It’s the 6th time I’ve scanned my soul in the last hour. The excitement of my soul finally transitioning and getting to see what the system can do was getting to me. All I did today was destroy all the killing intent spots on my soul and after I was sure that there were none left to stare at my soul.
The system told me not to add more shadow concepts to my soul in the last 2 days as it might interfere with the process. So I was literally looking at a 99% progress bar but for my soul. The excitement also made me too distracted to try any of my exercises.
The system also said that I might black out for a couple hours in the literal last stage of the transition. And I think I know why. After the soul finished its paint job, my soul-body channels were getting dyed so my mind will probably get some modifications to get along with the new channels better when they get there.
And here it goe…
----------------------------------------
I was looking at a cat. Looking in the way I see with my shadow vision. It was black and it had long hair. It somehow gave me the feeling that it was a shadow cat and an old one at that.
My view instantly changed to another cat. This one had short hair. It turned its head to look at me. It flicked its tail and it turned its head back. It had pretty orange eyes that shined like gems.
I was looking at a different cat. This one was sleeping. It raised an ear, got in a more comfortable position and it continued its nap. My intuition is telling me that I’m seeing Shadow Cats and who am I to argue?
…
The next interesting thing that happened besides seeing all the styles of black cat in the universe, was a blue-eyed cat. What it did differently from every other cat that I’ve seen was talk to me.
[Wow, a young one. You probably got here by trying to divine my location with the mental energy I’ve left behind in the Shadow Realm. You have way too little to get anything about me and the connection will die quickly. Don’t worry, the connection that you made is so bad nobody can divine you back or send anything back at you. Anyway, there is little time left so contact me if you are bored. I love stories.]
It proceeded to show me a symbol. The system will know what I should do with it. And with that though my journey continued.
…
After tripling the amount of cats I’ve ever seen I was back in my body.
‘I’d say welcome back, but I was with you on the whole journey so do you want to check the System?’
‘You were there and didn’t say anything. Anyway, [Status]’
[Status] Name [Unnamed] Class [Shadow Cat] Stats Overall
-Level: 5
-Health (HP): 350/350
-Mana (MP): 256/326
-Mental Power (Psi): 70/70
Body
-Soul Cohesion: 7
-Ritualic Link: 2
Mind
-Mind Size: 12
-Mind Density: 7
-Mind Power Finesse: 9
-Thought Speed: 3
Soul
-Stable Soul: 1
-Soul Purity (Density): 12
-Soul Membrane: 0.1% (Shadow) - 0.001% (Killing Intent)
Skills Active
-Focus (Lv 8)
-Memorize (Lv 6)
-Misdirection (Lv 1)
-Lie (Lv 6)
Passive (Knowledge/Sustained)
-Programming (Lv 25)
-Multi-tasking (Lv 1)
-Polite Insult (Lv 10)
-Deception (Lv 3)
-Persuasion (Lv 9)
-Seduction (Lv 5)
-Sexual Technique (Lv 8)
Traits [Shadow Magic Affinity(Divine)]
-Shadow magic comes naturally to you.
-You have a boost to any shadow-related meditation technique, cultivation, etc.
-You have increased shadow-related materials' efficiency.
-You can learn shadow-based Concepts and Laws more easily.
-All your mana will be infused with an imitation concept. (New)
[Limited Immortality] -You will not die of old age. [Shadow Realm Entity]
-You hold a permanent connection to the Shadow Realm.
-Upon the destruction of your body in the physical realm you return to the Shadow Realm.
-Your body, mind, and soul are held together and powered by shadow magic. (New)
[Ritual Attuned]
-You instinctively know how to set up rituals that suit your purpose.
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
-You instinctively know how to navigate the [Consciousness Flow].
-You have an inherited map of the [Consciousness Flow].
-Resistance to [Mental Pollution] and [Mental Corruption].
[Lucky]
-The laws of [Luck] consider you a cat.
-You are a little luckier.
-The laws of luck are clear in your eyes.
‘Ok, but most stats don’t really mean anything to me. An explanation, please?’
‘Sure. I’ll start with your body. Your body works by having shadow mana attached to stable soul power that was disconnected from your soul. The ritualic link defines how much soul power unattached to your soul can remain stable. The cohesion is how much mana you can attach to your soul power. Max health is how much soul power you have and health is how much mana is attached to that soul power. Any questions?’
