First things first is the anchor points. So this part was a little tricky. It wasn’t like there was something easily grasped to describe as the anchor point. I couldn’t see my Traits the way I could see my hands and feet. I know they were there, and I could feel some differences in my body that weren’t there before.

  The key here was the mana. That was how I had to sense the Traits, obviously. A part of that was knowing where to look. Part of it was obviously in or around my heart, so I closed my eyes and focused everything I had mentally on my heart, not trying to sense the organ itself, but the concentration of mana lingering in and around it.

  It took a few moments, well maybe more than a few moments and likely a couple minutes, but I could feel it. One blob of powerful mana that pulsed with every beat of my heart. Slowly but surely, I painted a clear picture of it in my mind, sensing the mana, where it came from, where it went, and all of that. Almost like sensing blood being pumped through various veins from my heart.

  Eventually, I felt like I had a good picture of it in my mind, and the Heart of Currents was quite literally in my heart, but intertwined with it in a way, though not quite a new heart, just an improved one.

  Focusing on the area where the mana concentrated the most, I pulled at it. It was a weird feeling because I was usually pulling something and using my hands to grab hold of it and pull, like a door or anything else for that matter.

  But this time I was grabbing it mentally, literally focusing on the mana itself and with my own control over said mana, pulling at it. At first, there was a bit of resistance, and I thought for sure I was doing something wrong, so I relaxed. Not knowing what else to do, I tried it again, and this time when the resistance came, I decided to pull a little bit more.

  The only reason I did so, apart from not knowing what else to do, was the fact that I felt no pain. I could feel a strain, like someone was pulling on my finger, but it didn’t hurt. That little extra push I gave it, or pull I should say, seemed to work.

  I could quite literally feel the mana forming that line to my chest before actually exiting. It felt weird, like very weird, like someone stuck their hand into my body and then pulled something out.

  It did not feel normal, but I focused and kept my mind from straining because this was a delicate process, and I just kept pulling and pulling and pulling until there was nothing else to pull.

  When I opened my eyes, what I saw was a pulsing ball of blue. Not like sky blue, but it felt like I was staring at the deep ocean, like I could see waves and the receding of the tide, all of it. It felt odd, but it was beautiful to look at. I took a deep breath, shifted my gaze from the ball of deep ocean blue, and once again focused on my insides. That was the base now for the bridge.

  The Soaked Pulse Membrane was a bit different. It was quite literally spread all over my body, and I remembered getting it all the way back at Level 25 and how powerful I felt at that time.

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  But where was the concentration of mana? I searched my body, but there was nothing. Even now that I think about it, the same was true for my frame. There was nothing. I kept my mind calm because I couldn’t lose focus here, since I had already succesfully pulled on one anchor.

  So I thought about it. My membrane, my membrane, isn’t it kind of like my nervous system? I focused my attention on my brain. I didn’t know much about biology, or was it anatomy? This wasn’t the time to think about that, so I reined my mind back in and focused on my brain.

  And there it was.

  It wasn’t the same level of concentration of mana like my heart was, but it was more like a knot of threads that flowed down into the rest of my body. Feeling confident I had found what I was looking for, I pulled on it just like I did with the heart, and before long another Trait was floating in front of me. It resembled the first one a lot, but I could have sworn I could see threads in it.

  Not wanting to waste time trying to figure that out, I focused once again.

  The final binder would be the Crushing Depth Frame, and after some thought and a bit of searching, I found it nestled in the middle of my spine. Much like the other two, I pulled and brought it out, and now all three Traits were laid bare before me.

  Phew.

  Time for the home stretch.

  Knowing I wanted the Heart of Currents as the base, I left it where it was and instead pulled on the Soaked Pulse Membrane and brought it on top of the Heart of Currents and it took a lot of concentration so much so that I was sure I was sweating as if I’ve been running for more miles by now.

  Thankfully as the book said, the Traits wanted to fuse so after dealing with the resistance of pulling them together, the membrane clung to the Heart and stayed there. A bright light slowly growing brighter as the seconds passed.

  I couldn’t completely take my focus of both Traits, but I only needed minimal concentration to keep them together. Instead I shifted majority of my focus to pulling the Crushing Depth Frame over and starting the convergence thing.

  The best way to describe what I was doing was like balancing something in my left hand, while pulling on something heavy in my right hand with the goal of adding it to the left and then balancing all of them together…but with my mind only.

  It took some time but I managed to do it. Sweat now pooling at the area where I’m sitting. But I did it.

  The Traits converged upon one another and eventually I no longer had to do anything as the light now grew so bright I couldn’t see what was happening at all. A few more minutes passed as the light became the center of the room and then…

  Ding!

  Traits have successfully fused into a Gene!

  Abyssium

  Your mana will naturally gain the weight of the deep Abyss of the Ocean. It is no longer the same mana shared by others around you, but instead something truly born of the deepest depths. To become the Abyss…is to Crush those who swim too close.

  I barely had time to gawk at the description that pooped up in front of me before I literally felt something…heavy, slam into the center of my chest and I was almost knocked completely over.

  It was like someone threw a 5lb medicine ball at me, but instead of falling to the ground after hitting me or having all of its momentum push me backwards, it simply vanished within my chest and it was almost like I could quite clearly feel like it was sinking into the depth of my very being.

  Where the Traits connected and rooted to my various body parts they aligned with…the Gene was rooting itself to my…my soul.

  The answer didn’t necessarily come from a deep place of thought but I was willing to bet that I was right. The concept of a soul was an elusive one, but that is only place I could descibe the location of the Gene.

  Holy shit man.