"So… What now?" Felix asked after realizing he was getting bored, just sitting around in his soul garden.

"What do you want to do?"

"I guess… I'm not sure. I'm kind of stuck without a body. I could try and expand my soul space I guess…"

"Maybe wait till we're back to do that, just in case."

"Actually, should I learn soul attacks or something? Play to my strengths?"

"No, they wouldn't be affected. No one will ever permanently hurt you with one, but you won't be able to launch some super weapon either. Your soul seems to be fully defensive, from what I can tell, it's impenetrable and invincible. You can't really use your core soul to attack though so a soul attack won't be any more or less effective. Maybe a little more, but marginally. Same way you aren't some stat behemoth, it's the outer layers of your soul that dictate all of that stuff."

"So soul attacks are out of the question?"

"Yeah. Well, traditional soul attacks. I guess… If you were to try and possess someone else's soul? If they put you in their soul space… you would completely dominate them, destroy their soul from the inside out. In fact, if you every managed to get your soul in direct contact with another soul, no bodies in the way… I suspect their soul would just be obliterated. That sounds a lot easier than it is though, you would likely have to kill your target just to get their soul out of their body. Then you would need to pull your own soul out of your body, which is dangerous as hell. Overall, not worth it by any means. If you're already killing them, you can probably handle their remnant yourself."

"So, in a contest of wills, based on our soul?"

"Yeah I guess, I couldn't name you a situation like that though. No idea when that would ever come up. Again, it seems to be entirely defensive from what I can tell. Your soul is dominant in the sense that it's unyielding. At least, that's what it seems like."

"I guess it's nice to not have to worry about soul attacks then. Does that mean my soul will… live forever?"

"Sort of. Yes and no. Yes in the sense that it will exist as an entity pretty much forever. No in the sense that without a body, your soul will lose it's memories and identity in a sense. If it ever did possess a different body in the future, it would carry with it all your convictions and part of your personality. None of your memories and what you interpret as your consciousness… it wouldn't persist with your soul. Not unless you did some weird soul alchemy, but even then…"

"I see…"

"You obtained that fighting skill with the intention of learning to fight. Do you want me to teach you?" Grim offered.

"You know how to fight? You're a book though."

"Yeah, I'm also a vault of information and forbidden knowledge. One of those secrets that I store is a fighting style or martial art."

"Why was it forbidden and when did we unlock the ability to talk about it?"

"Well, it's very lethal, designed entirely for the purpose of killing. Most other martial arts have some kind of defense or way of protecting from and redirecting strikes. Some others are considered violent, where instead of redirecting a strike, you break the enemies arm. This one is split into two sets. With one, you kill them. They strike, you kill them. You strike, you kill them. Everything is intended to be lethal and kill as efficiently as possible. It's also designed to kill anything, your martial arts from earth are designed for humans against humans. This one is designed to make use of weird bodies, skills, spells, to kill weird bodies, animals and beasts."

"What if it's not possible to kill them?"

"You'd be surprised how rare those situations are but in that case, you move so that you can kill them with your next move."

"What about the other half?"

"The other half is about getting to an enemy. It's all about mobility. Being able to catch your target is just as important as killing them. The second also has steps to avoid attacks. The idea is that you need to avoid as many attacks as you can from range as you move in. Once you're in kill range, you switch to the first half and take them out."

"Not sure this is something I want to know. Who practiced this, back in your universe?"

"There was a faction of assassins that ran rampant through my universe for a little while. They recruited billions of people but their trainee survival rate was a few hundred per billion. The faction had the recruits spar with each-other, which meant they just killed each-other endlessly. If there is an avenue to kill the enemy, the practitioners were taught to take it even if it meant being hit by an avoidable attack. Eventually, they had to be stopped. The knowledge of their martial art was then sealed away, in me."

"So the people who created you were like a police force?"

"Yeah… Think of a team of super heroes from those comics you read in college. It was something like that. Then they have to store and seal away all the relics and items they come across."

"So this martial art is some kind of super weapon?"

"Your universe is old. There are probably, almost definitely, martial arts and fighting styles out there that are better than this one. It will be a good start though and should rival most of them, if you manage to master it. If you're interested, you can see what rarity the system gives it, that should be a decent indication."

"I'm not deluded into thinking I'll ever be great at, let alone master it. I could take the time but realistically…"

"It would take far too long to ever really be worth it."

