Chapter 27: Ren

“Nice to finally meet you face to face,” the teenager said. “I’m glad you chose that chair, it would have been bad if you had chosen the other. Care for a drink? It’s no remshola, but I think it's still pretty good.” He then brought out two glass cups from nothing and a red can. He then poured a black bubbling liquid from the red can into the cups and passed one over to Van.

Van stared at the strange liquid, unsure of what it was. He looked up and saw that the person in front of him seemed to be enjoying the drink very much. As he watched, he noticed that the chair that the teenager was sitting on had changed, and was now a very comfy looking chair that floated in the air.

“Pah! Yes! That's the good stuff! As a memory, I can’t really take the initiative to enjoy things like this without being in an area like the one we are in now.” he said wiping his mouth. “By the way, you can call me Ren, I would prefer you to call me Van, but I think that name is taken,” Ren said with a smirk.

Van looked down to the book and noticed that many of the names in the book had V or A in the names, mostly both, and had similar variations of his own name. He looked up at the Ren. “Are you a past life of mine?”

Ren rolled his eyes. “Perceptive, aren't you?”

Van glared.

Ren raised his hands in immediate defeat. “Right, right, sorry… that was rude of me.” he righted himself a bit. “Yes, I am a past life of yours,” he said with more seriousness.

“What did you mean that it was a good thing that I sat in this chair as opposed to the other?” Van asked.

Ren nodded. “In here, things are more a matter of perspective and will. By choosing the chair that clearly had more authority you choose to put yourself above whoever you called. If you had chosen the other chair… things might have been messier as many of your less scrupulous past lives would have demanded an audience with you. You could still refuse, of course, but it would have been more difficult.”

Van felt glad he dodged the figurative bullet by choosing the right chair. He sat back as he thought, he had so many questions, but he didn’t know which ones to ask or if he even should. Like that, time passed, and Ren seemed more than content to wait it out as he enjoyed his drink and whipped up a panel and played something on it.

Finally, Van couldn’t help but ask. “Why… why all the past lives. Why me. Why was it my soul that was shattered and broken.”

Ren paused from his game, looking up at Van with a serious expression. “I’m not sure I can explain that, both because I don’t think I should, and because I both do not have all the information or the right to say. Just know that your last life was… difficult and it broke something in you. As for why you, there was no reason, it happened completely by chance. You were just reborn too quickly and your soul didn’t have the time to heal. Just bad luck.”

Van couldn’t believe what he heard. “Bad luck? Just Bad Luck!? I grew up in a weird world with weird rules, not feeling like a fit in, and then I was raped, and then I was forced to have sex again, like it was normal, which was fucked up, and fucked me up in the head a little more! Even as I tried to play it off-I-I-.” tears started to form around his eyes. He rubbed them away violently, angry at himself for letting his mask slip.

“If you're still afraid of those nightmares, don’t worry, after you leave and your soul realm is completed. Your nightmares, alongside your trauma, would be gone.” Ren said impassively.

Van stared at Ren in shock at that. “...Gone? What do you mean, Just gone?” he asked, unsure if he heard him right.

“I mean gone... is that a problem?” Ren said, uncaring of Van’s feelings.

“I… don’t know… shouldn’t Trauma be something you overcome and grow stronger for doing so.” Van said unsure and in disbelief.

Ren shrugged. “I get what you're trying to say. Imagine if someone lost their entire family and then someone told them they will get over it within a week because of reasons. But it remains a fact. Once you leave... you will not be the same as you were before...”

Van actually felt scared of that. “I don’t want any more nightmares, especially of that time, but… is it really alright to just get over it? Just because I awakened? And to have so much of me, my personality, the way I think, change due to having a completed soul realm. Would I even be me anymore?”

Ren saw the look of fear in Van’s face and sighed. He then pushed the untouched glass of black liquid closer to Van. “calm down, I feel like you're overthinking things. Have a drink.”

Van looked at Ren and then the drink, with some hesitation he reached out and took a sip of the black liquid. “It's… sweet?”

Ren nodded. “Listen, you're not going to change as much as you think you are. You will still be largely you, just a little more, and better. Not to mention, it's not all bad having past lives like us, in fact, I think you will become far stronger than you could ever dream of being, thanks to that very fact. Now, do you have any other questions?”

Van stared into his glass, lost in thought before looking up. “Where's the orb my dad gave me? How do I operate that strange device in the center? Why do I have information about the others? How did I get my clothes back? What do I do next?” and many more questions.

“Wow, wow, wow… one question at a time,” Ren said, raising his hands. “Your orb is probably in your treasury, the west point. By the way, smart of him to give it to you, you're going to need it soon.”

“What do you mean? And, I have a treasury?”

“I mean that that’s a lot of essence that you can use to make yourself stronger! I come from a world that didn’t have anything convenient like that, and even I understand the idea of it and what it can do. And let me tell you, your father just dropped a massive fortune on top of you. He must really love you... And yes, you do. It's where you keep your physical possessions, such as the essence orb. And what you want to do with it is use it to upgrade your core to make this place bigger and have more slots to work with.”

