"Hmm," pondered Vallynor, sitting by a tree and holding the book "Necronomicon" in his hand. He was searching for something useful in it while his eye floated five meters above and created a magical arrow pointing in some direction.
Anino, noticing the Eye's pointer, headed in that direction, disappearing into the shadows of the trees.
"I need a spell that attacks the enemy, ignoring their defense... Something that would target the soul. Are there any attacking spells for the soul?" Vallynor spoke to the book, flipping through its pages and reading the names of different spells. Most of them were currently inaccessible to him, but he could cast them without the expected effect or with a strong backlash. For example, the puppet-golem he created to fight the Ent eventually became an object of ridicule due to its weakness. If he advanced to the second level, his battle would not be so pathetic. At the moment, he was looking for any spell that would help him in battle against opponents like a fallen Ent.
As Vallynor read, he restored his strength, receiving feedback from the curse. He thought about creating a portable conduit that would always be with him and would absorb the backlash from the curses.
So Vallynor sat until Anino appeared next to him with a corpse in her mouth, which she dropped on a small hill of corpses that was supposed to become a new batch of undead in Vallynor's army.
Seeing this, Vallynor covered his eyes with his hand and said:
"I also need to come up with a way to strengthen the army. They die like ants. I have a lot to do."
Flipping through the book, he found a soul spell that was aimed at helping the caster rather than harming the enemy's soul.
"What's this?" he asked, finding an interesting spell in the book from its brief description. He began to consider whether it suited his criteria or not.
The spell "Hands to the Soul" is auxiliary and allows you to turn the fingers of your hand into threads of the soul. You can also turn the whole hand into one thread with the thickness of your choice.
At first glance, this spell may seem useless, but Vallynor immediately remembered enemies from games who used threads as weapons.
This auxiliary spell seemed interesting to him. After all, he often uses the hands of the soul, and if he learns to use it correctly, he will be able to attack enemies even more strongly and painfully to their souls. However, to take the soul of a strong enemy, he must first kill him, and it is very difficult to harm him with his hands of the soul.
After studying the spell and learning all the combinations of runes and words, he began to practice. At first, nothing worked, but with each attempt, he felt changes, as his Hand of the soul turns into something new and slowly changes its shape into threads.
Only on the 143rd attempt did he manage to completely turn his hand into threads. Then he tried to do the same with the fingers on his hand but failed. In addition, memories of other people suddenly came to his head, not his own memories, of people who used the soul hand spell to turn into threads. Someone played with them, someone used them to beat bad goblins, and someone killed.
Such memories interested Vallynor, and he watched them closely, learning a lot of new things. Unfortunately, most spells were supplemented by another auxiliary spell. Unfortunately, Vallynor could not supplement the main spell with another auxiliary one since he was already struggling to hold two spells together, which is difficult for him. And three spells were already too many. He shook his head sadly until he suddenly remembered an old man who killed monsters by attacking them with soul threads. He cut the soul of strong enemies into pieces, after which one hand of the soul quickly took a piece of the soul. This is just fantastic!
"Annino," Vallynor called his friend, seeing him with a new prey in his teeth and looking at the pile of corpses with reluctance. "We need to raise the dead again. I found an improved version, but it is not at my level, which is very upsetting. Damn."
Annino quickly approached his master until he stopped three meters away from him and sat down, wagging his tail.
"Good boy," he began to praise his pet, stroking him. After a few minutes of caressing, Vallynor continued, "Anni, when you go hunting, bring live prey, don't devour their souls."
When Anni heard the new command, his happy mood quickly disappeared, and he looked sadly at his owner, saying, "Do you want to deprive me of food? Don't you love me anymore?"
"In return, I'll play with you when I have time," Vallynor continued, understanding his pet's nature.
Anni immediately brightened up, leaping up, circling a few times, and jumping on Vallynor, starting to lick his face. Eye watched them the whole time. She raised her pupil, then lowered her eyes into a semicircle, as if she were rolling her eyes.
