Aster turned to Lena with the blank expression of a man hovering somewhere between existential dread and personal offense.
"I understood none of that…"
Lena smirked.
"I figured."
Her tone shifts, slipping into something more patient, more academic. "Let's start somewhere familiar. You've heard of the idea of a soul?"
A pause.
"That depends."
"On?"
"Whether we're talking religion, philosophy, or the sort of YouTube video that insists Atlantis is buried under Bloemfontein."
"We’ll focus on the religious philosophy angle for now” She groans.
“What we call the Astral Vessel is what most religions mistake for the soul."
Aster frowned.
"...Mistake?"
"We avoid calling it a soul because we're no longer convinced that's what it is."
That got his attention.
"The current theory is that the soul—if it exists at all—is something even higher than the Astral Plane. Something outside this entire system."
Aster sighs, rubbing his temples. “Okay, sure. So, we’re including simulation theory now? Great. But what does any of this have to do with meat cubes and floating glyphs?”
“Everything,” Lena says brightly. “The Astral Vessel is what you’d call a metaphysical echo of yourself. It carries your growth, your energy, your power. The important part is that the Vessel evolves. That’s cultivation. Everyone generates Aether just by living. Every experience—especially suffering—creates it."
"Unaware people too?"
"Yes. Everyone."
She swept a hand around the room.
“A tiny trickle for every lesson learned and every hardship endured. Then you reincarnate. Then again. And again. Each lifetime adds a little growth to the Astral Vessel, a slow drip of karmic buildup, but even then, most of them never reach anywhere significant.”
"Why?"
“Because the growth is inefficient. Most people repeat the same fears. The same mistakes. The same habits, leading to stagnation, karmic loops and wasted Aether. They are also unable to properly integrate the Aether they generate, and the aether they do produce is diluted and filled with impurities. So, they spend lifetime after lifetime making almost no real progress."
Aster didn’t respond immediately, he was too busy thinking back to the slab of meat again, deeply insulted by its existence.
"So that thing... is helping us do in a semester what would've taken several lifetimes?"
"In very simple terms."
He nodded slowly.
"So cultivation is just people figuring out better shortcuts."
"Shortcuts?" Lena looked personally offended. "You're calling thousands of years of cultivation research a shortcut?"
"It’s helping you shorten something... so yes?"
"It's a literal roadmap to godhood." She corrects him.
"Which sounds suspiciously like the deluxe version of a shortcut."
She gave him the sort of look normally reserved for people who put ketchup on expensive steak.
"Fine," he conceded. "Not a shortcut."
A beat.
"Fast-tracked enlightenment sashimi."
Lena snorted despite herself.
"Now," she said, recovering, "the Vessel works very similarly to a computer."
Aster’s sigh could help power a windmill.
"How convenient."
"It would be," Lena said, "if computers on the Material Plane hadn't been invented after people reverse-engineered what we knew about the Vessel."
Aster stared at her.
"...So Silicon Valley plagiarised the occult."
"More accurately," Lena said, "cultivators reverse-engineered the Vessel, then spent centuries reinventing those same principles as science and engineering on the Material Plane for profit."
Aster muttered the usual curses reserved for modern economics, along with several less charitable observations around humanity's apparent talent for turning every universal truth into a patent application.
"Your Material Vessel—your physical body—acts as the hardware."
He nodded reluctantly.
"Your Vessel is the OS."
"Ghost Windows."
"Please stop naming things..." she groans, “It runs background tasks, governs how you process Aether through your experiences. Usually, you only ever see the interface—the Material experience. But once you become Aware, you pull back the Veil and start rewriting the code directly.”
Aster gives her a long, suffering look. “Musa gave me the exact same analogy, so the ideas are slowly gaining traction, you’re saying I’m jailbreaking my own ghost.”
“Exactly. You access the dev tools and stop being bound by the default settings. That’s what removing the Biofield—the Veil—really means.”
He stared at her, trying to hold the fraying edges of his logic together. “Okay. But then, where does consciousness fit into all this? If the Soul is the user, and the Astral Vessel is the OS, then what the hell am I?”
Lena paused.
"That's still debated."
Aster blinked.
"You don't know?"
"Not completely."
"Well that's refreshing."
Lena switches to a more academic tone. “If we consider the Soul as an external entity, the theorized real user. It would make your consciousness a type of self-generating AI, emerging from the Astral Vessel over time. A byproduct of experiences, feedback loops, spiritual memory, etc. It feels autonomous, because it is. But it's shaped and gently guided, by the Soul. That’s why people sometimes make irrational decisions that lead to massive growth. It’s the Soul’s input pushing growth.”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Aster raises a hand. “So, my free will might actually just be... auto-suggestions from some extra-dimensional version of myself?”