"Yeah, it would take too long. The second half sounds perfect though. Being mobile, acrobatic and generally able to move around a battle… It's really just parkour then? That, sounds worth the time. The first half… I'd like to learn the basics of combat martial arts, just so I can survive and know what to expect in a fight."

"Yeah, basically parkour. A little more tailored to stronger, more agile bodies but in essence. I can just show you the full set of steps and you can choose what to focus on. You interested then?"

"I mean, it's probably better than whatever the fighting skill would have taught me. Was this one just not sealed very tightly? Was it always available?"

"Uh… Don't feel bad but, looking at your soul kind of did a number on me and ripped some of the weaker convictions loose. So, you accidentally unlocked some things a little earlier than intended."

"Oh… sorry…"

"Not your fault, now we know. Just think of this as a silver lining. Also those convictions were imposed convictions, it's not like you actually damaged my soul. It was more like a thorough shock. You shook some of the chains binding me, loose."

"Ok so the martial art, what's it called? Where do we start?"

"Uh… The faction was named after the god like being they worshipped, it resembled a serpent dragon with a dozen wings. My best attempt at a translation would be something like: ‘The Dragon's of Death.' Their lethal martial art was something like: ‘The Bloody Dragon Dance' or ‘Lethal Dragon Dance'? The mobility half was something like, ‘Death Dragon's Prowl'."

"So in total, Dragon's Dance of Death? Dance of the Death Dragon?"

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"Sure, either are close enough."

"Great, so I'm really sticking it to the dragons now, aren't I? Learning a skill named after them?"

"Yeah, guess so. You don't have to tell anyone it's name though."

Grim guided Felix through, and demonstrated with his new projected body, the basic forms of the martial art. Just simple steps and motions to get Felix more attuned to the general motions and improve his balance. Felix felt like he was practicing yoga or tai chi. It was slow, and Grim observed and adjusted Felix as needed, based entirely on the record he had of the martial art. The best part of being in a constructed space that didn't exist, was that Felix didn't get sore or tired. The downside was that he was gradually growing accustomed to not having a body.

If he practiced in here for years without ever leaving, his balance would be awful and his coordination would suffer. His body simply wouldn't be able to keep up with his mind. On the other hand, if he simply exited and sparred for a few days a month or so, he should be able to learn much faster. Not that he was planning on studying in here for months, that was just the limit he and Grim had come up with that was almost definitely safe.

Felix managed to get relatively comfortable with the first motions and initial movements Grim showed him so they slowly added more until Felix knew all of the basic forms. He even managed to commit them to memory, making the movements somewhat instinctual. As he completed one movement, the second simply came to him naturally, from the sheer amount of repetition.

He spent what felt like a week in his soul garden with Grim before his soul was returned to his body. He didn't even notice anything at first, but then he felt something nudging his arm, he looked down and saw nothing. It confused him for a few moments until he clued in. It was his real arm that was feeling something, not his soul garden projection.

He immediately stopped practicing his forms and closed his eyes, letting his consciousness fall out of his soul garden. He was worried it might be difficult to find his body again as to him, it had been a while, but instead it was like falling into place. As soon as his consciousness had left the garden, it fell right back into his body, as if he had never left. He opened his eyes and immediately felt something off. He had blinked countless times in his life and opened his eyes many times, but never had he actually felt it before.

If he had been asked before this moment, he would have said he knew what it felt like. Now, he knew that he had known nothing. He felt his eye lids unstick from each-other, the pressure of the lid raising over his eye balls, the contraction of the muscles and the folding and stretching of skin. With his eyes open, he felt a slight tingling in the back of his eyeballs as the nerves responded to the incoming light. He felt his pupils contract, his lenses focus, the signals being passed back from his eye balls back to his brain. He could feel, not quite the individual neurons firing, but a general tingling path as the image was processed in his brain. Before he possessed a body, now he experienced a body.

He passed his attention over everything, and felt it all. Starting from his head, down to his toes there were new sensations and feelings everywhere. With the new sensations, came some level of control. He didn't have to manually beat his heart, but he could if he wanted to. He could even stop it all together if he had the need to do so. Everything was accessible to him now, everything was now in control. He knew the control had come in part from the race and in part from his bond with Nova, but it was still more than he expected, likely because of just how unnatural it all was to him.