Anni happily jumped into the shadow world and disappeared into the shadows of the trees, while Vallynor began to use soul threads, trying to attack the material world. However, like hands of the soul, the threads could only touch the material within a five-meter radius of the spellcaster.
Vallynor looked with dislike at the corpse of some monster that had been used for his experiments. He tried to take the corpse with the thread and throw it, but it collapsed with a crack. He realized that controlling the thread wasn't the same as controlling a hand. These threads were like the tentacles of an octopus. Trying to use them a few times, he realized it was too difficult. It was as if he had been eating with a spoon all his life and had recently switched to chopsticks, like the Chinese.
He would have given up and tried to find another spell if he hadn't seen the memories of an old man using threads to fight.
"Master, what are you doing?" A question unexpectedly sounded from behind.
"Huh... Eye! I'm testing the soul thread spell, can't you see?"
She shook her head, saying, "No, I can't see anything."
"Don't you even feel it?" he asked quickly. He couldn't see the threads himself. He could feel them, as the spell bound him to his soul. After that, he transformed himself into hands or, as now, into threads and subjected them to his will. They became parts of his body.
"No, master. Watching you, I thought you had hit your head. But it turns out you're just training. Then I won't bother you." She flew away without letting Vallynor say a word. And Vallynor himself watched Eye for a long time until Anni came with prey in his teeth.
This time it was some kind of huge centipede writhing in convulsions. Anino, seeing his master, headed towards him with live prey. Well, alive, but barely. It was even better that way. He couldn't use soul threads for battle yet.
After Valynor patted his head, he told Anino not to bring live prey anymore, but to bring corpses, as before. He decided to first learn to use threads on this centipede. Specifically, to cut its soul into pieces and take them before it began to dissipate.
Anino couldn't understand what was happening, but it pleased him greatly. More souls meant becoming stronger. The little eye watched them, then turned and returned to his work - watching the territory and finding possible hidden threats, as well as targets for his hound's hunt.
Valynor created soul threads and tried to attack the centipede sitting on the ground. But all his attempts to harm it were unsuccessful. Despite trying to attack from the right, the threads attacked from above, and so it went every time. He trained for half an hour until the centipede began to recover.
Then Valynor summoned his ten undead servants, who pounced and caught the centipede, allowing him to continue training. Anino increased the number of corpses during this time.
Every day Valynor, Anino, and the little eye got closer to the old woman, but she remained silent all this time. And in the evenings, he trained on the live beasts named by Anino.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Sometimes Valynor got tired of all this and, taking the head of a slain beast or a creature resembling a goblin in his hands, threw it into the forest. Anino quickly ran to the flying head, catching it and bringing it back, throwing the head several times and destroying it into pieces with a strong bite.
Playing like this for half an hour, Valynor returned to training, creating soul threads and beginning to attack the prey brought by Anino. Then he resurrected them as undead. Thus, several days passed.
One evening, while creating threads, Valynor immediately attacked the enemy's soul, using it as a whip. He struck the enemy's soul directly, and then with his soul hand, took the severed pieces of the soul. It didn't take ten seconds for the enemy to fall to the ground without a soul.
Then he took the same thread and picked up a live corpse, throwing it towards a huge pile of bodies. The most interesting thing was that they were all alive, but they did not have souls. Body parts even after losing their souls moved and attacked, which greatly surprised Vallynor.
Questions arose in Vallynor's mind: can a body without a soul still move and even think? This turned his whole picture of the soul upside down. Does this mean that the soul is not the center of everything? And can one live without a soul? But all of these mysteries and conjectures fascinated him, making him study deeper and deeper. He began to ponder that the soul might be an astral "I." But this raised a new question: "Why did this only happen now? What prevented the corpses from rising before?" With this thought, he began to carefully observe the souls of his enemies as he cut them to pieces.
After dozens of such killings, he realized that when a soul is severed from it, something resembling a liquid or gas leaks out of it, which quickly absorbs into the body of its carrier. The more of this substance is soaked into the body, the more alive the victim looks after the soul is destroyed. And this information raised a new question: "What is this substance from the soul? Why is it absorbed into the body?" and so on.
