[That’s annoying.]

I was seriously getting ticked off. The ability of the Drow to simply recall away their Souls upon death was an incredibly frustrating one.

“What happened?” The Elder asked. He was furthest away and came last.

I gestured at the corpse. [This guy was possessed. By a Drow, most likely. I killed it, but the Soul escaped.]

“Escaped, huh? Yeah, that’s expected. They always do that, unless you destroy their Soul quickly.” He kneeled down and examined the remains, shaking his head as he examined the gray, decaying flesh. “The guy’s been dead for over a week. What a horrible way to go, they didn’t even let him stay dead.”

The Elder stood up and turned around. “Men! We were infiltrated by the enemy. The Drow shame us with their antics, so we must strike back! We will visit every guardhouse and examine every sentinel stationed there. Make sure to stay alert, there could be traps.”

There was a chorus of agreement, and after a short exchange of words with the command center in the outpost, we departed. On our way to check other guard stations, we were careful to avoid any hidden traps, but we soon reached our target without finding anything suspicious.

Even the guard house itself seemed normal. There were no unusual activities anywhere near or inside it, and the woman inside acted just as we would expect.

Everything was perfect, except for the Soul inside her that did not belong. Actually, there were two of them.

[Hey, could you hold still for a moment?] I said to her with a smile.

“What?” She looked at me in confusion. At that exact moment, I summoned Soul Breaker and stabbed it through her chest.

“Hey, what are you doing?!” A guy jumped at me and shoved me out of the way. Well, he tried. He shoulder-checked me, but I moved a step back on my own.

“Aaaaaaaah!” The woman screamed in pain and surprise at the same time, but then her eyes turned mad and focused, and she extended her hand towards me. “Nemluf Aicifelam!”

But obviously, I just moved, so a blast of energy hit the other guy instead. He instantly lost consciousness and collapsed, while I threw out a Soul Smite at the second Soul that momentarily took control of the woman.

I unfortunately missed with the sword, only wounding it, but the second attack found its mark, blasting the Soul out of the body. The original owner was back in control, and she fell to her knees, trying to fix the gaping wound on her chest. Even though she was losing a lot of blood, she was a Spirit Realm Cultivator and would be fine, though in her panic she seemingly forgot that.

I let her as she tried to stem the bleeding with her hands, and jumped after the escaping Soul instead. I could feel its intense hateful Intent, but instead of aiming it at me, it aimed it at the girl.

[Damn it…] I instantly turned and abandoned my chase. I grabbed the bleeding guard and turned her around, stabbing my hand into her chest and tearing out a part of her lower ribcage.

She obviously screamed even more in both fear and pain, but I didn’t have time to explain. I threw the bloody body part into the sky and then encased her in a sturdy barrier. An instant later the piece I tore out of her exploded, blasting all the Cultivators present way despite the distance between them and the center of the blast.

By the time things calmed down, the foreign Soul was obviously already gone, so I focused on healing the victim instead. The damage wasn’t too bad. Just a few missing bones and some torn muscle. Nothing that couldn’t be healed with time and pills.

Getting her mentality back in order, on the other hand, would probably take more effort. The girl was absolutely terrified. And she was a young one too. Only at the Second Level. Barely over a century old. Made me think whose idea it was to send her on guard duty.

She was lucky we found her before that other Soul took over. It was probably waiting to learn enough from her and then replace her. That’s what I would have done if I was in its place. It obviously couldn’t just steal her memories like I could.

“Hey!” The old Elder shouted and stomped angrily toward me. I realized what I did must have looked absolutely insane. “What are you-?!”

I took a memory orb and tossed it at him before he could finish. The Elder hesitated for a moment and then absorbed the memories inside. His eyes went wide.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“That… It was… You can see Souls?” He eventually asked, flabbergasted. I nodded.

“That’s an incredibly rare ability… Good work, soldier!” He patted my shoulder and nodded. I showed him what I saw during the incident and it appeared to be enough.

“Ooh… My head…” The guy who tried to stop me woke up with a groan and stood unsteadily on his legs. He was also extremely pale, with a tinge of green on his face.

“I… I don’t feel so go- Bleagh!” He folded over and vomited all over the ground. It was red. He was vomiting blood and chunks of his organs.

“What in the blazes happened to him?!” The Elder exclaimed wide-eyed and jumped back to avoid getting blood on his robes.

I looked at the guy. [Well, I’m not an expert, but it appears to me he has been cursed. And with a rapidly-acting curse too.]

“Help… me… Bleagh!” The guy looked weakly at us, his skin already turning sickly gray. I could see weird growths forming under his skin. He was going downhill fast.

I looked at the Elder and shrugged. The guy’s energy was all messed up and it was getting worse rapidly. While I knew how to reverse curses, that was a bit much even for me. It was too aggressive for my amateur ability.

