The Soul Space was not a place of physical dimensions. It was a colorless void, an infinite, stretching canvas of churning grey mist and silent, rippling echoes. In this ethereal realm, physical matter—flesh, bone, rain, and obsidian rock—was entirely irrelevant. The laws of thermodynamics, gravity, and mass had no jurisdiction here. Only the absolute, naked core of a being mattered. It was a space of fundamental truths, stripped of all earthly pretense.
Lencar's spectral form, a glowing silhouette of pale, blue-white light, drifted effortlessly through the mist. He didn't swim or walk; he simply willed himself forward, the sheer density of his own Stage 3 soul acting as an anchor in the shifting currents of the void.
He floated toward the spiritual projection of the Diamond Kingdom General.
Over the years, Lencar had briefly peered into the Soul Space during his early, reckless experiments with Absolute Replication. Most of the souls he had observed belonged to small forest animals or the occasional low-tier bandit he had ambushed in the woods. Those natural souls had always looked like spheres of soft, pulsing light—warm, coherent, and perfectly whole. They were simple, harmonious melodies of life force.
But as Lencar approached the hovering spiritual manifestation of Mars, he felt a profound, chilling sense of revulsion.
Mars's soul was an absolute tragedy.
It did not resemble a sphere of light. It looked like a fragile, beautiful pane of stained glass that had been violently smashed with a hammer, and then painstakingly, haphazardly glued back together by a desperate madman. It was jagged, asymmetrical, and deeply scarred. Deep, dark fissures ran across its surface, and from these cracks, a faint, sickly light was bleeding out, leaking Mars's raw mana into the surrounding grey mist. It was a soul that was constantly, perpetually bleeding out, only held together by sheer, unnatural force.
"Damn," Lencar whispered. His soul-voice didn't vibrate through air; it echoed directly into the void, a projection of his pure thought. The word hung there, heavy with a mixture of profound pity and cold, clinical disgust. "They really butchered you, didn't they, kid?"
He floated closer, the ambient spiritual pressure of Mars's fractured soul pushing against him like a weak, erratic current. Lencar squinted, focusing his spectral vision to peer past the cracked, leaking surface and into the very center of Mars's spiritual chest.
Floating inside the hollow, damaged core of the boy's soul were two distinct, violently bright lights.
One was a brilliant, sharp Pink gem. It was large, multifaceted, and radiated a sense of absolute structure, rigid hardness, and impenetrable defense. It pulsed with a cold, methodical rhythm. This was the core of Mars's existence. This was his natural, God-given affinity—the seed of his Crystal Magic. Even in its damaged state, it was breathtakingly powerful, a testament to the boy's immense natural talent.
But it was not alone.
Fused to the side of the Pink gem, jammed violently into the spiritual cracks of Mars's soul like a parasitic wasp laying eggs in a host, was a second light. It was a deep, violently burning Red.
Unlike the cold, structured rhythm of the Crystal gem, the Red gem flickered chaotically. It felt angry, hot, and desperate. It felt like a scream frozen in time, a trapped echo of terror and pain that was constantly trying to expand but finding itself caged.
Fire Magic. The stolen magic of Fana.
Lencar hovered mere inches from the core, his spectral eyes narrowing as he analyzed the point of intersection. The two gems shouldn't be together. Magic attributes were deeply personal, tied to the very nature of a person's soul. Forcing two opposing elements into one container should have resulted in immediate spiritual detonation.
He wasn't surprised by the dual nature of the soul; his meta-knowledge had already provided the "what." He was here for the "how." He knew Mars wasn't a natural hybrid like Charmy or a blessed outlier. He was a Frankenstein's monster, a spiritual graft. But seeing the mechanism of that graft was what sent a cold, clinical thrill through Lencar's core.
"Wait," Lencar said, leaning his glowing silhouette in closer, his curiosity overriding his initial disgust. "What in God's name is that?"
Connecting the two gems wasn't a natural spiritual bond. It wasn't a blending of light, nor was it a harmonious fusion of two souls becoming one. It was entirely, horrifyingly artificial.
It was a Rune.
But it wasn't a rune Lencar had ever seen in the dusty, ancient Clover Kingdom textbooks he had read in the Hage Grimoire Tower. It wasn't the flowing, natural script of Elven magic, nor did it carry the chaotic, malevolent, reality-warping static of Devil script.
It looked... mathematical.