Thus, he stayed for several days, not wanting to leave, while he thought and studied his new victims. Behind him, a pile of live corpses accumulated, which sometimes Anino or Glazik had to kill when they tried to attack or escape, looking at their master who tried to learn more about the secrets of the soul.
After a few days, Vallynor realized that he would not learn anything new and decided to turn to the huge pile of bodies, wanting to turn them into undead. However, as he approached the pile, the corpses began to move, and the ground began to shake more and more. Not ten seconds had passed when long black tentacles emerged from under the pile of corpses, wrapping around the pile and began dragging it into the sand, then a huge mouth full of teeth appeared.
"Why is this giant here? And why does he need the bodies of these beasts? There is no soul in them. But then again..." Vallynor asked himself, watching as the pile of corpses slowly entered the mouth of the monster. Confusion enveloped him, but he quickly realized. He remembered how the substantiation entered the bodies of the slain and absorbed them. Does it follow the thief? Or maybe not only him?
Watching the horrifying scene, his rotten heart was torn by loss, while his soul danced with joy. "Less tedious repetitive work," he thought.
He felt the urge to attack, but he saw the creature tear apart a huge being that was flying nearby.
"Aninno, Glazik... run!" he shouted at the two idiots who were preparing to attack the thief.
Why not attack the bold thief, one may ask. There are two reasons not to kill this lover of stealing corpses. Firstly, its tentacles are too long, about 20 meters, and to have such a body, one needs to be huge, but it is not an octopus. Secondly, attacking the tentacles is useless, as Vallynor couldn't see anything because of the clouds of black sand, and if he cannot see the body himself, it is impossible to attack its soul.
What to do then? Run! There is no need for a new battle with the titan monster, and they can forget about the corpses of the slain beasts. Aninno can find new ones. He felt his dog looking at him with pity, like a cruel employer who wishes for a lot of money but barely pays his employees.
Glazik looked at the creature for a while, then ran, catching up with his companions.
The beast that was devouring the corpses stopped and let out a loud howl. Parts of the tentacles lunged at the fleeing group, and Vallynor, seeing how quickly they attacked, pulled out the first undead he found in his pouch, a fat ogre. Jumping on its back, he ordered it to run as fast as it could.
Aninno quickly hid in the shadows, moving from one to another to avoid being caught in the world of shadows.
And Glazik soared high into the sky, where the tentacles could not reach him, slowing down and watching Aninno and Vallynor.
Vallynor, kicking the ogre, shouted, "Run, bitch, run! It will eat us alive," looking at how the ogre was left behind, and it was very noticeable - "Bitch."
After Vallynor's jump, the ogre was caught by the tentacles and thrown into the monster's mouth. He didn't even look at what happened to the ogre, knowing it was over. He ran with all his might, sometimes jumping or dodging the persistent tentacles.
He was already about to take out a new undead, without looking at whom to extract, but quickly came to his senses when he remembered that fat ogre.
"What to do? I ran so fast to avoid being caught. And I don't want to use undead as a mount anymore. Think, why did he come here in the first place? All monsters want souls. Flesh doesn't matter to them. But all the souls have already been taken..."
His eyes widened as he realized what might have brought this octopus here. It was so huge that Vallynor called it Kraken.
Summoning ten dead, he borrowed five souls from the book, with interest. Still, he couldn't fully repay the debt, and he couldn't accumulate souls while he was in debt.
Then he cut off a part of a soul with a thread and threw it into each dead person who was running alongside Vallynor. Two of them had already been caught by a tentacle trying to attack their master.
In a few seconds, most of the tentacles pounced on eight of the dead who ran in different directions, not allowing themselves to be caught immediately. It only took three seconds for the slowest three to be caught and end up in the Kraken's mouth. Another ten seconds, and the rest were caught.
Vallynor quickly searched in his talisman for a swift animal that could help him escape from the persistent beast. Fortunately, he found a wolf. Without hesitation, he pulled it out and, sitting on it, began kicking it and shouting, "Run fast!"
While riding the wolf, he constantly turned back for two seconds to check how far he had run from the pursuer and then turned back to look at the road. When he turned his head again to look at the pursuer, he exclaimed, "Your mother!"
He was already ready to jump off the wolf when he saw several tentacles almost reaching him. He wished to distance himself from them for at least a second so as not to be caught and eaten. No, better like this. Reluctantly, he borrowed souls from the damned book again.
Cutting off all ten souls into 50 pieces, he immediately threw a piece onto each undead. Then he ordered them to run scattered.
Seeing how the tentacles quickly pounced on all the undead, he realized that they were looking for souls. Controlling the undead became more difficult after he fed the tentacles with severed souls.
The tentacles were quickly approaching the first victim, who could have been Vallynor several times if he hadn't thrown one of the zombies right into the tentacles. The tentacles caught it, and then after a few seconds, they stopped, as if evaluating the prey and threw it far into the sky.
"We need to slow him down somehow. Otherwise, in half a minute, everyone will be caught... And also, why didn't I get rid of these tentacles if I keep running away from the main body so many times?"
Looking at the place where the mountain of bodies should have been, he saw only bare black sand. How could this happen? When did he manage to eat them all? Does this mean he's targeting me?
"Think, think. We need to slow him down and run away somehow... But will it work?" Directing his hand towards the sand under the tentacle, he called upon the land of the Dead. The army of dead hands rushed to catch the tentacle.
Some hands were completely torn off, several others couldn't even catch the tentacles, and some could catch them but couldn't hold them for long due to the size of the tentacle. Either they held the tentacles with all their might until new hands came to help, or they simply gave up.
"Damn, the tentacles are too big. That's why the dead hands can't catch them properly and let go," muttered Vallynor, watching the Ent struggling with the kraken. "The same thing happened with the Ent, but it wasn't so noticeable. I need to think of a way to increase the size of the dead hands. After I escape from this creature."
It seemed that the kraken heard his thoughts and threw five tentacles at Vallynor.
"Damn it. How much more?" Vallynor cursed.
Without hesitation, he pulled out several dead bodies at once and threw them at the tentacles. He didn't stop even after that, throwing new and new dead bodies at the tentacles, which tried to break free and bite their opponents.
The tentacles fought fiercely, striving to reach their goal. Vallynor looked around and saw Anino lazily jumping from one shadow to another, and Glazik watching them from the sky, where two tentacles were trying to reach her. But she didn't seem to care.
"Hold on. Is she floating in the sky and watching us?" Vallynor was enveloped in anger, but it quickly turned to hope. "What a fool I am. How could I forget."
He took the pendant in his hands, on which was depicted a flying undead creature in the form of a black Pegasus, like most everything around.
Quickly mounting his Pegasus, Vallynor flew into the sky. Looking at Annino, he shouted, "Annino, come to me!"
Upon hearing the order, Annino quickly turned and disappeared into the shadows. Then Vallynor emerged from the shadows, almost on the back of his Pegasus.
When all the kraken's loot was caught, it began to scream at Vallynor, Annino, and Glazik, and then began to shoot magic at them. Most of the attacks were watery.
Vallynor watched as the kraken prepared to attack with magic. He immediately attacked the monster's head, targeting the undead.
One by one, the undead attacked the kraken, forcing it to get rid of their annoying attacks. When it tried to attack Vallynor again, he was already at a safe distance next to Glazik.
Calming down, Vallynor began to examine the kraken. I wonder, is it a real kraken? Turning his head to Glazik, he felt hostility but quickly suppressed it and asked, "Do you know what kind of creature it is?"
Glazik, without looking at him, replied, "Everyone knows it as a sea monster. It has many names, but the most famous one is Kraken... We need to run."
"How can it move in the sand? Why run?" Vallynor asked, looking at the Kraken, or rather, its tentacles. He was afraid of the glowing magical runes on their ends. "Fly, fly higher and further."
Vallynor shouted at everyone as he felt danger approaching.