“Slots?”

Ren nodded. “Each of the four points are slots, south, north, east, and west. All of them are already taken. The entrance and teleportation array in the south, the library of memories in the east, the vault/treasury in the west, and the communion in the north where we are. If you want to grow in power, you're going to need more slots.”

“What do each of them do?” Van asked.

“The teleportation array makes it so that you can teleport wherever you wish within your soul realm. Even to other people's soul cores, such as Anna’s since she is also here. And-”

“Anna is here!” Van shouted in surprise.

Ren glared, not liking being interrupted. “Yes… she is. She even has her own little island. And if you have permission from your wife and concubine, you can teleport to theirs, though it would be more difficult since their soul realms are not in yours. Now, may I continue?”

Van felt properly chided and nodded.

“Thank you. Now” he began again. “The library of memories contains not just your memories, but your past lives as well. That's why you may find that some books might have more than one lock. You would have also seen that we, including yourself, value our memories so highly, that the soul realm has created a figurative and literal attachment to them. As you no doubt saw when they were attached to the bookcases. Though if you were to go to the control center, you can change the appearance of them to say… chains or something.”

Van felt glad to hear that. He definitely didn’t want those black tendrils.

“Finally, the vault/treasury, where you can store your physical possessions. That really should be self-explanatory. Everyone with a soul realm seems to be able to store their stuff in it, if it's big enough so why not make a representation of a treasury/vault for convenience sake.” he said with a shrug “The communion where we are, should also be self-explanatory as well, it's where you can talk to all your… past lives.” he hesitated, when he said that last part, but continued on as if nothing happened. “Does that help somewhat?”

“Yes. thank you.” Van noticed the hesitation but decided it could wait for later. “But I still need to know how to work the control center where my core is.” Van said.

“That my friend is going to take a long time.” Ren then made appear another red can and poured more into Van’s drink. “Now sit back, relax, because I have a whole mess of things to tell you, and not just about your core.”

---

“And that's how it works, with me so far?”

Van groaned and rubbed his temples, it had been literal hours and he didn’t think he could take it anymore. “Why so much math? Couldn’t you have made things simpler?”

Ren grinned. “Where's the fun in that? You should be happy! I made it so that you can become strong in a nice organized and structured way. It took me over ten years to perfect. Though I did have a lot of time.”

“You made me into this, this… Video game character?” Van said unsure of the word. “Why?”

“Because I thought it would be fun. Besides, all isekai stories have something similar like that, I’m just keeping with the theme. Besides you're not a video game character, you're just based on the concept of rules and numbers that just so happened to be very similar in structure to an rpg video game.” Ren said with a mischievous smile.

Van glared at Ren and sighed. “I suppose things could have been worse… At least I have an idea of… umm… you said you also installed a help menu and it was…”

“Top right corner,” Ren said flatly as if he said it many times before.

“Right. Thank you.” Van quickly said. “So I think I can handle it from here.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to go through the tutorial one more time?” Ren asked, worriedly.

Van winced. Already starting to hate the word. ‘Tutorial’… and just ready to get on with his life. “No, no. I think i’m fine. If I have any problems in the future, I know I can always come back here to ask you, right?”

“Of course. And if you ever have any free time, just drop by and we can play a game or two.” Ren said with a smile, showing several floating blue panels with what Van presumed to be game titles.

“Sure. when I have the time.” Van said and waved goodbye with the intention of ending the conversation, only for nothing to happen.

“You have to close the book,” Ren said helpfully.

“Ah, right… thanks.” Van did so and everything disappeared into nothingness and he was back in the white void. Now with an empty chair in front of him.

Van got up from his desk and stretched. Glad to finally be free from all that explaining, but also happy for the useful information. “He said Anna was here. Perhaps I can pay her a visit?” With great willpower he flew outside the barrier and felt that strange sensation once more and headed straight to the teleportation array, making far better time than he would have walking. Glad that Ren told him that he didn’t have to walk everywhere.

Once there, he landed and walked up to the pedestal. Like Ren had taught him, he reached out and felt the connection. Almost immediately a full 3d projection of his entire soul realm was shown. Van’s eyes widened at the enormity of it all. He then narrowed his eyes in concentration and focused on looking for Anna. the image adjusted and zoomed in on an island in the distance. With a flash of blue light, Van was gone and was zipping through the air at unimaginable speeds until he landed on a far smaller array on Anna’s island. The whole process took little more than a few seconds and left him a little dizzy. “It's more a transfer array than a teleportation one.”

Regaining his balance, he looked around and found that it was somewhat similar to his island with two layers. But everything else was different. For one, it was far smaller than his and it only took about ten minutes to reach Anna’s core.

