Stray Soul

Looking at the goblin in front of me, and the undead near me, for a moment I thought that maybe, I should really bounce off.

But the fact that the goblin in front of me was either as strong as or stronger than the body I was in made the possibility of me managing to escape slim, so I’d have to either injure him, or somehow scare him away to have the hope of escaping and... call me a pessimist, but I also don’t think that that’d happen as he was the one to step forwards first to attack me.

But if I can’t overpower him, or scare him away, what do I do?

Once again use my tried and trusted tactic of not caring about the injuries I sustain because I am practically immortal?

But I doubt that my immortality would last for long if I started treating sapient beings like how I treated animals, and it wouldn’t be weird for the goblins to have a magician or a wizard with them and kill me for good.

Hell, even the artefact that this goblin has stored away behind his armour might be able to kill me!

So, I can’t fight because my enemy is stronger than me, I can’t run away safely because neither can I injure nor scare my enemy away, and I can’t leverage my immortality because if I do, I won’t be immortal for a long time.

So... what do I do now?

As I continued to stare at the goblin in front of me, I saw that he seemed... relaxed? Did he really not see me as a threat big enough to be cautious of?

Or... or does his confidence come from something else?

Focusing on all of my eyes all over my body, I couldn’t see anything other than the undead surrounding me and the goblin in front of me, and that was a problem as there was a lot more goblins here just a few minutes ago, had—had they gone to call for reinforcements?!

I mean... surely not...right?

...No, I can’t say for sure why they are here for, or what they are planning on doing.

For all I know, they just came across me by accident, or were actively seeking me out.

If it’s the former, it wouldn’t be weird for there to be a main force or other task forces with them that they could go back to ask for help, hell, they might even be only scouts looking around this area!

And if it’s the ladder, there is also no guarantee that they are the only group hunting me town, the necromancer I talked about earlier might even be here!

Then I need to escape here, fast! But how do I even escape when I don’t have any way of fighting back...

...But it doesn’t matter if I can fight or not now, does it?

If they truly seek my death for... whatever reason, they will get it with enough time and forces, I just need to get out of this battle and then I can think of a way to deal with them later or make a proper escape plan, maybe I could even make the goblins and the elves fight?

But that’s a plan for later, now it’s the time to fight with this goblin, who is way, way stronger than me.

Not to forget the undead around me, who are way weaker than me, but are still a problem, but taking advantage of them shouldn’t be much of a problem, after all, I am the lord of undead in this part of the forest!

...or at least in this battle as there is a goblin necromancer somewhere in this forest, who is probably way, way more knowledgeable about souls and undead than me.

Either way, to take advantage of the undead here, I will need to at least touch them for a few moments, maybe a second for the stronger ones, but if I do that, the goblin will attack me and destroy a limb of mine, and if I guess his strength from how damaged my old body is... he should be able to destroy all of my limbs in 2 hits, and my torso in 5, assuming I defend my body parts with harden of course.

If not, he could destroy any limb in 1 attack, and my torso in 2 or 3 hits.

And if I take control of the undead, that will give me 12 more hit points in the shape of 12 more meat shields.

So, a total hp of... 29, or 30 if we round it up because I believe in the superiority of numbers that are divisible by 5.

And I am more than confident in being able to finish this battle with only being hit 15, or 20 times at most, but to first get my 12 meat shields... I gotta lose some hp first!

With points streaming to my feet, I sprinted towards the goblin in front of me with a burst of speed, to which he just responded with just repositioning himself and preparing his mace.

To which I responded with jumping and trying to body slam him as my torso was much stronger than my other parts and I could lose an hp or two if it meant I’d create the opportunity to get 12 more!

Seeing my totally reasonable attack, in my correct opinion, he dashed backwards, I then hit the ground, maybe shattering a bone due to my weight, and used the few seconds I had created to rush towards the undead and rip their souls apart!

So, I once again did the reasonable thing and head slammed one of them, using the brief moment when my head met its body to spirit away its soul and put in a miniscule part of mine, and then started attacking the other undead pushing them around and away from the middle of the battle field so I may use them later as meat shields while I was running away from the goblin.

