Space Core

POV: Belief

Pain. Mind-numbing, incomprehensible pain. It was present in every single inch of my newly mortal body, maybe even deeper than that. I felt like dying would've been a better alternative to what I was feeling at the moment. The pain didn't stop, It didn't let go. Pure, unfiltered, complete, suffering.

And then it all stopped.

{PROBLEM------ resolved by <GOD-HANDLER>. Please open your status.}

What was that? It just... appeared in my vision, like some sort of glass put over my view. And status? What does that mean? Wait a minute, isn't this the 'system' that appeared because of Lor? It got me?

I shook my head, the message following all the while. I let out a deep sigh and then followed the instructions

status

That... is something. But what were those skills about? At least I don't really have to worry too much about my magic being routed into the skills, not like I was using it anyway. The real question was what [Known Belief] was about; It had a description too vague for my tastes.

I let the questions fade away from my mind, right now there were more pressing issues. One of them was checking on the others to see how they were doing.
 

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POV: Akashi

It was a normal day in the world. Birds were singing, flowers were blooming, everything was perfectly normal. Until it wasn't.

I looked at the group of Divine beings that had just fallen out of the sky. I already knew what to do. Four of the souls present were now scarred with my presence, I would now always be with them.

But there was one I didn't scar. Why you may ask? Well, to be blunt, I didn't think I could. I mean, how was I supposed to affect the soul if there was literally nothing there!? That woman had no soul! She was closer to being me than to being any other living organism! How was I supposed to imprint myself onto, well, nothing?

There was nothing I could do right now, I didn't know what I was supposed to do now. A living being must have a soul, I knew this just as well as everything else! To infect her, she'd need to somehow gain a soul! And that wasn't something that I coul- ...wait a second.

I couldn't create a soul, that was an immutable law of the universe that even my illogical creator didn't seem to be able to break. But I existed, I was thinking. I had no soul. I already knew how I came to be, I pushed too hard... and then I simply was. But what really happened?

For the first time in my life, I had to truly think about the situation. Let's start by looking at what I knew about souls, and what they were.

The simplest explanation was that a soul was everything that made up someone. Every memory, every single bit of personality, all of it in a single 'object'.

But that was obviously an ignorant explanation. After all, one could lose memories from severe injury to the brain. Perhaps it was 'consciousness'? It was certainly tempting to say that it was... but in that case, something was missing.

But what was it? I already discarded memories... oh, the personality.

Right, let's say the soul contains 'consciousness' and 'personality' inside of it. What did that say about my awakening into sapience? I had simply pushed until something gave. And I do remember 'my' Mana interacting in weird ways. I had gained access to way more Space Mana than I was supposed to at that point... Space Mana.

Things started clicking in my mind, I was connected to every disconnected part of myself using portals made using Space Mana. And I broke something before being flooded with Space Mana. I quickly realized what I had done, I had partly broken thousands of portals... all with connections to other souls.

I wasn't a 'true' being, I didn't have a soul... but I had gained consciousness from nothing... and that could only come from souls. The only conclusion from this madness was a simple one; I wasn't a single being, no, I am a being made out of millions of infinitely small bits of souls. My personality was a heavily diluted version of everyone I had infected.

I 'shook' myself as best as I could. I could deal with the aftermath of this realization later. For now, I needed to give a 'soul' to this girl.

I reached through myself, through my connections, and found so many souls that a necromancer would probably have fainted from bliss. I made sure to only find human souls... and then I was able to decide on what personality she would have. I decided that a slightly shy but smart girl would be who she would be.

I found the souls matching the description... and then went as quickly as I could, connecting them. I made the 'inner-system' of the girl directly inside the connections before letting go.

I was suddenly quite thankful for the fact that my thinking speed was billions of times above an average human. It had all happened in the span of barely a few seconds.