Felix sat down and meditated, but didn't enter his soul garden. Instead, he collected as much mana as he could and began forcing it into his soul space. It expanded quickly without issue, but Felix wasn't happy with how slow and manual the process was as a whole so he began testing some things. The first thing he tested was pulling out a mana battery and placing it in his soul space, then reverting it to a gas. That was faster, but relied on how quickly he could produce batteries, which wasn't very fast in the long run.
What he really wanted, was to funnel excess mana regen into his soul space automatically. The biggest issue with that was that it needed a valve of some sort and he needed to have a tube running into his soul space, which he didn't think was possible. If it were, he could also theoretically move his mana and energy cores into his soul space, though he wasn't sure if there were any advantages to that. It would require further investigation in the future. For the purposes of expanding it though, he gave up on the entire concept for now after a few simple tests. The next best thing he could do was reach for the biggest source of mana he had ling around, the mana engine on the roof. All he had to do was funnel the mana from the mana engine into his soul space. It had a ridiculous amount of mana in it right now, somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred million mana currently.
He ascended to the roof and sat below the mana engine, right at the center where the mana was densest. He used his mana control to tap into the mana and began pulling it out of the engine and pushing it into his soul space. The basic idea, as Grim had explained it, was that the soul space was like a balloon at the time being. It couldn't just be empty. Luckily mana, in it's gaseous state, was naturally offset in the fourth dimension from most everything else. That meant he could use mana to expand it, then simply place things inside without displacing the mana. He could just force bodies and souls in there as well, but that would cause them all to be squeezed together which was a great way to compost, not to preserve. Once it sat at a certain size for a little while, it would relax and become semi permanent, but Grim said it would likely be a while for that. In the meantime, he forced mana into his soul space and it slowly expanded.
It took him a half dozen hours to drain all the mana in the engine but it netted him a soul space that was a sphere about 70 meters in diameter. It seemed like a lot of space, but if he wanted to store all of the souls and corpses he created, he would quickly run out of space. There was about 175,000 cubic meters, but a soul seemed to be about one cubic meter and a corpse could take hundreds, if they were really big. He could easily fill the space in a week or so. In the meantime, it would work perfectly for his use case. He wanted to try out the whole god like ability and zoom capabilities but he didn't have a corpse that was worth examining so he didn't bother for now.
Instead he looked at the time and saw that it was exactly midnight, so he decided to run through an hour of workout with the restrictive equipment and an hour of the Dragon Dance. His plan was to repeat one hour of each every day at midnight, if possible. He wasn't hard set on the time, if he needed to push it because he was busy then so be it. If he had to skip a day, he would do two the next day. Luckily, his rapid muscle regeneration meant he didn't have to worry about exhaustion or recovery. He could theoretically just continue practicing without stopping for the next four months until the world council meeting.
His plan for the rest of the day was to learn how to manually soul harvest with Grim so he headed out, with a restless Nova in his arms, and flew into the jungle. Nova's restlessness had only grown over the past few days. They napped and processed the bodies in their soul space, but they woke up every hour or so to see if Felix was ready to do something. Felix figured that was likely the curse making them hungry and Grim said it would come as hunger for not just food, but also anything Nova desired. In this case, he figured they hungered to fight or maybe just hungered to do something other than nap.
They flew into the jungle together as Felix carried them deeper than either of them had ever been. They finally descended into a portion of the jungle where the trees were much larger than the trees in the jungle near the volcano to the north west, where the panthers had been. As soon as they set down, Nova bolted off into the jungle. Felix ventured inwards himself in the opposite direction. He pulled out his staff and carried it in his hand just in case as he walked through the trees.
This area of the jungle was much more open, where the other areas he had been were cramped. The trees here were easily twice as tall and spread out much further from each-other leaving plenty of room between them to move. Felix didn't even have to cut through any vines or vault over roots of any kind, the jungle floor was mostly flat, at least in comparison. This area of the jungle was also oddly empty and void of non-plant life as Felix hadn't encountered anything but trees, moss and the odd flower or bush up to this point.
So Grim, how do I manually soul harvest?
It might be best if you use the skill a few times to get a feel for it, but I'll give you the run down. The first thing to do is when a creature dies, within 10 seconds or so, place your hand on their corpse and reach out. You remember how you opened your soul sight to see my soul and before I saw yours?
Yeah. Why did you make me look out before you saw mine?
To make sure the system wasn't being lazy and using the pocket universe for multiple souls. If you saw a bunch of other souls here as well, it would have been too risky to pull me out.
Ah, makes sense.
You need to sense the soul within their body, which is normally very difficult. You can sometimes see something along the lines of the outer most layer of a soul when it's attached to a body, but nothing more. This is, again, why no one reacts to your soul as you walk around. It's almost entirely contained in your body.
So this is why it didn't affect me before the integration and mana?
It would have made you marginally more persuasive if you really believed in or were very passionate about something, but that's about it. Also it would have been negligible without you knowing how to control your aura.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Aura?
Yeah, it's just a slight manipulation of the ambient anima around you. Sort of. We can talk about it more some other time.
Gotcha.
Back to soul harvesting, when a creature dies, their soul leaves their body, then slowly dissipates in most cases. When this happens, the containment the body provided completely deteriorates as the soul detaches itself from the body. Your goal is to pull the soul into your soul space as quickly as possible after the creature dies. Too late and it will dissipate and too early and you either won't sense the soul or you might rip it apart if it's still a little stuck to the body..
