Nico left shortly after that. He had his answer. There were many other things to attend to, and while his long dialogue with Gemma had been fulfilling to a degree, the need to return to them was mounting.
The first of those endeavors he had come up with involved expanding his knowledge of souls. The rest all arrived faster than expected. He needed to form his Devil Core, and he needed to train with his sisters. He had to communicate with Kido and Gemma, and he had to explore Shaman's capabilities better.
Eunbin had even relayed to him that the distant queen of the Song Domain wanted to question him, though he couldn't imagine why. The Queen of Song had just now given him thought after an entire month, and whatever the cause, it meant nothing good. Nothing good at all. She might've been the person to honor his mother's wish and keep Nico safe from his father, but her motives — like he had once said about Changing Star's — were completely unknown.
And there was nothing more dangerous than the unknown. Ki Song, by virtue of existing, was capable of hiding Nico's mother from his father. There was nothing more mysterious than that.
Anyway, speaking with her was a future problem. The one he was about to have now proved less so…
He notified Eunbin and Seishan that he would be returning home, gave Kido a curt nod, ignored Gemma because he was somehow wasted, and found a quiet, private room to sleep in until his body was transported to the Dream Realm.
When he felt the shift between realms, he opened his eyes to find himself in the plaza of Ravenheart. The environment suddenly swapped from modern, opulent wealth to medieval architecture and a dark backdrop of snow and soot-stained jade rock. It was jarring, but Nico managed better than most.
Nobody approached him on the way through the palace.
He — if not quickly due to the castle's immensity — deftly maneuvered through the endless halls. Ten minutes later and he passed a set of imposing, guarded metal gates into the ice caverns below. Revel was probably here. Whatever army of puppets Ki Song had collected throughout her decade-long tenure of power were as well.
The ice caves were really quite disappointing to behold. It just looked like the rest of the palace. All the truly cavernous areas full of jagged blue stalagmites and stalactites were hidden far past where Nico had any purpose to ever approach.
Swiftly reaching the corridor where his private suite was situated, Nico pushed opened the giant double doors and headed inside. The interior was structured in three floors. The first was a simple lounge, everything just as glossy and waxed as when he'd first arrived. With only cookware, reclining space, and various other amenities that he had really zero realistic plans of putting into use, it was forgotten.
Forgoing the use of lighting, Nico pulled on his mind, mentally ordering Shaman to flow outwards from his soul. The dark room almost instantly swelled with light, but not in the traditional sense. As Shaman expanded, its fluid body seeping into each crack and crevice of the luxurious structure, Nico's soul sense flared, compounding that information into a blueprint of his surroundings.
Once he ascended to the second floor — just a smaller replica of the first one with separate bedrooms, he stepped into the bathroom and sparked on a gas lamp. When the golden light filled the room, he focused, pulling Shaman's mist easily back into his body.
His face contorted.
'What is happening?'
Nico placed both hands on the counter and stared into the mirror. A pair of blue eyes sparkled back at him, but something was strange about them now. There were wisps of pure white light intertwined within the irises like tiny stars.
He couldn't help but repeat, this time out loud:
"What is happening?"
Sourly, he leaned closer and used his thumb and index finger to unnaturally widen his left eye.
Still, no matter how much he inspected, it was the same. The color was swirling into some milky combination the longer he kept hold of Shaman's mind — something that seemed harder and harder to disengage from nowadays. Not only that, but he seemed more tuned into Shaman's actual thoughts than usual and was increasingly able to feel sensations through it. From the way it moved its fluid body through space, called on its Abilities to twist minds, and even thought and felt.
Slowly, it was becoming his, and not just in a metaphorical sense.
Shaman seemed to be assimilating into him. Even its soul essence was melding with his own.
"Hm."
That seemed to be the conclusion he'd finally come to.
Once again, and hopefully for the last time, he asked himself what was the difference between a Spirit and a Specter?
Was there more of a connection between just having their minds linked?
Was the whole purpose of a Spirit to become one and absorb more power for himself? To grow? To continue to hunger? To chase the high of other people's emotions before they melted into his own absent psyche?
Rubbing his temple, Nico's eyes suddenly widened. He slowly left the bathroom, his mind a jumble of messy thoughts as he slipped into the hall. Opening his bedroom door, he carefully undressed, replacing his fancy attire with something more casual — dark brown work pants and a white tank-top.
He walked back downstairs afterwards, then further into the off-shoot research room in the basement below. There, carcasses of dead creatures lined the walls. Scattered tables, dissection equipment, warped items — the latter created through his Awakened Ability — dotted the stained tile floor.
Filing away that strange phenomenon for later, he remembered something he had been wanting to do for a long time. Tonight, instead of studying souls, training, or hunting, he wanted more hands-on practice.
Because there might be a way to consistently replicate objects through his Awakened Ability.
Of course, he had had this same thought several times. He knew the key was his soul sense. It allowed him to understand his own body's composition with frightening accuracy. After Awakening, that inherent intuition deepened into something more. He could sense the make-up of things with souls, as vague and unscientific as it may sound.
Most dead items, though, didn't have a soul, and only Humans and Nightmare Creatures were really within his ability to study. Other things were simply beyond him, so he grabbed as many test subjects as he could, observed them using his soul sense, and tried to extrapolate that as well as cross-reference it with science and imagination to use [Soul Construction] to manifest inanimate objects.
It was successful sometimes. The wine he had procured for Gemma, for instance, was something he had practiced quite a bit. But, other times, it was woefully insufficient.
He was limited in the things he could create by knowledge.
'But this situation gives me a new idea.'
What if, in order to construct whatever he wanted, he just needed to infuse it with his own soul essence? He could use his roots to feed it to items, watch how they shifted and twisted to become a part of them, and then replicate that pattern.
Hopefully, somewhere along the way, he'd be able to extrapolate that pattern into something like the foundation of a technique.
And hopefully that technique would lead him towards an epiphany worthy of unlocking his first Aspect Legacy Relic.