Chapter 10:

Shane spent the next few years in trance between observing how souls were absorbed from soul beasts and increasing his own strength.

Unfortunately, no matter how hard Shane tried he was met with difficulties in every turn. It seemed calling out soul cores from soul beasts would be difficult as he had yet to succeed.

Due to this Shane tried adopting a new approach. Instead of trying to observe other souls he first tried summoning his own soul to see if it was possible. Afterall, he needed to learn to walk before he could run, and so the next few years past in the blink of an eye until Shane finally succeed.

Fuelled by his success Shane went on to further experiment on dead soul beasts, capturing live soul beasts was still quite difficult as they were often captured in the death pits which resulted in them feeling terrible amounts of pain and suffering. This made entering their mind space far more difficult and dangerous.

Upon successfully using the devouring roots to send his own spirit energy into spirit beasts, he then focused his metal conscience through the roots and towards the beast mental space.

Beasts under 1000 Years of age had no intelligence besides sparse few unique bloodlines and because of this Shane could easily enter dead soul beasts' mental space, providing they had been dead for under 10 minutes.

As he entered, Shane focused on trying to summon the beast's soul through the use of his own soul. Shane developed this technique as he found his own soul was denser and more powerful than the soul beasts he hunted and through this attraction the souls would emerge.

It was a system seen in space as higher density planets often attracted smaller masses towards themselves such as the solar system he used to live in.

At the start Shane was surprised at what he saw, a dull black soul emerged from the dead bests devoid of feeling and life. After he observed more dead soul beasts, they all showed such peculiarities. Shane used this information and came up with a conclusion. It seemed that when an organism died its soul would leave the body, however a small trace of what it was would be left in the body. Shane was unable to explore this further as a few minutes after the beasts died their mental space would collapse but he did believe that some part of the soul remained as he was still able to devour those small traces well after their death.

This might also be the reason why soul masters had to absorb the soul rings after killing a soul beast. After a few minutes of being dead the souls beasts mind space would collapse sealing the soul from the outside world.

Shane thus continued to experiment on the deceased corpses toiling away between cultivating and refortifying the death pits. However, during one of Shanes routine morning patrol of the surrounding forest, which he was still unable to see out of, he discovered a rather odd situation taking place on a plant type soul beast.

At first Shane simply ignored what was transpiring as it was a simple case of the strong praying on the week, but to his surprise as time went on the plant-based soul beast, remained unscathed and actually seemed to get better with the passage of time.

This new specimen was a Tree based soul beast. It was a towering tree with bright beautiful leaves which grew from exposed barks penetrating deep into the forests canopy radiating relaxing hues of energy to the creatures that populated its lower thick trunk.

Of course, such a scene was common in a forest full of trees, but the peculiarity was the creatures that were latched on to the tree. Dull black organisms unreminiscent of form or structure stuck like glue to the tree. The view was rather comical as if the tree was wearing black pants.

Shane had already identified the parasitic soul beasts that latched on to the 100 Year old tree as 10 year old insect soul beasts. The strange part lied that as more time past both the tree and insect seemed to grow stringer together instead of one devouring the other. It was strange why a 100 year old soul beasts would allow such pesky creature to latch onto itself but over time Shane gained a deeper understanding of what was transpiring.

It seemed this was a case of symbiotic relationship, simply put two organisms working together and growing from it. The Tree released hues of green light, definitely an auxiliary ability which had detoxification effects. The insects latched onto it however released thick yellow fumes, fumes that burned and seared the surrounding vegetation and clearly had corrosive or poisonous properties.

But of course, having such a powerful ability would come with side effects, it seemed the insects actually poisoned themselves with their own ability. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. Those that left the salvation of the tree quickly melted by their won gas. The Tree seemed to neutralize the effect and thus both creatures stayed together.

Of course the tree also benefited as it was a symbiotic relationship. The gas produced by the insects would deter any predators keeping the Tree safe. This really broadened Shanes view on soul beast society. It seemed the ecosystem had similar feature to the system found on earth. Unfortunately the novel didn't deliberate on soul beast society but Shane was glad he didn't look this over.

-----30 Years Since Soul Rebirth-----

Shane was currently attached to the side of a very robust Tree which released gentle waves of green energy. The tree stood effortlessly shouldering Shane's weight as it continued to grow and reach into the sky.

Of course, the current situation would seem weird if anyone saw, thankfully no one was there. Shane never had this level of intimate connection with anyone even on earth. Clinging onto something 24/7 did seem like a one-sided relationship but he didn't really care.

Shane came to his current position after observing the insects cling to the tree. After seeing the two soul beasts working together as opposed to fighting, he also tried to join in on the fun. First, he tried sending his roots towards the tree to see the reaction, as he held no hostile intention he found the tree didn't resist his attempts to communicate but he did need to manoeuvre around the insects.

The reason Shane did this was to see the soul of a living creature. When he captured soul beasts they would often be impaled on spikes and having a rod run through your body ripping out all your innards wouldn't make you very compliant.

There death throws and suffering made entering there mind space very dangerous as it wasn't stable. Also creature under 10 years old had no cultivation energy and although capturing them was easy they had no developed mind space to enter so that was also pointless.

However, if he could bridge a symbiotic relationship to this tree maybe he could observe its soul and structure to get a deeper understanding of soul cores. Thus, Shane attached his roots to the tree and gave some of his own spirit energy which would help the Tree cultivate and grow faster. Following this he slowly inched closer and closer until he finally climbed the trunk and proudly sat on the tree being adjacent to the ground.

Shane used his spirit energy and navigated through the trees complex structure before finding a mind space to invade. He slowly spread his energy around the mind space to get a deeper understanding and through the use of slight force penetrated into its mind. The Tree shudder in response to the blatant invasion but as it held no intelligence it simply ignored what transpired.

Shane went into the centre most region of the dark abyssal space and used his own soul core to fish out the Trees counterpart. One disadvantage Shane had found was that if he wanted to access soul cores he needed to latch on to the intended soul beast, after all his soul core was in him not his roots. As Shane called forth his own jewel like core the surrounding began to glow, a clear difference to his other observations as a dim almost see through globe manifested drawing closer towards his own.

Shane took this opportunity to first inspect the outside of the core and then delved deeper. Glad in his success Shane laughed maniacally.

" Muwahahahahah. Yours secrets will be mine, show me your truth"

Of course, Shanes current mindset was unhealthy to say the least. His experiences led to a few missed place screws. After all, he lived without society for so long and through this his more carnal desires, his deeper crazy began to emerge.

(A.N - Hey guys Chowder here. All the chapters from now are over 1000 words some even nearing 2000 so look forward to that. Dont forget to leave some stones.)