So I can just place my hand on them right away and wait?
Yeah, you totally can. It's going to be a little hard considering you fight mostly at range. Luckily, the time it takes for a soul to leave the body and the time a bare soul takes to dissipate gets longer the stronger the creature. I suspect around the middle of the C grade you will start to have remnants which are basically souls that are strong enough to not dissipate at all.
So like ghosts?
Yeah, kind of. In the middle of C grade or whenever they start appearing, they won't be able to think, just act on desires, base emotions and convictions. They might attack the person that killed them because the soul remembers the experience. Later on, they can be fully functioning sentient beings. That usually requires many convictions though and a lot of soul cultivation. It's not something that all creatures will create. Also most remnants do dissipate eventually, it just takes a lot longer.
Couldn't they just find a new body at that point?
Yeah… kinda? Your soul's connection to your body is complex. Making a new body entirely is a massive pain in the arse and not possible for the vast majority of people, even gods.
Really?
It's one of the most complicated processes that exists. There are certain spell formations that can do it. Typically you need to inscribe them ahead of time. Then you can possess the body, but you won't be able to control it for a while. You need the body to accept your soul and for it's affinity to grow. It may take millennia to be able to swing a sword. To get back to god levels of strength, it would take a ridiculous sum of time where you are essentially just asleep. Then you would have to level from scratch more or less as your soul knows all these techniques but your body isn't used to them. Your soul might command the body to do something, but the brain is wired slightly differently, the joints are slightly different and they completely miss.
Isn't that basically a lich?
Yeah, a no phylactery lich. That's why they are usually spell casters, they can inscribe a soul to body connection and they don't care as much about moving their limbs.
What about the lich class? It said I could possess bodies, wouldn't that take forever?
It's not too difficult to transfer a soul to body bond, it is very difficult to create a new one. If you die, and that bond is destroyed, you're kind of stuck for a while.
You could come back though?
Yeah, but if someone wants to keep you dead, it's not too difficult. At that point, they just launch a soul attack on you or implant a curse or even something worse. Then your soul is basically guaranteed to just fall apart.
Got it, so if I need to keep someone down permanently, implant the soul with a curse?
Or harvest it, yeah. You won't have to worry about that for a long time though. Like A to S or higher.
Higher?
Above that are gods and the Divine levels, remember?
Right. So for now, find a creature and try to sense it's soul leaving it's body as it dies?
Yeah, it will probably take a little while to figure it out. Don't worry about wasting a few souls.
Will my soul's peculiarities make it easier?
Probably not, it could make the next step after this one ridiculously easy though. Get one into your soul space and we'll see.
Felix crouched down and began stalking through the jungle, doing his best to make use of his new skill which would work most effectively, when he was already being stealthy. He was pretty sure he was awful at it, but he figured he would practice and hoped he would eventually be half decent. He knew he would need to seek out instruction at some point, he just didn't think now was the best time because he had more important things to do.
He continued to prowl through the jungle until his eyes caught the sight of a large creature that appeared to be the cross between a bird, bat and a bear. It had four legs with leathery wings sprouting out of the front ones, it's body otherwise covered in a dark green fur. It was facing away from Felix, it's tail loosely hanging down from the branch it was perched upon.
[E - Common] Beaked-Bat-Bear (Lvl 152)
Felix continued to sneak up on the creature, rather proud of how effective his stealth was as he managed to get within a few meters of the tree holding his prey. Suddenly, Felix was shoved forwards and into the ground. A heavy weight pressed claws into his back and held him down, face in the dirt. He immediately cast a hasty force blast outwards from his back to free himself then shoved mana into the spells inscribed into his boots to gain even more distance.
He ended up launching himself towards the Beaked-Bat-Bear he had been hunting so he quickly rolled across the ground once then stood and dodged as it tried to bite him. He managed to jump back a few times finally gaining enough distance to get a full picture of the fight he had gotten himself into. He realized that he hadn't been hunting the Beaked-Bat-Bear at all, it had laid a trap for him. It had two others of it's kind hiding in the tree tops nearby ready to ambush anyone that took the bait and tried to sneak up on their oblivious seeming friend.
Felix could feel slight bruising on his back, but his armor had completely prevented the claws from penetrating. He would be sore, but sported no open wounds just yet. He thought about practicing real combat with the creatures, but he was a little annoyed they had ambushed him and that his stealth was not as effective as he had thought. He also only needed to test soul harvesting so he quickly spun up three lightning bolts, 5 times bigger in every dimension, about 25 times the spell effect for about 125 times the mana. The two closet to him lunged forwards and the one in front stalked forwards but they were all struck and instantly died before their legs left the ground.
Ding You have slain 3 [D - Common] Beaked-Bat-Bear (Lvl 152)
Ding You have gained a level in [D - Epic] Soul Harvester
Felix quickly turned to his right and lunged forwards placing his hand on the still sizzling corpse closest to him. He looked inwards towards his own soul before expanding his soul senses out as quickly as he could. He wasn't sure if he was too hasty in extending his soul sight but he didn't feel anything. Everything outside of his soul was like a mess. It reminded him of the ambient mana, where the anima bunched together and moved around all over the place with no apparent direction or reason. He waited 10 minutes before giving up on these and continuing through the forest to find more test subjects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .