The first System notification was simple.

Skill: Raise your understanding of Eldritch Soul to [Basic] Grade

Achievement +400

Unfortunately, I only got 400 Achievement for pushing a magic-related skill to basic grade this time. Last life, it had felt much harder to push {Ocean’s Duality} to [Basic] grade, and I had earned 500 Achievement for it.

When I saw the next System notification, I felt far more confused than before.

Skill: Raise your understanding of Eldritch Soul to [Intermediate] Grade

Achievement +1000

I had… raised the skill to [Intermediate] grade in one go?

That was very unexpected. I had never seen a skill increase by two grades at once before. Usually, skills increased at a much more consistent rate. It was my first time seeing something like this.

After some thinking, I theorized that it had to do with the way abilities worked. I had theorized that my spatial abilities were incompatible with my humanoid soul. Perhaps that incompatibility also made it hard to form abilities and get Achievement. If it was impossible to get Achievement from incompatible skills, that would also explain why I went straight to [Intermediate]. After all, I had been using my spatial soul-manipulation for years already. I had just run into problems whenever I tried to advance it beyond a certain level. I had probably reached [Basic] grade a long time ago in {Eldritch Soul}, and was only getting the reward now.

I sighed, before I decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Either way, I had earned a hefty amount of Achievement. The 1400 Achievement I had earned pushed me from 8,372 Achievement to 9,772. It was a nice addition to my earnings from this world.

After I checked my new Achievement total, I focused on my next System notifications.

Since you have trained Eldritch Soul to [Basic] Grade for the first time, upon your death you will have the option to purchase [Eldritch Soul] as an ability, for the cost of 2000 Achievement.

Note: because this ability permanently modifies your soul, you may NEVER remove this ability if you take it.

This Ability has the following effects:

Keywords: Soul, Space, Madness (3 keywords).

Your soul is changed in the following ways:

You may divide your soul into smaller fragments. You may attach these soul fragments to any type of water within your surroundings. These soul fragments retain some of your intelligence and personality. They can move, think, and attack autonomously, and they lose essence every second. They create lesser copies of your abilities.

Glut Penalty: 30

Note 1: This ability permanently modifies your soul away from the ‘basic humanoid’ template. It will not severely impact what species you reincarnate as in the future on its own, but with more abilities, this might change. If your base species changes beyond recognition, you will be moved to a more suitable nursery.

Note 2: Turning your soul into fragments means peeling off a small layer of the outermost layer of your soul. It is best to avoid doing this more than once every few months. If you use this ability more frequently, it may cost Achievement. If you do so without enough Achievement, permanent soul damage may occur.

This ability was interesting.

First of all, it sounded like this ability would allow me to leave a fragment of my soul behind in each world, so long as I maintained its essence reserves. I had no way of doing that yet. But the soul fragment in the Zelyrian ruins had told us that this was a way to farm achievement without being present in a dimension. Even if there were some logistical issues I needed to solve, it could be a worthwhile future investment. Earning Achievement from across the ocean of souls sounded excellent.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Of course, that wasn’t the most immediate use of this Ability.

More importantly, I would be able to turn nearby water into a miniature clone of myself. Having clones fight an enemy while I fled would provide amazing new tactical options. My clones could also scout for us. There were dozens of other scenarios where clones would be useful. Even if I could only use the ability once every few months, it was still an amazing tactical option.

The first note attached to the ability was very interesting. Not only did it confirm my suspicion that souls were somehow tailored to fit certain species, it also stated that if my soul changed enough, I would move to a new nursery in the Market.

The abilities and items that we had seen in the nursery were useful for humans, but not other species. We had found swords, and backpacks, and clothes that fit us. We had never found anything that would help us... say, maintain our fur, or clean our scales. Which, now that I thought about it, was pretty weird. I seriously doubted that the multiverse was populated only by humans. Since that was the case, why didn't the Market have non-human products for sale?

The Market valued money more than anything else. I didn't think that the Market would refuse to sell to nonhuman life.

If species were divided into nurseries based on their biology, things made more sense. The fur-cleaning products existed, they just weren't in our nursery. After all, humans had much less need for that sort of thing.

The final thing I noticed was that I didn't get a new ability for raising [Eldritch Soul] to intermediate grade. I only got a reward for raising it to [Basic] grade. That was a bit disappointing, but I shrugged it off. Getting 30 more glut capacity was already going to be hard, if I wanted to buy this ability. I wouldn't be able to afford an intermediate version even if I unlocked one.

I waved my thoughts away, and turned towards my final System notification.

There was another ability I had unlocked.

Upon your death you will have the option to purchase [Blood of the Ocean] as an ability, for the cost of 1000 Achievement. This Ability has the following effects:

Keywords: Blood, Space (2 keywords).

Each drop of your blood will transform into an ocean. (You must drink extra liquid to fuel this transformation).

These oceans will be comprised of a mixture of essence and water. Each drop of blood that is transformed into an ocean will increase your essence storage abilities. They will also enhance your physical attributes. (Attributes can be raised by up to 1 Grade per life through this method).

These spatial drops of blood will not weigh more than a normal drop of blood.

For a small amount of essence, you may force these drops of blood to temporarily regain their proper weight. You may also transfer this weight to other nearby liquids.

The extra essence storage offered by this ability will not increase your essence regeneration rate.

Glut Penalty: 10

This one was less flashy, and had a considerably lower glut penalty. However, it also had some rather interesting applications.

Having each drop of my blood turn into a literal ocean of essence and water meant that my ocean keyword would always be active. More importantly, I would have a much higher amount of essence storage. The extra grade in all of my physical attributes wouldn't hurt either.

The fact that it didn’t increase my essence regeneration meant that it wasn’t quite as good as increasing my essence stats. However, a literal ocean of essence in every single drop of blood made it sound like I would have more essence storage than I could ever hope to fill. In a combat situation, my essence regeneration didn’t matter - only how much essence I had on hand. This might not help me train any faster than before, but it could make a massive impact on what kinds of threats I could handle. Extinguish was an incredibly powerful attack, but it also suffered from severe limitations. If I tried to use it on enemies that were much stronger than me, they could just shrug it off. It was also rather expensive to toss out extinguishes left and right, making it hard to handle crowds. This ability could at least partially overcome these weaknesses.

The weight transfer part of the ability might also be useful. If each drop of my blood weighed as much as an ocean, I could crush weaker enemies with pure weight. I imagined this would be useless against stronger enemies, but it was still interesting. I was having a hard time figuring out when exactly I would want to use that ability, but more options never hurt.

As I finished looking over my new ability options, I grinned.

I wasn’t sure whether I would take these abilities once we returned to the Market. They were both expensive, and I was already at 6/10 keyword slots used. But I finally had an option for big upgrades once we finished this life. My study in souls and how to use my alteration essence was also coming along nicely. Seeing my new keyword abilities felt like an affirmation of my progress thus far. I felt warm and fuzzy as I called my friends over the bracelet and told them about my new ability options.