He stood up, which was a weird sensation for so many reasons. Firstly, he felt his ears and brain working together to figure out where up was and adjusting minor things to keep him balanced. His stats and weight had also changed drastically alongside his body. He couldn't be sure by how much, as his strength had changed, but passing through his cells, feeling them out, he could tell everything was denser than before. He doubled over, slightly overwhelmed by all the sensation and took his time to adjust, slowly getting used to everything and learning to tune most of it out, piece by piece.

He managed to stand upright and taught himself to walk again, slowly at first, until he could make it up to a normal walking pace. Then, somewhat out of habit and somewhat to feel what it was really like, Felix moved himself through the motions of The Dragon's Dance of Death. In his mind, his bodily projection moved exactly as he willed it, here his body had weight, was pulled by gravity. His muscles and skin stretched and his joints contorted. He tripped and fell, many times. Each and every time though, he stood back up and started again.

Slowly, he grew accustomed to the feelings, the sensations and the effort required to move his body. It was like a new body, but it wasn't. Instead it was like before his evolution, his mental commands and the sensations his body returned had been heavily filtered. Now he was feeling it all for the first time, moving his own body for the first time. He didn't think The System had been filtering anything before though, it had just accelerated something he could have done for himself, further connecting him to his own body. It had simply unlocked the sensations and made the connection between his body and soul, stronger. He was now attached to it more thoroughly, in a more intricate and detailed way.

He finished running through all of the basic forms successfully without tripping but, anyone watching would have been able to tell, it was an abysmal performance. He ran it through one more time, this time much more elegantly, but still evidently a novice. He knew what to do and when to do it, he knew where his limbs should be and when they should be there, he just had trouble matching his own body to the mental image. By the time he finished the second attempt, he was feeling much more comfortable in his own skin. He also finally noticed Nova, sitting off to the side of the room. Their form had not changed in the slightest, still a muscular black cat with comically big eyes making them likely the cutest cat on the planet, if they were actually a cat.

[D - Cursed] Ravenous Matter Spirit (Lvl 104)

Hey Nova, how was your evolution?

Felix got back an extensive stream of thoughts that depicted Nova sleeping, then waking up in a different body, with a bigger soul and what felt like an empty belly. Nova looked around and saw Felix lying on the ground completely still. Nova nudged Felix, but he didn't move. Nova waited and nudged him again every hour or so until finally he woke up. Nova watched as Felix tried to stand, tried to walk, then tried to dance. Though, Nova's interpretation of his dance was comical at best, resembling a drunken clown. He was pretty sure that wasn't actually what he looked like, but honestly he couldn't be sure. Nova sent along with the stream of events a stream of emotions they had felt which was a complete rollercoaster.

This is probably the first time it's feeling emotions, complex ones at least. Sprites don't exactly feel emotions other than fear and desire. Spirits, are a different story and experience emotions as complex as any sentient being's.

Huh, that sounds like a weird experience. Nova's communication is definitely better now, will they ever be fully sentient?

They kind of are but in terms of complex thought… Could, depends on it's evolutions. My bet is no because of the curse. If it manages to beat the curse, then maybe. With your soul too… the odds aren't quite as low as before. If it instead incorporates the curse into it's soul, it will likely be closer to a smart dog or animal until the curse consumes it.

Good to know, guess all we can do is wait and see. Speaking of waiting, how long was I out?

Felix checked the clock screen and saw that about a day had passed, even though it had felt like much longer in his soul garden. Looking at his stats though, it likely had been much longer, roughly 6 days if the time dilation on his Soul Garden Skill was still accurate.

Name: Felix Kade FREE 1299 Innate: Ascendant Prodigy: Mana (Wizard) STR 2200 Class: [D - Epic] Soul Harvester (Lvl 127) DEX 3273 Race: [D - Unique] Wanderer (Lvl 114) AGI 2282 Profession: [D - Arcane] Mana Engineer (Lvl 101) PER 3103 Health: 22160/22160 VIT 2216 Mana: 513370/513370 INT 4667 Energy: 88560/88560 END 2214

Holy shit, wait a second…

Your amulet doesn't work anymore.

Oh, right. I was so used to seeing all my stats being the same number. The 1000 to each stat from the race evolution was huge though, I was so worried my stats would be abysmal without the amulet since I let them fall behind. All Free Points to Intelligence.

At what point are you going to shore up the other stats? Like if Intelligence is 10 times strength, is strength too low?

Good question, probably 4 or 5 times greater I think. Let's go with 5. I'm hoping I don't ever have to think about it, but we'll see what happens. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .