Rob gazed at the lump of milky white light with a serene smile. His eyes shimmered with a dim golden luster, and Fortune Stealer was activated. The milky white light passed through his hand, down to his chest, and into his soul. A strange sensation soon overtook his senses as a series of flashing lights occupied his vision.
A hideous hobgoblin mother, a hobgoblin’s first enemy in the form of another hobgoblin adolescent, hours poured into training the spear with a hobgoblin’s crude wisdom. He lived through day and night inside a rainforest, damp and wet for most of the time he was alive.
Then eventually, it all looped back to the hobgoblin’s final moments. Rob saw his serene smile, the urgency of death as an iron-like grip clutched at his neck and the feeling of falling into the abyss when he heard his whispers.
Rob enjoyed every single bit of this unfamiliar yet familiar sensation. Stealing… Heh, perhaps I should have been called the Supreme Thief rather than the Devouring Darkness.
He stared at the body of the hobgoblin beneath him and wore a sympathetic gaze. He said with a smile, “I was just like you, you know? It’s just that your misfortune was many times greater than mine.”
Rob sighed and looked back, his eyes locking down on the apprehensive hobgoblins that pointed their weapons at him. They had just witnessed the death of a comrade, a death so swift and so quick that it was akin to an ant being crushed by one’s finger.
Fear. Anger. Vengeance. Despair.
Rob recognized their emotions all too well as he had experienced those emotions over the course of eons. It’s a cycle of fortune and misfortune over and over again. A quick glance at their luck and Rob saw a terrifying tall black coffin of death over their heads as if to signal their inevitable end.
So this is another mystery of luck and fortune. Rob widened his smile as he enjoyed the enlightening experience. Fortune Stealer… I wonder what kind of Truth would be formed with the entire culmination of my past life condensed into one single ability.
Perhaps it would be related to stealing again, or perhaps into something more mystical like Buddha. Rob rubbed his chin. Nah, I definitely don’t want something like Buddha. Stealing is so simple, why bother encompassing so many different concepts like samsara, nirvana, and bla bla bla.
Rob chuckled and slowly walked towards the terrified hobgoblins at a casual pace. They shrieked in fear as the hobgoblins that wielded bows shot their arrows, but it was useless. The difference in luck was simply too enormous, like an ant being compared to a mountain.
He watched as an arrow came zooming through the air and arrived right in front of his forehead, but with a mere thought, the wooden arrow disintegrated into pure carbon and swiftly reshaped into a clear, colorless crystal.
The colorless crystal rod hovered in the air and changed shape once more. It transformed into a small crystal sphere and Rob grabbed it with an intrigued smile.
“Whew, that took quite a lot on my stamina. But a diamond sphere… This would sell for a lot, probably around 10 gold coins with its strange shape and high quality,” Rob muttered and pocketed the diamond. He had a plan on how he can swindle his way through and sell it for a decent profit. He could simply say he got it inside the dungeon, and bam, ten gold coins are his for the taking. “But this is the limit. Any more and they’ll start asking questions.”
He scratched the back of his head as he yawned, and soon enough, he arrived right in front of the helpless hobgoblins. They cannot run, they knew that because they had seen Rob’s speed already. The difference in power was simply too great to overcome.
The second one soon fell down as their heads were crushed into a meat paste. Rob gave them a painless death, a form of giving them a merciful end without pain. He wasn’t the type to enjoy the suffering of others if it didn’t give him benefits.
I did have my villain arc before when my soul was partially damaged which impaired my cognition. After I recovered from that injury, that would be the time I understood a bit more about the nature of life and the needlessness for good or evil.
It’s all about what you can gain and what you can lose. All I wanted was to gain more and more without losing anything, quite the mindset befitting a thief.
Rob chuckled as more memories surfaced in his mind. Seeing all of these hobgoblins who faced similar circumstances to his previous incarnations made him nostalgic for some reason. Eons of memories were a lot to process, like scattered fragments of different individuals. The sheer length of his life caused different periods in his memory to almost have different individuals living as the same person, a different Rob Fortune for different lives.
And, it was understandable. Every life he lived was another life stolen, another identity to take hold of as another cycle of reincarnation starts anew. He had lived as a pitiful beggar to a grand king with legions spanning across galaxies.
He had lived as a butterfly, a mighty dragon, a living moon made of flesh and blood, a sentient star, a bacteria, a spiritual virus, an artificial intelligence… The memories that molded the person known as Rob Fortune was numerous and distinct.
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Rob regained his focus when the last hobgoblin in the group was defeated. From its corpse, a milky white lump floated into the air and entered his chest, strengthening his divine sense and soul.
Ten monster souls, a single human soul. Oscar Vane himself only managed to reach a Liquid Soul and had never reached the mystical Solid Soul, but it isn’t that strange when you think about it. Gathering up to a total of a billion human souls is simply courting death and waging war against the entire world.
Although… It’s entirely feasible. Rob laughed and walked deeper into the forest to hunt for more prey. Fortune Stealer allows me to steal the soul foundation of others, the memories and experiences they have stored, and even their comprehension of the truth. It’s a lot more efficient and optimal compared to the methods Oscar Vane used to strengthen his soul.
