When he made it back to the entrance of his cave, he paused a step, not going in just yet, and scratched his head with his non-blood-covered hand.

‘Why did I take these bodies with me?’ he thought confusedly at the pile of four Lorpee’s he was holding.

Honestly, he hadn’t been thinking about it, it just felt like the right thing to do. Getting spoils and all, you know? Now he had four dead gerbils that he was getting uncomfortable holding as the adrenaline began to wear off. He’d never let himself cut his aggression so loose before, always opting to hold it in, but he now realized it felt so satisfying. More than that, he didn’t regret it at all as he hadn’t done so for any horrible reasons. He believed he was completely justified in killing the Lorpee’s, as he really did need to get stronger. Sure, they didn’t do anything to him, but he didn’t have the choice in getting stronger. He had to become more powerful, he had to use all the tools at his disposal, and he would use them unapologetically. There would still be limits of course, as he had specifically chosen a creature to fight that would fight back, but the inhibitions he felt left over from his previous life fell away more easily than he could have imagined.

It brought into question how much of ones personality people were born with. He had no doubt that Leven would have taken things much slower and been shocked into silence by all the killing Dei had done, but Dei found it as natural as breathing. Was this something he had gotten from his parents? He’d never really seen his family fight, but if he was born to love fighting, he wouldn’t be surprised. It probably wasn’t just his parents either, people who loved fighting would naturally succeed and create more children in this world, as they would be the more desirable partners in such a brutal society. It wouldn’t be that simple of course, as someone with a shit personality would probably still struggle to find a wife, but he believed “being powerful” was like this world's version of “being rich.”

Pondering about his personality changing between lives done, he was still faced with the complex problem of “what the hell do I do with my meaty spoils before the meat spoils.”

He honestly wouldn’t mind eating it, just to taste something. The specks of pure energy were not very satisfying to his taste buds, even though he somehow felt full afterwards like he had eaten a large lunch. Eating the bodies wasn’t an option though, as he knew fuckall about starting a fire, and he wasn’t in the mood for raw gerbil.

He had to find something to do with it raw. Could any of his Skills benefit from using raw meat? No. Did he need to study the gerbils to “look for weak points” or something? Absolutely not. Could he skin it and use the fur? …actually not a bad idea. He was starting to grow out of the clothes his mom gave him, so he would need a replacement soon.

Ok, thats what he would try first. Skinning it. Before he even did that though, he knew it was going to make a right mess everywhere. He couldn’t leave raw meat or stuff like that out, or it could attract other wild animals. He needed to dispose of it in some way, if only he had something that would eat it, but not cause him trouble. Preferably something that wouldn’t attack him, but wouldn’t move around too much either, so he could use it as a garbage disposal if he ever brought other meat back. More than that though: what if it could actually benefit him in some way?

So his criteria were as follows: can dispose of bodies, won't attack him, easily controllable, and beneficial. It would’ve been an outlandish request, if he didn’t already have just the thing.

* * *

Having never dismissed his Projection, he was now holding his mothers knife that he’d retrieved from her pack, and was surrounded by six gray spikes that were slowly sinking downwards, flattening themselves out and changing color to match that of the stone they sat upon.

The six spikes were, of course, half of the [Biting Flesh Trap of Allure bulb]’s he had. He still held six back in the safety of his Garden, but he decided to try and make use of these tall spikes. If there ever came a point when he was being chased by a monster, Dei did not want to lead them right to his house, so he’d set them up in a corridor between the Garden and Bog Cavern, as he’d creatively named it.

With his new Physical stat, he could actually lift his moms knife with a semblance of dexterity, and his mental enhancements helped completely remove any shaking of his hand he might have from taking it carefully.

That being said, he was by no means an expert at skinning. He tried very, very hard to cut through the skin delicately, but he just kept poking holes in it, utterly ruining what mightve passed for a pelt that he could potentially turn into a loincloth.

After utterly annihilating the four bodies, he sighed and turned himself intangible, letting the blood that coated his body fall to the ground. He was able to absolutely coat the Flesh Traps in blood, and he watched as they visibly soaked it all in through both their spikes and the ground. He watched the stone crack as the Flesh Traps spread their roots across it, trying and succeeding to get all that they could from what was left of the Lorpee corpses.

Plants were absolutely terrifying in this world. He suspected that the fragility of plants on Earth stemmed from the lack of mana, throwing their inner balance off greatly.

Either way, he’d failed to harvest anything useful from the bodies, but boy was it a learning experience.

Leaving the Flesh Traps in the tunnel, hoping nothing would come along to eat them, he went back home to finally check on the progress he made fighting the Lorpee’s.

