"Concepts?" Rafe couldn't believe his ears.

"That's just a way of simplifying it for you," the goddess told him.

Rafe thought through her words for a few moments, the weight on his soul increasing every moment. He did not have too much time, so he gestured for her to continue.

"Maybe you've heard before that there are myriad paths to godhood?" the goddess asked. And when Rafe nodded, she continued, "there are also a myriad of ways to get your truth to the pinnacle. According to Ma'la, you've probably got some contact with a guardian or two. Most of these people use an external aid, a mantle that contains memories of eras long gone to help them reach the pinnacle.

"Well, there are lots of other ways, though less than five known entities in this current iteration of the multiverse did it that way. Like the first Skyholm god. There is no need to mind if you don't know these people.

"In any case, planet deities are much more common since the system and its primordials came into existence. Some high level planets had deities even before the system, but that is a lesson for another day. What I'm trying to say is that every deity is at least connected to one primordial. For example the soul keepers like my sister Dust to Dust, or the Drowned god, are attached to the veiled land."

Rafe thought about this information again, nodded his head in understanding, and gestured for the goddess to go on.

"Younger planets cannot rare deities. It takes a few thousands of years for that to happen. Of course, there are Essence deserts too, that may probably never develop deities."

Deities were made from Essence. The Essence gathered different kinds of beliefs and turned them into a kind of authority figure that was then connected to a primordial.

Rafe listened raptly to the goddess's explanations for all the time he had, but he was unfortunately unable to listen to everything there and then. His soul felt like it was about to be torn asunder.

With a lurch, he was forced back into his body. There was a lot more information he hadn't gleaned yet.

For example, these young planets that didn't have deities still needed to connect to the primordials somehow, didn't they? Or was the connection to the primordials not that important anyway? Because even if these gods were connected to the multiverse mainframe, they didn't seem to have much influence over it. Maybe that was a mistake on the system's part?

He had to give himself a few minutes to get used to his body again. The pain in both his body and soul had him unable to move for the first minute.

He got used to it after a while though. Next he had to consider. After this last fight, he was so close to level fifteen he could practically test it.

If his hands were free and he was able to practice, he could get it after maybe three days of training. He didn't know if he would be able to make it to level sixteen in the next seven weeks. Though he had an inkling the pit organisers were going to make his life a little harder from now on. If they gave him two opponents a match, then maybe he'd need more than three months, by his estimate. If they brought more than that, then could he win?

He probably could, and he wasn't trying to be conceited. He remembered the Skyholm legacy trial and how many times he had been forced to fight a group of more than twenty elites. Three or five at a time was nothing.

The shackles on his hands and legs blocked his stats and skills. His mana and stamina pools were blocked just like they had been during his second floor in the Skyholm training tower. But the shackles did not block essence absorption, because that would be a death sentence.

The portable fight simulator only said it needed energy. It never specified the type of energy it needed. He hadn't used it this last week, mostly because he couldn't even get it out of his hair with how his hands were positioned.

But now he was desperate. He was not used to manipulating ambient Essence, because who was? Besides, he didn't even know how to manipulate mana, and that was one of the basics.

Still, he had nothing to do and all the time in the world. He tried for hours. Rested, did his soul quality manual and then slept.

A few hours later he detached his soul and moved through the spire. This time he noticed he stayed in this state more than an hour. What he wanted was to find the quickest way to the highest floor of this palace. Because he wanted to carry out the system's request. Not because he felt threatened, but because he genuinely empathised with the little sprites the Chosen was holding captive.

After this, he waited for his soul to get used to being in his body again, then he started with the Essence manipulation. It wasn't going well yet.

The time rushed. He was able to cultivate his soul quality four times that day, as usual.

He didn't even know what time it was when both Filoria and someone he didn't know appeared and started walking towards the direction of Rafe's cell.

With his soul strength and quality increasing daily, Rafe's aura skill was getting stronger and stronger. The aura was a reflection of the soul after all. Now he could afford to spread it and cover the entirety of a sixty kilometer square potion of the underground dungeon, and even someone above the mid tier of the E grade would not feel it.

That was how he knew ahead of time that the promised torture session was coming. He didn't even wait. He had timed well as usual, and his second soul walk within twenty-four hours was a possibility.

He met the goddess Terra in the same cell.

He thought that on this occasion he'd improve his time and maybe last five minutes more or something. Unfortunately, the array had been tweaked a bit, and the pressure rose just a tiny bit faster than the previous occasion. Rafe knew he had been hoping for too much.

He did get to ask Terra the questions he slept on before.

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"You're right," she told him. "The connection to the primordials is not the most important thing. It only gives us local authority. For example, it would be hard for even an S grade fighter to fight the champion, Goleon, on this planet. He is the god of warriors, you know."

"Oh? What primordial is he connected to?" Rafe asked.

Terra hesitated. "Miscellaneous," she said with a shrug. "There is a number of smaller unnamed primordials, probably born of weaker tools. Although, apparently Goleon's primordial isn't one of these unnamed ones."

Rafe only looked at her, letting his eyes ask the question for him.

"Apparently, he is connected to a future primordial. His primordial hasn't yet appeared!"

"Ahh," Rafe said, though he understood nothing. "Then what connection is most important to the deities."

"The connection to the planet's core," Terra said. "Consequently, planets that do not have deities have planet spirits."

He managed to push his time by more than two minutes, only snapping back to his body when a wisp of ethereal smoke peeled off from his soul.

When he returned to his body, the pain was overbearing this time. First was the pain from a soul wound he caused to himself for being arrogant. Of course with his soul reserve full of soul energy, this injury would heal in less than a few hours and that part of his soul would get stronger.

There was also the pain his body had experienced of torture so far, and it seemed like the torture session was still going on. If it was Filoria, she would be finished in fifteen minutes, but this torturer would probably take an hour.

