Chapter 1
A black robe with filled with something darker than black, that was the most anyone saw before a wave of despair blew across the room causing instantaneous unconsciousness for the class. There were only 3 students, including Asher, that were able to remain conscious.
”KAHHAHAHAHAAHA! I, Elder Lich Yemen, am finally free! What more, I see hundreds of tasty souls laid before me. KAHAHA! This must be the world’s welcome to an Elder Lich as great as I! KAHHAHAHA!”
The Elder Lich then raised a bony hand, no the hand was bone, pitch-black, with inky swirls shifting across the surface. Asher was already frozen in terror as the black hand bone ascended and witnessed a sight that would forever be engraved upon his soul.
A student in the front row suddenly floated into the air, jerking, as blood and foam seeped out of his orifices. Then his head exploded, showering Asher and the other students with blood, brain, and fragments of bone. At the same time, a small black cauldron, about the size of a soccer ball, materialized in front of the black robed figure. From the ruins of the student’s skull, a murky blue globe of light rose up and was instantly bound by a black ephemeral chain that shot out from the cauldron. Faint wails of pain and terror echoed through the souls of the students that were still conscious as the globe of light was hauled into the depths of the cauldron. Person after person’s heads were exploded and these globes of lights were captured by the cauldron. Some of the globes were brighter than others, some were larger, the lights even varied in color between each student. However, there was one thing in common, as each soul was bound and retrieved by the cauldron’s black chains, a wail of terror and despair echoed through the 3 remaining conscious souls.
‘Are those souls?’
Asher was desperately seeking some kind of explanation as to what was happening in front of his eyes. The sight of student after student floating into the air before their heads violently exploded left Asher in an almost incoherent state of mind. The other two students that had managed to remain conscious swiftly fainted away amidst their own excrement at the grisly scene.
Suddenly, Asher felt a pulse of energy pass through his body and felt a sharp tearing pain in his mind.
[Immortal System integration complete. Basic System Manual installation complete. Executing Body-System interface protocols, estimated time of completion: 5 minutes]
A timer suddenly appeared in the corner of Asher’s vision as a soft mellifluous voice rattled off an incomprehensible list of information directly in Asher’s mind. Sadly, 5 minutes was roughly 290 seconds too late to aid Asher in any sort of comprehension. 10 seconds later, Asher felt his body gripped by an enormous force and yanked into the air. His head felt like it was expanding as pain wracked his body. The sensation grew more and more painful until—
BLAM
Amidst the bloody ruin of Asher’s head a brilliant blue white soul floated into the air, as the ephemeral chains came into contact with Asher’s soul, smoke rose and the chain recoiled as if struck by a powerful slap. The Elder Lich frowned at this sight and gestured once more with his hand, 8 more chains shot out from the cauldron and the initial chain morphed into a sharpened spike. The chains and spike paused for a brief moment before the brilliant soul before rocketing straight forward. The cursed chains and spike slowed briefly as they neared Asher’s soul before redoubling their momentum. The spike shot straight through the middle of his soul and veins of angry black and radiated out in a symmetrical pattern. The 8 chains each melded with a corrupted vein before dragging the dimmed light into the depths of the cauldron.
“That brat unexpectedly had such a pure soul. KAHAAHA. Very well, I, Elder Lich Yemen, shall corrupt this pure soul in my Lich Cauldron and turn it into a Tortured Soul to serve as my retainer. Once he has been refined with all of the soul fragments, his consciousness will shatter and I will make him my soul-bound slave. KAHAHAHHAHAA!”
Elder Lich Yemen then redoubled his efforts, and in less than 5 minutes the entire lecture hall contained only an insane Lich, an ominous black cauldron, and more than 300 headless corpses. Blood and brains slowly dripped from the ceiling and walls as the Lich picked up the cauldron, cackling madly as he ignited black flames beneath it.
Within the Lich Cauldron, a fragment of pure white light
Asher slowly woke to burning, tearing pain. Pain so immense that he immediately lost consciousness again. Hours later, or maybe seconds, Asher woke once again. The roaring wall of pain drove straight into his consciousness and rammed it into the ground once again. The third time Asher woke, he was finally able to form a single thought.
“AAARGHHH”
With that, he was overwhelmed and rendered unconscious. After waking for perhaps the thousandth time, Asher was able to remain conscious for more than a second.
Asher then fainted.
After a long time, a soul fragment that appeared mostly grey, with slivers of bright blue shining through could be seen floating around, periodically colliding with the surrounding soul fragments.
‘I feel as if my being is being smashed with a thousand hammers, pierced by a thousand blunt sticks, and sliced by a thousand rusty knives. Wow, I’m pretty eloquent this time around.’
The first thing I noticed was that everything was dark. I couldn’t see anything, and when I tried waving my hands in front of my face, I realized my entire body felt like a lead weight. I couldn’t move at all! The only thing I could feel was raging ocean of pain; yet it seemed to be somehow separate from me. I knew that the pain was terrible yet my perception of it felt detached, academic even.
There were only two sensations besides the pain. The first was the feeling of hundreds of things whizzing around me. I could only feel them a couple of inches from my skin, and they would often bump into me, causing roaring waves in my ocean of pain. The other feeling was like an annoying mosquito, buzzing in my consciousness and demanding attention. As soon as I thought about it, I suddenly realized I had gained an enormous amount of information, and multiple semi-transparent blue windows popped up in front of me.
‘I can see’
That was my first articulated thought. As I read the foremost window however, my thoughts flew into disarray again.
