Dei and his family talked until around midnight, none of them wanting to cut the conversation off just yet as they'd missed each other, but eventually Dei knew he had to get to work.

True, he wasn't going to sleep, but that was okay. His endurance could handle some exhaustion with ease in favor of getting all his ducks in a row.

At a lull in their conversation, he finally told his family "Alright, I think it's time we head to bed. I have to meet Loretta in the morning and I intend to do a lot of spellwork tonight since I don't really need to sleep again for a while. Last night was a luxury."

A glint of interest in her eye, Sophie asked "What kind of spell work? Can we watch?"

Dei laughed, "Maybe, but it won't be interesting. I'm just testing them for functionality, as Perumah has informed me that it's way different calling upon magic on Earth. And no, I'm not doing any teleporting right now. Just some internal stuff such as Meaningful or Empower Self. I mean, I could cast a Meaningful at you to spiritually say 'frick you,' but that's about it."

"I would like to see that happen" Sophie told him, almost vibrating. He could see Jack was interested too, but his mom was indifferent. She'd likely seen more than enough magic from dad to be impressed by something Dei could do.

He shrugged, 'Well, there isn't anything wrong with a small show, and I need to practice using spells anywho.'

"Alright, fine. Give me a second and I'll show you one spell, then I need to start doing some more dangerous stuff so I'll probably leave the house for a little bit."

She nodded, and Dei released some Kindness mana from Cycle of Sealing before activating Meaningful, getting the expected resistance Perumah was talking about.

At first, the mana wanted to do what it'd always done. It took on the meaning he was trying to convey before pushing itself at his skin- only to bounce back. The spell seemed to recognize that there was a shift in the laws of physics, rearranging the ball of mana into a new formation before sending it at his skin once more. This time, when the mana slammed into the surface of his skin, some of the pink glow continued forward despite most returning once more, the small bits of mana now slightly dimming.

A very faint light appeared in the air, broadcasting its message to the world.

"Frick you."

Sophie giggled, watching the mana for a few seconds, then hesitantly swiping at it like trying to pop a bubble. When interfered with, the spell finally broke down and dissipated.

"Do it again."

He rolled his eyes, doing it once more with a slightly different message as he thought about how mana worked now.

It was all about Concentration when mana itself could not be dissipated, which made sense. None of the three spells he'd made as Leven used mana, which was unusual on Avium. Cycle of Sealing, the actual spell Leven made, only held mana, not using it at all. Call for Help, what he used to find those in need, did not have a cost either. Growing Pains was the only spell that took anything, consuming Concentration to make him stronger.

'Wait, if all the spells only consume Concentration now, do I even need to remove the mana from Cycle of Sealing? Growing Pains had no trouble drawing that out from the spell… might as well try."

When Sophie asked for him to make a third Meaningful, Dei tried doing something different- directing the spell to draw from his mana storage, without removing the mana itself.

The spell seemed to sputter for several seconds, Dei watching in real time as some minor coding within it was rewritten. When it was finished though, the spell kicked into gear once more, successfully drawing out what it needed without any need on Dei's part to use his Sectioning upgrade.

'Oh hell yea, if I change all my spells like this I can definitely create a shitload of Null mana.'

Going through his spells one by one, he managed to convert all of them to a new form to better align with Earth's physics, now easily usable.

'I wonder if I'll still be able to use these in the same way back on Avium, but probably not. Just as Avium spells don't work on Earth, there's likely complications for Earth spells on Avium.'

When he was done he finally waved Sophie off, telling her no more demonstrations- much to her disappointment.

He wished his family goodnight, and promised to be back shortly after sunrise. When they were finally all off to their rooms, he headed out into the night, searching for some remote place to mess with Connection once more.

* * *

Flying over his old city, he remembered one location that would work well- somewhere outside of city limits.

An old broken bridge, a popular spot for teenagers and hippies to occasionally hang out. He would check there first, and if anyone was there, he'd go somewhere else.

Luckily it was empty when he showed up, so he sat down on the edge of the rubble, overlooking the shallow river below and shrugged. It wasn't that far down, but it was enough to be a cool location for the younguns. Of course, that was when he was in highschool, so maybe not anymore.

Telling Perumah to wake him if anyone approached, Dei dove into his soul, going for the base of Connection.

It was still attached to his Potential, the bismuth looking chunk, and he now considered what to do with it.

When he was first attaching parts of himself to connection, he was limited only to his spells. Right now, he had the chance to do something better.

Similar to how it was attached to his Potential, Dei wondered if he could attach it to his HP, SP, and MP. Not just that, but could he attach it to his Class or Profession? That wasn't possible before as they weren't contained within his soul, but they were now, so… why not? Could he attach it to the infinite gyroscope- the link to all affinities?

