[Put everything into luck,] something whispered from within me.

"Luck? Why?" I asked myself and... received no answer.

If I was alone and had no terrifying, ghostly monster clawing at an invisible shield right in front of my eyes, I would invest everything into intelligence, or perhaps soul because my soul was aching and suffering from the minuses hanging upon it.

"You better be right, inner me, lets gamble," I sighed and dragged the [5] into Luck.

Nothing changed.

I wasn't sure what to expect anyway. I had no idea what luck was in terms of the Soul-Song or what it even improved. No memories of lectures on luck emerged from within me either as I contemplated the concept. I didn't become invisible to the ghostly whale either.

Oh well.

I looked again at the Phantom. I wondered what kind of a creature it was exactly. Did it have a name or...?

I tried to sift the degraded memories of Kopusha for answers.

The answer that came back was entirely unexpected. It wasn't a name for a phantom, no, it was much better. A Song-Spell called Identify resurfaced in my mind. Kopusha had used it countless times to identify something while designing her own Song-Spell compositions. It was the ultimate tool, an Acolyte's Song-Scope which could be used to derive information from just about anything, depending on how high level it was.

I tried to recall this [Identify-Song] fully, hummed it to myself.

The song was an appeal to the rings of Lunaria for knowledge, to Mage Morningstar and to the collective wisdom that the founder of Alanian Academia had bestowed upon all of her children's children. The stanzas focused on the search for intelligence, the quest and thirst for knowledge like a magnifying glass, like a beam of light that scorched the earth. It was a hymn to cleverness and curiosity that drove civilization onwards, of asking questions about everything, including the universe itself. Of peering at the stars in the sky and wondering why, of collecting the knowledge and encoding it across the great Citadel cities of Alania and their Librariums, of building knowledge on top of knowledge to construct soul-powered artifacts and other incredible things.

[Song of Identification] recalled!

The voice of the Soul-Song resonated in my mind.

Hang on... if I knew four Song-Spells... Why weren't they listed in the my menu?

My menu flickered again.

Skills:

[Soul-Song LV 1] [ON]

[Raising Spell efficiency by 0.3%]

[Providing detailed Soul-Stats]

[Translating the Soul-Song's Language]

Known Song-Spells:

[Tamus-Anima] [Sectus-Anima] [Conjugo-Anima] [Identify]

Ah, here we go. Kopusha's memories whispered that all of the Song-Spells listed were the level of the [Soul-Song] skill. Interesting.

This meant that Kopusha and others like her would never consider to pull the [Soul-Song] skill out to deeply study the original language of the sky-gods! If the Alanian Academics relied on thousands of Song-Spells, their Spell-Songs would all drop to zero if the [Soul-Song] skill was dropped.

I quickly hummed the base tones for [Identify], staring at the Phantom in front of me with my eye-stalks.

[Phantom Whale-Squid]

Riiiiight.

I hummed [Identify] again and looked at the decayed obelisk above me.

[Skyisle Beacon Tower] [Astral Engine]

Uh-huh.

I aimed [Identify] at the nearest hollow corpse.

[Cazligor Alan Skyisle]

I moved it onto another female-looking body.

[Sintamma Lighteria Skyisle]

Then another...

[Nikte Oma Skyisle] [Nomach Goubler Skyisle] [Jillian Oma Skyisle]

I kept identifying the bodies. Entire families, men, women and children had died here all at once, their twisted up bodies now fused into the gray, crusty ground.

According to the last names most of them were born in Skyisle. A few were born in Tricameron. A few more were born in Agamemnon.

So... this was Astral Ocean right below the town of Skyisle. A lot of people had died here when Tricameron was atomized! But how did they all die?

I attempted to juxtapose the map of the terrain from Kopusha's head. The town of Skyisle was a fair distance away from the Citadel of Tricameron river delta, high up in a little valley between the glacier-covered peaks.

Hmmm... Did the radioactive cloud from the fallout spread out all the way to the mountains?

No... that didn't make sense... the bodies in front of me were bent unnaturally, broken, crushed.

Of course...

A glacier avalanche had likely killed them all, as a massive earthquake was triggered by thermonuclear destruction of Tricameron that shook up the mountains for many kilometers all around.

Something within me snapped. What was done here was monstrous, truly abhorrent, unbelievable.

I would make the Seditionists and their vile gods pay for what they've done to... my people.

Identifying all of the bodies in line of sight had brought my experience all the way up to 186/200. It wasn't enough to level up again! Argh.

I pondered about what else I could identify. The Soul-Song menu... the language of the sky-gods!

That's what I could identify next!

I pulled the [Soul-Song] skill out of my menu. The letters turned into gibberish again. I slotted the Identify spell into the empty channel where the [Soul-Song] sat before.

Identify itself looked like

I hummed the Song of Identification and aimed my mind at the > floating bit within the word.

It expanded itself into:

≯̺̬͉̀̈́͗́

Next, I attempted to identify the ○ bit.

It expanded into:

`̸̧̛̩̦͓́̚͝͝○

Bit by bit I memorized a new, expanded version of [Identify]:

The more symbols I identified, the longer the information chain became, seemingly stretching out into depths of itself with increasing, looping detail.

I couldn't believe it! The true language of the Soul-Song was akin to a matryoshka! It contained a variety of symbols within symbols. But, why was it so complex? There was a definite mystery here waiting to be solved!

