Kyle looked at the small metal fragments scattered around the area.
His Ether Sense tried to analyze the different fragments, but they were too small, damaged, and scattered to make sense of them.
After all, Theodor blew up with quite some force.
"Boss?" Kyle asked.
Nothing.
"You there?"
Nothing.
Then, Kyle grinned. "Finally free from my mother-in-law! Feels good, man!"
Kyle remembered when he had met Theodor and how crazy he had been.
Back then, he hadn't even been able to remember the last three sentences Kyle had spoken.
He had seemed so insane with his demands and constant paranoia.
Over time, Theodor hadn't made his paranoia known as much, but it had probably still been there.
'He probably changed his approach,' Kyle thought. 'I mean, despite being a fucking insane schizoid, he was not dumb. When he was still alive, he probably manipulated a bunch of people left and right.'
'Wonder if the real Theodor would have changed.'
Kyle thought about that for a bit until he realized that his supply of fucks to give was drying up.
"Eh, who cares?" Kyle said with a shrug.
"Anyway, now that that's over, I can do whatever I want! No more voices in my head!"
Kyle blinked a couple of times as he realized something.
"Dang, 50s medicine was onto something. A lobotomy got rid of the voices in my head."
Kyle looked at the huge pile of Rank A Materials that used to be the three Metal Elementals.
"Gotta find a way to transport- wait!"
Kyle approached the big ball of metal and willed it to come with him.
The next moment, the big ball vanished.
His senses followed the ball, and he quickly found where it ended up.
Once more, there was metal in his brain.
Well, it wasn't directly in his brain.
Near the middle of his brain was a small spot that had some Ether moving in and out of it.
Kyle's perception entered the small spot, and he sensed a big, isolated space.
Naturally, the big ball of metal was right inside it.
As he looked at the space, Kyle realized something.
'That's bigger than expected. That's like… 45 feet? Isn't it supposed to be smaller?'
Kyle's Soul Space was around 15 meters wide, which was quite a lot wider than the Soul Space of people with an improved Soul.
Usually, Master Artificers or Beast Masters only had Soul Spaces that were about five meters wide.
Since the shape of a Soul Space was always spherical, this didn't just triple Kyle's storage space. A sphere with a diameter of five meters had around 65 cubic meters of volume.
In comparison, a sphere with a diameter of 15 meters had around 1,767 cubic meters of volume.
27 times!
Kyle had 27 times more storage space than people with improved Souls!
'So, does that mean my Soul is stronger? I mean, people without an improved Soul have pitiful Soul Spaces. If my Soul Space is bigger, it means I should have a stronger Soul.'
Kyle looked at one of the two grey specks in his head.
'That your doing? Probably.'
'Speaking of,' Kyle thought. 'People must have tried breaking through like this. You know, just allowing the Ether to flow into random places. There's gotta be some insane people who did that.'
'And yet, everyone is saying not to do that.'
Kyle scratched the back of his head.
'I wonder…'
The next moment, Kyle thought about Rank D Materials and shoved Metal Ether into the green speck near his heart.
The Metal Ether gathered around it but didn't do anything.
It was just there.
Kyle willed the Metal Ether to enter into the speck, but the Ether just flowed around it like it was water and the speck was a boulder.
'Can't change this thing anymore. Guess my body is locked into using the Fragment of Wind Movement.'
'So, does that mean I can create these specks only during my advancement?'
'Things are slowly starting to make sense.'
Kyle's mind was coming up with thousands of theories in almost an instant.
He imagined a primitive world where people advanced in the natural way.
Then, at some point, somebody made a ritual that redistributed the Ether of their Aspects of Power.
That person became quite a bit more powerful than the normal people in the First and maybe even the Second Realm.
After all, they were specialized.
It was much easier to effectively use two stronger Aspects of Power than four normal Aspects of Power.
The skill floor was much higher.
However, truly talented people could achieve much greater power with normal Aspects of Power.
So, while the skill floor was higher for people who had undergone a ritual, the skill ceiling was lower.
But for how many people did that matter?
How many people could reach the Third Realm?
90% chance to become a millionaire, but never become a billionaire, or 0.1% chance to become a billionaire?
What would people on Earth choose?
Naturally, almost everyone would choose to become a millionaire unless they were already a millionaire.
So, over a long period of time, more and more people underwent the rituals.
However, that made it basically impossible to comprehend Fragments during the Second Realm.
While in the primitive world, some people might have known about the use of understanding Fragments in the Second Realm, after thousands upon thousands of years of rituals used everywhere, this knowledge was probably lost.
Eventually, the Aristocrat's Bodies appeared, which would make it possible to understand Fragments again.
But by then, the advancement into the Third Realm would have already been optimized.
The natural advancement was lost, replaced with the active and conscious distribution of Ether during the advancement into the Third Realm.
So, while some people with an Aristocrat's Body managed to comprehend Fragments in the Second Realm again, these specks never materialized since their framework was never created.
'At least, I think that's what happened,' Kyle thought. 'I mean, it would make sense.'
'Anyway, I should look at my actual power.'
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