Chapter 117 – Repair

When Dream looked at his soul, he saw it in two parts. 

The first part was the nucleus. This is where 'he' was located. This nucleus was a big jumble of interconnected signatures and strings, and it made him who he was. It contained all his memories, experiences, and it's where he processed things. At least this was his speculation. He couldn't be absolutely sure.

The second part was everything outside of this nucleus, and this was where the skills were located. All the skills were their own signatures and created a large barrier outside the nucleus like a shell. It resembled a clam and its pearl. This was where half the problem was.

Since Sophia had merged with a part of his soul, this meant that her signature not only occupied a part of the shell but also the nucleus. And currently, not only was her skill signature weakened and damaged, but the connection between her shell piece and the nucleus was cut.

Once Dream identified this, he didn't ask any questions and started thinking about how to solve the issue. 

Though it was as simple as reconnecting the signature, he didn't really know how to go about that. The signatures were incredibly complex and each string held tons of data. If he made a mistake and either broke something or tried to connect the wrong string, it could result in a defective skill and would ruin Sophia. But not all was lost, and as Dream studied the broken strings, he noticed something.

There were many sets of disconnected and broken strings strewn throughout both Sophia's nucleus portion and shell portion. But all of them, on their ends, were emitting some kind of force. And this force was directed towards the opposing portions. It was like they were trying to connect to each other, they just lacked the power to do so.

So Dream targeted these strings first. He directed his influence over to Sophia's nucleus portion and began sifting through the strings.

'*grunt*'

Dream let out a painful grunt. Moving around his influence and tampering with the strings was not pleasant. Though compared to the pain he went through during recovery, this much couldn't do anything to him. He continued moving through the strings and came up on two that were broken but relatively close. They were emitting force directed towards the other.

'These must be a connection. Let's bring them together.'

Saying so, Dream pulled the strings together while ignoring the strain on his soul. Soon, they came together and like magnets, snapping in place.

When they were reconnected, Dream could sense a little more power streaming through than before. Even he felt a little better, and he knew that it succeeded. 

'Alright. Next.'

Not wanting to wait, he moved on and looked for another pair of strings. He soon found another broken connection and pulled them together, letting them snap into place.

This happened a few dozen more times before Dream wasn't able to find any more broken connections. Well, he did find some broken connections, but their connections weren't towards each other. This could only mean that their connections went to the shell.

'*sigh* Alright. Let's find those connections.'

Dream moved his influence and moved out towards the shell. This required a lot of effort as he had to reach away from his nucleus. The farther he got, the more pain there was. So when he finally arrived at the broken and distorted shell, he felt like his heart was being carved out.

'Ugh. Damn. Come on.'

He forced himself to disregard the pain and moved through the much more sizeable shell. This portion was at least 3 times bigger than the nucleus portion, and it was also much more damaged. That along with the pain would make for a very strenuous repair.

Since Dream couldn't tell where the connections to the nucleus were, he opted to just repair the shell first. So he moved through the strings and found their pairs or thirds or fourths and put them together.

Some strings were broken into ten pieces, some were only broken into two. It varied and Dream always felt unpleasant when he saw a string broken into several pieces. They were just floating there with severely faint attraction forces. It hurt him to see that since it was all Sophia, so he continued on.

But one problem became apparent as he reconnected strings. Some strings were so jumbled and so weak that he sometimes couldn't tell if one went to the other. But he had to connect them to something, and when he went to go connect one particular piece to another, he was able to tell that something was wrong.

'That feels wrong.'

Dream could feel how those connections weren't supposed to go together. Data couldn't stream properly and he didn't get the same refreshing feeling as with the others. So knowing his mistake, he went to go break the connection. Though this brought along its own consequence.

*snap*

'ARGHHH!!!'

When the string was broken, Dream felt another world of pain. He yelled out to nobody for a while before everything went back to its normal pain level.

'...Huuhhh...Oww...'

Dream moaned in agony as he carefully made a different connection. This time it worked and the small refreshing feeling alleviated a tiny bit of hurt.