But after I felled and quietly took control of the 3rd undead, I realized they weren’t fighting back... it was as if they were turned off, and the moment I tough that, they came back online, and even though each was strong, they weren’t strong enough to pose a big threat to me, but after the 7th was felled, the goblin returned and tried to break one of my legs, which I responded to with doing absolutely nothing other than hardening it, and continued on my slaughter of the undead.

Finishing the undead which were somehow less mindless than the usual, probably because the goblin had to control them or some other stupid bullshit, I was left with 12 hp scattered around the ground, and a leg left without scales, which was a win in my book!

Swiftly turning around, I started attacking him with my claws, swinging them as fast as I could, and trying to push him back, but he just blocked all of my attacks with his mace, seemingly with no trouble.

Which was, while annoying, fair, as my previous fights were with mere animals and not with an experienced warrior, so I didn’t have the chance to gain more experience.

But I didn’t let my inexperience bring me down, and starting put my full force into my attacks, trying to at least break his stance so that I’d be able to actually charge at him and leverage my larger body and weight.

Seeing that he wasn’t really stepping back, I tried to leverage my body by standing up on my hindlegs for a moment and falling on him as quickly as I could, which caused him to step back, and the moment he came near a lesser soul of mine, I charged at him, and as he was about to swing his mace towards my head, I used my lesser soul to attack him... but my lesser soul was taken out by a spear throw from the forest.

“Well... fuck.”

Quickly hardening my skull, I was semi-successful, but the hit from the goblin’s mace still destroyed my jaw and threw it away, but even though I was hit, I steered back to my course and continued to charge at him, albeit less effectively, but failed all the same.

And the goblin stood a few meters in front of me, still calm as ever, just standing. Waiting for me to do something.

At least I now knew that the other goblins weren’t gone to call reinforcements or whatever, but they also now knew that the undead they lost control over were now under my control, which was bad.

So, now I had lost 3 hp, and 11 of my remaining undead were compromised, so effectively 14 hp... that was not good.

“Status” I muttered, wanting to know how much more mana I had remaining.

Name: William Race: Stray Soul (Pale Lizard)

Level: 25 Exp: 30/90 Rank: H

Health Points: 0/553 Mana Points: 700/857

Strength: 0 (90)

Vitality: 0 (55)

Agility: 0 (77)

Intelligence: 38 (47)

Wisdom: 34 (30)

Charisma: 0 (40)

Free Stat Points: 28

Skills: Ethereal Body (S), Mana Sense (Z), Bind (Z), Soul Sense (H), Soul Manipulation (H), Mana Control (Z), Mana Strengthening (Z) +

Titles: Reincarnator (S), Otherworlder (A)

Quests: Meddling with the Unknown (S), What Lays Beyond? (C)

“...WHAT?!” I yelled out in my mind after seeing my free stat points, which was actually... kinda understandable seeing that I’ve killed a dozen undead and replaced them with miniscule parts of me, but it was still kind of crazy... not that those points would help me much now, maybe if I survive this battle.

But not now.

Seeing that I still had 700 mana, I started to think how I could win against this goblin and didn’t bother thinking of the others hiding in the trees or something as if I was able to defeat their leader, I’d doubt the others would make a move on me.

And I hoped I was right with that.

Ignoring my worries about the other goblins, I started thinking of a plan on how to defeat the goblin leader... but I couldn’t come up with one.

Like what I said, I wasn’t strong enough to defeat it, scary enough to scare it away, and not clever enough to outsmart it.

And especially not experienced enough to know how to overcome my weakness’, but there was still one thing I had, my body.

I had hoped to save this pale lizard’s body for later because its so strong, and looks nice, but as the things are going... if I don’t go all in, I won’t be going anywhere at all.

After a bit more planning on what to do and get out of here with... some of my body parts in place, I put 6 stats into wisdom, and the remaining 22 into intelligence, bringing my wisdom to 40 and intelligence to 60.