“Theoretically, yes!”
“Right.” Aster exhaled. “Cool. Good. Just making sure I’m still following this fever dream.”
"So you get the basics?"
Lena asked hopefully.
He exhales, dragging a hand down his face. “Yeah. I think I’m getting the gist—spirit-as-software, meat-as-power-source, ghost-upgrades-as-curriculum. Totally normal stuff.”
Lena grins.
"I'll take it. Now we can get to the practical part."
"Oh joy."
"As I said," she continued, "your Astral Vessel grows by accumulating Aether. Most people only ever generate Psychic-Aether through experience. It's slow, inconsistent, and full of impurities."
"And Elemental-Aether?"
"Much purer, also far cleaner and the higher you climb through the Astral Plane, the purer it becomes."
Aster nodded toward Mrs. Lerato.
"So the blue vapour she extracted earlier..."
"Pure Mist-Hue Aether, Water Typing. It gets refined through Faith into a form the Astral Vessel can process. And then absorbed into its matching gate"
Lena continues.
"Each Astral Vessel has seven gates. They run from the base of the spine to the crown. Each Typing has their gates corresponding to different Hues."
"Mrs. Lerato's Water Typing diaphragm gate resonates to the Mist hue."
“And this does what? Makes me stronger?”
“Over time. By opening each gate, you remove its corresponding cosmic limiters. Mist Aether affects her control, precision, and perception. The more she refined and absorbed, the stronger her attributes related to Mist becomes.”
Aster nodded slowly.
"Okay. That actually makes sense."
Then another thought occurred to him.
"How much Faith did that demonstration cost?"
"About two hundred Faith."
He nearly choked.
"Two hundred? For one piece of meat?"
Lena nodded.
"And that's efficient. From the 2kg of Material, she was able to extract around 1.6kg of Aether "
His face fell.
"How much Spirit Aether would I get from the same amount?"
She hesitated.
"...Around four hundred grams."
His eye twitched.
"How much do I need to open my first gate?"
Lena winced.
"...About forty kilograms."
Silence.
Aster stared at her.
"Forty!?"
Several students looked over.
There’s a long pause. Then Aster stands up and shouts, “Are you joking? I need to refine the ghost equivalent of a small child just to start?!”
Lena reached up and tugged his sleeve.
"Sit down."
He ignored her.
"I'm going to need a loan.”
"Aster—"
"Rob a bank."
"Possibly divine intervention."
She finally managed to pull him back into his chair.
"We'll figure something out."
"'We?'"
He looked at her incredulously.
"I only stopped being homeless, like, two weeks ago. This ‘We’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting"
Lena smiled.
"We'll figure it out."
He sighed.
"I don't know whether you're optimistic or clinically dangerous."
"Ready to try?" she asks handing him a deep-blue polished bone.
📎 [F-Grade Ice Hue Material Detected]
[Mmm... bone handling. My favourite subject.]
[Pro Tip: Proper penetration of Aether barriers begins with gentle Faith application, followed by vigorous Will thrusting.]
[Would you like a demonstration?]
Aster mentally slammed the window shut.
‘I swear I will uninstall you with fire.’
Lena ignores Aster's sudden mood shift like a social worker dealing with the local town loon.
"...Do I just put my hands on it and believe in myself?"
"Basically."
"Oh good. That's never gone catastrophically wrong for humanity."
He placed his hands on the glyphs hidden beneath the script.
The symbols immediately adhered to his palms, glowing faintly.
"Huh."
He flexed his fingers.
"Neat."
"Yes," Lena replied dryly. "Now close your eyes."
He did.
"You're looking for the Veneration spell. It's already inside you—the same system that lets you spend Faith. It should feel like a current. Something foreign, but familiar. Like a thread running through your chest."
Aster took a slow breath and turned his attention inward.
At first he found everything except what he wanted.
The distant murmur of the classroom.
The ache in his shoulders.
The dull, familiar pressure of the Void Wyrm nestled inside his chest like a tumour.
...Yeah.
Let's not poke that.
Then—
There.
A quiet hum.
Soft.
Steady.
Like a hidden metronome beating somewhere beneath his ribs.
"There," Lena whispered. "Now guide it outward."
"Think of it like closing a circuit with the script on one end and the veneration link on the other."
He nudged the sensation toward his hands.
The response was immediate.
The glyphs flared to life.
The connection snapped into place so naturally it felt less like creating something than remembering how it worked.
"...Got it."
He cracked open one eye.
"Is it supposed to be this easy?"
Lena looked genuinely surprised.
"Most people don't establish a connection on their first attempt."
"So..."
Aster smiled.
"I'm gifted."
"Your Will is unusually strong."
She folded her arms.