So he moved on to the next string and made a connection, but this one was incorrect as well.

'Shit! Fine! Just break it!'

*Snap*

'OWWW!!!'

Making another mistake, Dream was given another pain wave. When it was over, he gritted his teeth and kept moving.

Although this scene repeated itself several dozen more times, he was able to make lots of progress and made several hundred connections. Compared to before, the shell looked more like a smooth highway instead of a shattered circuit board.

But this came at a price. If Dream still had a bit energy before, now he didn't. He felt extremely weak and the pain only worsened it. He felt like he could vomit, but there was obviously nowhere to release that horrible feeling. 

But despite this, he kept pushing through. This was for Sophia, and the shell was almost put back together.

Dream came to the last connection. And using his last bits of fuel, forced the connections together in a jerk.

When he did, the entire shell seemed to light up. Power began gathering within and strengthened the highway greatly. 

But even after that, Dream couldn't sense Sophia. And since he no longer had the energy to keep himself out by the shells, he was forced back into his nucleus where he fell unconscious once more.

..........

.......

After recovering a certain amount, Dream woke back up in the same void as before. He felt much better, so he immediately went back and assessed what needed to be done to fix Sophia.

Though it didn't take him long to figure it out. As he was fixing the shell, there were indeed some open ends to the strings. And these open ends were the same amount as the open ends on Sophia's nucleus portion. This meant he needed to connect the ends, bridging the gap between the shell and nucleus.

So Dream moved his influence over to Sophia's nucleus portion and grabbed a string. He knew he wouldn't be able to do them all at once so he chose one and pulled the string over to the shell.

*Grunt*

Dream let out another pained noise as he pulled the string. Like before, he felt more burning the more he traveled outside the nucleus. And on top of that, pulling the string caused it as well. 

But he had the energy, so he forced himself out and made his way over. But as he suddenly traveled halfway across the gap, the pain increased exponentially.

'AHHH!!! SHIT!'

Feeling that literal soul-tearing sensation, Dream stopped himself and went back. The pain died down when he did.

'Huuuu...Damn! There's no way I'm forcing myself over there.'

Dream shivered as the pain died down to its normal level. He almost wanted to cry after that. It was on a whole other level, and something like that was telling him that he shouldn't do what he did.

So he thought of another way. A less painful way. He looked across the gap to the other strings he needed to connect to. 

'I need to pull them over here. But I can't reach it... Or can I?'

Dream looked across and began extending himself. It wasn't exactly like reaching out his arm, but that's how he thought of it. He reached out as far as he could before he couldn't anymore. At least, as far as he could without feeling any discomfort.

'If I go farther than this, it's gonna hurt. But probably not as much as pulling this string over there. I guess that's my only option. But then I gotta find the corresponding string... *sigh* This is gonna suck.'

Dream stopped thinking about it. If he began overthinking, he wouldn't get it done. So he just looked towards his goal and began reaching farther than his limit.

'Haahhh...Arghhh....'

Dream took deep breaths as he extended out his influence. His reach gradually lengthened and crossed the gap. But as it lengthened, the stress kept piling on, as if it weren't already enough.

He was receiving pressure from pulling a string, moving away from the nucleus, and now reaching out. At a certain point, he couldn't help but yell out in frustration, wondering why everything was so damn painful.

But he eventually was able to reach across and grab a string. He quickly pulled the string over, and connected it to the string from the nucleus.

'...Shit! No match!'

As Dream felt the incompatible connection, he suddenly felt a wave of anger overtake him. And without thinking, he just cut the connection.

*Snap*

And a blinding wave of pain hit him.

'...'

He couldn't even yell and just took it. The stimulation seemed to overload his soul and for a small period of time, he couldn't even think properly. But as he was about to lose himself, an external force came in and stabilized his mind, returning him to his normal state.

'...What the hell was that?'

Dream, who had thought he was going to die, suddenly felt very good. The pain from before seemed like only a memory, unlike the traumatizing experience that he knew it just was.