Mana Points: 702/1.070

Intelligence: 60 (47)

Wisdom: 40 (30)

And the moment I was done spending my points, I turned towards the goblin leader who didn’t have any of my lesser souls near him, but it would matter not as I could now go all out because no longer did I have to worry about a third party showing up and finishing me.

Gearing up for another charge, I started putting dozens of points into dash, intend on finishing this battle as fast as I could, collecting my lesser souls, and bouncing off of this forest once and for all.

Seeing that I was once again preparing for another charge, the goblin once again started preparing his mace, but he noticed too late as only a moment after he noticed me, I was already on him, dust and dirt going up in the air in my wake.

And as my claws were about to connect to him, his mace moved faster than it ever had in this fatter and shattered a few of my claws, but I was able to hit him with my other set of claws, but sadly they hit nothing but the metal on his armour.

*CLANK*

Though the plate was now mostly useless, the leather below it stood, and he was mostly unharmed, but I continued my reckless assault by swinging my head down, trying to bite him with the remaining half of my jaw, putting my whole weight behind my attack.

Not wanting to have my whole body crushing him, the goblin retreated, but I gave chase, not caring for the mana I was using, I dumbed dozens into my leg, keeping up my sprint and following closely behind him, and trying to hit him with my claws.

And after nearly half a minute of me keeping up my attack, I saw an opportunity to do some damage, and took it! And dashed forwards and forced the goblin to retreat to right, and the moment he did that a couple lesser souls got up and charged at him, and though spears were thrown at them, one missed.

And my lesser soul got close enough to the goblin to nearly hit it, but was stopped by the goblin, and taking the opportunity I created, I swinged around and brought the force of my tail upon him, and though he was able to negate most of the damage by defending himself with his mace, I was still able to throw him down to the ground, and I immediately rushed to him to incapacitate him.

But the moment I came close, the goblin yelled and dozens of spears started being thrown at me from the forest, wave after wave, the goblins apparently hadn’t ben just hiding and making wooden spears, though they were mostly ineffective against my scales, some hit my hind leg whose scales were broken by the goblin’s mace, and a few even managed to hit my eyes, and though I wanted to do nothing more than just rush towards the goblin leader, and beat the shit out of him, one of the spears thrown at my leg managed to get stuck in somewhere it shouldn’t have and locked my leg, realizing this too late I tumbled down and slid on the ground a few meters away from the goblin leader.

For a moment we stared at each other but both of us quickly got up.

I broke the spear stuck between my bones by sheer force, and he got up and gripped his mace, ready to strike me down and finish this battle.

The moment I got up, and started sprinting towards him, the goblin also started sprinting towards me, his mace steady and moving with purpose, seeing this I threw my body towards him, and reinforced my torso, hoping to crush him below my weight, or at least give my self enough time to strike back at him.

But the moment his mace met with my scales, I was thrown towards a tree and broke through it and rolled on the forest floor until I hit another tree far away!

The bastard must’ve used a skill to strengthen his attack!

Getting up, I felt my broken rib bones sticking to my flesh and scales coming off like tomato peels after it has been boiled, with stale blood pouring out of the holes made by the spikes on the mace.

4 hp down from the torso, 1 remaining. So, 7 down on total, counting the undead 19... yeah, way past my 15 points mark but, can I finish in 20?

Easily!

Pulling up my mana counter I once again looked at it.

Mana Points: 574/1.070

Still got some life in me, and that’s enough.

I then once again started running towards the goblin, and slowly put mana into my legs, drip feeding it one mana point at a time.

And after a few seconds clashed with the goblin who by now started to seem tired.

Not by much, he was still very lively, but the tiredness from my unending assault was starting to get to him and if I had another hour or 2, I’d be able to just tire him out!

Sadly, I had half an hour at max, and more realistically 10 more minutes of mana left in me.

As I continued to swipe my claws at him, and he continued to block or dodge out of the way, the sound of claw hitting metal filled the air.

But my claws just weren’t strong enough to do something.

Harden did nothing other than hardening things, making them tougher, but not sharper.

