B2 Chapter 20: Concurrency
The next morning, they moved camp again. The new site had aether only 1 level higher, to be safe for Ressara who had only just compressed her essence to Level 7, but that still meant about 25 miles distance at this point, so they had Esmorana fly them out again to save time. They touched down without incident, and Carlos was about to place Purple in his new spot when he noticed something surprising.
"Whoa, what killed that thing? The neck stump is still bleeding fast!" Carlos took a few steps closer toward the moose-like headless corpse, then started looking around nervously. "Is it still around? Must have been something strong; that looks like a very clean cut."
"Thank you for the compliment." Carlos turned around to see Esmorana smiling at him. "I noticed that this clearing came with free meat for dinner and hit it with a wind blade while we descended."
"Oh." Carlos stood still and blinked dumbly for a moment. "Um, good job? I'll just… set up on the other side of the clearing, away from… that." He chuckled awkwardly. "I'm sure it will, uh, taste good?"
Carlos tried to ignore the assorted stares and raised eyebrows that followed him as he walked away from the scene. Amber caught up after a few steps and held his hand as she walked beside him. [So, what was that about? Have you never seen a dead animal before?]
Carlos shook his head. [It's not that, not exactly. I've never seen an animal being butchered, cut up into pieces of meat to be eaten.] He sighed and shrugged, then spoke aloud. "I'll get used to it if I need to, eventually. But for now, let's just focus on our next step: leveling up the new structures."
Amber gave him a long look, then nodded and set her pack on the grass-covered ground, preparing to sit down beside it. Carlos placed Purple a few feet in front of them, then followed suit.
Settled on the ground, Carlos closed his eyes and focused inward. Alright, I've finished filling out a new set with the soul hardener and training scaler, and I'm finally in an area where the merged superstructure can absorb aether. Time to stop holding all that aether out and satisfy my curiosity: what happens when soul structures of drastically different levels absorb aether at the same time?
He watched closely and caught a brief glimpse of Level 16 aether decompressing down to Level 1 as it entered his soul to stream into each of the 9 new soul structures. Then Carlos reeled in shock as that stream got lost in a veritable tsunami of aether flowing through the singular Level 15 structure. The one higher-level structure was pulling in tens of thousands of times as much aether. Probably exactly 32,768 times as much as any single new structure. Seems like this should be too much, but I don't feel any damage?