Now that he knew the ambush tactics of the Beaked-Bat-Bears, his identify skill had aptly named, he wasn't fooled again. After the first attempt, he didn't even bother with his stealth skill anymore and just blasted through the enemies so he could keep trying to detect their souls. It took him 50 or so kills before he thought he felt something, another 10 to be sure and another 40 to be able to see it leaving the corpse. The next kill, he tried to grab hold of the soul and thought he managed to move it a little, but it didn't exactly move the way he expected it to so he wasn't sure. The next one he managed to pull on and he felt himself affecting it, but he couldn't seem to freely move it.
Any tips? Felix, frustrated, hoped Grim had a trick or something to help.
Yeah, but I'm not gonna tell you because it'll be a waste of time. Most people use a trick, and do it in a different way, you aren't most people though. You need to figure out how to do this without the trick. I'll tell you what it is after you get a few of them.
I see. I guess I do want to get it this way, I feel like I'm so close already.
On the next kill, Felix managed to move the soul and even touch it, but he couldn't quite pull it into his soul space. He did manage to pull the next two in though. It had taken a hundred and five kills of various jungle creatures all at around the same level as the last ones which had netted him another 7 class levels.
That enough?
Should be. Probably don't want to turn off your senses to dive into your soul space right here though.
Will it take that long?.
It shouldn't but, do you really want to risk it?
No… I shouldn't.
Felix looked around at the jungle surrounding him, trying to find a relatively safe place for him to, essentially, turn off his awareness of his surroundings. The best he managed to come up with was flying up to the highest branch that would support him of a nearby tree. He didn't think it was perfectly safe, but he also didn't want to fly all the way back to his tower so he hoped this would be good enough. Once he had settled in, he began meditating and entered his soul garden finding Grim sitting atop a rock just over the water's surface.
So what now?
First, you need to not be here.
Yeah, but how do I get into my soul space?
You don't. If your body went there literally, your soul would… Actually it might be possible, but let's not worry about that now. I said you need to not be here, but I just meant you need to meditate and focus on your soul space not your soul garden. You should be able to focus your consciousness there instead. Basically you're projecting yourself there, that's also not necessary, but it should help for now.
Felix sat down in his soul garden and began meditating. It was a weird thought for him as he was kind of meditating while in a meditation but really all he was doing in both was transferring his attention so it didn't really matter. He spent a few minutes dragging his attention along his soul until his conscious finally managed to pierce into his soul space. He was essentially just using his mana and soul senses to look inside. He didn't have organs to see light, hear sound or really any other senses. He could however, feel everything. In his souls space, it was like when his race had evolved, he was suddenly feeling things everywhere. He felt like he could feel every bit of mana, anima and matter, even mana in the aether. It was simply too much for him to process. Even after almost an hour, the overwhelming sensations weren't getting any better.
Can I actually go in there and see instead of this?
You should be able to.
How?
You are kind of the god of your soul space, you know everything that happens in it. You should be able to feel light bouncing if you cast a light spell or something.
I won't be able to see the soul though, right?
Sort of? You could probably choose to have your soul senses appear as an actual image if you wanted to, same way the mana sight skill works.
Could I do that in real life too? Replace the mana sight skill?
Yeah for sure, you just need to figure out how.
That's a problem for another time. Ok, here's what I'm going to do, correct me if I misunderstood something, I'm going to choose a point in the soul space and feel all of the sound, light, mana and soul from the perspective of that point to simulate actually being there. Should also make it easier to process all those inputs. Then I just ignore anything outside of that point.
Yeah more or less. You don't need to do that. If you would rather figure out how to deal with feeling everything in your soul space at once, then you should practice that. It shouldn't matter for the next step anyways.
Maybe some other time. I'd rather not waste time on it now.
Felix spent an hour or so fine tuning his new senses and making them as close to his current senses as he could. He made sure to offset the light he sensed from his chosen point as close to how his body was laid out as he could so that the transition was as natural as possible. He didn't bother with any of the other physical senses at the moment because he didn't think they would be necessary. He didn't have to do anything about his soul or his mana senses as he was already used to processing a wide area in real life and not much was happening in his soul space currently. When he was done, he looked inside and turned on a light but the only thing to see in there was Grim's actual body, a large grimoire, which was just floating around. He looked around for the soul but couldn't seem to find it at all. All he found was the outer layers of his own soul.
Grim, where is it?
Uh… not sure. Should be in there somewhere. Maybe try looking around with just your soul senses?
Felix looked around for half an hour or so, scrutinizing every inch of his soul space before he concluded that it wasn't there. I can't find it anywhere.
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That's weird, try again, this time I'll pay attention from my body and watch.
Alright.
Felix returned his attention to his body, exited his soul space and garden then jumped through the trees until he found some sort of six limbed monkey creature. All of it's limbs, other than it's head and tail, were identical ending in hands which was actually rather disturbing. Felix didn't pay it much mind, killing it as fast as he could with a ridiculously oversized lightning bolt then jumping over to catch it's body as it fell. He immediately reached out with his soul sight and waited for the soul as soon as it left the corpse. Just a few minutes later, he sensed the soul and latched onto it as fast as possible. He sent Grim a heads up then dragged it into his soul space.
Can you see it?
Uh no… Gimme a few seconds, I'm gonna watch your most recent memories and figure out if you're doing it right.
Felix waited patiently for the first few minutes then grew anxious for the last dozen or so.
Can we try it one more time? Grim finally asked.
Sure.
