I am depressed. I don’t know how else to put it. While I’m happy that the book was purchased, I’m still depressed.

  Sure we got the book, but it was only one book for the entire family, so we would have to take turns on getting a hold on it ourselves. But that wasn’t the cause of my depression. Instead, it was the first thing I learned about the book when it was purchased.

  Since Grandpa was the one to make the purchase, he obviously was the first one to get a chance to read, and he didn’t make it past the first page before another meeting was called because he had important information for us.

  It was quite literally one of the first things in the book.

  ‘Note: Traits cannot be fused unless they are fully integrated. Attempting to fuse Traits while unintegrated can result in loss of Traits, critical injuries, or even loss of life. Again, Traits cannot be fused without first being properly integrated.’

  That was the note on top of the book and the source of my depression. And not just me, everyone who was in the theater at the time just sunk into their seats and I just stared at Grandpa blankly.

  I mean how could I not be depressed? The entire family painstakingly worked to gather 300 God Coins only to be told we needed to go another 200 plus because we can’t make use of this book until our Traits were properly integrated.

  Sigh

  Now while the situation wasn’t good, I suppose it’s not entirely a waste since we would eventually need this book anyway. All it would going forward was that we would have to take our time in gathering the necessary Gold Coins once more to buy what we needed to buy.

  In the meantime we will simply ensure we have shored up our knowledge on how to fuse our Traits so that when we finally do get to integrate our Traits, we’ll all be ready.

  It doesn’t make me feel any less depressed about the fact we that we couldn’t use the book right away but that’s life.

  Anyway…the book eventually made its way into my hands after a couple of days passed. It was a proper book, containing roughly 400 pages and being separated into 6 different sections.

  Section one was on the ‘Nature of Traits’, section two, ‘The Law of Three’, second three, ‘Principles of Mana Manipulation’, section four, ‘The Process of Fusion’, section five, ‘Failures and Stabilization’, and finally Section six, ‘Closing Notes and Observations’.

  It kind of reminded me of a textbook in high school, but obviously this was far more interesting of a read.

  The first section spoke about a few different things, but it could all roughly be summarized by explaining what a Trait was and how each Trait had its own distinct mana anchor. This anchor is what allows the user to draw upon something that would be further elaborated on later in the book.

  Another point to section one was the fact that when it came to fusing Traits, there was no such thing as compatibility. All three Traits can be fused together which is good thing. If we had to worry about which Traits were actually compatible with one another after already choosing our Traits then we might’ve shit out of luck.

  Thankfully that wasn’t the case.

  From there section one continued to explain that the resulting strength and power of the Gene born of the fusion is mostly dependent on the stability of the constructed connection of the Gene. It wasn’t necessarily what the Traits themselves were but the actual fusing process.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Of course if I had three Unbound Traits then the Gene would likely be Unbound as well, but the idea was that there were a few things to consider when it came to the resulting Gene and how ‘strong’ it was.

  Now section two was really interesting. The Law of Three. It talked about the Base, the Bridge, and the Binder.

  The three facets of the fusing process.

  It was these three things that fusing Traits into Genes really boiled down to. One Trait would serve as the base, another as the bridge and finally one would take the place of the binder. All three was necessary and Traits couldn’t be formed without all three of them being present. This of course answered my question about how many Traits could, should and or would be fused together.

  Now regarding the base, bridge and binder, there wasn’t any particular rule as to which one had to be assigned where. We had full creative freedom to do what we wanted to do, and of course this decision will therefore influence the Gene that was constructed. Every action had a consequence and this would be no different.

  It’s an important decision because the base is what would make up the core of the Gene. It is not all that the Gene will be, but it is what will be the core of the construct that is to become the Gene. The bridge, on the other hand, is what determines how the base and binder will influence one another during the construction.

  While the binder is what will lock the entire construct into place, and thus into existence, which will therefore create the Gene.

  Next came the Principles of Mana Manipulation, which was really interesting to say the least. As mentioned in section one, each Trait had an anchor or better yet an anchor point. This section explains the process of pulling and I mean literally pulling on that anchor point to draw the thread of mana that made up the Trait outside the body.

  Like it would be entirely visible to the naked eye once it was drawn outside of the body successfully. All three threads for all three Traits would be present outside of the body and this is where the different threads would then get assigned to the base, bridge or binder roles respectively.

  Well you’d probably want to make that decision before hand, but yeah. It also reinforced the idea that there is no such thing as compatibility for the fusion process. Any three Traits will always result in a Gene when successfully fused.

  It is through mana manipulation, control, will power, and a calm mind that determines the success and result of a Gene.

  Now actually fusing the Traits together was the focus of section four, and this only happens after the threads of all three Traits have been pulled from the body and it is time to weave them together. Something the user will have to manually do.

  Thankfully, this process doesn’t include actually brute forcing them to join as one and become a Gene. All the user has to do is gently coerce the threads to get close enough together to encourage resonance between each Trait.

  The Traits themselves want to merge, but only after a certain point and it cannot be forced lest the user risk injury.

  Anyway, the base Trait will serve as the core, the bridge Trait must be added next and when that construct is stable, the binder Trait will be added to bring it all together and create that resonance.

  Once that is completed, the Traits will carefully continue to merge while the user ensures they maintain the construct properly and eventually if successful, a Gene will be created. This is a process named in the book as the Tri-Anchor Convergence.

  The section talked about a lot more things regarding that, but that was the gist of it. Of course I’ll make sure to commit even the most seemingly irrelevant tidbits of information to memory by time I was ready to begin this process.

  One that I’m reminded of the dangers of in section five. A section that basically talked about many of the different signs of a potential failure to be on the lookout for and what to do in case that is spotted. Though for the vast majority of them, it basically said to release the hold on the anchor points and all everything to dissipate.

  It’s not recommended to force the fusion due to all the risks that carried. Loss of Traits, critical injury, or worse, death.

  This book made sure that whoever read it, would without a doubt understand the risks at play here.

  Finally was section six, and it really was just a section with powerful sounding quotes.

  Things like ‘The strength of a Gene reflects not the strength of its parts, but the steadiness of the hand that joined them.’

  There were some really bangers in there, but overall the section didn’t really provide any helpful information.

  All in all, it was a good read, and I’ll be sure to read it multiple times before it is time for the fusion.