The gyroscope held the "Anchor" of his spells, where they were attached to his soul, while the line of Connection ran through the "Body" of the spells, the place in his memories where the main portion sat. If he anchored them to Connection instead, that would absolutely attune them further to Leviathans.

* * *

Just two hours later, he found several issues with his original plan. He started off the entire process with a clean slate- removing the places where Connection was attached to his spells and memories. Because he no longer needed it to hold his soul together, he had a lot of extra material to work with.

This also resulted in him finally seeing the shape of the lasso at the end of Connection, the one that wrapped around the surface of his soul. It looked weird because it dove in and out of the third dimension, becoming a regular loop when he brought it all down to his level.

Once he had the several-mile-long line of Connection, he started with the closest things to his Potential, the various cores at the center of his soul, only to run into multiple problems.

Connection did not play nice with these aspects of himself.

When he brought it close to the gyroscope and his spell anchors, the thing started to spin violently, sending out waves of danger. He knew that if he tried to force Connection into it, he'd likely die.

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In a similar vein, he tried to hook it up to his HP, SP, and MP, only for the things to attack Connection directly- straight up shred the spell to pieces when it got too close. Luckily, Connection was easy enough to repair, but that was a dead end too.

His first success came with his Class. When he fed Connection to it, the thing hardly responded- much more a construct than a living thing, unlike the other nodes. Rather than attack or reject, he saw Connection travel down the length of his Class.

The Class spread out roots into all his memories and all the different pieces of his soul. When it came into contact with Connection, he watched the roots begin to glow a ghastly white, indicating they now had Connection inside them. Curiously, he continued to feed Connection into the Class, seeing the glow run further and further down, through the different parts of his soul.

When he was about one fifth of the way through the length he had on hand, the glow finally reached the root-tips of his Class, and he saw hair-thin tendrils exit out of it. When he continued to feed it to his Class, all it did was make the tendrils longer.

Stroking his chin thoughtfully, he realized that doing this caused literally every single part of himself to become imbued with Connection, and was a wonderful idea. More than that, he was pretty sure he would still be able to control the itty-bitty pieces and re-tie those to his spells. Before that though, he had to think of his Profession.

Withdrawing Connection from his Class, he split the end down the middle and fed both strands to his Class and Profession equally, watching the overlapping roots begin to glow. This time, when he was unsurprisingly two fifths of the way through his stockpile of Connection, the fine tendrils again exited the roots.

'Okay, I COULD split it a third time and use that third line to link up with my spells… or! I could use these hair-thin tendrils to link my spells together!'

It was not a hard choice at all. Excitedly, he fed all of Connection to his Class and Profession, finding that he still had over two, perhaps even three, miles of Connection to work with, and parts of the spell permeated every fiber of his being.

The first thing he did was with his Outer Skills, linking them back to whichever node they'd originated from. High Mind was linked to Pondering Sage, Vigilance was linked to Watchful Slaughterer, etc etc.

Then he went through, one by one, attaching every single spell to one or the other. Those that helped in combat went into the Class tendrils, those that helped outside combat went with the Profession tendrils.

Most of them didn't seem to change drastically, but those that had already evolved with Connection as part of them seemed to overhaul those differences.

Good Samaritan, his tracking mark finder, flared brightly now that it was directly attached to more parts of his soul. He knew this spell, in particular, would be overhauled beyond belief

Growing Rage and Solidity buzzed with further power, but Cycle of Sealing was where the true, notable changes came.

Hundreds of Connection tendrils were fed to Cycle of Sealing, the ability twisting and shaping itself differently, the form hidden within the spell writhing in place. It didn't just absorb Connection though, instead starting to… interface with it slightly. Some red and pink were pushed out from the skill, moving along Connection to alter it from pure white to a mishmash of the three, forming those same incomprehensible shapes outside the spell as well. The spell's efforts made it so that the lines of Connection gradually shifted from white to multicolored, the effect becoming stronger the closer it got to Cycle of Sealing.

Eventually the spell could contain no more. Still, Dei continued to push Connection through his Class and Profession, giving Cycle of Sealing more than enough slack that he could use it from a distance without worry about it being destroyed.

Most of his spells were almost exactly the same, but by the time Cycle of Sealing calmed from his writhing, its shape was drastically changed. Chained human no longer, it now took on a shape he remembered seeing only once, in a dream at that.

Far smaller this time, it took on a manta-ray-like shape, except a large dorsal fin that ran from the top of its back all the way to the tip of its tail, a tail that mimicked a whale more than a manta ray.

'This… must be an actual Leviathan.' It had to be. Looking at its face, he saw the four eyes, except this one had two pink on its left side and two red on its right to match Dei's. Its mouth was a grand maw, stretching the entire front half of its body. If it so desired, Dei had no doubt this thing would be able to split its body open to swallow creatures almost as large as itself.

