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‘It tends to cause a huge disparity in power,’ said Garovel. ‘It makes it so that certain servants can’t even be wounded by anyone who isn’t close enough to their level in strength. They can just mow down hordes of lesser servants without a care in the world, pretty much.’

“Fuck...”

‘Yeah. Few things are as terrifying to see bearing down upon you on a battlefield.’

Hector returned to his crude tunneling. Its downward slope was perhaps a bit too steep, he thought, and he started trying to curve it more.

‘Anyway, soul resilience is only the first means of passive defense. The second is “field density,” which is similar but a little less intuitive.’

“Field density...? I can’t even imagine what that would refer to.”

‘Mm. It’s also called soul pressure, which might be easier to conceptualize. It’s a defense against abilities being used within your own personal space. For instance, a materialization user might try to use the orifices of the human head to create the base of a spike that then shoots straight into the brain and kills their opponent instantly. But with strong field dens--’

“Oh!” Hector stopped picking again and blinked. “I didn’t even think of trying something like that...”

‘It’s a very advanced technique, not easy at all, especially on a moving target--but that’s neither here nor there. I’m saying that one’s field density offers a kind of constant defense against that sort of thing. It’s a lot like how you couldn’t coat Karkash in metal due to his magnetism. Same concept, only applied more broadly.’

“Hmm. How does that work?”

‘By preventing the USE of the abilities in the first place. Materialization won’t accumulate properly. Destruction won’t tunnel properly. Integration won’t fuse. And alteration users, they’re fucked, too. Only transfiguration and mutation are immune, because those powers are strictly limited to the user’s body, where one’s own field density is strongest, so it doesn’t matter how oppressive their opponent’s soul pressure is.’

Hector scratched his head. “You weren’t kidding about it being less intuitive than the other thing...”

‘Soul resilience.’

“Yeah, the other thing.”

Garovel exhaled a nonexistent breath.