* * *

Locking back into his body, he sighed in relief that he could sigh in relief again. Not breathing for such a long time felt so weird to him, though he suspected that it was mitigated somewhat by how his Projection was formed. He found himself, weirdly, thinking like a spirit when he was in Spiritual form. He didn’t really crave breathing, and he naturally knew what would and would not be within his power if he tried it, like flying. It didn’t feel jarring, being able to do everything humans could not.

Was that what made it so he couldn’t absorb just any source of Soul mana to heal himself? It would make sense if his Skill gave him a sort of “ghost instinct” and he needed processed material to actually digest it into a useable form. If Soul mana was like amino acids, he couldn’t just drink a cup of them and hope for the best result. Instead, his Skill provided a framework for his body to use when projecting. The only mystery was: where did this framework come from?

Not really a mystery at all, the Soul affinity.

The mystery of how Skills processed mana into useable forms aside, he opened his notifications.

[EXP gained for killing the Aeroflight Lorpee Screamer (Level 188). EXP gain raised due to level disparity]

…

[EXP gained for killing the Aeroflight Lorpee Screamer (Level 145). EXP gain raised due to level disparity]

[Class Leveled Up: Prodigal Detector (Level 36) -> (Level 37)]

…

[+1 Mental, +1 Magical]

[Class Leveled Up: Prodigal Detector (Level 44) -> (Level 45)]

[Skill Leveled Up: Vigilance (6) -> (7)]

…

[Skill Leveled Up: Vigilance (17) -> (18)]

[Skill Leveled Up: High Mind (14) -> (15)]

…

[Skill Leveled Up: High Mind (25) -> (26)]

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

[Achievement Gained! Born for Slaughter]

[Achievement Gained! Born for Slaughter

Before the first sapient creature learned to wield the axe, before the first fire was ever started and the first morsel of food was ever cooked, there were the Slaughterers. Born to fight. To kill. To Slaughter. There was no one race who became the Slaughterers, no one people from whom they rose, they were merely those who rose to finish the fight. They were the scorned, the ones who lost their families to the unfeeling eyes of beasts, and promised to fight the war they never knew they were a part of.

They fought for their people, whoever they might be. They fought because they had nothing left. They fought to feel alive. Only death followed in their wake, their heavy footfalls shaking the earth to its core. The weight of their presence enough to kill weaker men.

But as communities banded together, the Slaughterers fell into obscurity. They protected the people, allowing for agriculture, music and arts to flourish where horrible monsters would have torn the beauties of creation apart.

By the time sapients had founded the first city, there were no Slaughterers left. They gave their life, blood, bones, and flesh so the support systems that protect sapience today might be given the chance to bear fruit.

The Slaughterers knew nothing but war from their first breath to their last. They raged against the horrible cruelty of it all, and died roaring in pain as the hordes of beasts tore them apart one too many times to come back from.

Now, in a squalid cave, abandoned by all, you follow in their mountainous footsteps, craters left behind by giants. In time, you too shall grow into them. You shall shake the earth with your every step. You shall Slaughter.

Or you shall die in that same squalid cave.

You have slain ten enemies over one hundred levels higher than you before the age of one without any community to support you.

* All affinities advance 100% faster

* When engaging in primal fighting, boost Physical stat effects by 50%

* Increases Soul Presence]

When he started reading the notifications, he was ecstatic, even more so when he read that he got a new Achievement. The description of it was rather grand, and the story it told drew him in as he garnered some respect for the people put in situations that made them become the Slaughterers. They were those at the beginning of the species, when humans first came into existence, who became the strongest of warriors. It sounded like they gave up everything to fight monsters, becoming monsters in themselves.

The second to last paragraph jarred him from the story though. It referenced him specifically. His exact situation. He knew it wasn’t just the System picking favorites with him, trying to send him some message, as it was already proven it wasn’t able to do that. This Achievement was difficult enough to get that any who did get it were going to be noteworthy.

Noteworthy, or dead.

In order to get it, a child needed to be abandoned by their parents in a dangerous situation, but fight their way out, exactly how he was doing now. He thought back to the description, and imagined that the first Slaughterers were those who were not abandoned by their parents, but had their parents killed in front of them.

Still, he didn’t think most would get this specific Achievement. It was so nearly impossible to earn, that there wouldn’t be enough Slaughterers to defend the populace. There had to be more, easier Achievements to get that would dictate what constituted a Slaughterer.

No, this one functioned to give people in his situation hope. If he really was a child abandoned at one year old, this Achievement would work to tell him that there were others out there. It would give him hope to keep fighting, and eventually find his people. Someone with no community as young as he was should, by all accounts, not have a single memory of other humans. That was why it gave such a lengthy description where other Achievements did not.

That made him think there were more Achievements like this one, a so-called Slaughterer line of Achievements.