Thankfully, I had the skills to do it. The scientific method, aka science of examining patterns is a methodology that can be used to determine the nature of reality - any reality, be it life around you or conceptual reality such as one in a computer simulation. Any system, be it one created via evolution or human hands can be broken down with math, understood and taken advantage of. No matter how seemingly visually complex something is - it all relied on repeating information to function.

Thanks to my excellent understanding of trigonometry and fractal mathmatics, I could focus on the System language quite well, noting the patterns within it. There was beauty to the original language of the Soul-Song, deep complexity beyond human language akin to mathematical formulae. Each notch of it was able to expand outward, flowing like a four-dimensional puzzle in my mind. I dove deeper into [Identify] using the Song of Identification, trying to understand and memorize every bit of it.

Eventually, after memorizing a hundred different iterations of Identify, I used my knowledge of mathematical formulae to combine all of them into a dandelion-like information superstructure. Since I worked with viruses my entire life, I imagined it looking akin to a RNA virus from the Coronaviridae family, with its numerous envelope proteins extending outwards from a central core, where each data-strand of [Identify] was a different protein envelope.

I had no idea how much time flew by as I slowly memorized and assembled the full version of [Identify] with all of its long, complex variety of info-strands.

. . .

The hungry phantom whale came and went. I was a very tasty snack it could not reach, taunting it behind the barrier... visible, but inaccessible.

When the ghostly abomination returned again, I aimed the newfangled fractal version of [Identify] at it. It was no longer a Song-Spell. It was a purely-visual fractal-shaped spell.

I sang the Awakening song, ejected and slotted the [Soul-Song] back in. Then I unslotted [Life Forge LV1], slotting the fractal dandelion [Identify] structure that I was still mentally visualizing into the empty channel.

[Identify LV 3]

HA! I did it! I actually made a spell ABOVE my level!

I mentally formed the [Identify] spell by pushing mana into it from my branches via the channel going from my soul.

Power rushed through me from the Astral Engine and the spell became real, ignited with brilliant shimmers as it filled up with mana.

I saw the fractal structure for [Identify] actually manifest in front of me with my eye-stalk eyes. It was incredible! I made something new, all by myself!

I let the spell go, in the direction of the Phantom whale. A shimmering silver line flew towards the ghost and returned back to me in at incredible speed which my eye-stalks could barely track.

[Phantom Whale-Squid] [Aberration] [Soul-hunter] [LV 64]

Yes! My machinations really made the spell better, more high-level!

[326/200 Experience optimum reached! Initiate level up?]

[Yes,] I replied, sinking into blissful nothingness.

As I levelled up...

I dreamt. I knew that I was dreaming because the vision before me was blurry, inconsistent, unclear.

The dream suddenly became more focused, slightly clearer...

An enormous jellyfish with a hollow, diatom like body, even bigger than the whale jellyfish had arrived. The two ghostly creatures screeched at each other in ultrasonic, producing a disturbing cacophony. I wondered if they would fight over me, getting ready for a fun observational experience.

The diatom-shaped jellyfish suddenly stopped screeching and released hundreds of copies of itself from its innards. The little monsters attacked the whale-jellyfish from all directions, nipping at it with small blade-like threads. The Phantom-Whale creature screeched and rushed away, chased by the swarm.

The hollow jellyfish turned towards me. It slowly circled the barrier, without slamming into it.

In panic, I realized that it had intelligence. It looked like it was prodding the shield for a weak spot, for a fracture. It had eventually found one and I could do nothing, for I was but a tree bound to the warmth of the battery. The abomination opened its grotesque maw and released a blinding beam of light into my direction.

As it struck me, my tree ignited, burning up from within. Pain, immense, blinding pain filled my entire tree.

[-50 in Soul]

The Soul-Song resonated.

I wept, the pain was overwhelming, icy, cold. Something foreign, alien filled my head. A single thought began to dominate my mind.

Mother.

The hollow-shelled phantom was my mother. I would do anything for her. I would serve her for all time. I belonged to her. I would make her into a goddess. An all-powerful being that would not be stopped...

Time didn't matter. I had all the time in the world to design mother a new plague unlike anything else, a virus based on fractal mathematics, as mother and her swarm protected me now.

Someday, perhaps in a thousand years time, I would arrive at the answer, would use all of my remaining scraps of Earth knowledge and skills to forge her a unique skill that would turn her into a true divinity and then all of the known worlds would shake in her wake and all people and creatures would bow to her as every door in the universe would open before her.

[Congratulations on reaching : Level 2]

[1 new skill slot gained!]

Flashed into being, interrupting, ending the horrific nightmare.

I awoke with a shudder of all of my branches. If I still had a body, I would probably freak out and start to sweat profusely, but I was a little Astral tree and lacked sweat glands.

I nervously stared at the gray field of bodies in front of me.

There was no enormous hollow-shelled phantom. Only the whale jellyfish was near me, circling my obelisk.

"W-what the hell was that?" I cried to myself, feeling incredibly distraught.

[Luck shows the future,] something whispered from my soul. [RUN. NOW.]

[Repair the shield while making more spores]

[Attempt to communicate with the Phantoms]

[Abandon the obelisk, head up]

[Dig down]