Restart

Talini hurriedly undid the leather straps. Rayne climbed down from the Rune Altar, twisted his whole body a few times, and stretched his muscles.

After lying still for more than an hour, his body had become somewhat stiff.

The Soul Transformation Ritual had been easier than he had expected. The music player's effect in reducing pain was simply too good.

He had immersed himself in the singing and listened to more than a dozen songs in a row. Aside from the final ten minutes, which had been somewhat painful but still bearable, most of the earlier part had merely felt a little uncomfortable, nowhere near painful. The Mind Protection Scroll had been completely useless. Those fifty gold shields had essentially been wasted.

The entire process had been less torturous than yesterday's Soul Test.

If he had not known he was still undergoing the Soul Transformation Ritual, Rayne would have thought he was about to fall asleep.

Of course, to outsiders, this was a sign of extraordinarily strong willpower.

When Viola and Talini saw how relaxed Rayne looked, shaking his hands and feet without a single drop of sweat on him, their expressions immediately changed.

The two of them looked at Rayne as if he were a priceless treasure, practically itching to come over and touch him.

Rayne came back to himself. Their stares made his scalp prickle, and he could not help freezing as he asked, "What's wrong, ladies?"

"Rayne, you succeeded!"

Viola was rarely so flustered. Unable to hide the excitement in her lake-blue eyes, she exclaimed, "Perfect Soul Transformation, Goddess above! Rayne, your ritual actually achieved Perfect Soul Transformation!"

"Yes, it's practically a miracle!"

Talini was equally excited. Even now, she still could not believe that Rayne had truly made it through.

Rayne nodded and smiled. "I know. Thank you both for your help."

Viola continued marveling, then shook her head. "I didn't help much at all. This is your own talent. Goddess above, Perfect Soul Transformation..." Her words were filled with envy, and she was almost incoherent.

Rayne realized that he seemed to have underestimated how shocking Perfect Soul Transformation was to other people.

If word of this got out, it would likely bring him enormous trouble and might even endanger his life.

After thinking it over, he said seriously, "Ladies, I hope you can keep this a secret for me."

Viola immediately understood what Rayne meant. Her smile faded, and she said solemnly, "Please rest assured, Mr. Rayne. Once we leave this room, Talini and I will never mention anything about the Soul Transformation again. This is the responsibility of Violet House."

Talini nodded in agreement.

"Thank you." Rayne put on his coat and said, "I'm a little tired and need to rest for a while. You don't mind, do you?"

"Of course not. You should." Viola led Talini out of the room and closed the door.

The room had a sofa and tea prepared for resting after the Soul Transformation Ritual. Rayne went over and sat on the sofa, beginning to investigate the changes after his Soul Transformation.

The greatest change was that the phone had rebooted!

At the instant the ritual ended and his soul completed its transformation, something flashed before his eyes, and the phone interface that had always been there disappeared.

Before he could react, he saw the long-missed startup screen again.

This startup took longer than the one when he had first crossed over.

At that moment, Rayne had lost all the functions the Mutated Cellphone had provided him. Soul Eye, Voice of All Things, and even the gyroscope were all gone.

For half a month, he had used the Mutated Cellphone almost every moment, merging it with his very being. Now that he could not use those functions, he felt somewhat unaccustomed to it.

It was like having his sight and hearing taken away and regressing to a weakened state. An inexplicable trace of panic rose in his heart.

Fortunately, this should only be temporary.

Rayne consoled himself, silently noting this point. It was very likely that the phone would have to reboot again when he underwent another Soul Transformation Ritual in the future. That would be when he was at his weakest.

After waiting patiently for ten minutes, the familiar phone interface finally returned and unfolded before his eyes.

Rayne immediately noticed the first change: the battery had dropped from full to ten percent, leaving only ten bars, almost the same as when he had first crossed over.

However, there was a difference between the two. He did not feel physically weak. In fact, he felt even stronger and healthier than before.

He casually activated one of the functions and used up some battery while investigating. He soon understood.

"It should be that after the soul transformed, the battery capacity increased as well."

"These ten bars are equivalent to a full charge before the reboot. In other words, the battery capacity increased tenfold. The battery is the strength of my soul, so this ritual increased my soul strength tenfold as well!"

Rayne was overjoyed. Perfect Soul Transformation truly was formidable.

Before the ritual, his soul strength had already been very high, surpassing that of most ordinary people, though it was still inferior to that of Transcendents.

But after his soul transformed and surged tenfold, it far surpassed that of a Rank 1 Transcendent!

Rayne often secretly observed Transcendents, understanding their soul strength even better than they understood it themselves. By his rough estimate, his current Soul Power was already comparable to that of a Rank 2 Transcendent. Once he cultivated a Meditation Method, the gap would widen even further.

Moreover, the benefits of Perfect Soul Transformation went far beyond this.

First, it gave him tremendous potential and a higher Soul Power limit. Second, his meditation efficiency was also higher than other people's. Given the same meditation time, Rayne could obtain more Soul Power and cast more spells. Third, his Soul Power recovered faster as well.