Felix tried to jump to the next tree but had no practice with this kind of thing and completely overshot it. Instead, he landed on the jungle floor and ran between the trees until he found a panther, similar to the ones he killed in the jungle when he was hunting for natural treasures. He killed it with a simple heavily oversized Lightning Bolt as he just wanted to figure out this soul thing and didn't care about the fight at the moment. As the body fell limply to the ground, he ran over and held his hand to it's side, waiting for it's soul to leave the corpse. As soon as he felt it shift and reveal itself, he latched on and pulled it into his soul space, warning Grim as he did.
It's coming.
Ok, I'm ready.
Felix did as he did with the other souls, he pulled it into his souls space and waited for Grim to say something. He waited a few minutes then couldn't hold himself back and stay patient any longer.
So, what happened?
It took Grim a few minutes to respond. Well… When a body dies with a soul attached to it, the soul bond breaks and the soul is damaged, so the soul that leaves the body is slightly weakened. It had essentially been wearing armor, the body, for it's entire existence. Outside of the armor, it's fragile. Your soul and the enemies you kill are kind of hostile… I don't know if it matters though… The souls just exploded. They were completely obliterated.
Say what now?
Similar to me seeing your soul for the first time, except they don't have bodies to protect them anymore.
Shouldn't my body protect them though?
Not when they're in your soul space, in direct contact with your soul. When you move them into your soul space… I'm not sure honestly, I guess that's enough. Either they're too weak or there's just enough time exposed to your soul as it enters that… well, they just can't seem to take it.
So I can't soul harvest?
Not manually, not like this.
You said it's just as I pull them in right? Could I teleport the souls directly into my soul space? Get rid of the in between?
Uh… Probably? Not feasible right now. Teleportation takes a ridiculous amount of mana and is not something you want to be doing repeatedly. Also I've never cast it or seen it cast on just a soul. So probably not. Furthermore, I'm just telling you what's happening now. I'm not saying they would survive in your soul space, just that they aren't even making it there now. There's a good chance the souls can't handle being inside your soul space either.
Could I store the enemy before they die?
Maybe? It would be really difficult and even if you could do it, you would likely have to harvest them while they're still alive which would basically be the worst kind of torture.
Yeah, I don't want to do that. So I'm screwed?
You should try the skill, maybe the system can get around these issues.
What if it can't? I just have a useless class?
Well… We can figure that out if we need to. For now, there are other ways you can get stronger. The only good ways I know of to get around this would take a long time to get going, like a really long time.
Well shit, hopefully the skill works then.
Fingers crossed.
Uh… uh huh.
Felix, once again, darted through the jungle. He hunted down and killed another creature, this time reaching his hand out above the corpse and mentally activating his Soul Harvest class skill. As soon as he did, he saw a white stream of something more opaque than smoke that carried with it a slight glow, pour itself into his hand. He instinctively tensed his hand into a fist, as if grabbing hold of the incorporeal. He felt a warm sensation trickle into his arm and into his core, in the middle of his torso.
[Epic - Novice I] Soul Harvest
Soul Harvested!
You have harvested the soul of a fallen enemy. The soul has been placed in your soul space for processing and you will be notified when the processing is completed. This soul's level is at least 20% greater than your level and will grant bonus stats.
Estimated processing time: 0 seconds.
[Epic - Novice I] Soul Harvest
Soul Processed!
A soul you previously harvested has been processed. The harvested parts have been integrated into your soul, strengthening and improving it.
Stats gained: None.
SHIT.
Yikes.
How do we get around it?
Well… The best way I can think of would be to have a different soul space where you can harvest souls freely.
What do you mean?
Make an item with an embedded soul space, then store the souls in there. You can go in, with your body, and manually process them from there.
You think I could get the skill to harvest into the item too?
Probably? Skills don't seem to be set in stone, they seem to just be simplifying things you can already do, so yes, if I had to guess.
Why didn't we do that?
Well… It's not exactly easy to do and it takes a lot of time. The easy way, is to sever a piece of your own soul and embed it into a ring. Given that your soul decimates any other it comes in contact with, that isn't really an option. So you need to use someone or something else's soul. That would mean crafting an item out of something's soul or collecting ambient anima. Both take a long time and are a huge pain in the ass. Like, multiple decades long. Though it would take about that long to naturally regenerate the sliver of your soul you would use with the first method.
What about the charm?
Doesn't seem like you can process the souls while they're in the charm. We're talking about a pretty specialized item here and I doubt the charm is that. You could try entering it yourself but from some basic examination, that's not a soul space but a specialized pocket dimension or something like that. In the meantime, it should be able to hold and preserve the really strong souls so you don't lose out I guess, at least until we figure this out.
Great, so my class is useless. All I have is this fancy stealth skill? Lame. It's just annoying is all, I can work on my body in the meantime, but if we can think of a way around this, I'd like to get the ball rolling on that as soon as possible.
Yeah I agree. You could see about changing the class?
I guess. The other classes kind of sucked though. If I can get this one to work, I want to. I might be forced to in preparation for the world event though.
I think you'll be fine with your class now as is. If it becomes an issue you can swap it out during or afterwards. Worst case, your progress is delayed a few weeks. You don't exactly have any issues with leveling the traditional way, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. I'll let you know if I think of or you come across something that could help.
Alright, in the meantime, I think the best thing I can do to prepare myself for the event is to gain stats and enchant my armor properly. I should probably also practice with the Dragon Dance just in case and make some tools. If we end up with the sanctum, there isn't anything in specific I can think of to prepare, just general tools. If we end up with the tomb, I need some ways of getting into vaults and finding hidden caches. If we end up with the natural treasure hunt, I need drills and other extraction methods.
You'll have a month between the decision and the event to make preparations too.
Yeah, that should be enough time for any of the tools I'll need to build… hopefully. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .