“So far, you’ve only been exposed to Alteration magic by reaching into possible futures, right? I believe I’ve given you a very light amount of information about how attunements work, but it was quite shallow. Before I really get into details, do you have any other knowledge of shaping?” asked Ella, giving me a curious look as she found a comfortable place to sit. I looked around the empty chamber on the top floor of Ella’s house, thinking about my answer as I tried to find a place for me to sit.

Ella seemed to notice what I was looking for, and waved her hand at the ground near my feet. A chair that I vaguely remembered being stored downstairs in a storage room suddenly appeared right next to me. I gave Ella a grateful smile, and she gave me a friendly wink as I sat down.

I focused on Ella’s question, before I shook my head. “I’m basically clueless about what shaping does, apart from the timeline trick and the fact that attunements let you turn stuff into whatever you’re attuned with.”

Ella fell into thought as she processed my answer. “That’s probably a good thing, honestly. I’ve heard from the other shapers that plenty of new apprentices come in with the idea that a shaper is basically a spellcaster, which is fundamentally wrong. Sadly, since there aren’t many shapers in the city, kids don’t really get much exposure to our abilities, which means they don’t know what to expect.” Ella snorted. “Completely ridiculous. Spellcasters and shapers are as different as mathematicians and artists. They have very little in common beyond the fact that both use mana, much like how mathematicians and artists both use paper and ink. That’s about it as far as similarities go.”

Ella frowned. “Let’s see… you should already have a rough idea how timeline manipulation works, and I’ll teach you more in depth about it later. But right now, I want to focus on attunements. Do you mind if I use my mind-related attunement on you? It’s impossible to get precise enough to read someone’s thoughts, or do anything that invades your privacy like that, but I can inspire unnatural fluctuations in mood, in addition to ‘touching’ your thoughts, if that makes sense. My headache-related ability is basically like sticking my finger into your thoughts and stirring them as violently as I can, but what I want to do here is just let you experience the lightest ‘touch’ I can manage. I think it’ll help you build a better idea of what an attunement feels like, which will be helpful for you. If possible, I’d like to help you form your attunement today, and then I can start teaching you how to improve it later.”

“Go ahead.”

“All right. Just try to be alert, and I’ll ‘touch’ your thoughts a little bit.”

Ella started to gain a sort of hazy expression, as she stared at my face with a mixture of sleepiness and concentration. A few moments passed, and then I felt something at the edge of my mind. It felt sort of like someone blowing the dust off of a countertop… in my thoughts. I also got the feeling that I could swat the ‘touch’ away using my Willpower, if I wanted to. Since I knew it was Ella, I decided not to resist the external influence, and I felt the sense of someone ‘touching’ my mind deepen for a moment. It was an incredibly strange experience, and felt very different from the mind-crushing pull of the ocean from my previous world. 

“I feel it,” I said.

“Good,” said Ella, grinning as the feeling withdrew from my mind. “This is what my mental attunement feels like. Every single attunement will feel differently, because every single attunement is different. However, at the very least, try to remember the feeling of my mana as it made contact with you. Did you get any sensation of the mana behind what I was doing?”

I tried to remember if I had sensed the mana behind Ella’s attunement, and I was surprised to realize that I had. It had been subtle, but if I trawled back through my memories, I could distinctly sort out the sensation of the alteration essence when she used her attunement on me, and also sort out the mana as well. It was as if her alteration essence was a weaver, knitting the mana in its surroundings into an incredibly specific shape. 

“I think that your altera… ah, I mean… your shaping ability was… shaping the mana in its surroundings, right? It was essentially making the mana in its area fit a certain pattern. And the reason you were able to do so was because you had a really strong image of what that ‘pattern’ was? I imagine that’s what an attunement is, at its core.”