In every kind of cultivation related to Soul Power, Perfect Soul Transformation gave Rayne all sorts of advantages over Transcendents of the same rank.

But to Rayne, the most important point was that Perfect Soul Transformation had also increased his Magic Soul Fusion Degree!

He had already decided to become a Combat Wizard, and fusion degree was the most crucial factor determining a Combat Wizard's strength.

Every increase in Magic Soul Fusion Degree reduced conflict and allowed him to obtain more elements. After accumulating this several times, the results could be astonishing.

With the addition of Soul Eye and the high-quality World Tree Seed in Viola's possession, his fusion degree absolutely would not be low.

All of a sudden, Rayne was filled with confidence in his future!

Next came the phone's other changes. All its functions were still there, but several seemed to have been enhanced.

Voice of All Things could hear things from farther away. The room was soundproof, yet it could not hinder the sound waves entering his ears from outside in the slightest. The perception brought by the gyroscope had also become more precise, as if every muscle in his body could be controlled independently to exert force.

Most importantly, Soul Eye seemed to have changed as well. Its visual range had been magnified and enhanced, but Rayne vaguely felt that it had other functions too. He simply could not see them yet.

His attention was drawn to a newly appearing icon.

The first icon depicted several books stacked together. Rayne was very familiar with it. It was a mobile app developed by the library where he had worked in his previous life, an online library—in other words, a reader.

He opened the icon expectantly. Sure enough, this was his personal library.

There were already many books inside, all available for reading.

Rayne began flipping through them, then suddenly slapped his thigh and cried out inwardly at the waste.

All these books were ones he had read and downloaded for offline use, which was why they had been brought to Aerenus. He had only changed phones not long before, so there were not many books in the reader. Some were books he had read, while others were downloaded for testing as an administrator. Altogether, there were only a little over five hundred.

These five hundred or so books covered every imaginable subject. There were reference books, history books, dictionaries, novels, personal essays, and memoirs, involving many different fields. Only a small portion of them might be useful.

Rayne even found a copy of Five Years of College Entrance Exams and Three Years of Mock Tests, leaving him thoroughly speechless.

"Why couldn't it have given me a copy of Postpartum Care for Sows?"

The library where he worked had several million books in its collection, more than ninety percent of which could be read online. If he had known this would happen, he would have desperately downloaded books for offline use. There was no need to move the entire library over; just bringing a few tens of thousands would have been enough.

After browsing the book catalog, Rayne could only shake his head regretfully.

He continued examining the second icon. It was a black, vortex-like pattern with a deep center that seemed capable of swallowing things.

"This icon is unfamiliar."

Rayne could not remember which mobile app it was connected to at all. He tried opening it, and a suction force immediately arose in his mind. An inexplicable feeling of hunger also appeared in his heart.

This hunger was not for ordinary food, but for some kind of object.

He sensed two things inside his coat. They were two Soul Stones containing the Demon Souls of Gold-Eating Ants. When he took them out and held them in his hand, the feeling grew even stronger.

Rayne hurriedly exited the status, immediately understanding that once this icon was opened, it could fuse Demon Souls.

This was an ability possessed by every human who completed Soul Transformation.

"So the new abilities I gain—even functions the phone didn't originally have—will also appear as icons." Rayne suddenly understood.

But he could not fuse with the Demon Souls yet. He first had to obtain the World Tree Seed.

Rayne was not tired in the first place. Resting had merely been an excuse. Now that he had more or less finished exploring the phone's functions, he rose and left the room.

A female servant was waiting outside the door. When she saw Rayne come out, she immediately said, "Mr. Rayne, Lady Viola asked me to tell you that she's waiting for you upstairs. You may go up whenever you're ready."

Rayne nodded and followed the servant onto the lift to the fifth floor, then pushed open the door.

There was only Viola in the room. She was sitting on the sofa, apparently waiting for Rayne. The moment she saw him enter, she immediately rose and said, "Mr. Rayne, please, have a seat."

"Lady Viola." Rayne sat down opposite her.

"Rayne, just call me Viola." Smiling as she spoke, Viola personally brewed a pot of tea for Rayne, its fragrance drifting from the cup.

"All right, Viola." Rayne agreed readily and smiled. "You don't have to keep calling me Mr. Rayne, either."

He could sense that Viola's attitude toward him had changed considerably compared with yesterday.

That was not to say that Viola's attitude had been poor yesterday. As a Myriad Spirits Wizard, she inevitably carried a trace of pride when dealing with ordinary people. Even though she had been very polite, it had been the courtesy one showed a customer, with a certain sense of distance.

But after witnessing the Soul Transformation Ritual today, that sense of distance had vanished completely.

Viola not only treated him as an equal Transcendent, but seemed to faintly place him in an even higher position. Every gesture and movement drew them closer, as intimate as friends.

"It seems Perfect Soul Transformation really did shock her."

Rayne smiled smugly to himself and habitually activated Soul Eye, immediately discovering that Viola's soul seemed different from before.