‘Soul cohesion doesn’t sound like a body stat.’
‘That’s not a question but I’ll indulge you. The more compressed soul power is, the more it repulses everything around it. Mental power wants to bind to anything. So the stat means that your mental power can stick to anything with a soul density lower or equal to 7. To get more soul cohesion you need to understand more powerful concepts like space.’
‘So in the end it was a mind stat.’
‘Yes, but those are the stats that describe your body. I’ll move on to the mind stats. Mind size measures how much mental power is in your mind palace. Mind Density measures how compressed your mental power is, it also determines how much of a punch your mental power packs. Mind Power Finesse determines how small your thoughts get, it influences your control of mind power. And lastly, Thought speed influences how fast you think and how fast your mental power is. Those upgrade by having better control over mind power, exercising your mind, and understanding higher concepts. Psi measures how much free mental power you have.’
‘The names pretty much gave away what they mean for this one.’
‘Well, the soul stats will be a little more confusing with your lacking information on them. Stable soul measures how big your outer soul is. Soul purity is how condensed your soul power is. The soul membrane is the mental power that surrounds your soul, it reduces damage from killing intent and shadow based attacks on your soul, body, and mind. Also level is a measurement of how big your soul is. You can ask your questions now.’
‘If my soul cohesion is 7 and my soul purity 12 how am I alive?’
‘Your soul purity is so high because your soul membrane is slightly squeezing your soul. Your true soul purity is a little under 4.’
‘I feel like I’ve been insulted somehow. Anyway, what is up with those numbers? How am I supposed to compute them?’
‘You get the immortal treatment when it comes to stats. Normal stats grow exponentially with 10^(1/10). That means that with every 10 stats you are 10 times better, 20 means 100 times, and so on. The Stats that don’t work like this are how much stable soul you have and your Soul Membrane. The first one is based on how many small skills would fit on your soul and the latter is based on how much of a law your mental energy contains.’
‘So 1 in a stat would mean?’
‘Average newborn immortal. The ones without that stat don’t count in the equation.’
‘Now they make sense somewhat. I don’t think I understand enough about the soul or mind to really piece together how relevant any of them are, but it would help if I could get a comparison with the average human from here.’
‘For a normal human of this world, all stats would be between 2 and 3 for mind and soul stats, the only one that would exceed that would be mind size with 7. For you, the important ones are the mind stats as your soul and body will be dragged up by them. We have more to talk about like skills and how you have the perfect build to be a conman, not a programmer.’
‘That’s easy enough to explain. The 2 mind skills come from all the cramming for exams and university in general. Misdirection probably refers to misdirection in conversations so probably debate competitions from my high school. Do I need to explain programming?’
‘I was referring to the remaining ones but my story senses are tingling so go on.’
‘Were you bitten by a mutant book? Cuz your senses are spot on. So I was either the biggest introvert in existence or I had some weird form of autism or something. Anyway, it manifested in me getting really tired by social interactions. Well, not all social interactions, talking about homework, cute animals, or having logical arguments were completely fine with me, but things that involved me taking feelings into consideration like encouragement, comforting someone, or even picking presents for something important would reach my limit for the day within an hour. So I got better at social interactions to spend less time with people.’
‘That’s the opposite of how things usually go. You get better because you interact a lot with people.’
‘Well the side effect was having a ton of superficial friends but not really being popular and having one or two good friends who can stand my attitude after the hour expires. Oh, I forgot to mention but if I’m tired I either annoy everybody or act like a zombie. Long story short this made me be invited to all the parties and not keep in contact with people.’
‘That explains some things but not all. Polite Insult?’
‘I’m mean and if you straight up insult people you usually drag on the conversation. So you just have to throw a veiled insult that everybody besides them gets when they annoy you.’
’With that skill, you are ready to enter the upper class. The last 2 skills?’
‘Going to the gym helped me with my depression a little and kept me in good shape. I also had a habit of taking care of my appearance and apparently, my tastes in clothes were good enough for partying. It was also during university so I pretty much studied all weekdays and the backlash on my mood from that meant that I would unleash myself upon the world for the next 2 days to party like it was the last day on Earth.’