Rafe needed to find a way to endure the torturous soul training for longer than an hour soon.

"This one does not scream even after all my ministrations," the torturer, an old muscly man who looked like a sage but had the eyes of a rogue, said. "It's too boring. It's like he has no soul."

Rafe could only endure the torture, trying to act like his soulless self. In any case, for more than fifteen minutes he was numb to the pain. And once his soul issues were finished, the torture begun to sink in, but the pain was too trivial compared to soul pain. He could resist it.

But then they fed him two potions when the hour mark was over. The first potion made Rafe feel warm inside, like he had eaten his first meal in over a year.

Then they fed him the healing potion, and all the day's tortures came back to him at once. He bit his own tongue, and it too was forced to heal very fast and very painfully.

"Do you see that girl?" the torturer said. "They all scream in the end."

Filoria spoke in a shaky voice, "he didn't scream though. What was that potion?"

"An experiment. Using holy water blessed by Ma'la's most gifted priests, we thought we would be able to use both the power of potions and healing magic coupled with holy magic. The best of all three worlds.

"Unfortunately, it was found that healing too fast was rather painful. And there are inevitable mistakes in the rebuilding of the body using this method," the torturer said. "So, did you learn anything girl?"

"Y-yes," Filoria answered.

She sounded shaky. Rafe had not seen her facial expression, and he did not intend to. He didn't open his eyes again until after they had long gone.

He looked down at his still somewhat hurting body. These villains were too vicious.

He sighed and went through his routine again. He tried to manipulate essence for a few hours. Once his soul was completely healed, he ran the soul cultivation manual. According to his soul sight, he was very close to finishing the refinement of his first soul core, a step most people could only complete by the end of their E grades. Qualitatively, his soul was better than most people below the D grade.

Even most D grades could not complete with him. It was unfortunate he did not have a more advanced manual to move on to once he finished this one. It would take him maybe a month to finish building his first core. The only option he'd have after that would be to manually rotate the core and bash it around in his soul space to increase its individual quality. The mechanical method.

The core would get a few holes and cracks, and fixing them would make those weak areas stronger, remove all the impurities. He needed to use up all the treasures he had received from the Skyholm trial anyway. All that soul energy would let his soul move up a grade.

Once he couldn't hold on anymore, he nodded off for a few hours. And when he woke he repeated the routine again, moving around the spire for more than an hour and a half this time.

After that, his training with the Essence finally yielded some results. He was able to get the tiniest wisp of Essence to flow into the small jewel in his shaggy hair. It wasn't enough to power the artifact, but it reacted positively. Which meant that yes, it could use Essence as a power source.

Rafe tried to trace the path of the Essence to a reservoir in the tiny artifact. He called that reservoir the battery.

Sure enough, there was less than one percent of it now filled with that tiny wisp of Essence.

If he continued in that vein, he would be able to use the artifact in maybe two years.

He escaped again once he sensed his enemies approaching. Again the goddess Terra was waiting for him. He could see that she was becoming weaker and weaker. He was using this God he had just met as a cultivation material.

There was a question he was very curious about these past two days. The moment he took his place in the array, he turned to Terra and asked her directly.

"What qualifications does a Chosen have to fight against the gods?"

Terra looked at him for a long time, although he didn't think she was hesitating. In the mean time, the pressure on his soul was rising faster than it had on previous days. He was used to this sudden increase by now though, so he did his best to ignore it.

"I cannot parse any titles on your person?" the goddess asked curiously.

Rafe frowned. He didn't have any titles, but he thought these gods already knew that. Couldn't they access his status window?

"I don't have any titles," Rafe replied.

Terra didn't seem surprised and instead simply asked, "nor any achievements, right?"

"Right," Rafe said suspiciously.

"Yours is an irregular case. I'm afraid explaining this matter to you will take more contributions than you currently possess," the goddess said. "So, do you have any questions directly related to planetary deities? You should make sure to use this opportunity to its fullest."

While the information about how these gods were basically just made out of people's beliefs was interesting, Rafe didn't care for it anymore. He knew the basics, and that would have to be enough. What else mattered anyway? How they went to the toilet?

Rafe was definitely not trying to avoid talking about the elephant in the room.

Terra told him that on most of these small planets, the gods gained consciousness after the system arrived. So then weren't these guys ten year olds in a sense? But in another sense, they were as old as the planet, only they were barely conscious at their initial conception.

And now they gained consciousness and Rafe was going to take that away. Ten year olds, the lot of them, and the fate of this world rested on their shoulders.

For the rest of that week, Rafe did not ask Terra anything about gods.

She told him it didn't matter if he came up with questions later. Since the promised reward was ambiguous and had no time frame, he'd get all the information about these gods whatever time he asked.

That day when he went back to his cell, he was lying on his belly on a newly acquired table, still chained. Something hit his back, and even though the soul pain was still killing him, he felt the whip with hundreds of sharp barbs. He hissed out a breath.

"Are there any spots of skin left?" a malicious yet gleeful voice asked.

With his first racial ability extended, Rafe saw the torturer, two E grade guards, one of which was familiar and was gritting his teeth, and Filoria. He retracted his racial ability and withdrew deep into his consciousness. His back felt wet.

He only spent close to thirty-five minutes with Terra that day, and he had returned with extensive soul injuries. And now he could feel most of the skin leaving his body.

After their torture session was done, they fed Rafe a potion again and left him to his own devices. Of course they took their table with them.

It was hard to motivate himself, but Rafe persisted. After an estimated three hours of just sitting blankly and trying to ignore the pain, Rafe started working on his Essence control technique again.

By the time his next fight rolled around, the artifact's battery or what he thought was its battery was only a quarter full. He officially failed to level up before the week was completed.

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