Chapter 161: Infected

"What do you mean by 'Boundless', Aaron? Is that the stage of power that you're at?" Crystet asked Aaron with a curious look on his face. "Yeah. You get a weaker state of my strength. What do you say?" Aaron responded, extending a grey soul towards Alec. To Alec, it looked like a gold and silver soul, but Aaron could tell what colour it was by the little skill he got when he copied it. When Aaron copies an item, Aaron can see if it's a fake, a copy, or the real deal. This means that if someone tried to make an artificial Purified Demonoid God Soul, he'd be able to tell. It was a cool little trick, considering there was a little tag above its head.

"No, I'm good. I'm not worthy enough to become Boundless yet. If I take such an easy way to Boundlessness, I won't feel good about it at all." Crystet responded, putting his hand in front of the ball. "You use it. After all, you're the one who earned it."

"That's the thing. I can't use one of these until later, as my soul would be destroyed if I used it now, so that's a no from me. Alec doesn't possess any skills that we know of yet, so there really isn't much point in trying to make him Boundless yet." Aaron reasoned as Alec just shrugged. "I didn't get an ability as I came here, so there's nothing special to see here," Alec explained, his arms dropping to his sides casually.

"See? Now, the best thing we can do is save this. After all, I can make copies of these now, so later on, in my life, I can use the copies and keep the original safe in my inventory." Aaron responded, but then he realised something. Instead of making a copy of it, he wanted to create an original version of it. If so, it would be a great bargaining tool amongst the gods. A social experiment of sorts. To see how much they'd bet just to get their hands on it.

Aaron closed his eyes and focused on creating another soul. A black portal appeared above his head, but it began to shine with a golden and silver light. It was almost as if the soul had the power to create light out of the darkness. A weirdly coloured orb floated down from the portal as Aaron looked on in confusion. It was coloured black and pink, like his corruption, but these weren't the colours that had shone through the dark gateway above him.

[Infected Soul of the Demonoid God (Willingly Purified) {Copy}]

[A copy of a Demonoid God Soul which has been infected by corruption of an unknown source. No details on its abilities can be found, except it is only possible to use this after reaching 101% Boundlessness. Any lower, or even with 0% Boundlessness, there is a 99.9999% chance your soul will be crushed with a 1 in a million chance of living.]

"So I've now got another item I can't use until later, and it won't even tell me what I can do with it. That's kind of bad, isn't it? Plus, if I were to use it right now, there's a one in a million chance of me actually living, so only someone suicidal or someone with this as their last resort would use it." Aaron said to himself, throwing the two souls back into the Boundless Interdimensional Summoning portal. He needed to find a proper way of storing his items, but this would work for now.

"Aaron, what was that you just threw into the portal? It reminded me of your corruption. The stuff that caused us to have our first-ever battle to the death." Crystet asked, reminding himself of that cursed material that destroyed his planet. "Well, that's a soul that's infected with corruption, although it isn't known who. It might be me, or it could be the men in the stars. We don't know yet. Although I can say for sure that I'm not meant to use it yet. I have to be 101% Boundless or higher for it to work successfully, so only people past that can achieve such abilities." Aaron responded, clicking his fingers as he thought about what he should do. He could try manually break through his power level, but that wasn't going to do anything, was it? After all, it was just physical power he was upgrading, not Boundless potential.

"Well, I believe it is time that we go decide what planet we wish to visit now, so Crystet, Alec, would you two care to join me?" Aaron asked the pair, leaving the other gods in silence. None of them had ever bothered going to a different planet but seeing Aaron do it confused them. There were no advantages to doing it. "Sure!" Crystet responded, running up to him, but Alec stayed behind. "I think I might just explore around here for a bit longer. I want to see more of this place, as it is Heaven. A place amongst the stars. Or, as you called it, Takamagahara. I need to learn how the place where I'll be spending the rest of my foreseeable future works." Alec explained. "That's actually a pretty good reason to stay behind. I never bothered to learn about how this place runs because it's fun going to new planets while having new abilities to mess around with, but that's because I'm overly strong. You explore around with Shadow, as Crystet and I go explore new planets. We both have our own little jobs to do, I guess!" Aaron responded as he began looking down past his feet at the planets below. "Hey, Crystet, pick one. Pick the next planet we're going to visit." Aaron asked him, giving Crystet the choice on where they went. Crystet pointed at a planet directly beneath his feet. "This one. It feels like it'll be fun."

"Well then, that's where we will go!" Aaron exclaimed, jumping down, imagining himself having nothing stopping him from falling. Crystet did the same, and they began falling side by side, going on another adventure.