Time passed and Sol worked on her preparations. Over the next 8 months, Iridescent expanded itself into all factors of common life. Despite other companies attempting to hold out, Iridescent managed to either offer exceedingly good terms for those who capitulated or buy out the competition of those who refused and then undermine those companies until they, too, fell under Iridescent’s wing.

Sol inserted the company’s influence into the territories surrounding the Imperial capital as smoothly as possible. She avoided large corporations and heavy competition until the company had an established foothold. Every foothold Sol obtained, she acquired the chain of producers leading to it.

While Sol was laying the groundwork for her plans, An was also progressing his own plans. He was clear about the future and took steps to protect the Reviarra household. Whenever Sol was not training or doing business, An would drag her around the Reviarra estate and teach her methods of controlling magic. With enough examples, Sol managed to pick up the trick for creating basic arrays, though she lacked the ability to actually create them.

Many of the examples An taught Sol were alarm magics. Sol watched with her spiritual awareness every time An expelled magic from his body and formed runes in the air. The constructs remained existing even after An detached his spiritual awareness from them. The first time Sol saw the rune float in the air, she nearly jumped around in excitement.

It was one thing to see an example that dropped the temperature in a cabin, but it was a wholly different thing to see a stand alone rune that could be triggered. After begging An nonstop, Sol managed to obtain 20 different runes from him that had different effects. In her rare moments of downtime, she would study the runes with her spiritual awareness or sharpen the Knight’s swords.

Her constant efforts paid off and by the end of the 8 month period, Sol managed to enter the Body Refinement stage. There was a strange kinesthetic type sense that linked Sol to her soul. She was able to feel its location and to her joy, she obtained a degree of control over it. After her body became strong enough to act as a container for magic, An sat the girl down for a serious lecture.

“Now that you’ve entered the Body Refinement state, you can officially be considered an Assembler. This isn’t the end though. Body Refinement doesn’t have an end. As your soul becomes stronger, it will require a stronger body to house it.”

Sol clenched her fist repeatedly while immersed in her new strength. The moment she reached initial success in Body Refinement, Sol felt energy flood her system. The weakness that plagued her since she first collapsed was nowhere to be found. After hearing An’s lecture, Sol refocused her attention.

“How do I make my soul stronger? I’ve found ways to strengthen my spiritual awareness, but I’ve only just recently managed to even sense my soul.”

“Hahaha! Of course you couldn’t feel it up to this point, it was leaking magic non-stop. Your initial success essentially plugged the holes leaking magic from your soul. There’s a few ways to strengthen your soul, all of them are effective and share similar characteristics. Technically, you don’t need to do anything. Magic in the environment is naturally attracted to the soul. As long as you’re not leaking any, your soul will grow at a gradual pace.

The cognitive model you pick is a method to accelerate the process. The Unchained Queen Beast that I gave you for example specializes in magic control. From the moment you started meditating with it, you were unconsciously stimulating your soul and forced it to pull in more magic from the surroundings than its natural rate. That magic followed the cognitive model and altered your body.”

An observed the girl to make sure the information stuck with her before continuing. “Your soul has a maximum limit it can hold, just as your body does. Think of it as a balloon. Your soul can only inflate so much before it explodes. To prevent that, Assemblers will refine their soul each time it reaches that limit. The refining process tears apart the soul and reconstructs it according to the cognitive model to be denser than last time. The refined soul then starts over, however it now has the added benefit of a stronger attraction to magic. That's one of the many reasons an Assembler is broken into multiple stages. Each stage is a major leap in magic density, recovery time, and storage. As the soul grows, it refines the body and as the body is refined, it enables a more powerful soul. The link is circular.”

Sol turned her attention inwards and observed the nascent outline of her soul. It was nearly transparent and her spiritual awareness could barely touch it. Sol asked the next question that came to mind.

