Stray Soul

Inching closer to the Centurian Turtle’s corpse, I touched it with a claw in anticipation of what kind of stat’s it’d have, and as my soul flooded into it, I wasn’t disappointed.

Name: None Race: Lesser Soul (Centurian Turtle)

Level: 1 Exp: 0/270 Rank: E

Health Points: 0/2.704 Mana Points: 734/1.845

Strength: 254

Vitality: 270

Agility: 168

Intelligence: 184

Wisdom: 163

Charisma: 161

Free Stat Points: 0

Skills: Ethereal Body (S), Earth Attunement (D) +

Titles: Lesser Self (A)

“...Ohoho~, god, if I could, I’d be orgasming right now! Look at those stats!” I said in glee after I looked at the stats, but I must have accidently let it slip through our connection because Rifu-san then asked me a question.

“Hm? What does sexual pleasure have to do with getting a new body?” She asked.

“Ah, it doesn’t have anything to do with pleasure, I used it to, you know, express my immense satisfaction/happiness in the face of my current situation.”

“Makes sense.” She then replied, and stayed quiet while I was going through my new skill, Earth Attunement.

*ding*

Description Earth Attunement (D): Allows the being in possession of it to use earth magic like their second nature.

Then I pressed onto the + sign and expanded it to see the functions or sub-skills the racial skill had.

*ding*

Earth Manipulation: Passively manipulates the earth around the being in possession of it. Can be also actively used.

Stone Skin: Passively makes the skin of the being in possession of it hard as stone or harder if more mana is actively spent.

Enrich: Passively enriches the earth around the being in possession of it with inorganic nutrients taken from the stone below them and speeds up plant growth. Can be used actively if a sufficiently large piece of inorganic nutrients is present

“Oho? I’d have expected Earth Manipulation and Stone Skin from the things I’ve seen... but Enrich? That’s an interesting one... though it explains how the grass had regrown over the turtle when I returned...” I muttered to myself, and willingly transmitted it through our connection to Rifu-san, but she just listened instead of responding.

Hmm... I wonder how much mana, if any at all, will I need to use to use these skills?

The last time I used a racial skill was with shadow melt, and it basically nuked my mana reserves... so maybe turn off the skills if possible?

Well, after I test a bit with them of course.

Then I quickly notified Rifu-san that I’d be doing a bit of testing with my new body, and quickly got it up and made it burrow to the ground while watching my and its mana pools and... something happened.

I could see little bits and pieces of dirt start to cover the turtle, but nothing big, and they seemingly coalesced onto the turtle without any mana spending on mine or its part.

Then I tried to pull the earth around the turtle onto it to completely burrow it in dirt, and only then did problems start to occur.

And with problems I mean my lesser soul losing more than 100 mana in the span of a second, which made me immediately stop manipulating the earth, and before you ask it, no, it was not even remotely worth it as, while the edges of turtle’s shell was fully covered in dirt, I doubted that I could make stone pillars or earthen walls using this racial skill.

I’d have to either find a way to attune my soul to the racial skill of other creatures or just learn earth magic myself and... imma be honest, I don’t have the slightest clue which one would be faster.

Though, instead of attuning my soul to racial skills, I could always just learn how to keep creature’s souls inside their body after their death, and turn them into undead, which I knew is possible because I’ve seen both the goblins and the dungeon do that... somehow.

I haven’t got the slightest clue how they manage to subdue the soul of another creature, no matter how... incomplete it feels or is, I just don’t understand how they do it.

And the souls actually deteriorates somehow when they are turned into undead too? Which I totally understand, and I totally haven’t spent nights thinking about how such a deterioration of the soul could be possible, and how much mana the undead spent on solely moving, if any at all.

Totally not!