“Shit.” The Elder cursed and quickly summoned a talisman and stuck him on the guy. “This should slow the spread… hopefully.” He then grabbed a tablet and took a step back, throwing it at the guy. The clay tablet struck him right in the forehead, breaking, and he was gone in a flash of light.

“He’s in better hands now.” He said after a few people gave him weird looks. “The Drow are notorious for the use of nasty curses, so we have a facility to fix the damage in the outpost. Let's just hope it wasn’t too badly damaged in the last attack.” He murmured the last part to himself.

Taking inspiration from the Elder, I placed the girl on the ground, took a piece of paper, wrote a short explanation of her situation, and then threw a tablet at her. Both she and the paper disappeared in a flash of light and swirling magic.

----------------------------------------

With two guards taken care of, our work has only just begun. And without alerting the others, we traveled to the next destination.

It was a small cliffside bunker, hidden from sight by vegetation and cloaking formations. Without the Elder’s knowledge, we would have had trouble finding it.

“What do you see?” The man asked as we neared the invisible barrier.

[Two individuals are inside. Both possessed corpses.] I reported back. [And I think they noticed us.]

Almost as if on cue, the ground near us exploded, a magical projectile the size of a basketball being the source of it. Two more shot from the bunker, one of them striking me and doing no damage, while the other hit the Elder and singed his beard.

“Damn animals!” The Elder thundered and reinforced his defenses. “Get in there!”

At his order, the rest of the Cultivators surrounded the barrier and with combined effort, shattered it like fragile glass.

“Muut Maretnoc Surc!” We heard a shout from the bunker and one of our allies suddenly crumpled, his bones broken. The guy screamed more in shock than pain, but then he quickly lifted off the ground and flew back just as another magic projectile was about to strike him.

“Careful! This place is heavily fortified, don’t die for no reason.” The Elder warned.

[You heard him, stay back. I got this.] I shouted and pulled out a bow. The Soulreaper Bow.

“Muut Maretnoc Surc!”

The curse came again from the bunker, that time aimed at me. I felt an insanely strong impact on my legs as if someone tried bashing in my knees with a bat the size of a skyscraper. I resisted, obviously, but it damn hurt. No wonder the other guy simply collapsed. They were using some really weird magic.

But that pain only served to fuel me. I nocked a Ghostbane Arrow and aimed, locking a Soul in my sight. I then imbued the arrow with my Qi, pulled back, and released.

It was as if someone fired a cannon at the cliff as it exploded outward, one of the Souls inside being snuffed out in an instant. There came a roar from the inside, followed by another curse magic.

“Teredra Sinrefni ni!”

Once more I burst into flames, the wild energy sticking to me like glue while the enemy inside laughed. I looked at the flames and then back at the ruins of the bunker.

[Really? Again? When will you fools learn? I’m a fucking immune!] I then pointed my palm at the guy and obliterated him with an Arcane Blast. A cone of lightning and flames consumed everything, not even leaving ashes behind.

The Soul there, though severely damaged by my attack, somehow survived, and wasted no time escaping. It flew into the sky, and then just… disappeared.

[Ah… Shit.]

I wasn’t going to lie, the fact that their Souls could just escape so easily was giving me a bit of a problem. I had never before had to destroy an opponent’s Soul after they died, so my reactions were a bit slow. Also, there was no sign of them going, like creating a portal or something. They were just there, and the next second they were gone.

“Job well done!” The Elder complimented.

[One of them escaped again.] I said, feeling annoyed. [Isn’t there an easier way to stop them from escaping?] I could probably snatch them up directly if they were close enough, but that didn’t seem like a reliable strategy.

“Sure. You can just use a Domain.” The Elder said and then shrugged. “Just lock everything down and then they can’t escape. Easy.”

[A Domain? As in the innate ability of Sky Realm Cultivator?]

“That’s right.”

I resisted rolling my eyes. That was obviously impossible at my current Level. Even if my Soul was much stronger than average and I could make a pseudo-Doman like John could, doing so at the beginning of Spirit Realm was not going to happen. The Elder was most likely trying to tell me there were no easy solutions.

[What about Grand Elders? Why doesn’t one of them come with us? They could kill or capture all of these Drow, no?]

“Haha! A Grand Elder chasing rats around, that would have been a great sight.” The Elder laughed and then shook his head. “That’s never going to happen. Not to mention it would be a waste of resources and they would never agree to it, but as soon as the damn rats realized they were getting hunted, they would just figure out a different strategy, or simply avoid the Grand Elder altogether.”

[Eh…]

He was right, of course. But that really sucked.

“Alright, enough chit-chat. We got a few dozen more places to check. Let’s go!”