“Pretty close. An attunement isn’t just a mental image. You’re literally taking some of the shaping essence in your body, and remolding it to fit a certain shape or image. That way, you have a ‘reference’ when you try to shape your surroundings. When you remold your surroundings using general shaping, you’re using an alternate timeline as a very clumsy reference image to tell the mana in your surroundings, as well as reality itself, what shape it needs to take. However, there is only one ‘real’ timeline that we live in, and every other timeline is more of a… vague, shadowy ‘could have been’ timeline that splits off from the real world we live in. If that makes sense. Attunement-based shaping is where you create that image inside of your essence instead, and then force reality to bend to your will.”

“I see,” I said. “So it’s all about having a good mental image of what’s there, and what I want to change?”

I was starting to get a suspicion about why the ‘alternate timeline’ explanation rubbed me the wrong way. I didn’t know if my idea was correct or not, so I would keep quiet and experiment some on my own, but I had a sneaking suspicion that ‘alternate timelines’ either didn’t exist, or were completely unneeded for general shaping. One could probably get the same, or better, results using a mental image for general shaping that didn’t include alternate timeline at all.

Of course, I had no idea if this was correct or not, so I decided to stay quiet for now. I could test things on my own later.

Heedless of my internal thoughts, Ella continued with her explanation.

“Yes, attunement shaping is all about what image you form. This is why shaping can be excellent for fighting, or it can also be terrible for fighting. General shaping, the art of reaching into other timelines to bring aspects of them into our world, is incredibly inconsistent, since the nature of general shaping is so dependent on its environment. However, your attunement is easy to form, and is completely unrelated to your environment. Which makes it several times easier to use in battle, but only if you have an attunement that’s actually useful in combat. 

“Now, what I want you to do is start focusing on a mental image of what kind of attunement you want. You’ll need to have a clear understanding of it, and the better you understand it, the easier it will be for you to use your attunement.” Her tone took on a note of warning.

“Furthermore, don’t try to use a substance that you don’t want to interact with. A big part of growing your attunement is interacting with whatever you based your attunement on. Since I chose to use orthanoid minds as the basis for my attunement, I spent quite a bit of time interacting with people, getting to know them and how they think because it was what suited me the best. I spent time getting people’s permission to ‘touch’ their thoughts, and even give people mild headaches, in order to better increase my attunement. I even managed to experiment some on a few Orukthyri minds, when I got trapped during one of my journeys to the surface and needed a way to escape. Whatever you base your attunement on, if you want to improve it, you will need to interact with the substance or idea you based your attunement on.

“I know you wanted to use either the ocean or madness as the basis for your ability. If you haven’t changed your mind, you will need to either interact with mad people, or the ocean. There is an asylum in a nearby cavern, which would let you interact with mad people. If you want to interact with the ocean, that would be much harder, but you can probably do something with the town’s river, even if it won’t be perfect.

“Then, once you’ve chosen your image, start to condense your shaping essence into a copy of that image. The more detailed it is, the easier it will be to use in the future.”

I gleaned down at my lake-gazer’s dress, wondering if it counted as an ‘ocean’ for the purposes of my attunement. Then, I chuckled to myself.

In a way, an attunement was kind of like a keyword, as far as I could tell. At least, that was my assumption based on how I was interpreting Ella’s words. Whenever I interacted with the image I formed my attunement, it would improve, giving me a stronger and more reliable tool for fighting in the future. Similarly, whenever I got in contact with the ‘idea’ a keyword was based on, it would temporarily power up, boosting my ability as long as I was near the relevant keyword. 

Part of me wondered if Eluxia, or whoever had designed the keyword abilities of the Market, had taken inspiration from a magic system like this one while designing everything. It was hard to say what had happened in the Market before its fall, but it was hard not to notice certain similarities.

At the same time, I had a sudden, random thought.

What would happen if I used the ocean from my previous life as my ‘attunement?’

In my previous world, the laws of physics had been completely different. The way magic worked, the technology of the people who had lived on the islands, the creatures of the ocean… all of them had, at best, only been loosely similar to this world.

