Well, as it turned out, the cannibals ate me. I mean, I can't really blame them, when I was just sitting there being useless. You shouldn't waste food, after all...

'What the hell! How can I think like that?! If even I give up on myself as a lost cause, then how in the hell am I going to prove to the gods I'm not hopeless?'

Well, I am actually pretty hopeless, so there isn't really a need to prove anything otherwise...

...

'I'm kinda bored, actually. Now that I'm dead, shouldn't I be taken to judgment or something? Or get reincarnated? Or something? I expected death to be... more, I guess. Actually, it just feels like the bottom of a pit. And there are some squishy things around me too...'

'Wait a second, how can I feel if I'm dead? And, now that I think about it, how come I was able to survive after the vampire drained me of blood...?'

...

'I see. It seems I became a vampire, or a 'half' as pure-blood bloodsuckers called their victims. And, since vampires and half's are technically undead, that means my soul is cursed for all eternity...'

'Well, shit.'

So, it seems my soul is doomed to forever linger in this world, tied to my physical form, unable to pass on, and unable to ever taste the sunlight ever again. Well, it's not all bad, I mean, my body will eventually disintegrate and I'll be able to move about as a soul. Once there, I'll just have to avoid shamans and alchemists who want to make soul crystals.

'Wait another moment... my body is just a skeleton, and it should be nothing but bones. But, as a soul, I should be able to move a couple meters away from my body, at least. I started pushing, feeling at the prison of my bones, and broke out. When I did this, I felt a sort of feeling of loss...'

I slowly floated out of the hole, and took a look around. I'm currently in the middle of a camp full of cannibals, so this hole I'm in must be where they put the parts of people that aren't edible. Like the bones, and the parts they burn...

Trying to keep such thoughts distant, I started to float around the camp. It was roughly the size of a small village, and felt tents and wooden huts were what made up the camp. Totem poles made of human bones were erected at certain intervals within and surrounding the camp, and for some reason they repulsed me more than when I first saw them...

Halt

My spiritual body stopped, and I couldn't seem to move anymore. Looks like this will be my limit until my body decays. As I fully explored the six meters around the refuse pit I could access, I noticed fist-sized spheres of light floating in the air. The strange thing was that they were behind the tents and huts, or maybe inside them.

Yet... I could see those spheres bright as day, though it was night, and a wall seemed to be separating me and whatever they were. The other pattern they had was that they stayed in groups of three or four. Even as i watched, one of the spheres started moving away from the others, and as it walked into view, I saw a man. He was another cannibal, but he had a sphere radiating out of his chest. He came closer, right up to the edge of my pit, and threw a bunch of garbage into my pit.

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...

'Well, I knew my value was low before this, but now...well, at least he isn't-

Yep, there it goes. Oh well, I guess I'm not even worthy of being trash. I have to be human waste as well. It's just too cruel...but, it does make since. I was wasted as a human. I should've been born as something edible, like a cabbage...but I'd probably have been a rotten cabbage full of maggots...maybe I could have been a caterpillar? But then I'd catch some kind of sickness and infect all of the plants, and my metamorphosis would probably fail, and I'd have come out as some sort of mutant cross between a moth and a butterfly, but with a disease that kills other bugs as soon as they breathe the same air as me...maybe a maggot. Then, at least, I'd be fulfilling my meaning in life by being a pest.'

Still, getting peed on even while dead kind of offended me. I mean, getting peed on by the other kids as a child, that I could understand, but I expected at least my body would be respected, or at least left alone in a mass grave somewhere...

After the cannibal had done his business, he pulled up his loincloth and spit into the pit.

...

'Really? Really, after all I've been through, after you've eaten me, thrown my remains into a pit with who knows what else, you pee on me, and now, just to rub salt in the wound...'

Before the cannibal can get out of my limit, I draw close to his sphere, and grasp it in my hand. Soft and warm, it feels nice to caress it. But, just holding isn't enough.

'So warm...'

Grasp

'I want it...'

Pull

'It's mine...'

Riiip

'So pleasant...'

"Aaaaaaaaah!"

A wet, ripping sound echoes as I tear the sphere from the cannibals chest, and he collapses.

Dead, surprised eyes show that he died without any knowledge as to what killed him.

'So warm...'

I hugged the sphere close to my chest, feeling the warmth, but...

'Huh? Why is it getting colder...'

The sphere was losing its' light, and slowly changing in color. After mere moments, my warm, comforting orb was now a cold, throbbing purple sphere.

'Why... why, when I find the one thing that makes me feel...'

Feel what?

Snarling, I grasped hold of that orb, and squashed it. I grabbed it with all my might, and tried to crush it, to make it nothing, to destroy what had once been comforting.

'What is "feeling"? And why do I need it?'

The orb resisted me, and tried to escape, but I held on and kept crushing it.

'After everything... even warmth is denied to me.'

I held onto the palm sized orb, subdued and unmoving, and closed my hand into a fist.

'If even warmth is denied to me...'

Bringing my fist up to my mouth, I thrust the orb into my mouth.

'Then I will make myself so cold that heat is but a memory.'

As all heat left my soul, a permeating chill seemed to fill my soul. And with this chill...

Came Power