Chapter 282: Unique Options
Alex stared at the six options for several seconds. The names were all quite unique, and he honestly hadn’t expected to receive so many choices simply because he had been reinforcing his soul and pouring an obscene amount of mana into it.
It seemed that he had accidentally fulfilled the conditions for several different evolutions while doing other things. Alex had no idea what the exact requirements for most of them were, but he was glad that his experiments had given him so many options.
𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞
The first one was the Advanced Soul Reinforcement Spell, which was the most straightforward option. Based on the name alone, it would probably strengthen everything his current Soul Reinforcement Spell already did and allow him to reinforce his soul to a much higher level.
The second option was the Soul Guard Spell. The name made its purpose fairly obvious, as it would most likely teach him a method of protecting his soul from outside attacks.
Alex hadn’t encountered an enemy capable of directly attacking his soul yet, but he knew that such abilities might exist. An enemy that could attack the soul would be extremely dangerous, especially if ordinary physical defenses were useless against their attacks.
The Soul Recovery Spell was more surprising. Until now, whenever Alex poured an enormous amount of mana into his soul and generated large amounts of Will, he never felt as though he had actually consumed anything significant.
There was some mental exhaustion afterward, but compared to the amount of Will he could produce, the exhaustion was almost negligible. That made Alex suspect that he had never truly pushed his soul to its limit.
The Soul Recovery Spell seemed to imply that this would change if he evolved his Soul Reinforcement Spell further. If the advanced version allowed him to push his soul much harder and generate more Will, then he would eventually need a method to recover from that strain.
Alex moved on to the fourth option, the Soul Anchor Spell. This one was particularly interesting because he couldn’t immediately determine what his soul would be anchored to, whether it would be his body, his mana, or even his Mana Heart.
Alex had a strong feeling that the spell would anchor his soul to his body. If that was the case, then the spell was essentially a specialized form of soul defense, preventing someone from forcibly pulling his soul away from his body.
A sudden thought entered Alex’s mind, and his expression became serious.
’Wait, so it’s possible someone can pull out our souls and replace them with their own?’
A chill ran down Alex’s spine. That should be possible, shouldn’t it, and such an attack would be particularly dangerous for Pioneers because they could only use one body at a time, leaving their other bodies defenseless while their consciousness was somewhere else.
If an enemy discovered one of those bodies and managed to replace its soul, they could potentially take control of it. Alex believed the soul being removed from the body could count as the death of that body, and Pioneers might no longer be able to return to it.
He was almost certain the System would count that as the death of the body. Alex remembered what had happened when he examined one of the Grim Apes that had been transformed into stone, as the System had continued treating the creature as alive even though its body had become completely immobile.
Its soul was still alive, which meant the death of the soul was ultimately what mattered.
’Someone trying to hijack an unoccupied body of a Pioneer would be incredibly dangerous,’ Alex thought.
’It’s even worse for me because I expel almost all of my mana before moving into another body. Without Mana, my body has almost no natural defense against an enemy’s energy.’
Alex then looked at the fifth option, the Soul Mana Resonance Spell. This one took him longer to understand, so he thought about the name and the relationship between mana and Will before eventually forming a theory about its purpose.
It probably allowed his Will and Mana to resonate more closely, making the Will produced by his soul more firmly attached to his Mana. If that was true, it would improve his mana control while also making it much more difficult for Priests or Priest-type monsters to pull his Will away from his body.
That alone made the spell extremely useful.
Finally, Alex looked at the Soul Mark Spell. He could already guess what this one would do, as it would probably teach him a method of leaving his Will on another person or creature so that he could recognize the mark later.
Alex could already accomplish something similar, but his current method required him to leave some of his mana along with the Will. The Soul Mark Spell might allow him to leave only his Will, making the process much more efficient.
All six options were useful, which made the decision more difficult. Alex began eliminating them one by one, starting with the options that seemed least important to his current situation.
The first to go was the Soul Mark Spell. It would definitely be useful in situations where an enemy could change their appearance and hide among other people, but those situations were extremely specific compared to the broader benefits offered by the other spells.
The second option Alex eliminated was the Advanced Soul Reinforcement Spell. It was probably the safest choice and would undoubtedly make him stronger, but the other options offered better abilities.
That left Alex with four choices: Soul Guard Spell, Soul Recovery Spell, Soul Anchor Spell, and Soul Mana Resonance Spell. All four were useful in their own ways, which made the decision considerably harder.
Alex eventually removed Soul Mana Resonance Spell from consideration. If he wanted to fight against Priest-type monsters, he could simply pour more Will into his attacks or generate more Will in the first place, because as long as the amount of Will he produced exceeded what the enemy could absorb, the ability to resist Will extraction would become much less important.
The spell would still be useful in other situations, especially when he used projectiles. A Priest-type monster would have a harder time absorbing the Will attached to his projectiles if the Will and Mana were more closely connected, but Alex felt that this was something he could eventually figure out himself.
He didn’t need to spend an evolution on it.
That left Soul Guard Spell, Soul Recovery Spell, and Soul Anchor Spell.
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