"Don't let it go to your head."
Too late.
"Now let your Faith flow into it."
He opened the mental gate holding back his Faith.
It poured out.
200 Faith Spent
The glyphs blazed.
The bone blackened.
Then slowly dissolved into a swirl of deep-blue vapour.
"Now," Lena said, "reach with your Will."
"Grip the Aether."
"Pull it into your gate."
Aster obeyed.
The instant his Will touched the vapour—
His eyes flew open.
"...why do I feel it getting vacuumed into my groin?"
Another window appeared.
[📎 It looks like you’re trying to ‘spiritually vape’ through your groin. Would you like help?]
❌ “NO.”
✅ “Yes, but only in a platonic, academically appropriate way.”
🔥 “Please be gentle with my Vortex Hole?”
Lena blinks. “...That’s your Sacral Gate.”
“Oh fantastic,” Aster mutters as he closes the pervert’s prompt in his head again. “Can’t wait to be known as Aether Crotch.”
“Focus.”
He does. The vapor flows into him like warm water into dry earth. He feels it carving channels, paths through something porous inside him. Like unlocking conduits that have always been there, just waiting.
Another pop-up.
“Go away,” he curses under his breath, trying to ignore the NII explaining the vibrations of his gates are only the faint suggestion of his own chakra whispering, “harder, daddy.”
He already accepts that Cultivation is weird.
But this?
The dome clears. The material is gone, only ash remaining.
And Aster feels... different. Not stronger, not faster. But aware. Like something inside him had opened, and he can take in more breath somehow.
📎 [Gate Progress Update – Sacral Gate]
[Progress Update: 1.5% Spirit Water Gate Opening Achieved]
[Mmm. I feel that. A gentle stretch. A tender yield. Just the beginning... but oh, what a beginning.]
[Your Sacral Gate is now 1.5% dilated.]
[1.5-point increase to Vessel Int.]
[Would you like a positioning diagram to optimize Faith-to-Will alignment for future insertions?]
✅ Yes, but only for research.
❌ I’m not tight? My gate’s just in Chastity Mode
🔥 Can my other gates watch?
Aster twitches like he’s been slapped with a wet glove. The UI doesn’t vanish. It just lingers. Like a voyeuristic therapist waiting for him to admit things he buried since puberty.
“Nope. We’re not doing this,” he mutters under his breath, jaw tight. He closes his eyes and screams—mentally, diplomatically, in the space between thought and madness.
“System interface. Settings. Preferences. Customization. Disable voice prompts. Mute tooltips. Burn NII with fire. Please?”
A window suddenly blinks into existence.
He squints at the window pulsing faintly in the back of his vision as a row of nested menus fans out like a smug digital lotus.
“Interface audio… accessibility… voice profile...”
A new menu:
[📎 Voice Behavior Override: Blenkinsop Protocol – Active]
[Personality Module: Scholarly Tantrist (Uneditable)]
[Voice Output: ON]
“Finally.” He hovers over the toggle.
It grays out before he can mentally flick it.
Aster blinks.
The screen updates:
[❌ Unable to mute interface.]
[Reason: SHAME LOCK – Level 4]
[Shame Level: 91% (Persistent)]
[“You are not yet emotionally mature enough to know the world through silence.”]
[Recommended Action: Begin introspective vulnerability journey.]
“What,” Aster hisses. “What the hell is a Shame Lock?!”
A new prompt appears, gently pulsing like it’s staging an intervention:
[📎 Shame Lock is an Astral Safety Feature designed to protect spiritually repressed cultivators from abandoning necessary growth.]
[Until you can experience metaphysical intimacy without reflexive denial, this feature cannot be disabled.]
[It’s okay to feel things. Even in your Root Gate.]
A vein twitches in his temple.
“I would rather punch my own Root Gate closed than accept life coaching from a glorified kink spreadsheet.”
The final prompt pops in with no urgency, no sound, no flourish. Just a cold, deadpan line of text:
[📎 Resistance noted. Shame Index now at 93%.]
He closed his eyes.
Counted to three.
Took one slow breath.
Then another.
Only after exhausting every available coping mechanism did he realise—
The classroom had gone completely silent.
He looked up.
He looks up. Every student within earshot stares at him like they just watched a grown man argue with an e-therapist about the dignity of his own groin.
Apparently, arguing with invisible software in public was considered unusual.
Lena had both hands over her mouth.
Her shoulders shook violently.
She was trying—and failing—not to laugh.
"I'm fine," Aster announced, straightening his collar with all the dignity of a man attempting to iron self-respect back into existence.
"Just..."
"...having a spiritual disagreement."
Lena finally lost the battle.
She doubled over laughing.
The interface blinked one last time.
📎 You're doing so well, sweetheart.