for the purposes of teaching and keeping track of everything, we will do it anyway. Any questions?”

  Hearing Alyx's question, Tesilim shook his head, Drex mimicking him, and just like that, their day got underway. Then, a few magic words later, the disappearance of some materials from the ground, and poof, Tesilim and Drex were suddenly looking at projections of their souls. As expected, the appearance of their souls caused quite a stir. Not because the people in the room had never seen souls before, but by what Tesilim’s soul had in it. Granted that, aside from Alyx, at least at that point, no one knew what Tesilim’s special mana was, yet that was the very thing causing the excitement. It was something new, which would of course motivate any researcher alive.

  Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

  After the scholars had written down whatever they needed to, since Tesilim had no clue what information they could gain from looking at his soul, they finally moved on. It was at that point that Tesilim realized things would go slightly faster than he thought, as a few of those rooms that he had seen had been under preparation for him. So, after finishing the first ritual, he was taken to the next ritual room, where Alyx explained what would happen next.

  “Alright, so this ritual is similar to the one we just did, except for the fact that the last one only really allowed us to observe your soul. However, this one will allow us to interact with your soul, which will let us test some things without messing it up.”

  Basically, from what Tesilim could gather, the last soul ritual was like watching a recording of his and Drex’s souls. However, much like Alyx had explained, they couldn't do much with their recording. So that's where this new ritual came in. Instead of just observing their souls through a screen, they would essentially receive a recording of their souls and be able to edit it. Meaning they could cut it, add some extra sparkle effects, and whatever else to see what it would theoretically do.

  The next ritual to come along was also one of the simplest, at least according to Alyx. What the gnome had failed to mention was that it would be one of the most uncomfortable.

  “This ritual is rather basic; its whole thing is to measure the strength and stability of your soul. Then we will use that to compare your soul to others of equal rank and see how it holds up.”

  The moment the ritual began, Tesilim and Drex felt a low pressure pushing down on them. The pressure was subtle at first, but quickly grew in intensity. The weirdest thing was that it wasn't hurting them; it was more a spiritual pressure on their soul than anything else. It also helped that when the two of them felt like they would pass out from the pressure, it quickly ended.

  “Well, that sucked,” Tesilim said more to himself than anything, and Drex gave him a growl of confirmation.

  “Yeah, sorry about that. That's one of the two rituals that's not the funnest to be in,” Alyx told them, making the two wish he hadn’t, as they now had that hanging over them, and would expect every ritual to be the one that would suck.

  Luckily—or maybe unluckily—Tesilim's and Drex’s worries didn't last very long.

  “I'm going to go ahead and give you a warning now. This ritual will not feel great. Don't worry, it won't hurt, but like with the pressure in the last ritual, it will be an uncomfortable experience.”

  “Come on, let's just get this over with,” Tesilim told the gnome.

  “Is this the last one at least?” Drex asked.

  “No, but we're almost there. Also, we are going to have a special guest for this one.”

  And almost as if she had been waiting for Alyx to say the words, a woman walked into the room. This woman, as it turned out, was the Grand Cleric of the temple and would be required to complete this specific ritual. The reason for this was that the ritual was essentially going to isolate Drex’s and Tesilim’s souls. Granted, such a thing was possible for Alyx to do using the ritual, but it would basically mean they had accomplished nothing.

  The ritual in question was often one of those used to determine whether an external force was influencing a soul. And, by its nature, it required a fairly powerful person —in this case, an A Ranker—to complete it. Mainly, it was so that the souls being affected were not accidentally injured during the process since the ranker in question partially helped the process along. However, the main thing was to have an incredibly powerful person increase the ritual's power, ensuring that nothing outside of godlike entities could keep things hidden.

  As the ritual got underway, Tesilim and Drex felt the pressure on their souls once again, but even more concerning was the sense of isolation. To Tesilim, the pressure felt like a tooth being pulled, but there was no pain because his mouth had been numbed. However, the isolation was peculiar: it felt like he was in the room, but not really —almost as if he were in a separate dimension, yet still occupying the same space. The worst part came at the end, where he felt like something was missing, except nothing was.

  Anyways, after that particularly nasty ritual finished, they let Tesilim and Drex take a break before moving to the last ritual. This ritual turned out to be fairly calm, as it was a way for them to examine his link with Drex. The entire ritual was spent sending messages, going into the other’s Soul Realms, or sending the little amounts of mana Tesilim could send to his companion's soul while he was summoned. All in all, the entire ritual day took a couple of hours, and it was around noon when Tesilim was finally let go.

  After letting his friend go, Alyx took some time to reflect on what he had learned. For one, there didn't appear to be any connection linking his friend, him, and Lili. Of course, considering what was behind the system, it was definitely possible that whatever link might exist was hidden from them. Because, in full, honestly, Alyx doubted that even his two goddesses could find a link hidden by World Crystal, so he just hoped there wasn’t one, or if there was one, it didn’t bring any detriments.

  Speaking of links, the soul link between Tesilim and Drex was interesting. The link was a way for his friend to send mana over to the drake when summoning him. However, after his friend had done whatever he did to open the link, it clearly allowed more, which could have good or bad implications because connections went both ways. Even so, the thing that Alyx found most interesting was how Tesilim couldn’t send more mana the drake's way after summoning it. The restriction was an odd one considering everything, and Alyx couldn’t think of why it was there to begin with. Well, he had a few ideas, but was honestly too tired to elaborate.

  Finally, the last thing Alyx was happy to confirm was that his friend was fully elf. Tesilim had told him that he used to be human, but Alyx had not believed him, at least until the first World Crystal incident. The reason for his doubt was that he couldn’t find any traces of humanity in the elf’s soul. And even if there had been some level of proof that Tesilim was really involved with the World Crystal, the gnome had still held some doubt. Doubt that was eased when the World Crystal fixed the elf's soul and brought about Drex.

  Of course, due to Alyx’s lack of power, he still wanted further confirmation, because even most gods failed to erase a creature's old essence from their soul in the event of a transformation. So, Alyx guessed that maybe, just maybe, his level of power was stopping him from seeing something that was hidden, regardless of his eyes. Now, though, after all the rituals, Alyx could say with certainty that Tesilim was 100% elf, well, unless the World Crystal was hiding something, which Alyx was unsure of why it would.