The Challenger's Return: Rebirth of the Rainbow Mage

Up until now, [Split Symbiosis] was the only thing keeping all the pieces of his soul in near orbit of each other.

The cotton candy fluff formed hundreds of separate glowing portions that moved slowly away from each other, as if something was emitting weak outward suction on them.

If this continued, his soul would split completely! By that point, who knew if even an extra life could save him...

Otto's mind spun as he racked his brain for solutions, though it, too, was operating at a sluggish pace.

Wait!

If he could split his soul apart using his consciousness, he should also be able to thread it back together, right?

After having the idea, he immediately got to work.

There was not even a second to spare.

Otto first formed his consciousness composed of mental power into a net and began to capture the small pieces of his soul that were starting to float away.

The shards and stray strings of energy compressed slightly.

Once the pieces were suitably close to each other, Otto withdrew the net.

His mental power became a needle in his mind's eye, then two.

The blunt end gathered threads while the sharp end tied them or patched them together one by one.

Occasionally, when the threads were too thin to properly work with, Otto simply created an imaginary 'glue' out of his mental power to glue two threads together.

It was a deathly arts and crafts project!

He didn't know which threads used to be tied with which other threads, or if breaking or disrupting said threads would have any kind of permanent impact on him.

Otto also knew that what he was doing right now could at best be considered a careless job.

To be honest, all he could think about was preventing the threads from flying away.

By hook or by crook, his soul would stay together!

It was exhausting work.

Thankfully, the pieces of his soul weren't very far from each other due to the power of [Split Symbiosis] also working overtime.

Otto lost track of time as he used and refilled his mental power over and over.

The unknown 'force' pulling his soul outward thankfully lost its power around halfway through the process.

He worked and worked in his mind's eye.

When he was 70% finished, Otto realized that he had used his mental power so forcefully and so continuously that it had even broken through a small bottleneck and risen in volume.

The two needles became three needles working side by side.

Perhaps this was another hidden effect of one of his class traits, [Magical Equivalence].

The same one that allowed his basic magic attributes to grow over time with training.

What felt like days passed as Otto finally finished stitching the pieces of his soul back together with a final, graceful flourish of the needles.

He felt grateful that the kids had listened to him and stayed away from his room for the time being.

An interruption would have been exceedingly unwelcome, no matter how well-intentioned.

Otto laid back on the bed, exhausted.

His soul might be different than before, but it was now fully tied together. He mentally patted himself on the back.

It was then.

As he scrutinized his work, looking for any small loose ends or untied 'knots,' [Split Symbiosis] showed its true value.

Otto's soul began to glow brightly.

Alarm raced through his mind once more. The connections he had just painstakingly put together were once again beginning to split!

But before he could hurriedly create the three needles with his mind and start the whole charade again, he froze.

Threads thickened before his very eyes and attached themselves to other threads, entirely of their own volition.

Some tied themselves into dense knots that would be impossible for Otto to unravel, while a few acted as if they were glued side by side, paralleling each other.

[Split Symbiosis] was reconnecting the web!

As far as Otto could tell, it was beginning to look even more cohesive than the original!

A few minutes passed as [Split Symbiosis] continued its work.

Otto examined the process closely.

After he split off those four pieces to implant, his soul had shrunk by just under half.

But the threads within had now thickened by double or more, and the cohesion of the bonds formed with other webs, knots and strings was also far above its previous haphazard formation.

The overall glow was paradoxically brighter, too.

It was more condensed, and felt more…solid, for lack of a better word.

Moreover, Otto could see that it wasn't finished.

Even as he continued to watch, his soul expanded slightly to fill the space.

It would be a long process, but Otto had a inkling.

Before long, his soul might be just as large as before it was split.

Otto opened his eyes to find that barely ten minutes had passed since he lay onto the bed.

He clenched his fists, and moved his limbs one by one.

No trouble.

He was back.

Now, he just had to regain his attributes…

****************************************************************************

Otto once again called his team out of the virtual space to meet in the yard.

He looked at them calmly, and despite himself, was a little glad to see the expressions of serious worry in their eyes when they looked at him.

They were all quite distraught, though.

Elliott hesitated for a second.

But in the end, he steeled himself and asked the question that was on all their minds.

"Otto, are you… okay now?"

A light smile appeared on Otto's lips. His eyes crinkled slightly.

"I'm just fine. It was merely a temporary side effect of splitting my soul. It has already been completely fixed."

Actually, this question was mostly for formality.

They could feel from their connection, by the pounding of Otto's life force in their chests that he was back to normal.

What was crazy was that despite his theoretically much lower attributes, the pounding hadn't decreased in intensity one bit.

If anything, it might have gotten stronger.

Nevertheless, they all relaxed slightly after hearing from the man himself.

Otto briefly found himself lost in marveling at the connection he felt with the kids.

Since he finally had some time to fully explore it.

On his part, the changes weren't quite as enormous as theirs, though the sense of closeness and kinship he now felt to each of them was still very real.

He felt a sense of warmth at the knowledge that these were comrades with whom he could absolutely trust his back, anytime, anywhere.

Of course, their minds weren't much affected, so Otto couldn't imagine that they would choose to, say, sacrifice their lives for his own.

Below that, though, the trust he felt was sky high.

In turn, he also felt a sense of duty to them: to protect them, push them, and reveal their full potential, so they could feel proud of who they'd become.

It wasn't far off from what Otto expected a father to feel for his kids, but the emotion was purer and simpler, entirely built on their new connection.

But what else did this connection bring?

Otto had an urge to explore it a bit.

The first thing he noticed was that he could feel each of their current conditions.

Currently, they were all in good health.

That information was then transmitted back to him, as a kind of background knowledge.

Otto just kind of knew their current statuses in the same way he knew what he would see if he swept his gaze around the yard.

It was the same kind of instinctual awareness of his surroundings.

Even better was that this feeling would be present no matter their physical separation.

Frankly, Otto doubted that even entering a floor would block its transmission.

Second, was that for better or for worse, the connection did not work both ways.

They were bound to him, but not the other way around.

They could also sense his condition, but only if he allowed them to.

Which, obviously, he wouldn't, unless they were in a position to actually be able to help him. Otherwise, wouldn't it just cause them needless anxiety?

That kind of distraction in deadly combat would easily prove fatal.

Third was that they could vaguely communicate intense emotions through the bond.

Otto suspected that this would be upgraded when his trait evolved in the future, but for now, it was limited to extremes like rage, pain, ecstasy, humiliation, etc.

Thankfully, it wasn't as if he felt their emotions. It was limited to sensing them, as far as he could tell.

Finally, the trait mentioned that the kids could call on Otto's full power for a short time by choosing to permanently sacrifice their own attributes.

Basically, this function allowed them to draw on the latent power of Otto's own soul, which would, to Otto's surprise, continue to grow along with him.

Thus, Otto's full power was actually conditional; it was dependent on how powerful he was at the moment.

Right now, for example, his 'full power' was nowhere near his 'full power' before he split his soul.

But in the future, perhaps his 'full power' would allow them to instantly kill foes they might've previously struggled with, smoothly evading a potential life-or-death scenario.

Perhaps, if the trait evolved, they would gain attributes along with him as he grew stronger as well…

Otto looked forward to his own gains from the trait's evolution.

He shook himself from his reverie, and spoke formally,

"There are a couple things to do before we get down to serious training."