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‘...I think I’ll pass,’ said Hector.

‘Spoil sport.’

Hector continued working on his soul-empowered metal. His objective was to make as large a dome as possible while still having his soul permeate it thoroughly enough that there were no holes for reapers to escape through. He’d been devoting chunks of training time to this effort all week long, and he’d finally begun to see the fruits of his labor.

In order to implant his soul into the metal, he needed a point of contact with it, so he couldn’t just make a normal dome over his head. Rather, he’d taken to creating a pillar down the center, like the handle of a gigantic umbrella. Moreover, he discovered that after annihilating only the pillar, the soul power that he had already fed into the dome would linger for a while longer before eventually dissipating. Garovel likened it to blood leaving the body after the heart had been removed, which was perhaps not the happiest metaphor, but Hector understood what he meant.

‘Not bad,’ said Garovel. ‘I think I should tell you more about soul-strengthening techniques now.’

Hector’s brow rose.

‘At the moment, there’s only one technique you need to concern yourself with, because the others are way out of our league. And that technique is “resilience”--increasing the durability of a designated object. That was what Andres was using and why his crystals could plow through everything the way they did.’

‘Okay...’

‘The technique is simple enough to pull off. All you have to do is concentrate on your soul within whatever object you’ve pushed it into, and then just “think about” making it physically more durable.’

His head tilted. ‘Wow, uh... I know you said it was simple, but... that’s still simpler than I was expecting.’

‘Yep. Conceptually, it’s very straightforward, just like when you learned to empower attacks in the first place. In execution, though, it’s much more difficult than that was. It’s completely dependent on the synchronization that you and I have, but I think we’re synced enough now that you can at least start attempting to do it.’

‘Er. Alright.’