It helped with the durability of my claws, but they were still being chipped, slowly but surely.

But that wasn’t enough. I just couldn’t win this battle without some augmentation to my claws.

So, I started experimenting mid battle.

I remembered how sprint and dash worked, and made my arms move faster using mana.

And I could see the goblin notice the sudden increase in speed, and he worked harder to block my attacks and sometimes hit my claws back with his mace.

But that wasn’t enough, I was still going to lose.

Then I started experimenting with harden and remembered how mana acted in nature.

Harden worked with adding mana into any organic material, so imagine it like a coal becoming diamond, but temporarily.

The moment I stopped using mana, the carbon bonds making the diamond broke apart and became coal once again.

And mana acted just like any other matter in nature, and sometimes erratically.

It could be thought as like... dark matter, its real and causes things to happen to the world.

Add more dark matter, universe expands faster.

Add more mana, random shit happens.

But that randomness wasn’t absolute, after all here I was standing, a testament to the order in chaos mana brought.

And that chaotic nature of mana could be used to bend the world in different ways, but only if enough mana was used.

If enough mana wasn’t provided, nature would win out and mana would be just wasted, and if there were enough dark matter, the universe would just collapse in on of itself!

So, I couldn’t just turn my claws sharper, I just didn’t have the mana to affect nature in such a way. It just wasn’t meant to be.

But I didn’t necessarily need my claws to be sharper, more friction would work too!

Just like a saw, I could just add teeth to my claws and make them sharper. So, that’s what I did.

I started off with testing with harden, filling out gaps in my claws that weren’t there, and soon I had teeth on my claws that I could use as saws to cut through matter.

Though it wasn’t efficient, it was still a way to sharpen my claws.

Suddenly my claws started chipping away at the mace that the goblin was holding, sparks coming out of it, which the goblin immediately noticed and swung his mace towards me to force me to back off.

But sadly for it, I had already given up on this body and losing a few parts for victory was more than justified in my opinion.

Then I used my left arm as a sacrifice to his mace, and moved in with my right claw, tearing the mace away from his hands and leaving gashes along its arm.

*ARGH!*

He screamed, but I didn’t stop.

I couldn’t.

I teared apart his armour, leaving thin gashes across his body that slowly caused him to bleed.

And it was easy. Too easy even.

After his weapon was gone, he was weak.

And I moved my claws to his neck as he stared at me with not fear, but resolution.

If he died today or tomorrow it wouldn’t matter.

“What a strong soul...” I muttered, but sadly for him, I wasn’t planning on killing him.

My claws moved quickly and grabbed his medallion from his neck and brought it up to my reptilian face, opening it with another claw, I saw an absolute darkness pulsing and spreading, only to slowly disperse over the next few centimetres around.

*ding*

Inspect the artefact?

Y/N

What?

Inspect the artefact?

Y/N

Ummm... sure?

*ding*

Medallion Of The Dark Lord (H)

Description: A medallion made from a low-ranking mana stone using the holy mana of the Dark Lord by a priest of the Great One. This medallion allows its wearer to sense undead and plant beings that are not of the Dark Lord’s making.

Wow that’s... actually a lot of information that I can use to gleam insight about the goblins and their religious practices. System, are you okey? Did—did a stone fall on your head or something?

If I gave my soul, you wouldn’t even give me 1/1.000th of this information on a normal day, is there a special reason for this or...?

*ding*

The system provides information on divine artefacts to beings come into contact with, no matter the circumstances. You only have to be in physical contact with them.

Well, that’s... weirdly useful, and I will not question it anymore and look a gift horse in the mouth!

Closing the medallion, while feeling a really small amounts of fear of divine retribution, I looked at the goblin leader who was still alive and saw that he had a weird look I couldn’t quite decipher on his face.

Backing off from him, and yoinking his mace and medallion, I moved to my lesser souls and got my souls from each and every one of them, moved to my broken lower jaw and took it, and of course didn’t forget about the weird papers from my old body.

After I was done with everything, I saw that the goblin leader was still looking at me with a weird look, not knowing what to do, I just... waved at him and set off.