He also realized that he might be able to upgrade this Achievement if he had enough time, so he used [High Mind] to help him go over all the memories in his soul, calculating the exact day he was born. Luckily, Iora had awoken the memories from before he became conscious, so he could read through them all the way up to his birth.

He was shocked when he realized his birthday was in just six days, on [7/15/808]. It was currently [7/9/809], so he just barely made the cut to get this achievement. The question was: could he go out and upgrade it? He didn’t have the Soul mana to use a Projection again. If he’d known he would get such an Achievement, he would have absolutely not dismissed his Projection. The mana used in it was gone, he watched his soul absorb it for some purpose he couldn’t figure out when his Identity clicked back into place. Six days was not enough time to earn the mana and make a new one either.

If he wanted to try and upgrade this Achievement, he would need to leave the cave himself. With his own body, and kill those Lorpee’s…

He would think about it first. Was it possible? Could he even do it? He searched his soul for the memory of him killing the Lorpee’s, trying to find out how many he’d actually killed that were over 100 levels higher than him. Some were lower level, some were higher. He actually found out that there were two races of Lorpee’s: The [Aeroflight Lorpee Screamer] were those who had surpassed level 100, and undergone an evolution of some kind. Those that were less than level 100 though were called the [Lorpee Screamer]. A small yet notable difference.

He had killed thirty three Lorpee’s exactly. Of that number, fifteen were over level one hundred and, of that number, only eleven were one hundred levels higher than him at the moment of their death.

He’d killed one more than was necessary to get the Achievement, so there was no way to know how many more he needed to kill to earn an upgrade to it. Now, how many Lorpee’s were there that were eligible to be 100 levels higher than him? While he didn’t know the levels of all the surviving Lorpee’s, it was only the strongest that had survived, with him getting some lucky shots in on a few of them. Those that survived, the remaining twenty nine were bound to be of sturdier stuff. If he assumed that nine of them weren’t high leveled enough, that would still be twenty Lorpee’s of one hundred levels higher than him. Was that enough? Would the Slaughterer title be upgraded every ten kills? He wasn’t sure, but it was technically possible.

Now for the real question, was he crazy enough to go there in person, and try to finish off the Lorpee’s? Would it even work?

As it was, he’d always used his Projection to fight, and it consumed massive amounts of mana to keep itself stable. It was more durable than his own body, but why was that? Shouldn’t his physical body be more durable?

The short of it was, that his physical body didn’t have hundreds of mana pumping through it to keep it stable. His [Astral Projection] worked to boost the strength of his Identity, keeping it strong while detached from his Soul. To strengthen his body to that degree, he would need a boosting ability for himself too.

The only affinity he imagined he could do this with was his Wrath affinity. It was not only the perfect ability to work on his body, as it was an affinity natural for Humans and was shown to boost his muscles through [Growing Pain], but he also had a hell of a lot of it. The amount he was earning still rose as well, the simmering fury he felt after his near-death encounter was beginning to abate, but it was still there.

He would need to go into battle, with his real body, believing that a boosting ability would come to him mid-fight. Was that something he was willing to risk?

No, it was not. He didn’t want to fight with his real body! That sounded painful and dangerous. He was so much weaker than his projection, and he might not even get the chance to boost himself before it was over. He didn’t have six hundred HP, he had forty four.

But he looked at the very last line in his new Achievement, and hesitated. Did he have the choice? Could he afford to give up on power? He had nobody else, no one to rely on if he were hunted down, same as he was doing to these Lorpee’s. If he stumbled, he would fall. He was hoping to fix that by reaching someone else, but they felt more desperate than him, and they might not even survive until he got there. Not unless he could fast-track his power.

He spent a long moment, re-reading the Achievement over and over again. He sighed, sinking his face into his hands.

‘I’m going to do it aren’t I? I’m going to go out into that Lorpee cave, with my physical body, and throw myself against them until they’re dead. Or I am.

‘Yes. Yes, I am.’

At the thought, a tension left his shoulders. He’d made his decision, so he would pour everything he had into following through.

Four days. He had just four days worth of training to get himself stronger. On the fifth day, he would fight the Lorpee’s to the death, and on the sixth, he would celebrate his birthday.

He began working out immediately. He still had a whole day of training ahead of him, and no [Meditation] or [High Mind] were going to help here. He needed strength.

He stopped fighting against the bubbling rage too, instead focusing on it more. He forced himself to relive the fight with the frog in his head, and stopped his [Pandora’s Box] from pulling all of it in. Some, he left in his body as he began to stew in his own hate.

The familiar feeling of seething with rage while pushing his body to the limit evoked memories from his previous life, memories that helped him control his body and fall into a repetition.