I remained standing silently upon the endless gray plains while the pale mist drifted around us in slow currents, the strange realm feeling emptier with every passing second as though existence itself had thinned here to the bare minimum required for reality to continue functioning.
Defender Aurora stood several meters away from me without interrupting my thoughts again, allowing the silence to settle naturally while her golden soul force moved calmly around her body like flowing liquid sunlight.
Her words continued echoing inside my mind.
Your soul is not power. It is you.
At first the concept had honestly sounded almost meaningless to me, because all my life strength had always been tied to power, laws, Essence, control, destruction, dominance. Even the system itself had reduced existence into measurable numbers and visible progression, and somewhere along the way I had unconsciously begun treating my soul the same way.
As another weapon. Another source of force. But Saint rank had already changed that without me realizing it.
The body was no longer the center.
The soul was.
And if that was true, then forcing the soul to obey like a tool would naturally fail.
I slowly closed my eyes once more while allowing my awareness to descend inward. Instantly the vast inner world unfolded before me again, the enormous soul standing silently above the expanding landmass beneath endless streams of silver-violet soul force. The crown rested naturally upon its head while the cape behind it drifted slowly despite the stillness of the world around it.
This time I did not try pulling it outward.
I simply acknowledged it.
Acknowledged myself.
The moment that thought settled properly inside my mind, I felt something shift.
Silver-violet soul force began moving upward through my existence naturally instead of being dragged forcefully through it. The energy flowed differently from Essence carrying intent rather than pure force.
Slowly the silver-violet light spread across my skin.
At first it appeared unstable, flickering around my arm in broken streams before dispersing repeatedly into the gray air around me. But instead of forcing more power into it like before, I focused on maintaining the feeling itself, the certainty that this force belonged to me because it was me.
Gradually the instability lessened.
The silver-violet soul force wrapped itself around my arm fully this time, forming a thin translucent layer that shimmered faintly against the pale surroundings.
Defender Aurora finally nodded slightly.
"Good," she said calmly. "Now move."
I raised my arm instinctively and punched forward.
The instant my fist moved, the soul force wrapped around it surged violently outward.
A shockwave exploded across the gray plains.
The air itself distorted visibly while space rippled from the impact before stabilizing again several kilometers away. The force of it startled even me slightly, not because of the destruction but because of how naturally it occurred.
No skill activation.
Just intent.
Defender Aurora observed the shattered space ahead before looking back toward me.
"Again."
Hours passed after that or perhaps days. The realm itself made time difficult to judge properly.
Again and again I continued drawing soul force outward, slowly learning how to maintain stability without overwhelming the manifestation through raw pressure. At first even covering both arms properly felt difficult, the silver-violet energy collapsing repeatedly whenever my focus shifted too aggressively toward force instead of intent.
But gradually the process became smoother.
The soul force began responding faster each time I reached for it, moving through my existence less like energy and more like a second nervous system spreading naturally across my body.
Eventually Defender Aurora changed the training.
"Create something."
I frowned slightly.
"Like what?"
"Anything."
I raised one hand slowly afterward while silver-violet soul force gathered above my palm. Instinctively I shaped it the same way I would ordinary Essence, compressing it into a sphere. The result looked strange.
A floating silver-violet orb hovered above my hand while distorted ripples spread around it continuously as though space itself struggled to contain the soul force properly.
Then it exploded.
The gray plains cracked violently beneath the blast while silver-violet shockwaves spread across the horizon hard enough to scatter the drifting mist entirely from the surrounding region.
I stared quietly at the destruction. The training continued.
I shaped arrows next.
At first only one.
A long silver-violet projectile formed slowly above my hand before shooting across the plains with enough force to split the distant horizon apart entirely. The projectile did not simply pierce the ground either. Everything around its path distorted momentarily as though reality itself had been forcefully displaced.
Then came multiple arrows.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
Entire storms of silver-violet projectiles rained endlessly across the dead realm while massive explosions shook the world continuously. Cracks spread through the pale sky itself while the ground beneath us fractured farther and farther with every passing attempt.
But even then Defender Aurora remained unsatisfied.
"You are still thinking about destruction first," she said calmly while standing amidst the devastation completely unaffected by it. "Your soul force follows your identity."
I frowned slightly hearing that.
"What difference does that make?"
She looked directly into my eyes.
"What do you want to become?"
The question lingered strangely inside my mind afterward. What did I want to become?
Not just stronger or powerful.
Something beyond that. I closed my eyes briefly while silver-violet soul force drifted around my body.
Absolute.
The answer surfaced naturally. That was always what I wanted to be.
Not someone who borrowed authority from the world. Not someone asking reality for permission.
Absolute.
If I wished for water to become air then it should. If I wished for destruction then existence itself should obey.
If I wished for the dead to live then even death should bend.
The moment that thought settled fully inside my mind, the soul force around me changed.
The silver-violet energy stopped behaving violently. Instead it became calm.
Then I moved.
Soul force wrapped around my entire arm instantly before I punched forward through empty space.
The gray world shook.
A massive shockwave tore through the horizon while the pale sky above cracked visibly from the pressure alone. The drifting mist across enormous sections of the realm vanished entirely while the ground split endlessly outward beneath the impact.
For the first time Defender Aurora smiled slightly.
And after that the training became far more dangerous.
Each passing attempt pushed farther beyond the last as soul force spread naturally around my body with increasing stability. Entire storms of silver-violet arrows tore through the realm continuously while shockwaves shattered the sky repeatedly and enormous explosions distorted reality itself across the gray plains.
By the end Half the realm trembled continuously from the force of my training alone.