What would happen if I just… used the ocean from the islands as my ‘mental image’ for my attunement? I already had experience using it as the image for my runes, after all, and I was pretty sure I could reshape the mental image a bit and recycle it.

Some part of my enhanced instincts related to alteration essence started… tugging at me. It was the most clearly I had ever felt my ‘extreme affinity’ giving me a sort of… innate, instinctive understanding of what I was trying to do. I was distinctly certain that my idea was possible. Even without the help of the Market’s System, I would be able to force the laws of physics and reality in this world to temporarily take a completely different form by using my alteration essence.

The nature of alteration essence was to alter. It could alter not just mana, but even the laws of reality itself. 

However, the laws of physics and reality, unsurprisingly, were quite resistant to change. I would probably need hundreds of times my current alteration essence storage if I wanted to actually change the laws of reality, even temporarily. However, if I got strong enough, I was fairly certain it was even possible to permanently alter the laws of reality in small, specific ways, creating little areas where gravity, matter, and physics all worked completely differently from the rest of the world.

However, if I did that I would be fighting against the laws of this dimension every single time I tried to change them. If I formed my attunement based on the ocean from the islands, I would have an incredibly hard time using my alteration essence right now, even with my near-perfect instincts for how alteration worked and my Grade 7 Alteration Essence stat.  I would also have a much harder time growing my attunement, since I would be completely unable to interact with the ocean from the islands here. I would be able to make contact with the city river, but that was only a poor imitation of the ocean my attunement would be based off of. 

However, I did file away the fact that it was possible to use the laws of a completely different dimension as a basis for my shaping, even if there were several practical issues I would need to overcome first.

Then, I started focusing on the image of water itself. We didn’t have access to any oceans unless we went to the surface, and I wanted to be as strong as possible before we went to the wastes. But we did have quite a large river that flowed right next to our town. Water wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but it would serve us well during our journey to the surface when we got older…

As I tried to form an image of water, however, a burst of inspiration struck me.

Instead of just using water, what if I used the ocean of souls itself as inspiration for my attunement?

I wasn’t quite sure how the physicality of dimensions and the ocean of souls worked, but since new souls entered this dimension as newborn babies all the time, it stood to reason that it was ‘close’ to me in some way, shape, or form. Even if I didn’t fully understand how it worked, it should be good enough to do something with it. 

Furthermore, this image would be usable in every dimension we were born into in the future. If my theory about the ocean of souls touching every dimension was correct, that meant that I wouldn’t need to change my attunement from one world to the next. In the Market, my attunement would be, if anything, stronger, since the Market was continuously sailing on top of the ocean of souls. I would be able to spend 3 worlds after this one practicing my attunement, figuring out how to use it, and then be able to use almost the exact same skill set when we went to fight for our lives. If I could get this to work properly, it was too good of an idea to pass up.

I only hesitated for a few seconds before I made my final choice.

I started forming an image in my head, much like I had done when I formed my fourth rune, back on the islands.

I imagined a giant, twisting ocean, carrying all of the souls of every dimension in the multiverse from one world to the next. I visualized the way geometry twisted from one dimension to the next, and the way the ocean of souls was somehow able to maintain itself, even as alternate forces of reality sought to rip it apart. I thought of the oblivion brought about by the ocean of souls, the way the water of the ocean of souls seemed to wear away at one’s thoughts and memories until nothing but a newborn soul remained. Achievement protected souls themselves from being ground to pieces by the Ocean of Souls, but souls unconnected to the Market quickly ran out of Achievement before their memories were drowned in the endless waters between worlds.

I thought of the way that the Market managed to free itself from the darkness of the ocean of souls, sailing across the top of the waves in a galaxy-sized pirate ship. I thought of how the ocean of souls didn’t just destroy memories and souls that it came into contact with; instead, it also ferried souls to their next destination like a kindly grandmother, giving one the gift of rebirth in addition to the curse of oblivion. 

