Ten minutes had passed since Vira had left with Maverick. Not much had happened in that time. Wovan continued to bubble ominously in his pot, and Arthur was finally able to identify how his trusty bowl had evolved now that it was a soulbound item. The changes had been surprising, to say the least.

  The trusty Ikea bowl had come a very long way. What had once begun as an ordinary, mundane kitchen item had now become an alchemy cauldron that he couldn't even attach a price to. It was so perfect for him, and tied so closely to his personal growth, that he doubted he'd find anything better across the entire Myopan realm. That being said, his trusty bowl had remained the same except for two key changes.

  It was now linked directly to his blood and could be absorbed directly into his bloodstream. While interesting, the true versatility lay in how this would affect his circulatory system. It was like gaining an entirely new passive skill. Henceforth, he had no use for the magical syringe or any other blood extraction methods for that matter. He could just summon a nosebleed at will and use it as a handy faucet to fulfill his alchemy needs.

  The real juicy stuff, however, came in the second line of description. Harmful liquids covered a very, very wide range of things, and it was only limited by his skills as an alchemist. Venoms, toxins, poisons, acids—the world had just become his oyster. And that wasn't even considering the more imaginative use cases. Some of the greatest medicines created could technically be described as harmful.

  If I can push this far enough, I'll be able to pass as a blood mage. Yes, he'd have a very limited skill set compared to the real deal, but the potential was there to be exploited, especially when coupled with the telekinesis he'd gained from his few points of Titan's Constitution.

  The second change was a little more ambiguous, though no less interesting. The cauldron could now accept living ingredients. It didn't seem like much on paper, but the recipes now available to him had grown significantly. Standard alchemy didn't tend to incorporate living creatures as far as he knew. Arthur wasn't sure if it was even called alchemy at that point.

  He was a little worried about leaving Wovan in there to evolve, but his instincts weren't giving him any warnings. And besides, surely a cauldron that only enhanced what was placed within it would do wonders for her evolution. It was only twenty minutes into Wovan's new life as magical goo that Arthur realised something was wrong.

  He'd lost his hearing completely. The room had been so quiet that it had taken him a few minutes longer than it probably should have before he realised that things shouldn't be so quiet. Dead silence, the kind where he couldn't even hear the steady thump of his heartbeat, or the sound of air flowing into his lungs. Arthur wouldn't deny that he panicked for a second—completely losing a sense was far scarier than he thought it would be.

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  He managed to calm himself quickly, though, chalking it up to the changes his soul was going through as Wovan evolved. If the symptoms still persisted once the process was finished, then he'd start worrying for real. True to his suspicions, Arthur lost a second sense a few minutes later. This time, it was his ability to smell. It didn't affect him so severely this time. He'd been expecting something like this, and he wasn't as dependent on the sense.

  Around thirty minutes had passed at this point, and Wovan was steadily plodding along her evolution. Arthur was trying to track what exactly those changes were, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to see what was happening with his soul splinter.

  The next thing that Arthur lost was his ability to sense ether, the ambient energy around him and the reserves his soul personally produced. Now this time, Arthur was well and truly panicking, and no amount of trying to rationalise things helped him calm down. Ether had become so intrinsic to who he was since the System's advent that losing it so suddenly felt like he'd been hollowed out. Literally. It was like the world had been bleached of colour, that everything was a little less real.

  The Perfect Homunculus was a species that lived and breathed ether; his every cell fed and thrived on the energy. Suddenly being unable to sense the process that had become as natural to him as breathing was one of the worst things he'd ever experienced. It was like drowning, only Arthur couldn't tell if he truly was, or if he could no longer sense the sensation of breathing. Was he dying? Had things gone catastrophically wrong? Had he finally bitten off more than he could chew?

  Arthur rushed over to his soulbound pot to search for answers, but he was like a blind man fumbling in the dark. Wovan's evolution had already become so difficult to observe. Now it was like trying to see in pitch-black darkness for a pre-system human. Even trying to analyse her through the link in his soul proved futile. Without being able to sense ether at all, the magical senses he'd come to accept as completely normal were now useless.

  His sense of taste went next, followed quickly by his vision. Arthur could do nothing but sit and wait in horror as everything was stripped from him, piece by piece. He'd thought he'd lucked out when Wovan's evolution hadn't been accompanied by the terrible pain he'd come to expect of such growth, but this was so, so much worse. Pain he was used to. It was something that could be endured.

  Being stripped of his senses, both magical and mundane, was something new. He could no longer sense his soul at all, or any of his affinities. It was like there was nothing there at all. Finally, after how long, Arthur couldn't say, his last remaining sense, his ability to touch and perceive sensation disappeared. Arthur could no longer feel his body... at all. It was something he'd been able to do all his life, something he'd never questioned, so mundane that he hadn't even realised it was something that could be taken away.

  To say that Arthur's world had become one of darkness would be grossly misrepresenting what he was going through. Darkness was what happened when you closed your eyelids, the black of a room lacking light. This was like trying to see out of an elbow... except he didn't have an elbow anymore, or anything really. Arthur had functionally ceased to exist; the only proof that he had once lived was the litany of memories rushing through his brain.

  The worst part of it all was the uncertainty. Had he succeeded or failed? Was this the end of the road, the fatal mistake that finally pushed his luck too far? Compared to a normal human, Arthur's brain was significantly more powerful. It operated far, far faster, his thoughts forming and fading at speeds he'd never really appreciated. Without any external stimuli to ground him, no perceivable sensation to operate relative to, Arthur lost all perception of time. It felt like hours had passed, days even, in one moment, and the next, it felt like it had only been a second since he'd last felt the beating of his heart.

  Was he screaming?

  Arthur tried to scream, but he'd forgotten what it felt like. He had the code in his head, but lacked the necessary hardware to execute it. It was like the word had lost its meaning. He knew its definition, but lacked all context to understand it. He had no lungs, no muscles, no mouth to create sound. What was it like to possess a body?

  The memories were still there. They could be brought up in an instant if he wished it, but for the life of him, he couldn't understand them.

  My name is Arthur Ward. What does it sound like?

  Arthur didn't recall if memories warped so severely when someone lost one of their senses. That didn't make any sense. Or did it? Had a day already passed outside, and were Vira and Maverick going over his unresponsive body even as he tried to come to terms with who he was. Arthur attempted to count the seconds, but reached one and a half million before he deemed it pointless. Had so much time truly passed, or had it only been an hour? His brain shouldn't normally be capable of such speeds, but who was to say what was possible right now?

  Even the System, those annoying blue boxes that he could always observe, had abandoned him. What was his name again? The Perfect Homunculus. He was perfect, right, and he always strove for perfection. The constant grind for greatness. That was who he was. A being that always climbed the next peak.

  But what was climbing?

  An eternity later, or a minute—Arthur couldn't say—he opened his eyes. Black words filled his vision. He read them a hundred and twelve times before he remembered what meaning was.

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