I wonder which is the best method and decide to yet again try something new.

I increase the ‘aura’ flow into my right hand’s fingers and stick them into my chest in a claw shape, whilst taking care not to hit any vital organs. I then make a grabbing motion with my ‘aura’ that was now in a claw shape and rip a portion of my soul out.

I feel an intense prickling sensation all over my body, as though being poked by a million needles and then I pull an ebony black translucent sphere out of my chest. Ignoring as best I can the pain, whilst still releasing a scream that I tried to muffle with my other hand, I drop the sphere onto the ground by my side.

The pain lessens but I am still panting heavily as I watch the sphere grow and gain colour before turning into a human shape that appeared to be a translucent version of me.

Phew, success. Thank Death that my soul didn’t actually shatter from that reaving.

What I had done was that I stuck a claw-like hand into my chest to form a claw shape and from inside my body reave my soul. However, I didn’t reave the entirety of my soul and instead tried to rip it in half and take one half out of my body, creating a soul body.

This soul body, although using half of my soul to create it, only had ⅓ of my total strength and incredible fragility which makes it useless in fights but it had a single advantage. Because it had no body or container, it had no ‘veins’ and could therefore send magic anywhere from any area on the soul body.

This allows me to release a large portion of my power out of my soul body, unlike my physical body which took most of the power for strengthening. It is interesting having 2 bodies active and awake simultaneously, unlike my previous experience in a soul body.

It was like having my attention split in half, with half my brain focusing on the information that the clone received from its surroundings while the other half was concentrating and receiving information from my physical body.

I walked forward up to the dog’s side with my soul body and looked at it for a brief second before making a palm and pulling my elbow back. The soul body then slammed the palm into the dog, with its hand passing through the dog. The soul body dissipated in a dark light and turned back into a black orb as it ran out of energy.

Similarly, the dog emanated green sparkles before they sunk into the earth and vanished. I could tell that these sparkles were the dogs shattered soul and I had a feeling that they would be invisible to anyone who didn’t have any power in manipulating ‘Death Aura’.

The dogs rasping and whimpering were silenced, as was its life. I picked up the sphere and pushed it onto my chest. It seemed to sink through the skin and bones and vanish into my body, combining with my other soul half.

Once again I felt the needles, but this time, it came with a feeling of relief likely originating from the combination of the 2 soul halves. My body calmed down far faster than before and seemed to feel stronger than before I recombined.

I looked at the dog’s corpse and turned it around, analysing every section of it. Eventually, as I couldn’t find any visible marks on the outside, I decided to do the gruesome but necessary job. I strengthened the fingers on both hands and tore the dog apart at the belly.

I looked at all of the organs and made sure that no marks were left behind. I discovered no evidence of my soul shattering, and since its soul dissipated and went to the realm of Death, I saw no fragments left behind.

I returned to the orphanage and swiftly fell asleep due to my lack of ‘aura’ which made me incredibly tired. After eating a huge meal of rice early in the morning, I arrived at my training place and turned the ‘weapon’ into a sword and sheath again as I cycled through my memories for sword styles and stances.

All styles had strengths and weaknesses, but I decided to focus on the stances of Iaijutsu. The ‘weapon’ was a great for Iaijutsu as it had no resistance when sliding out the sword and also had the benefit of being completely undetectable as a blade.

Because of me being able to change it from being a rod to a sword and sheath instantaneously, it had great battle potential for surprise attacks. Especially when combined with Iaijutsu which was the art of quickly drawing the sword to either defend or attack swiftly.

I started with learning the basic draw initially before trying any of the actual stances of the style.

--Time Skip--

Yet again a few month past, with it now being 7 months and 28 days after an agreement was made between me and Helra.

I practiced swinging my sword about 2 hours a day, in two one hour sessions ever since that day. I spent the remainder of my free time increasing ‘aura’ capacity but didn’t widen the ‘aura veins’ and instead stored it in my body while really slowly opening the ‘vein’ that let ‘aura’ leave my body as my capacity grew and grew.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

The basic draw was basically mastered and it seemed that I was far more skilled with learning sword styles and stances mainly due to my photographic memory. I remembered videos (Or was it actual things that occurred in my life, I can’t tell) of Iaijutsu techniques from my previous life and managed to master and perfect a lot of them far quicker than the normal. Having a lot of time on my hands also helped with this, as Grandma didn’t burden me at all.

I completed one of the draws and then cycled through my memory and compared it to the one done by professionals. If there was any issue with it, I would instantly know of it by comparing the two and just as quickly as finding it, fix the problem.

Although I say mastered, I still plan to edit the techniques themselves in order to make them more unique and powerful. I also want to learn another style in case I don’t finish the enemy off with a Iai technique.

For the past half a year, I still had no word from Betty and hadn’t had access to hell in my soul body at all. However, that changed today.

I was training as usual in small tree park near the orphanage when I felt an incredibly huge, oppressive yet familiar ‘aura’ appear behind me. I turned and saw Lord Death appear, clad in his black robe from a large purple flame. It wasn’t Betty this time, but rather his warform which he uses when he has to cast techniques.

Upon his appearance, the trees surrounding us suddenly lost their leaves and the trunks and branches turned grey. The trunks and branches cracked and toppled, turning into dust from Lord Death’s presence.

This was the true power of ‘Death Aura’. My simple killing of a dog required me to use my soul body and against a weakened close to death being which wanted to die. However, his power was so great that just by passively standing there, all the life around him died, with the exception of me.

He looked at me and spoke in his deep, urgent voice.

“Quick, make haste and strengthen your body with as much ‘aura’ and techniques as possible.”

I heard the urgency in his voice and quickly did as he said, pouring ‘aura’ into my entire body, leaving me almost depleted, but not completely so that I could remain conscious.

I nodded at him to signal that I was done and he clicked his fingers.

Suddenly, he erupted in purple flames in the same manner which he used to enter and as I wondered what happened to him, I found myself surrounded by the same flames. These weren’t normal flames however, as they produced no heat and instead did something far more terrifying.

They imposed ‘Death’ upon me and with such great force that I almost cracked under the pressure and forfeited my life.

How urgent must it be, that Lord Death is willing to come to me in person and gamble on the idea that I will survive such a strong imposing?

I look around and realise that I am in hell again, inside Betty’s throneroom. Unlike before, when I came here in my soul body, I arrived here in my physical body and as a result I could clearly feel the cold of the place.

Lord Death ran up to me and spoke very quickly, as though he had no time.

“You are my only contingency plan, you cannot die and must get high up in the ladder of power. I will likely not see you again, and you must remember these words:

‘Chaos is Powerful’

Do you understand? Death is Eternal, but Chaos is Powerful. Remember those words and don’t fight the powerful. Quickly, stick out your left hand, I will give you a mark.”

I stuck out my left hand and he grabbed it, drawing a circle on the top of my hand. The circle then became black, similar to the mark on my chest and started to bleed black blood. The blood crawled up my left arm in two spirals intersecting each other at intervals.

The place where the blood crawled then turned into a black marking and the black circle on my hand turned back into an image of Cerberus, Death’s Mark.

While all this was happening, I was screaming from the pain and trying to tear my hand away from him while he held it in a tight grip and repetitively said:

“Endure, Endure, Endure, Endure, Endure!”

Eventually the whole ritual completed and I looked up at Lord Death in time to see him smile and then crumble away as I got consumed by purple flames.

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*We all love google… Also pardon me if I get something wrong as I am not versed in Iaijutsu. Like at all. But feel free to help me if you find an error.