It only takes me an instant, while he would need minutes to absorb a single monster soul. If it takes ten monster souls to equal a single human soul, then he would have to absorb the souls of ten billion monsters to acquire a Solid Soul. How pitiful, Oscar Vane. Even with your brilliant mind, you’ve never managed to deduce a way to overcome this critical flaw.
Rob didn’t mock Oscar Vane in the slightest, he only pitied that smart fellow. Misfortune surrounds fortune from all sides, like a hungry beast ready to bring catastrophe to someone the moment they were given the chance to do so.
…
A group of hobgoblins raised their bow and arrow and pointed it at the human standing still in the distance. The leader of the group shrieked loudly, and they simultaneously released their arrows.
Rob walked along the muddy ground with his hands behind his back. He enjoyed the earthy smell, the moist air, the soft breeze, and the rustling leaves. Arrows flew past his body and into the ground around him, but he wasn’t surprised at all. His luck was simply too great that it was like there was an invisible barrier around him that pushes away all approaching arrows from landing.
Another group of hobgoblins rushed out from the bushes ahead of him. They wielded long wooden spears with sharp ends, sharp enough that they can pierce through normal human skin. Even a knight wouldn’t underestimate the danger posed by those normal wooden spears since, even with tough skin, those spears can still attack a human’s natural weaknesses like their eyes, mouth, ears, nose, or even their crotch.
The hobgoblins shrieked in anger as cruel light flashed in their hideous eyes. Rob glanced at them with a serene smile and activated his Alchemy Magic. On the ground in front of him, the muddy ground began to turn dry and full of cracks as water floated into the air.
They continued to shriek, not noticing the strange glob of water that was extracted from the ground. Rob smiled and raised his hand to the front. He connected the tips of his thumb and his middle finger, smiled, and mumbled, “Boom!”
A loud explosion erupted from the water as a sharp burst of flame flared out like a dragon’s breath. Painful shrieks erupted out of the bright flame with hobgoblins rolling around on the ground, but the flame continued to burn brighter and brighter, yet strangely enough, the fire didn’t spread to the surrounding plants and was contained at a certain distance.
Rob soon ended their misery as from the ground, sharp earthen spikes pierced through the back of their foreheads and out from their foreheads. Lumps of milky white light floated out of their bodies and entered his body, invigorating his half-spirit soul and strengthening his Divine Sense.
He was already used to the surge of memories that invaded his memories. A couple of years of memories would only amount to a droplet in the vast ocean of his life. Eons is a very long time after all.
Soon, he arrived at the big boss of this dungeon, a giant Hobgoblin far bigger than any of the hobgoblins he had encountered in this dungeon. There was a trace of intelligence in its eyes, the vague wisdom that showed signs of a noteworthy soul.
“Ooh,” Rob hummed with surprised eyes. “You should have a soul equal to seven to eight monster souls. What a nice little harvest to end the morning.”
The hobgoblin roared in anger and bloodlust as it waved its big wooden club into the air like a mindless brute. It pounced forward and swung its weapon with enough force to kill a horse in one blow, as expected of a Boss Monster.
It might even be as strong as an Orc. Rob grinned and walked right up to the monster without any hint of fear. There was a reason why he deemed Alchemy Magic as the pinnacle of alchemy in Tyr.
Before the wooden club could even reach his body, it rapidly shrunk down in size and transformed into a lump of charred wood and dispersed into gas, yet there were no flames that had appeared to burn the wooden club to a crisp. The ground below trembled as sharp spikes erupted out of the ground and pierced through the giant hobgoblin’s body.
It cried out in pain but Rob wanted to end this quick. He still had a lot of other work to do today, such as getting that botanist that he had been wanting for days.
“How unfortunate for you to have met me. I’m practically unrivaled in the realm of knights and mages, and I can even defeat Grand Mages and Grand Knights with enough effort. I’m a man with a lot of knowledge after all.” Rob smirked and used his foundation in science to his complete advantage.
While his memories may be sealed, his knowledge of the omniverse, the truth behind religion, and the various common phenomenons that plagued various realities were still retained in his mind. Rob may enjoy increasing the difficulty of his new life here and there, but ignorance isn’t really something he’d want to go through over again - he’d just seal all of those reality-shattering knowledge like his various devouring methods or the creation of systems or the reality-hopping watch and store them in the far recess of his minds.
Albeit, he can still access them. He knows he can access them, but as to how, well that would appear when he needs it. And that’s a high order to go through since Rob believed that the condition is for him to face true death, and boy was he a slippery little cockroach that had survived the hunt of numerous Higher Existences as an Ascended.
Rob walked through the portal with the handful of loot he had gotten and gave it to the school for more points while keeping the diamond ball inside his pocket for himself. When he got out of the fortress-like building, he looked up to the sky and saw the sun was already high up in the sky, glaring down the land with its intense light.
Noon’s almost here. Rob grabbed his rumbling stomach and proceeded to walk toward the school cafeteria. I wonder what I should get for lunch today. Maybe pancakes would do well, or maybe something more meaty to boost my protein intake today.