1.3

Having an idea was one thing. To execute it was another. Without a defined walkthrough to guide players on how to do things, challengers of the labyrinth like Aesa had no other choice but to use their combined ingenuity and intuition to solve the difficult task presented before them by the game. After all, these puzzles were placed by the developers to hasten the evolution of the players. To help them rise above the occasion and achieve growth using their own strength in the shortest time possible. Unfortunately, that concept was easier said than done especially in Aesa's case. For starters, how in the world does one even begin to extract a soul when one has zero knowledge on the subject matter? Devouring A Soul for Dummies wasn't exactly something you readily find in a library or in a bookstore somewhere. Had there been an elective subject for this in the real world, then Aesa might have enrolled beforehand just so he could prepare himself for something like this.

Eight dead rabbits later, Aesa had yet to find a clue on how to devour the soul. Not even the tiniest hint was revealed to him during his testing. He tried invoking - devour or absorb soul or eat soul and yet there was no response from the System. He tried gnawing on them too to see if there would be any kind of reaction from that action. Disappointingly, there was none. Killing the 'fluffies' gained Aesa nothing other than blood in his hands. There were no groundbreaking discoveries either except for discovering the most efficient way of smoking rabbits out from their rabbit holes.

Four hours ago, when he first started this crazy idea, he was intensely enthusiastic. He was brimming with energy despite his hunger. Aesa was excited to see whether there was a way for an undead to combat its satiety problem by consuming the soul and all he needed to do was to prove it. But now that he was half way through the testing, that energy was waning fast and was almost spent. He somehow knew halfway that the experiment was going nowhere. All of these actions gained him nothing except the trauma he developed strangling innocent animals. It left Aesa with a mental scar that he would probably carry for the rest of his life. He felt sick to his pit having to witness the fluffy bunnies squeal in pain as he squeezed the life out of them one by one. Those ruby eyes would surely haunt him forever until the end of his days. They were supposed to be just pixels. However, to Aesa, the game felt so real that he had to take long pauses and even extended breaks just to calm his mind down while doing the experiment. The unspeakable pain he had inflicted upon those innocents in the name of an idea was simply barbaric and he could no longer take it.

'This is pointless. Its time to stop.' And with an army of bunnies staring at him with dagger eyes from afar, Aesa finally grew a conscience. Right at that moment, Aesa was just sure of one thing--- he will not be touching another bunny anytime soon. For now, he was giving up his pursuit. He wasn’t hungry anymore.

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With the lives that he took today, Aesa made sure that their sacrifices wouldn't go to waste. Using the iron tip of his spear, Aesa skinned all eight bunnies of their pelts. He was no expert when it comes to skinning animals, but Aesa managed to get the skin off albeit being roughly cut. Once all eight bodies were attended to, Aesa curiously checked for the organs of the creature. He was just amazed as to how realistic this game was to be able to mimic every detail of the real rabbit's anatomy down to the littlest detail; veins and bones et al.

While performing the dissection, Aesa discovered something peculiar hidden between the chest of the once hopping creature. Lodged between its ribcage, a sort of crystal deposit was found buried deep inside its pink flesh. Using the point of his spear, he scooped the crystal deposit out of its chest, ultimately separating the mineral away from all the flesh and tendons that was wrapped around it. Three seconds later, after wiping the mineral clean with his robe, Aesa welcomed the ember colored crystal right into his then empty but excited hand. What is this? He asked himself as he plucked the red crystal out from his left palm and then later clamping it right between his other hands index finger and thumb. While examining the thumb sized crystal up close, he suddenly felt strange while checking it. Like he was irresistibly drawn into it. Like a sort of craving. It was bizarre that for no coherent reason, Aesa had a terrible inkling to just gnaw on the crystal like he was unbelievably famished. He couldn't put his finger on it nor explain why, but the crystal sort of appeared inconceivably 'appetizing' to him. It was making him salivate even when he had none. And for Aesa, that was the last straw. Using his bare molars, he cracked the scarlet crystal like a walnut in one vicious bite.

Fumes in deep red exploded out of Aesa's mouth right when the crystal shattered. He shocked himself when he did that but only temporarily. Bathed in a cloud of red, the smoke didn't dissolve into the air as it normally supposed to. Instead, it clung into Aesa's skeletal frame like a leech would. Little by little, slow and steady, it seeped through his bones until a few seconds further, the cloud along with its reddish glow was no more. It completely integrated itself to Aesa's frame, leaving him energized and refreshed after the process. My strength is returning. Aesa expressed his delight. His hardship was not in vain. He now has the information on how to combat his hunger. He'll live.

Aesa wasted no time as he immediately dissected the next rabbit for its crystal core. He was in the process of gouging out his third crystal from one of the rabbit corpses when suddenly a large object flew directly into Aesa's shoulder launching him eight feet away from where he was crouching. In the aftermath, the impact broke his left arm, shattering every bone in the process. It left Aesa panicked and gravely injured. What the hell just happened?

A few feet away, he found his answers. There was a giant steel axe planted on the ground where he was dissecting the rabbits previously. A few meters farther, a group of three people in skin tight black suit were rushing towards him while shouting--- Kill it!!!