“The soul and body are interlinked and cyclical. I understand that. Then where does spiritual awareness come in? My spiritual awareness feels stronger than my soul.”

“It’s good you sensed that. Your soul is nothing more than a powersource in the end. Technically, it can be stripped out of you and used for other purposes. In fact, there are many cultivators in the middle and upper planes that consume the souls of others to grow stronger. The spiritual awareness is your will, your desire, your fears, and everything else that makes you, you. Your spiritual awareness is what drives the cognitive model.

It taps into the soul to fuel its goal. That’s why it’s so dangerous to probe the environment when there’s Assemblers nearby with a more powerful spiritual awareness. As you know, a spiritual awareness can affect the environment. It can also be used to assault another awareness. Doing so is the same as attacking the will of another creature. If the damage is large enough, it could instantly turn the creature retarded or braindead.”

Cold sweat broke out once Sol realized how dangerous her situation was back in the Imperial Capital. Although the situation was dangerous, Sol moved on and took it as a learning moment. Her mind shifted from the repercussions to utilization. She was already aware that a sufficiently strong awareness could affect the physical world even without magic.

Now that she has magic available, budding excitement filled her. There was an eager desire to experiment. An saw the girl become restless and sent her away. It was obvious she needed time to absorb the information and figure her thoughts out.

After the two split apart, An returned to his task of setting up alarms and traps throughout the Reviarra estate. He limited the inner territory to alarms while the exterior was laid with more deadly restrictions.

Another two months passed and Sol turned 10 years old. Her birthday party went unnoticed by the outside world and was celebrated only with the inner family and knights. As a present, An introduced Sol to the world of restrictions.

Sol’s eyes were fixed on the magic weaving itself in mid air. Its shape and form conformed to its usage. She was able to watch An catch a rabbit after the critter wandered into the restriction. As if it tripped a snare, the restriction acted like a spring and materialized tendrils that entangled the rabbit in place.

After repeated attempts, Sol managed to form the most basic restriction, however she felt drained from the attempts. Restrictions were clearly beyond her ability. Her spiritual awareness was ready, however it was lacking the fuel. Disappointed, Sol returned to cycling The Unchained Queen Beast while managing Iridescent.

Nearly a month later, Sol started receiving reports from her managers about strange activity around some of Iridescent’s remote branches. Small break ins, excessive loitering, unusual purchase amounts, and tails on a few of the employees were only the start of the reports.

Many of the reports were innocuous and the managers on site could mitigate them without worry, however Sol was concerned over the unusual purchases and tails. There are many reasons someone would want to purchase the entire stock of a product.

If the purchase is legitimate, then someone is likely trying to resell or store the product. Both harmless to Iridescent interests. If taken from a more shady perspective though, Sol suspected the buyout was intended to trigger a restock and the instigator could track the stock flow back to the warehouse or production site.

Sol immediately acted as if it were the worst case scenario and reorganized the trade route to leverage shops nearby as drop points. She ordered the manager of each store to pick the stock from those random locations and gave a stern warning to alternate between random pick up sites without any pattern.

Although it could buy time, Sol was unaware of the size behind the force potentially targeting Iridescent. If it were Prince Elric or Prince Roland, then her measures could only buy time at best. If it were an average competitor trying to gain the upper hand, then Sol expected her actions would be enough to deter them.

A week later, Sol received emergency notices about her shop managers being assaulted during their stock pickup. Her brows furrowed immediately. The areas her managers picked up stock from were all within the patrol routes of the local peacekeeping forces.

Unless someone had control over those forces, it was unlikely for so many assaults to succeed. In fact, as far as Sol could tell, none of the assaults failed. It was clear Iridescent was under attack and the reports were too slow for Sol to properly counteract anything.

The situation being as it were, Sol discussed with An before deciding to head out to the site. Luckily, most of the assaults were in the bordering territory. Sol collected Sir Leory and his team, bid her parents farewell, then set off for the neighboring territory Loughzar.