The ocean of souls wasn’t just a hostile force that brought souls into oblivion as they tried to go from one world to the next. It was also the reason that rebirth was possible at all. Without access to the ocean of souls, children that were about to be born would have no way to get a soul, which would basically kill them the moment they were born.

Much like the ocean in my first life, the ocean of souls wasn’t just a hostile force of death and decaying memories. It was also a source of new life; without it, babies wouldn’t be born, and life in most dimensions would ultimately fall apart.

I repressed the urge to chuckle as I realized that my mental image for the ocean of the islands and my image for the ocean of souls bore strong similarities to each other. Perhaps the ‘ocean’ keyword was a more fitting keyword for me than I had realized?

Then, I stopped fighting my urge to laugh, and burst out into wild laughter. 

So what if I used a similar mental image from one life to the next? In my previous life, by virtue of my mental image I had managed to create a unique ability set that let me overcome the limitations of my average starting stats at birth. Not perfectly; I had died as a consequence of exploring the deep ocean, after all.

However, I had done the best I could to give the villages a fighting chance. I had no idea if they had survived the fight with the outsiders, but I had given them every possible fighting chance. I had also farmed huge amounts of Achievement in the process, and managed to get Sallia a keyword ability related to her extreme affinity.

If it worked once, I had no problem using something similar again. We had lives to claim back at the Market, after all. I needed to be as strong as possible to make sure my friends and I didn’t die permanently.

I felt my image of the ocean of souls start to resonate with the mana around me, and a chunk of the alteration essence in my body started to cement itself into a certain shape. I realized that the essence was taking on the shape of the ocean of souls; furthermore, I would never be able to use that chunk of alteration essence for general shaping ever again. It was permanently altered to fit the image of the ocean of souls.

But that wasn’t a big deal. I had lost less than five percent of my total alteration essence reserve. It wasn’t a big enough loss to do more than annoy me a bit.

Power: Form a [Basic] level attunement

Achievement +250

I grinned as my Achievement went from 608.89 to 858.89, but dismissed the notification right afterwards. I wanted to figure out how my attunement worked.

I felt that I could now manifest a very, very small part of the ocean of souls in my surroundings in a very real, physical way. It would be easiest to convert a drop of water into a drop of water from the ocean of souls, but I could even convert something like air, or even lava, into water from the ocean of souls if I threw enough alteration essence at it. I vaguely remembered Ella saying that environment shouldn’t play a role in essence costs when it came to an attunement, but considering how weird my attunement was, it made sense that it would have a few other oddities. I put that question aside, because I had noticed something far more interesting.

I could see something… silver-colored inside of my body. It was mostly stuck near my brain, which I obviously couldn’t see, but I could see bits and pieces of it tethered throughout the rest of my body as well. 

What the heck is that? I wondered, panicking for a moment, and the silvery blob started wriggling madly. Then, I realized I had seen it before.

Twice, in fact.

I was looking at my soul.

Forming a connection with the ocean of souls hadn’t just allowed me to manifest parts of the ocean of souls in my surroundings. I had also, apparently, gained a very limited ability to see souls themselves.

I took a look at Ella, who was still watching me in anticipation, and sure enough, I could see her soul as well, although it was much harder for me to observe since it wasn’t mine. I could see a silvery blob stuck inside of her brain, with much smaller tendrils of white-silver spread throughout the rest of her body. it occasionally moved and bobbed from one second to the next.

My attunement had come with a rather unexpected ability as an add-on. I wasn’t quite sure what the use of ‘manifesting the ocean of souls’ was in practical terms right now, but I was absolutely certain that learning how souls worked would give me a lot of insight into how the Market actually worked in the first place. And surely manifesting the ocean of souls itself would give me all sorts of strange and unusual abilities. I just needed to discover what they were.

I grinned to myself.

My first steps into the magic of this world were off to an excellent start.