The only difference he could see were the red and pink chains hung loosely along its entire body, trailing behind it in various places.

It did not sit still like the previous version of Cycle of Sealing, swimming around his soul and twirling through various memories in random patterns. As though it detected him watching, the spell turned towards his view and looked at him, bobbing its head up and down in a playful manner before continuing its exploration of Dei's soul.

'Kinda cute… in a freaky sort of way.'

Studying it closer, Dei saw hundreds of tiny, multicolored shapes on its back. The most numerous by far were the red-tinted shapes, then came the yellowish shapes, then white, pink, black, and finally green.

'Oh! It's the different mana types stored in the spell.'

The small glowing shapes seemed to coexist peacefully in a small rocky terrain filled with trees on the back of the Leviathan- or at least, most of them. The Wrath mana, still cursed, had been bordered off and separated from the rest using Sectioning.

He remembered Aloran saying that the official title of Leviathans were The Living Worlds Below because they hosted civilizations of people on the back of their gargantuan bodies.

Wanting to get a look at it with his own two eyes, Dei activated the part of the spell that would summon Wild Chains out of his body, feeling that it was a bit different from before. Rather than a command, this was more a suggestion, but he knew this Leviathan was a part of him, and incredibly unlikely to reject the request.

When it changed directions, rapidly flying upwards to the surface of his soul, he nodded as it was exactly what Dei expected to happen. A difference of summoning it now though was that it did not need to pull on his body, instead clearly able to propel itself through his soul.

As it swam, he was pretty sure it accelerated past how fast Dei himself was, though it was hard to gauge distance in his soul. When it started to blur, he was positive about his estimates on its speed.

With the roar of crashing waves, the Leviathan breached his soul- jumping high into the air and glowing like a star in the sky, it gave him a good chance to see it with his own eyes.

Everything looked the same, but now he saw that it was the size of a small house, not human-sized as his last manifestation had been. On top of that, red and pink chains filled with an inner white glow kept him connected with the spell, letting him still utilize its mana and communicate with it as he pleased.

When it ran out of momentum several hundred feet up, its body began to dive down- towards the shallow river that would not be able to hold it. Frantically, he signaled for it to return to him as it would simply crash into the riverbed and hurt itself. It rejected his request, eagerly speeding towards what little water there was.

Horrified, Dei jumped from his position on the bridge to try and catch the Leviathan, flying to its back and taking hold of the chains before pulling with all his might in an attempt to arrest its momentum. Whether he was making a difference or not, Dei felt it resist his attempts, even going as far as to speed up further using its own natural ability to fly.

'If it can fly, why is it about to slam into the rocks?!'

Seeing the ground rapidly grow larger in his view, Dei could only open his eyes wide and brace for impact.

'At least my Physical stat will keep me ali-'

They broke the surface of the water, and Dei was pushed back and deafened at the force rushing over him. Muscles going taut, he clung to the Leviathan for dear life and squinted, blinded by a tangy burning liquid. The salty taste on his tongue harkened back to his memory of the ocean, but that couldn't be right… they'd just dove headfirst into a river!

Holding his breath he looked around, heart skipping when he saw nothing but long shadows. Looking up, a crack in the sky gleamed with moonlight, winding in the same pattern the river had.

"Dei… Where are we?" he heard Perumah ask, shock and horror lacing her tone.

"I don't know," he responded, just as unsure.

"This feeling… There's something around us! It's not quite mana, but it's a strong concept. Wherever we are, it reminds me of your Soul mana."

Dei was about to ask if it was Spirit, but realized that he, too, could feel something foreign. Despite not having a mana sense, this was impossible to miss. It felt like standing in the presence of something grand, something impossible. Something outside his understanding.

Wild Chains seemed content to swirl in place, seemingly confused about something, so he took a moment to glance over the side and look below.

A gaping abyss looked back, and Dei had to back away from the edge to calm his pounding heart. From what he could see though, the presence became stronger far below.

'Wild Chains, PLEASE, take us back the fuck up! I would like to leave now!'

His mental urging seemed to snap the spell out of whatever ponderings it had, and it thankfully turned back to the dim moonlight.

Just in time to see that light wink out.

Dei almost screamed but resisted, not wanting to waste the air. The light was not fully gone, instead only a thin line remained. Wild Chains started to panic, not knowing what to do or what was happening. Dei couldn't pry his eyes away from the line that should've been their exit. Formerly winding, Dei watched as it straightened itself out, the light transitioning from a gentle white to a glowing red.

The ocean around them sharply rose in temperature to the point that Dei believed if there wasn't heavy pressure on it, it would be boiling by now.

The orange slit finally halted in its changing shape, and everything was still for only a moment.

The crack in the sky opened, revealing a single, flaming, monstrous eye.

"Where do you think you're searching, little devil?"

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