Anna’s core was very different than his own, while his was black and metal, her’s seemed to be made completely out of liquid. It moved in strange patterns, and as Van concentrated to take a closer look, he found that thousands of little lights were inside the core, and acted as if some sort of giant brain with neurons, almost like a mini-universe. He looked down and there was a one-inch pool of crystal clear water in a circle around the core with stone flooring. He looked around and couldn't find a single Anna in the place.

“Odd? Where is Anna? I don’t see her anywhere? I wanted to ask her what a hivemind was. Ren kept talking about how she was changing in a different way. And kept on saying. “God damn hiveminds!” When I asked if he could look upon Anna for me. What's really annoying is his explanation, saying that I was lucky and would figure it out eventually, and wouldn’t explain any further.” Van sighed. “Well, I guess since she isn’t here I better get going.”

Turning away, disappointed, Van walked back to the teleportation pad. And zipped back to his own island. He then flew towards the control center and up towards the platform where the chair was. Taking a seat, he was far more prepared for what was going to happen next than he was before.

Soon he was floating in the chair with the panel in front of him. “Alright let's see. I believe this is the icon I’m looking for is...” clicking on an image, it then brought up a top-down overview of his island. He then clicked the center and then clicked the upgrade, the price shown was 20 million units of mana or 20 thousand units of essence. “Ren did say that because my soul realm was stagnant for so long that I would have to push it through the first time. Once that’s done, my soul realm should slowly grow on its own without having to spend absurd amounts of mana or essence on it unless I want to make it grow faster.” He clicked okay and then saw that 20 thousand of his essence in the top right corner was deducted.

Soon his entire island shook like it was struck by an earthquake, and the image in front of him changed and four new points were formed. Turning the inner layer of the island into the shape of a compass. The island itself seemed to double in size and the new price was now 40 million units of mana or 40 thousand units of essence for the next upgrade.

“Wow… that was... amazing!… I feel… stronger...” Van looked around at his new and improved island with some pride. A little sad that he couldn’t upgrade it again. But keeping in mind what Ren said to do next he moved on to the next phase.

Bringing up his status he saw and clicked on the icon that displayed his race. Several images popped up, showing his Dhampir/lesser vampire race, his lesser aasimar race, his unawakened dual demon race, his unawakened dragon race, and finally...

“He wasn’t joking…” Van thought in surprise. Godling. Van clicked on it and it displayed that his godling race was 0.02% awakened. He stared at it for a long time before exiting out of it. Moving on he turned to the right to the other race. The chimera. Clicking on it displayed that it was at 12.4% awakened. He clicked to awaken it and was given a prompt that someone had already donated the required mana for awakening, it then asked if he wanted to continue.

Van clicked yes and almost immediately a surge of power rushed from all over his soul realm and entered the core. The core then shot out a beam of energy that hit him square in the chest. At first a little painful, it quickly abated and he felt nothing new about himself. Looking back to the screen, he found that he now had a new race, the lesser chimera level 1.

He then dumped 2,500 units of essence for a total worth of 2,500,000 units of mana. Each level of up cost about 50,000 mana for a total of 50 levels. Once again a beam of energy, this time far more powerful than the one before hit him. He felt himself changing, this time for longer and far more painfully. After it was done, he quickly checked his display.

Van was now a full chimera at level 1 and it would cost him 100,000 units of mana per level for a total of a hundred levels to reach greater chimera. Thankfully he did not have to do that. He was only told to level up his chimera. “Ren told me not to spend any more essence when I finish since it's so hard to get and instead use mana when it's available.”

Exiting out he went back to his status screen and decided to play around since he was done. He checked his races, ranks, traits, attributes, jobs/classes, skills and skill trees, inventory, map, and many other features and tabs. Having to use help for a lot of it. He also checked on Luna’s and the other’s info, but for some reason, couldn't get anything in-depth about them. Especially Anna, who for some reason, had her display of information changed since last he’d been here and now showed error signes and one big caption that read. God Damn Hiveminds! In bold. Which was a shame, since he believed he could also turn Anna’s demon bloodline into a succubi one.

A little weirded out at the display on Anna’s profile, Van moved on until he reached the zapper. He clicked on her race to see what it would show. “Huh… interesting… if she could get some fae and elf blood, plus some wind and water affinity, and a lot of mana, she would reach the requirements to become a lesser storm fairy. But she would also need to become a chimera and maybe an insect-kin, which is very rare and hard to come by, and difficult to do.”

He then exited out of her info panel and went back to his. “I hate to admit it, but now that I got somewhat used to it, it's actually very helpful for my purposes. I can find out anything I want about myself, including what to do and how to do it. Not to mention, all the other bonuses...”

Van exited out of the panel and got off the chair, floating in mid-air. With a thought, he zipped to the teleportation array, a smile on his face. “I feel different. Good different!. Stronger... I can’t wait to find out how much I changed. And now that my soul realm is complete, I won't have to do a ritual every time I want to enter it. Things are finally going my way.” he said with a smirk.

And in a beam of blue light. He was gone.