Somewhere else, earlier in time. POV: Archmage Mandor

“Donson, have you finished binding the soul-eater?”

“Yes, Archmage, I have done as you have ordered. The soul-eater will take over the youth. From then on it will live the boy’s life and proceed as if nothing had happened. It will report in after joining a magical school. I will be his liaison.”

“Good, Donson that is all. You are dismissed.”

“As you command, Archmage.”

Seeing his servant leave the room, Mandor slowly walked to his throne and seated himself.

“Good, now after all the years of preparation we slowly near the fulfillment of our plans.” With an evil laugh, Mandor leaned back in his chair, fantasizing about world domination and destruction.

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Here and now, POV: Aron Brightcloud

You see now what I mean? It couldn’t have been a simple soul-parasite that had found its way to a poor innocent soul. No! It had to be the evil plot of a warmongering archmage with his own hidden cult of wicked magicians.

Well, at least I had inherited the memories of the soul-eater. With them, I could play my part correctly while advancing my own agenda.

For the people who were wondering what important thing I was doing while I let you watch the memories, or what happened with the rest of the memories of the beast, I will answer that now.

There were many more memories. What ancient being doesn’t know about supremely strong cultivation techniques or secrets which could rule the world. So, yes, I got one too! With the help of this technique I will transform my body and squash all the enemies in my way! So open your ears and hear the mighty name of my new legacy: Ha! Got you! There was no such thing!

The only thing that I got after having gone through that flood of information was a disconcerting pressure in my bladder and intestines.

While you were watching, I was shitting my soul out…. Or at least it felt like it. Yep, you read correctly. No invincible cultivation technique for me. With that, I closed my pants and walked out of the toilet.

So why did that happen? I couldn’t fuse with a big part of the memories of the soul-eater. I felt all its older memories dissolve into nothingness. My own soul was unprepared to handle the difference in our soul structure. The actual reason for having to go to the toilet was that I had gotten critically injured and had lain for a long time in bed. My body decided to flush out all the accumulated waste at the first possibility it got. No actual connection there.

Stop, did I actually make a real joke now? That was not me, or at least that wasn’t me before. I somehow felt lighter, in a happier mood. I had to pay attention. What else had changed? Until now it was okay, but it was important to observe further. I had to prevent changing myself at my core! I needed my calluous and strategic mind now more than ever. It was tragic that my combat persona got squashed so thoroughly. Hopefully it would somehow repair itself. Yet, there was nothing I could do about it now, I had to soldier on. My normal me had to be enough.

On the bright sight, as parts of other souls were now fused with me, this gave me more strength. The growth of my soul would help me suppress my evil hitchhicker.

Something else that I had found out was that there were now bindings on my soul which would push me into following their orders. It was okay; the orders were scrambled during the process of assimilation and I would feel them only as suggestions if they tried to control me. In fact, it would even help me. I wouldn’t betray myself with suspicious behavior as my body would automatically start doing whatever they commanded. The only difference was that I could stop it any time I wanted.

A certain (new) part of me wanted to flip out and do something rash, but I clamped down on it. Only pure cold logic and strategy could get me out of this mess. Knowing this, I put it onto my ever-growing list of problems. I would have to invest time in this evil cult in the future. It was not urgent at the moment. They wouldn’t interact with me until after I had joined a magic school. Now was time to enjoy the present!

In my former world I had lived, but it had never felt right. I did my job as an investigator well. (Yes, after having seen the advertisement I applied and successfully became a private investigator), I still had always felt like something was missing. And as you know, after that the Darkon came.

But now everything had changed. No aliens and no asshole relatives. In front of me was a whole new world full of the things I had been craving for. It didn’t matter that there was some baggage that I was carrying with me (namely a big bad and evil hitchhiker, who ate souls for breakfast and an evil cult that wanted to use me for their own means).

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I would not let them win! At that moment I swore to myself that I would live this life to the fullest. I couldn’t wait to explore the world for real. The memories Aron had given me let me understand the basic things in theory but were inadequate compared to a real self-made experience.

Having arrived at this point, my next action was to structure the important changes in this new world. As an investigator, I had learned how important it was to analyze and structure everything. Thanks to that, I would have an overview and be able to make plans for the future.