But honestly, if somehow those... tattered souls are more efficient at using mana for movement than my improvisation, I am going to outlaw undead in my domain and disable Ethereal Body so I do not break my own laws... though I am technically not undead... somehow... the system is weird and I’ve already accepted its weirdness, not due to me finding some sort of pattern in the madness, but due to the simple fact that I myself may go mad if I try to find one.

“I am done with the test for now, we can get going.” I said through our connection, and grasping the sceptre in my branches, I got onto the turtle after it freed itself from the earth, and started going towards where I remembered the hive to be.

“What did you find with your test?” Rifu-san then asked.

“Well... nothing really, I was just testing the turtle’s stats, and building a really primitive mana cloud network to get it moving and do a little test with its racial skill, Earth Attunement.

And like my previous tests with the Phantom’s Shadow Meld, actively trying to use racial skills costs a lot of mana, but unlike Phantoms, Centurian Turtle’s racial skill can just passively work, and when I am not forcing it to do anything, it works wonderfully!

But yeah, this... uh, William is not going to be slinging blocks of stone at the heads of heathens anytime soon.” I said, but chucked a bit at the end, not being sure if I wanted to tell what my race was to Rifu-san or not.

I mean, she definitely can kill me whenever she wants, it matters not if she knows about my weakness to mana or not, she just can, but I still did not want to tell the world that I was a Stray Soul, because I am not sure if my race can appear naturally in this world or is only reserved for otherworlders.

And yes, I do remember the system pointing towards natural stray souls appearing in this world.

“This William?” She started and gave me a little heart attack as she did so because I really did not want to be questioned by a deity about my origin.

But thankfully, she didn’t ask about that.

“As far as I understand, undead are separate creatures from their creators, and can use most of their skills like they did when they were alive, so shouldn’t it be able to cast basic earth spells at your order?” She asked.

“Well... you may be right for normal undead, but I don’t know how to make normal undead, so as you know I just separate my ‘self’, my soul, into different bodies, and can use them without any problem, but those bits and pieces of me have no skills other than their racial skills and my own.

Even if the Centurian Turtle, or any other creature I possess are able to cast spells or know magics and skills, the undead I make will know none.” I finished, and she responded, not with an actual thought-out sentence like she always does but with surprise.

“Hmm?” She said and continued after a few moments of silence.

“I had thought that me sensing your being in different bodies was just a quirk of your necromancy spell, not because you were actually separating your soul into chunks... I am curious, what do you plan on doing if you lose a piece of your soul?”

“Welp, nothing.” I said calmly after a moment.

“What?!” Her emotions once again came forwards before she could filter them and... was me not having any plan really that stupid?

“If you are wondering, my plan is just not to lose a piece of my soul, as simple as that.” Then she quickly asked.

“And what happens when you do?”

“We’ll see to it then.” I replied calmy, because... there wasn’t really anything for me to do if I actually chucked it and a lesser soul of mine died.

The weird silence continued for a quite a bit, well quite a bit for me, it was maybe less than or a bit more than a minute not, sure, but after some time she once again spoke.

“Do you have any idea how problematic a damage to the soul can be?” She asked in a voice that I couldn’t put any feelings behind.

“Nope, no idea. Don’t plan on finding it out. And, destroying a piece of my soul would be basically the same as destroying my very self, so I will just not allow anyone or anything to do that, as simple as that.” I said, and after a moment of silence added.

“And its not like I am an easy fella to kill. I mean, you could probably just brute force it and kill me, but even then, it’d take you a hot minute to fully get rid of me, so I am not that worried about some joe schmoe managing to kill a le—destroy a piece of my soul.” I said, and nearly chucked it by talking about my lesser soul, but that didn’t seem like a problem because Rifu-san started talking immediately after I finished, her curiosity seemingly piqued by what I had said.

“Oho? I could ‘probably’ kill you? I don’t know what kind of character you’ve built of me in your mind but know that I don’t take it kindly when others, who are clearly weaker than me, tell me that they could defeat me.” She said, her voice becoming slightly aggressive towards the end.

