SSS-Ranked Surgeon In Another World: The Healer Is Actually OP!

Chapter 422: Just A Push

"Every soul has three imprints," Kael began. "Deep in the core. Most souls never see them. Most souls never even know they have them. But they’re there. Three of them, always. They are your identity, they’re what makes you you."

He then held up three fingers.

"The first imprint connects to the body. Your body talent, the one you have back in the physical realm. That’s tied to your first imprint."

He folded one finger down.

"The second imprint connects to the soul. That’s your soul talent. The thing you’re trying to awaken right now."

Another finger down.

"The third imprint connects to the spirit. That one is rarer to access. Most beings never touch it in a whole life. We don’t talk about that one today."

He dropped his hand.

"The three of them together, body, soul, spirit, that’s the real you. Not your face. Not your name. Not the version of you walking around in any one realm. The three imprints. That’s what you actually are, underneath everything."

Bruce filed that away.

"To awaken your soul talent," Kael went on, "you have to comprehend it. You have to look at it directly. You have to see what it is. And to do that, you have to look into the core of your soul, where the imprints live, and read what’s written there."

"How do I look?"

"The state you used to get here. The way you sat down in your body and slipped sideways into this realm. That same state. Enter it again. Then, while you’re in it, you push outward. You awaken your soul will, and you awaken your soul aura. Once you have those two things, you turn them inward, and you observe."

Bruce frowned slightly.

"Will and aura," he repeated.

"Will and aura," Kael said. He paused, watching Bruce’s face. "Listen. Right now, your soul is just consciousness. It’s the thinking part of you that got separated from the body. That’s all. It can perceive. It can remember. It can be afraid. But it can’t act on its own, not really. Well it can but not in a way that affects this realm or any other. To do that, a soul needs two things. Will, which is the part of you that decides. And aura, which is the part of you that reaches. Without those two, you’re just a thought floating in a place that wants to eat thoughts. With them, you can defend yourself with your soul only, you can push back, hold your shape. Then you can do other things."

Bruce understood. He had felt it himself, since arriving, that strange helplessness underneath the familiar shape of his soul-body. He could think. He could move his limbs in this place. But the push of agency he had carried in the physical realm was not here. He had been operating on muscle memory and habit, not on actual force. It was a weird feeling.

"And the awakening," he said. "It happens when I observe the imprint?"

"It happens when you understand it. Observing is the first step. Reading what’s written there is the second. Once you understand what your soul talent actually is, it wakes up. The imprint stops being an imprint and starts being a power."

"Just like that."

"Yes, just like that. Assuming you can read it, don’t underestimate the process." Kael shrugged. "Some people can’t. Some people stare at their own imprint for years and never figure out what it means."

Bruce sat with that.

A small thought turned over in the back of his head, and it bothered him.

The Akashic Codex had told him, before the descent, that it did not know how to awaken a soul talent. The Codex had said the method was not knowledge it possessed. Bruce had accepted that at the time, accepted it because the Codex had been frank about its limitations, accepted it because there was no reason to doubt it.

But now he was sitting across from a young demon who had explained the entire method in two minutes flat.

Three imprints. Body, soul, spirit. Read the second imprint. Awaken will and aura. That was not obscure knowledge. The soul spoke it as if it was not a secret. As if it was something a regular awakened soul in this realm apparently knew, the way a child in the physical realm knew that fire was hot.

So how did the Akashic Codex, the core of the universe, the entity that could access the memories of all its inhabitants, not know this?

Bruce thought about it for another second.

It was possible the Codex genuinely did not know. Its counterparts ruled the other realms, and the Akashic in the physical realm had told him itself that it had never been to the Soul Realm. Maybe the knowledge was simply not in its archive, locked away by the other two Codexes, the ones Bruce was supposed to seek out and send message to. This was the only best explanation Bryce could come up with.

It was possible. But it was also possible the Codex had chosen not to tell him.

Bruce did not know which it was. He could not investigate it here, in this swirl, with the mist still eating at the edges of him. He set the question down, carefully, the way he had set down the memory of the universe’s death earlier. He would pick it back up when he was safe enough to handle it.

For now, he had work to do.

"Alright," he said.

He shifted his weight and settled into a proper cross-legged position. He laid his hands on his knees. He closed his eyes.

Kael said nothing. He just watched.

Bruce took a deep breath.

The air in the swirl pocket was more intoxicating and easier to breathe than the open mist had been, but he could still feel the faster, steady draw at his edges, still hear it underneath everything else like a sound just below his hearing.

He let himself notice it, briefly, and then let it go. It would do what it was going to do. He could not stop it from this side. He could only stop it by finishing the work in front of him.

He started the calming. Calming his heart...

Far away, somewhere in the open expanse, a soul let out a long shriek that did not stop. It went on and on, thin and rising, the way a kettle screamed when it was forgotten on the heat.

Closer, perhaps a few hundred paces off, there was a softer sound, a long low howl, slow and aching, the kind of sound a wounded animal would make if the animal could not remember why it hurt.

Bruce noticed the sounds. He let them be there. He did not push them away, pushing would only make him aware of them. He let them sit in the air around him like furniture in a room, present but not requiring his attention.

He noticed the faint cold breeze that moved through the swirl, slow and constant. He let it be there.

He noticed his own breath, the rise and fall of his soul-body’s chest, and that was the only thing he kept his attention on.

In, out.

In, out.

The world thinned.

It was easier this time. He had done it once already, sitting in Axiom not so long ago, though the not so long ago was hard to feel now, the way time might worked differently here, and his body, his soul, knew the shape of the motion. The zone opened around him faster than it had the first time.

He felt the familiar shift. The subtle replacement of the world he was sitting in with the deeper place behind it. He had entered that state through which he came to this realm...

He went inward.

This time, instead of letting the zone carry him sideways into another realm, he kept his attention on himself. He turned the perception that had brought him here back on his own being, and looked.

For a long moment, there was nothing. He saw only the inside of himself the way anyone in deep meditation saw it, patterns of feeling, the soft architecture of memory, the weight of his own thoughts moving slowly past one another.

Then he remembered Kael’s words.

"Push outward. Awaken your soul will and aura."

He did not know, exactly, how to do that. There were no instructions. There was only the rough sense that "will" meant the part of him that decided, and "aura" meant the part of him that reached.

He chose.

He chose, very deliberately, to push.

It was not a physical motion. It was something underneath the physical. He took the part of him that, in the physical realm, would have raised an arm to strike a blow, the part of him that commanded his body to move, and he turned it inward, on his own soul, and he gave it the command to exist. Not to do anything. Just to be present. To take up space inside him.

Something shifted at that very moment...