The Lone Wanderer-Chapter 323: Treatment

‘Rei has absorbed a fiend called Synthetis. It has granted her the Composing trait, which boosts her musical talent far beyond a regular person’s. You’ll be amazed by what she can dig out of your soul with that, combined with Soul Vision.’ Sol explained after sensing Percy’s shock.

Maybe he shouldn’t have been so surprised though. If he had managed to stumble upon something similar by himself, it wasn’t that strange an entire world of people with soul affinities had figured it out, especially with a dedicated spectral trait to help them. If anything, it was more impressive he’d accomplished the same without it. Then again, his bloodline was probably even better.

‘Man, if I had the trait too, maybe Micky would have recovered his lost memories already…’

“Are you ready to start?” the medic asked, breaking him out of his thoughts.

He nodded, feeling a little better about the whole thing. Like Sol had said, the worst that could happen was Rei failing to help him. He wasn’t that worried about getting hurt anymore.

The woman blew into the instrument, playing a gentle tune. She was definitely good at this, the sound coming out smooth and crisp. But it wasn’t anything noteworthy either. It was a simple melody, consisting of just a few notes. Percy raised an eyebrow, not feeling any different.

At first, he thought they were pulling his leg. Rei’s expression was dead serious, however. She was deeply engrossed in her music. At the same time, she was looking directly at Percy’s soul, examining it carefully as her eyes burned with mana.

Suddenly, she did something strange.

She varied the notes abruptly, shifting to a different tune entirely. It was deeper, and less playful. She kept at it for a couple minutes, before trying a third tune, and a fourth, seemingly searching for something.

Interestingly, she didn’t just vary the holes she plugged with her fingers, or the tune’s tempo. It went further than that. She even changed the way she breathed, adding various effects to the sounds. Sometimes, they came out soft like whispers, others raspy or shaky.

‘She’s trying to find something that resonates with you.’ Sol explained.

That made sense. When it came to his familiar, Percy had been able to skip this step entirely. After all, he’d played him the very tune that Micky himself had taught him. Something the gladiator had learned from his mother when he was little, and which he had kept close to his heart his whole life. Obviously, it couldn’t get much more emotional than that.

But Rei didn’t know anything about Percy. She had to experiment, until she saw some results. And experiment she did, for several minutes. She clearly tried every trick she could think of, searching for a response. But for a long time, nothing seemed to work. Percy was beginning to lose all hope, thinking this might be a lost cause after all.

That was when it happened.

Blowing into the instrument for the billionth time, Rei produced a familiar sound: one that pierced right through him, giving his host goosebumps by proxy. And Percy recognized the nostalgic tune, having many fond memories associated with it.

It was the sound the cones made, in the Whistling Woods! Rei had somehow reproduced it, merely by throwing things at the wall until they stuck!

She clearly noticed she was onto something too, a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. Emboldened, she used these notes as the foundation, as she expanded on the melody, adding more features: testing other possibilities. It didn’t take her long to make more progress, starting a new round of experimentation every time Percy’s soul responded positively.

At some point, Percy’s jaw almost hit the floor, realizing how closely Rei’s tune had approached Micky’s!

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Leaving aside how impressive it was that she’d recreated the whole thing with so little to go by, Percy wasn’t surprised this was the melody she had chosen: the one that best resonated with him.

He didn’t share Micky’s history, but this was an emotional tune for him too. It marked his first meeting with his closest friend. And it was something he had since spent years playing on his shoddy ocarina, simply because of how much he liked it. Plus, he’d done all of that without even knowing it was the key to unlocking his familiar’s past.

‘It’s a little eerie though, coming from a complete stranger…’

Even more notably, Rei was a lot better at it than him. As much as he hated to admit it, she was better than Micky and his mother too. Somehow, the woman had managed to reproduce the whole melody, despite having never heard it before. Neither the simplicity of her instrument, nor her lacking pair of hands seemed to hinder her in the slightest. Percy wasn’t even sure how she was able to overlap so many notes. Was she whistling as she blew at the harmonica?

‘Probably her trait’s doing.’

In any case, Percy ignored all of that, allowing himself to sink into the tune, his eyes welling with tears. It was a little embarrassing, but he didn’t care. How much had he missed this sound? It was so much better than his poor attempts at it… Sadly, he’d have to wait for his friend to regain his memory before he could hear it again: the non-butchered version, at least.

Something else happened as he immersed himself in the melody. ƒree𝑤ebnσvel-com

Memories flashed in his mind, one after the other. It was like a gate had opened, leaving his soul more receptive. But the memories were random, at first. His time in the damp cell, his fight beneath the crimson sun. Even his training alongside his familiar as they hunted goblins in the Whistling Woods. Brewing alongside Enki, having lunch with Klatz and Lyn…

‘Focus on our meeting.’ Sol gently advised him.

He nodded, taking advantage of this strange state to bring their previous encounter to the forefront of his mind. He thought of the spectral fiends that had attacked him earlier that day, suspecting that something similar had happened the last time around.

Sure enough, a few more memories emerged. They didn’t contain any images or sounds: only feelings. Not that strange, since the fiends had attacked him while he’d been a disembodied soul. They were faint at first, but they grew clearer as he focused on them, trying to remember.

He’d been less equipped to handle the creatures back then, hadn’t he? His mana had run out quickly, leaving him exposed to them. He’d been attacked on the way out too. At first, he’d been under the protection of some spell.

‘Mi’s spell: Sol’s father.’ he remembered.

But the fiends had stripped him of his flimsy defences, one of them even swallowing him whole. He’d fought to escape, with barely anything left of him by the time he did.

Next, he shifted his focus to his actual time with Sol. He thought of his Mend spell, causing the memories of her lessons to flood his mind. He thought back to the time he’d lured the spectral fiend on Remior, which helped him recall Sol’s instructions pertaining to that.

Despite his efforts, there were still a few gaps he failed to patch up. Noticing that, Sol pitched in, prodding him along.

‘At first, you entered my mana channels. I pushed you to my core, and I tried to absorb you. You protested, claiming you weren’t a fiend, but I didn’t believe you. You resisted, and we both got hurt. Later, we negotiated again, and we reached an understanding…’

Along with her words, she showed him her side of the events. It wasn’t the same as if he had experienced it himself, mainly because their connection at the time had been incomplete, so her perspective was very different from his own.

But it was enough.

Sol’s words, her memories, and the ones he had already recovered all blended together, helping him recall the rest. Of course, he knew this only worked due to Rei’s tune still playing in the background, stirring his soul.

By the time it was all over, the sun was about to set, evident by the dim rays that barely spilled through the flaps in the tent. Percy was breathing heavily, this whole thing having taken its toll on him.

“Thank you.” he said, looking at Rei. “But I still don’t get it. How is any of this possible? Figuring out an entire song just by looking at my soul… Helping me recall memories I shouldn’t even have anymore… There was barely anything left of me by the time I made it home!”

The woman shrugged.

“You know surprisingly little about souls, despite being one yourself, don’t you?”

He raised an eyebrow, not sure if he agreed with her assessment. Sure, there was always more to learn, but he considered himself a bit of an expert on the topic. As far as he could tell, he was the only person in the universe capable of possessing others. Even among soul users, he wasn’t sure how common it was to traverse the soul plane. And when it came to soul mana specifically, he’d learnt a lot over the years. He understood its lethality and its insidiousness, but also its ability to heal, or to read another’s intentions.

Yet, Rei made it sound as if he had misunderstood something fundamental about it.

She sighed.

“You don’t look convinced… So, let me ask you… What do you think a soul is?”

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