‘All that meant that I was good-looking, dressed nicely, and I was good at talking. Add that to my high alcohol tolerance and I end up towards the end of the party sitting with the girls who know when to stop drinking━ they were the only ones in talking conditions. Now all you need to do is be funny and make them feel safe with you━ I don’t have tips for this. The next step is to invite one of them to watch a movie at your place. Even if you don’t end up on the bed you’ll get at least some cuddles.’
‘You don’t get one of those skills from cuddles.’
‘I’m bisexual and switch so the guys were usually very happy to try the bed. You could also ask from the start if they want just cuddles or if they are up for sex and that makes things so much easier.’
’Well, by the skill’s level, you were very good at pleasing your partners.’
‘I know, I pretty much had sex friends at some point but then uni ended so I went back to getting out of the house just to the gym, have some flings, or work. Anyway, enough about me, tell me more about my skills.’
‘System-given skills work by having meaning artificially added to your soul to have the skill. To get a new skill it needs to already have a starting point. Every 10 levels skills will have a bottleneck. It can happen either because the meaning that the system gave you doesn’t have an appropriate memory or because the level of the concept that the system tries to give you is higher than the level you understand that concept at.’
‘Why the starting point? It doesn’t seem like something necessary.’
‘The soul puts concepts in a somewhat random manner and to avoid any interference the system only adds to what’s already there, the same explanation for the higher level concept. The system could add it just fine but doesn’t know where.’
‘Why are there bottlenecks every 10 levels then?’
‘Most sapients use base 10. The skills may have different amounts of information contained but the bottleneck is still level 10 for them all. Each bottleneck denotes a tier so it goes: tier 0, tier 1, and so on. The level growth rate within the same tier is exponential so you have the same equation as for stats. Also, the amount of information between tiers of the same skill differs. The system also has Lv Max. for the system teaching you all that it can teach about a skill and Lv Ex. for exceeding what the system is allowed to teach.’
‘Ok, so the system knows higher level skills but it can’t teach them. Anything I can do with my skills?’
‘You could merge the ones based on influencing others into Charm. Programming contains Structured Thinking and Logical Chain. Now you can merge your 4 mind techniques and Multi-tasking into Improved Mind. Don’t worry programming won’t change, you will just get some meaning to connect it to the 3 other skills.’
‘I don’t think I need charm in the forest so Improved Mind would be nice.’
‘You don’t have enough stable soul space. I’ll tell you when you can get it.’
‘Ok, then how does the skill included within another skill work?’
‘If you use a skill in only one context the overarching context is the one displayed. For example, Polite Insult includes Manners, but you only used manners as a cover for your true opinion. Also, your last skill contains Massage and Psychological Comfort. So every skill is a compound skill the more you add to it.’
‘I think that’s enough for me on skills, let’s move on to traits. How does the new part of Shadow Entity change things?’
‘Your mind now has some automatic defenses and if it gets damaged it can regenerate.’
‘Well, that was all so… I wanted to say anti-climatic but it sounds really good. What’s next?’
‘I think you skipped over the class part of the window so I’ll explain. The class is meant as an ideal that you want to reach. It is a path to power. How it actually influences you is by guiding your skills in the class’ direction and making sure you don’t go insane while doing so.’
‘I didn’t see it because that’s where my species was. Also, that’s too abstract, give me an example.’
‘You have a blacksmith and a swordsman that both have the Sword Inspect skill. One will get about how it's forged and how good it is overall, and the other will get how compatible it is with him. Of course, at a high enough level, they will both get the exact same answer but at first, things will differ.’
‘As for the second part, if someone gets only skills related to one concept they might start only producing mental energy associated with that concept. Someone else may also get skills that conflict and that may also lead to bipolarity due to the different mental energy produced. So for that one, I have a lot of examples that can span from soul damage to howling at the moon.’
‘So should I change my class? Or how does that work?’
‘You chose a class by how you want to grow. Don’t be too broad with it because there are secondary classes, but also don’t be too specific like a blacksmith that can only make nails. To change classes you can always go from broad to narrow or from higher to lower. You need to have the starting point if you want to go to a different path. For going to a better class you need to have an understanding of the appropriate higher concept. It works just like skills for the most part.’
‘So I won’t change that either. So I just got a better affinity and a lot of information but nothing really changed.’
‘A lot has changed actually and you are going to realize when we train next time but now the system has an offer for you.’
[System]
[The System wants to interview you on your quick adaptation to a new world.]
[The System buys the rights to use this interview for 1SP.]
[Accept]
[Decline]