After all, leaving this forest would take some time, and I wanted to be out before the dark lord or whatever decided to send an inquisition after my ass.

Seeing the... abomination walking away, Gram was left confused.

The monster could’ve killed him, but it didn’t.

And it even waved at him!

A MONSTER! WAVING AT A PERSON!

“Leader! Are you all right?!” Yelled one of his men coming out of forest, and good thing they hadn’t tried to come out and save him or something else.

The monster had decided to spare his life, but he wasn’t sure if it would spare the lives of others, maybe it was satisfied with his prowess and that was why it spared him?

He did not know, but he was grateful nonetheless for his life.

“I am all right warrior, I won’t die from cuts this shallow.” he said and got up, the slashes at his body hurt, but he would live for another few days even if the cuts were left untreated.

Looking at his men and the destroyed battle ground, he swiftly pointed at 3 men saying,

“You three, gather the corpses of undead to be burned.” then he pointed at another 3,

“You three, go gather firewood.” he once again pointed at another 3,

“You three, start setting up camp and cooking dinner.” then he pointed at the last 3,

“You three, secure the perimeter, and make sure nothing enters, and if something does, call me. I might be injured, but I am not yet deadweight.”

After he was finished with his orders everyone saluted and got right to their jobs, after collecting their stone spears of course.

Watching them work, he once again remembered why he liked working with this team, they were just the best, and most professional!

No doubt that they would rise to F rank in a few years... if they lived that is.

Looking at where the abomination left towards, Gram thought,

“Maybe we won’t even be in danger if they are just letting us go alive...”

William's Current Status Screen:

He gained a new function for Mana Strengthening and increased its rank from Z to H.

He also increased the rank of his Mana Control to H, and Bind to H due to the amount of undead he had control over at the same time and being able to use his mana in a way he had never done before, netting him a total of 30 exp from the increase in skill ranks.

Name: William Race: Stray Soul (Pale Lizard)

Level: 25 Exp: 60/90 Rank: H

Health Points: 0/553 Mana Points: 242/1.070

Strength: 0 (90)

Vitality: 0 (55)

Agility: 0 (77)

Intelligence: 60 (47)

Wisdom: 40 (30)

Charisma: 0 (40)

Free Stat Points: 0

Skills: Ethereal Body (S), Mana Sense (Z), Bind (H), Soul Sense (H), Soul Manipulation (H), Mana Control (H), Mana Strengthening (H) + (Sprint, Dash, Harden, Haste)

Titles: Reincarnator (S), Otherworlder (A)

Quests: Meddling with the Unknown (S), What Lays Beyond? (C)

Skill Descriptions:

Description Ethereal Body (S): You are the very essence of life, a soul. And thanks to you being an ethereal being, no physical matter can interact or harm you, but you are extremely weak against any and all magical phenomena. And due to you not having a body, your mana is stored around your soul, and it protects your life force from being scattered by magical phenomena, be it natural or not.

Due to this skill being essential for the life of the being in possession of it, this skill will be constantly active unless the being in possession of it decides to de-activate it while not being under any effects that may alter their decision-making skills.

Description Mana Sense (Z): Allows the being in possession of it to sense mana.

Description Bind (H): Allows the being in possession of it to bind their soul to things that don’t possess a soul.

Description Soul Sense (H): Allows the being in possession of it to sense their soul, and the parts of the souls of other beings that they have some kind of contact with.

Description Soul Manipulation (H): Allows the being in possession of it to manipulate their, and other beings’ souls.

Description Mana Control (H): Allows the being in possession of it to control mana.

Description Mana Strengthening (H): Allows the being in possession of it to use mana to give a boost to themselves. Needs a developed mana cloud network in the area to be used.

Sprint: Allows the being in possession of it to increase their speed for a low amount for mana.

Dash: Allows the being in possession of it to increase their speed temporarily for large amounts of mana.

Harden: Allows the being in possession of it to harden parts of their body for mana.

Haste: Allows the being in possession of it to hasten their movements for mana.