It was a complex, multi-dimensional geometric lattice constructed of pure, dense, artificial mana. It looked like a cage made of glowing silver wire, wrapped tightly around the angry Red gem of Fire Magic, and then bolted ruthlessly into the side of the Pink Crystal gem. It acted like a literal, spiritual clamp. It was forcibly holding the volatile Fire magic in place, binding it to the primary host, overriding the soul's natural immune response through sheer, geometric force.
It was a magical staple.
Lencar looked closer at the geometric cage holding the two gems.
Why didn't he use it? Lencar's analytical mind raced, piecing the combat data together. In the original story, when he was pushed to the absolute brink, he unleashed Fana's Fire Magic. But against me, even when I shattered his armor, even when I battered him with anti-magic... he never sparked a single flame. Why?
As he examined the silver lattice, the answer became glaringly obvious. The rune was degrading.
The geometric clamp was under immense stress. Little bits of the complex pattern—tiny, silver fractal lines connecting the major anchor points—were flaking off, dissolving into the grey mist of the Soul Space. The clamp was actively failing.
"That explains it," Lencar analyzed, his intense, burning curiosity completely overtaking his initial wave of disgust. "The trauma of our fight jarred the connection. When I inverted my mana and coated myself in the anti-magic void, every time I punched his physical body, the shockwaves of that absolute negation echoed all the way down into his soul."
The anti-magic hadn't just shattered Mars's crystal armor; it had fundamentally destabilized the artificial magical clamp holding his stolen powers together.
"If Mars had tried to use the Fire Magic in that state," Lencar reasoned, watching another tiny silver line of the rune snap and evaporate, "the surge of heat and volatile mana would have shattered this weakened rune completely. And if the rune shattered while still anchored to his primary gem... it would have torn his soul apart from the inside out. He would have detonated. His subconscious survival instincts locked the Fire Magic away to prevent spiritual suicide."
Lencar floated back a few inches, taking in the full, tragic picture of the shattered, stitched-together soul.
"This is fascinating," Lencar murmured into the void. "It is unimaginably cruel, inherently evil, and absolutely, undeniably brilliant."
This rune was the holy grail of magical engineering. It was the physical proof that the rules of this world—one soul, one attribute—could be hacked. If Lencar could acquire this, if he could study its geometry... the possibilities were staggering. He could potentially forge a chimera for himself, not through butchery, but through perfect, calculated replication.
He made his decision. He wasn't just going to copy a crystal spell. He was taking the entire engine.
He reached out with his glowing, spectral hands.
Normally, extracting a soul element, even with Absolute Replication, was an incredibly difficult, delicate process. The target's soul would naturally fight back, treating the intrusion like a virus, raising spiritual defenses and fighting tooth and nail to retain its essence.
But Mars's soul was so fractured, so thoroughly traumatized, and so used to being violently manipulated by Morris's experiments, that it offered almost zero resistance to Lencar's approaching hands. It was pliable, weak, and exhausted, like thick scar tissue that had lost all sensation.
Lencar didn't try to sever the rune. He didn't want to break the clamp while it was still inside Mars. If he shattered the connection here, the volatile Fire gem might explode, or the resulting spiritual shockwave could permanently cripple the Diamond General. More importantly, Lencar wanted the rune intact. He needed the complete mechanism, not broken pieces.
He cupped his spectral hands around the entire cluster—the Pink Crystal Gem, the angry Red Fire Gem, and the complex, degrading silver geometric Rune binding them together.
Lencar braced his soul, anchoring his immense Stage 3 presence in the grey mist.
And then, he pulled.
It wasn't a physical tug. There were no muscles involved in the Soul Space. It was a pure exertion of willpower, a contest of metaphysical gravity. Lencar commanded the cluster to leave its host and enter his own domain.
Instantly, he met fierce resistance.
While Mars's shattered soul offered no fight, the Rune itself rebelled.
This was Morris's masterpiece, a security measure designed to ensure the Diamond Kingdom's ultimate weapons couldn't be easily dismantled or stolen. The moment Lencar applied his spiritual gravity, the silver geometric lattice flared with a blinding, aggressive light. It dug its anchor points deeper into the Pink and Red gems, acting like a barbed hook fighting against a fishing line. The rune emitted a high-frequency spiritual screech, a localized defense mechanism attempting to shock Lencar's consciousness into releasing its grip.
"You think a dead man's lock is going to keep me out?" Lencar growled, his spectral form flashing with a sudden, intense blue-white brilliance as he doubled down on his focus.