Chapter 263: Something That Was Missing

Rion repeated the same process until he got enough strings to craft a net.

One by one, he sewed them together, but even with all of his carefulness, a few of them broke apart.

He didn’t despair over the failure; instead, he pulled more strings of soul energy and continued crafting the net.

The process was turtle-paced.

Sweat was already covering his forehead, and his eyes were closed as he forced all of his attention on the strings that were still floating within the layer of existence of the aura flame.

He still had to pull it out of the flame.

A couple of hours later, after multiple failures, Rion managed to craft the soul energy net, and with his will wrapped around it like a barrier, he pulled it out of the aura flame.

He easily left the realm of existence and returned to the layer of spiritual existence.

He slowly made his way out, but with the net entering the second layer, the strings turned into the whirls of his soul, and the net fell apart.

“Hah…” A disappointed sigh escaped his lips.

He opened his eyes as he wiped his forehead and stared at the ether floating around him.

Although he was aware that what he was doing wasn’t going to be easy and could take months to achieve, for some reason, he still wanted to do it… It was as if the world itself was telling him that if he didn’t do it now, he would never be able to do it.

“Let’s try again.” He took a deep breath and once again repeated the same process.

This time, he was able to craft the soul energy net much more easily, but once he entered the latter stages of spiritual existence, the net fell apart similarly.

He repeated the process, and the result stayed the same.

He tried and failed again.

Over and over again.

However, the failures weren’t wasted.

They told him what not to do. So even though he was failing, he was trying methods different than the previous and gaining more and more information about the process.

Seconds turned into minutes, minutes into hours, and before long, the day passed, and Rion continued with his experiments.

After two days, a possible answer appeared in his head, ’What if instead of forming a barrier around the net, I cover them with my will? Even though it will make it much harder to move, the whirls will remain at their intended position…’

Without wasting a single moment, he did just that.

His will coiled around the net like a second layer, and as he had thought, it was much harder to move.

The outer layer of will came into contact with the soul energy net, and it fell apart.

He continued to try, and after multiple failures, he found the best way to do it.

Instead of using just one layer of his will, he formed one around the net and then a barrier surrounding the two.

Although by doing this, moving it became easier, the fatigue increased so much that his veins were bulging all across his forehead.

As the second day passed, he pulled the net from the innermost layer to the spiritual layer, and just as he had concluded, the whirls stayed at their position, and even if they touched his will, nothing happened to them.

The corners of his lips twitched into a faint smile, and he pulled the net into the outermost layer of physical existence.

As the soul energy came out of the spiritual existence, he could no longer sense it, but as he had his will around it, he could still feel it…

He didn’t know how he could feel something which he couldn’t sense and decided to attribute that to the mystical nature of souls.

He opened his eyes and saw a strange obstacle in the flow of ether before him, and his lips curled upwards.

He removed the barrier around the net and let it hook the ether, but the net was too weak.

The ether easily passed through the net and left it with irreparable damage.

“Shit…” he cursed under his breath and got back to repeating the process all over again.

The first time, he used more strings of soul energy, but it proved useless.

After a few more hours and as the sun neared the horizon, he created multiple nets and pulled them out at the same time.

His body was covered in sweat, his forehead was blue from the mental fatigue, and his face was pale like a ghost.

He placed the nets in a circular formation, and instead of removing the barrier, he also turned them into nets of will.

The ether passed through the nets of will and was trapped in the soul energy nets, and once one of them was full, he turned the barrier back to its previous state and slowly moved it towards his eyes.

As the net neared his eyes, he removed the barrier of will.

’Please work,’ he pleaded in his head, and just as he removed the second layer of will… the spiritual eyes absorbed the soul energy net and the ether trapped inside it.

Rion’s eyes shone blue and went wide.

His fatigue disappeared, and for a moment, he felt like something that he had been missing had finally become a part of him.

“Huff…huff…” he breathed raggedly and mumbled in an obsessive tone, “I need more.”

He absorbed more and more ether, and when that wasn’t enough, he created more of them and continued to absorb them like a madman.

With each net, his obsession deepened.

His fatigue became more unbearable, but he ignored it and pushed through everything to chase the feeling that he had achieved.

The feeling of finally breaking through his limits… the feeling of finally finding the answer to reach the next realm of existence.

With each batch he absorbed, something within him changed, and just when a total of seven days had passed.

Something appeared within his body.

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