'...Whatever. Let's continue.'

Happy about the unexpected rejuvenation, Dream returned to connecting strings. But this time, instead of randomly hoping for the best, he pulled over every string from the nucleus and every string from the shell. 

The amount of effort this took was many times greater, as was the stress caused by it. But he would only have to do this once. And so after some screaming and pulling, he brought the bundles of connections over to each other.

'Alright! You go here! And you go here!'

Sensing the forces being exchanged by the strings, he was able to identify which strings connected to each other. And with each proper connection that he made, he felt a wave of information and refreshment hit him.

'Sophia!'

[Dream! I...]

'Not yet. I'm not done yet!'

Dream didn't get excited. He was running out of energy and he still needed to make more connections.

So he kept sifting through the bundles and sensing their forces. Sophia also helped as best she could and helped sort through which connection was which.

Soon, with one last cry, Dream slammed together the final connection.

'Done!'

*Woosh*

With that, the entire signature that was Sophia began running at full functionality. The information exchange going between them was immense as Sophia pulled his most recent memories and assessed the situation.

..........

[I...I'm so sorry...]

As Sophia went through his memories, a wave of sorrow hit her. On the contrary though, as Dream went through her memories, he became angry.

'You...You were really going to destroy yourself?'

The information Dream received was of the final moments before the blackout. Sophia had gone through an absurd amount of time and processing as she devised ways to protect Dream's soul against the crushing wave of mana from that class 4.

Although externally Dream's body was destroyed, something like that was easily fixable as it was still just material. But what they didn't account for nor know about was the mana attack that came with the blow he received. This mana attack was going to wipe out his soul, if not for the measures Sophia enacted.

Using every ounce of mana in his pool, or soul, she combatted the invading mana in a very intricate way. She also used the skills themselves as shields to defend against anything that got through. But even after throwing the magic skills at the attack, it still wasn't enough and she had to send her own skill forward. 

But even this was barely enough and while Dream's nucleus was severely damaged, it wasn't enough to prevent recovery. So over time, his soul regained power and instinctually devoted everything to repair itself. It was only then that he regained consciousness and was able to direct power towards repairing his broken skills, as he did.

While he understood the situation and why she did it, he still couldn't help but feel both angry and guilty. 

'I can't lose you too...'

[Was I supposed to let you die? Because then there would be nothing of either of us.]

'...'

[I can't lose you either. But everything is fine now. Let's not worry about what happened. We still have each other, and it's all thanks to you.]

'Both of us... And it's hard to consider things fine when my skills are still a mess.'

Dream accepted how things went and moved on, not blaming either of them. The bigger issue at hand was the fact that his two other skills were in similar shape to how Sophia's was. He looked over at the jumbled and indecipherable mess of strings.

[That won't be a problem to fix. Just leave it to me.]

Saying so, Sophia took over and moved to the other skills, activating her Emulation sub-skill specifically designed for this.

Her influence moved through the dense jungle of strings surrounding his nucleus and began sorting through the strings. Connections were quickly made through many different areas and it was immediately clear how much better she was at this than he was.

Dream could feel every repair being made and it brought him a steady wave of clarity. With those skills in disarray, he was also unable to use them. And while his understanding of the concepts of magic and material manipulation were there, he was no longer able to employ the practical skill. If he were to try and use the skills right now, they would be ineffective and he would look like a child.

So as she repaired the skills, not only was he regaining the ability, but his power increased back to its normal levels. Each skill signature gave him power, and with their loss came the loss of his mana pool and soul's influence. This was why he had such a hard time repairing and crossing the gap between the shell and nucleus. 

After an unknown amount of time, Sophia finished putting together the last string. When they overlooked the signatures encompassing his nucleus, it looked messy but brilliant. They created a bright and powerful barrier around his nucleus, though he debated how powerful it really was since a single blow from a class 4 nearly obliterated everything.

'Finally. Everything's back the way it should.'