Apparently, spending hours trying to focus one's mind to manifest one's soul was far more exhausting than any amount of physical activity. Despite succeeding only twice, Oliver ended up passing out from overexertion, leaving Riot to carry him back to one of the rooms on the third floor. Dante let them go even while knowing the big guy was just looking for a chance to escape. Their training session for the day was over anyway, and he saw no point in keeping them around.

'Alright…' Sitting down at the center of the arena, Dante took a deep breath and tried again. 'Let's try this again.'

The soul, the brain, and the body. A while back, Volcan had used a machine as an example while explaining the relationship between the three. The software -The soul- uses a processor -the brain- to control the machine -the body- and interact with the physical world. Dante wasn't sure if such a metaphor still applied when it came to Soul Manifestation, but the absurdity of trying to grant physical properties to lines of code was as absurd as what he was trying to do, which sounded quite appropriate. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

'It all starts with the mind…'

The mind was the connection point between the soul and the real world. To learn Soul Manifestation, one has to learn how to turn that point into a passage by granting the soul physical properties. The problem was that, even though he understood what needed to be done, he had no idea how to go about achieving it.

'What the hell are physical properties to begin with?'

He was sure his resident AI would provide him with the answer if he asked, but something told him that would be the wrong way to go about it. This was something he needed to figure out on his own, even if it meant wandering in the darkness for a very long time.

Cutting his connection to the outside world, Dante was left floating in the nothingness of his own mind. No sound reached him, and neither did light. Soon enough, even his thoughts grew silent. In that world of absolute darkness, he was left floating with no idea which was up and which was down. Having cut off his sense of time, Dante had no idea how long he had been in there. This time, he was adamant on not heading back until he achieved what he came there to achieve.

Unfortunately, no amount of determination could stop frustration from building up, and just as it began to turn into anger, he heard it—the sound of waves.

They were calm. Soothing. Just listening to them brought peace to his heart. For that reason, he had no desire to approach the shore. He could simply sit back, relax, and enjoy the sound of the waves.

'No…'

This was far from the first time he had heard the sound, but with him in an unthinking state, he never questioned its presence or tried to contemplate it. It didn't help that he tended to lose focus whenever he reached this part. This time, he didn't intend to let it slip from his grasp.

'Still…'

Dante had no idea how to reach the waves, even when he could hear them. The sound didn't come from any particular direction, either, so he couldn't even decide on where to go. There were no directions in the dark space to begin with.

'No directions…'

As he continued to search for a path forward, a wild idea came to him as an instinctual understanding, one he had never experienced before. If there are no directions and no paths for him to take, why not create all of it?

With his thoughts halted, Dante didn't even bother to think whether that was possible or not. The waves were obviously below him, since he could hear the sound they made. Knowing what direction was down, he naturally figured out which way was up, forward, and back, and that gave him left and right two. It was almost as if he had a body now, one that could swim swiftly through an endless sea.

Unbeknownst to him, Dante took on the form of his Diving avatar, which was only fitting, considering what he was about to do. Drawing in a deep breath, he took a step forward as if he had walked off the edge of a cliff. His body tilted as gravity took hold of him, and before long, he was upside down, diving straight toward the swaying waves of a dark sea he couldn't see.

He pierced the surface without making a sound and disappeared into the lightless depths. Once again, all sensations were cut away from him, leaving him in an endless darkness without even his thoughts to keep him company. The sound of waves was gone, too. The overbearing silence wasn't as easy to ignore anymore, and Dante found himself yearning for anything that would break it, saving him from the agony of being both blind and deaf.

His wish came true as a sound finally reached his ears. It was faint, but it gave him direction, and he didn't hesitate to swim toward it. The sound continued to get louder the closer he got to its source. Until then, he hadn't even bothered to wonder what kind of sound it was, or what could have possibly made it. By the time he reached it, a strange sense of discomfort overwhelmed him, but he refused to back down.

The source of the sound was right in front of him. Dante reached out to grab it, and as soon as he did, light filled the world, and the nature of the sound finally revealed itself to him. It was the ringing that persisted in his ears after a particularly close explosion. The sudden bursts of light likely came from the same source as well. As confusion quickly took over him, he looked down at his hands, immediately noticing the ivory gauntlets wrapped around them. His breathing grew ragged for some reason, his vision blurry as he struggled to regain focus. A face seemed to appear in his mind, and at that moment, something came flooding out of him unrestrained by his will or the laws that governed the world.