I used the learned Information of Aron and came up with the following biggest changes in this new world in comparison to my old.

For one, the world was full of magic and magical beasts as well as different races that coexisted more or less peacefully together. Additionally, one could gain power through killing other beings. Depending on the strength of the beast you would get a different amount of experience. The beings from the same race gave less than the ones of a different race.

Most of the people were still living their life normally. All of them had improved their bodies to a certain extent, but only so much as to support their chosen profession. Thinking more in dept about it, I could relate to their decision. Killing beasts was very dangerous. It was understandable that a big part would walk the easier route. Especially as one needed a notable amount of experience before one felt a significant difference. Because of that, it was normal that the people didn’t want to live most of their life on a razor’s edge and kill beasts for a living.

But for the ones that walked this path, they could join the adventurer's guild or the military. In the adventurer's guild they could accept new missions to hunt down different beasts or to finish special tasks for money. In addition, the adventurer's guild would supply you with task specific equipment and information.

It was similar for the military only that they integrated you into a more cohesive and rigid structure where you had to follow orders. On the other hand you got more support and equipment if you accomplished one of their tasks.

In this world existed so-called dungeons. These were instanced cave systems, full with mindless beasts devoid of any consciousness and could be used to train and enhance oneself. One could enter alone or as a group and challenge the dungeon.

If the group or person was able to complete the dungeon, they would get additional rewards. One could run the dungeon more than once. The monsters would respawn after a set amount of time. Depending on the dungeon, the difficulty could scale with your own power. So one had to pay attention at all times.

And as last, a small part of humanity was able to wield magical power. Every child was tested after its sixteenth birthday to find out if it had an aptitude for magic.

One could say that three factors decided how far you could go in this world. First, your power; depending on it, you could do anything you wanted. Secondly, as a noble you had more privileges from the start, but if you reached a high enough strength level as a commoner you could still topple a noble or even become one yourself. And at last, if you were able to cast magic, you were sought after even more.

That meant that if I wanted to get strong, I would have to fight. With all my problems I had no other choice, but that was only one part. The experience you got through killing monsters made only your body stronger. There was still another way to become more powerful. All techniques had secrets behind them. The more one understood about his body and the techniques, the easier one could manipulate the surroundings or execute techniques.

So I had to not only increase my body’s power, but I had to meditate about all the techniques and understand the underlying secrets and rules behind every single thing I learned. That meant that smart people who had a better innate aptitude for their magic would reach much higher heights than other people, who had gained the same amount of experience but didn’t understand the techniques.

After knowing this much, it was clear for me I wanted to become an adventurer. But first I had to undergo the aptitude test for magic. Aron had become sixteen only a week ago. He had yet to test himself. I dearly hoped that I had a good magical aptitude. I was uncertain, my soul came from another world. On the other side, it was powerful and had parts from Aron’s own mixed into it. I should be alright.

Now the most important thing was to integrate correctly into my new family. I couldn’t allow for any doubts in my mother or other relatives minds to appear. I went a second time over the new memories. It had to be flawless.

“Bathing” in the emotions towards my new family members was a special experience. It felt very unique to think about Aron’s mum but feeling the love and closeness I should have for my own mother. On the other hand, it made playing my part of a loving son much easier.

Somewhere deep down in the deepest parts of my soul I looked forward to having a real mother that loved me and cared about me. Even though I would never admit it.

After two hours of laying around and sorting through the data, I had memorized all the important parts a second time. I didn’t want to slip up later. For the rest of Aron’s memories I hadn’t gotten; I had to improvise.

I was also very lucky that young Aron wasn’t arrogant or lazy. I would have hated to have to play an arrogant prick for the next few months before I had slowly changed him to a more social person.

Such people had always more than enough enemies that only waited to stab you in the back at the worst moment. Luckily I didn’t have to deal with that. My troubles were more than enough.

Finished with that, it was time to meet my new/old family. I planned to only change certain key parts which would allow me to grow faster and were still plausible. They mustn’t realize that I was someone else. I had already seen how people reacted to possession. Being exorcised once was more than enough for me.