“Well, good think I never said I could kill you. Make no mistake, Rifu-san, I am aware of how insignificant I am compared to a being like you—I just said that you could probably kill me.” I told her, and continued before she could say anything.

“As far as I’ve understood from our talks, you know about soul magic enough to detect it when you see it, but neither do you know a lot about soul magic itself nor do you know a lot about souls, do you?” I asked her, and after a few moments of silence she answered.

“You are correct, I’ve not been able to grasp the concept of a soul enough to develop soul magic, and most of my experience with it comes from torturing necromancers under the Pale Lord and making out bits and pieces of knowledge from their pained voices.”

...Okay. Red flag. Big ass red flag, which I should’ve probably seen coming beforehand seeing as she is a deity that has lived for thousand of years and has retained control over a large domain and is able to battle against a deity under the Dark Lord.

And she is also a ruler in a seemingly... medieval world? I mean, I know modern countries are no strangers to torture, but I associate those ‘barbaric’ practices with the medieval times more. And the adventurers had weapons I’d say are pretty medieval looking.

And there is probably no need to say this, but I’ll probably be using the carrot more than the stick with razors attached to it in the future, and yes, I do not really feel great that I’ve aligned myself with a literal war criminal... but maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel?

Wait, what was I doing? Oh, yes yes, I was narrating the conversation. Just accept this section as coming directly after she finished talking, yeah?

Ahem, ahem... She said with a calm voice, but I could still tell the undertone and knew she was still a bit angry at being slighted and lowkey threatened me with torture, truly a woman of my heart!

Ah, only if the tags had romance in them, but alas, no murderous dryads for me!

“So, you cannot tell me how to kill a soul now can you?” I told her and continued.

“But I can, and let me tell you this...” I said and waited for a few moments before continuing.

“While the souls of other beings may be eager to depart to the other world, they do it out of their own volition, not because they die.

But if you try and kill me... you’ll see that I am quite the persistent one and seeing that you don’t know how to kill a soul, you don’t know how to kill me either.” I said and waited a second before continuing.

“But like I said, it’d take you a hot minute to brute force it and destroy my soul. Souls are hard to kill, but not impossible.” I finished, and there was only silence as I walked through the forest for a bit.

That is until Rifu-san started giggling, which turned into laughter.

“Hahahahaha!”

“What’s so funny Rifu-dono? Something caught your interest?” I asked jokingly.

“Nothing, it’s just... you know, when I first offered you guidance to deity hood, I thought your chances of becoming a proper deity were high, really high... well, at least compared to the others I am guiding at least, in reality all of your chances are abysmal at best. But day by day your chances are dropping... but also, I am almost starting to enjoy your company, so, don’t die on me, okay William-kun~”

“Almost? Oh my, the iron lady is cracking! What will we do?!”

“Ohh, stop you!” She said, and after a few moments asked.

“You know... I wasn’t really serious when I was angry, I was just acting but... do you really think you could survive me for a minute?”

“Hmm... I definitely wouldn’t die the moment you attacked me, but I wouldn’t have any way to escape either... maybe after half a year or a year I might be nearly unkillable, but right now? Very much so.” I responded, and she started talking not long after.

“...Fufufu~

I can’t tell if you are mad, or just someone who knows themself like no other... you are aware that if it were any other deity instead of me, you would be dead, right?”

“Well... if an A rank deity gets offended by a literal H rank... they wouldn’t be a deity now, would they?” I asked, knowing people as easily angered as that would die long before they became a deity... or at least reached where the All Mother was now.

“Fufu~

You are right, but still be careful next time, okay? Like what I said, I am almost starting to enjoy your company, and centuries don’t pass easily with no one that is interesting enough to talk to, so try not to die in a few days, okay?”

“...Imma be honest, even if I manage to take control of the goblin village, without massacring their ruling class, my chances are not looking good as I am probably not going to shut up the next time.”