Welcome to the Immortal System!
This system grants those who are integrated the knowledge of the gods.
By the grace of Athena, great Goddess of Wisdom and War,
the following has been decreed:
Mortals, your world has changed, and by a twist of fate, the
Apocalypse has occurred several thousand years ahead of time.
As such, you have been authorized to receive the power of the System.
You mortals will receive System Credits which will allow you
to learn the power of the gods. The system will also provide
an accurate measurement of your mortal bodies’ capabilities. Learn swiftly,
and evolve with the power of the gods or perish to the demon hordes.
God speed mortals.
P.S. My calculations predict a 10% chance of survival for the human race;
those who can comprehend the nature of the system
will have a 50% chance of survival.
Wait a second here! System? Potential of gods? Gods plural? APOCALYPSE!? This can’t be right, calculus must have finally fried my brain and now I’ve escaped to my happy place… WHY IS RUIN UPON MY WORLD MY HAPPY PLACE!? As my burdened brain attempted to comprehend this, another screen flickered up.
Your soul has been ripped from your body and impaled!
-999999 HP
You have died.
‘WHAAAAAAAAAAAAT? FUCK YOU I’M ALIVE!’
Congratulations!
Your race has changed to Soul Fragment due to
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external actions. Racial skills acquired:
Absorption:
Allows the assimilation of other soul fragments if you are strong enough.
Possession:
Your soul can take control of objects and beings, if you are strong enough.
Spiritual Perception:
You can sense some things around you.
Congratulations!
You have learned the skill Cogito Ergo Sum by special actions:
You think, therefore you are. As a soul fragment, you somehow
managed to form conscious thoughts, allowing you to form a consciousness
from an otherwise broken soul. Allows you to exist.
These notifications flicked past my consciousness one after another, and the information was well beyond my realm of comprehension. As I began panicking, another whizz thing (I guess they’re soul fragments?) struck me and I instinctively latched on. Suddenly, a deep hunger rose from within my soul and I somehow swallowed. It felt like I had split my entire being around the soul fragment before rapidly collapsing upon it, surrounding and smothering soul fragment. As I closed myself around the fragment, the pain that had been hovering around the edge of my consciousness surged. I took it stoically.
‘I’m BURNING! I’m SPLITTING APART! MY MIND’S TELLING ME NO, BUT MY BODY!! MY BODYYYY! IT’S TELLING ME NO TOO! AUGHUHHH!’
Flailing my thoughts blindly, I struck at the new pain, struggling to beat it back into the calm ocean where it came from. Moments passed like hours, until that raging ocean of pain finally quieted down again. As my pain calmed, an incomparable feeling of bliss passed through my body, as potent as the pain from before.
System notification!
Absorption successful.
You’re kidding me. Well, the pain convinced me that this wasn’t a dream, and the system notification had excellent timing. Within me, I could feel the soul fragment merging with my body… being, I guess I don’t have a body anymore huh…
As I focused on fully assimilating the soul fragment, another sharp lance of pain struck at my being. It originated from the fragment I was attempting to absorb and suddenly I could sense the fragmented consciousness within.
‘Waaaahhhg……….’
Incoherent wails were all that I heard, each wail was accompanied by another sharp pain and I struggled mightily to suppress the feeling of being ripped apart from the inside. It seemed like I fought to suppress the fragmented consciousness for what felt like several hours before it finally gave one last tearing screech and vanished, the sensation of the soul fragment had also disappeared. It was the first time I felt relaxed since I woke up, and decided to take some time to organize my thoughts. I didn’t mention this before, but it seems as if my perception of time has entirely vanished. I had absolutely no idea how much time had passed since I became conscious and I could observe nothing about the world around me except for the ricocheting soul fragments. Well, I guess I’ll just switch to some introspection…
Like before, the physical senses that I believe I used to have were gone. I could sense a small area of space, roughly a single foot, which I believe is centered on my consciousness. I can’t really tell what I look like now, though my range of perception was perfectly spherical, albeit small. Compared to what I felt before absorbing the soul fragment though, it seems as if my area of perception had increased slightly.
With next to no knowledge about my current existence, I suddenly thought back to the notification windows I had received. First the message from Athena. I guess that my current state of existence is due to the Immortal System. Furthermore, this system is somehow supposed to measure my capabilities and teach me the power of the gods… What the hell does that even mean? I don’t even have a body, though it seems as if I were a human before… whatever the hell happened. I kept trying to figure out how the system would measure my nonexistent body when I had a random thought. Status! (AN: I just got started on this website, still figuring out how to format stuff, well yeah this table broke and copying over from word is... lacking)
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To my surprise a table popped up! And I have no name... well, it seems these are my current capabilities. My physical status is ridiculously low across the board, though my constitution is strangely high. I guess it’s due to me being alive after getting my soul ripped out. My mental stats, on the other hand are quite high. Well, at least I would like to think it’s high. The system provided no further information besides the numbers displayed. Hopefully, normal is around 10. If that were the case then I would be way smarter than the average person. Well, I always did excel in the majority of my classes with little effort. I had been so bored by high school that I had started studying mechanical engineering. The only reason I had been in that stupid calculus class was because it was a prerequisite for a mech-e major.
Besides intelligence, two of the other three mental stats were somewhat mysterious. I have no idea what mind measures, as apparently I’m really intelligent with an average mind… Whatever works I guess. I assume that spirit has something to do with my current state, though it seems kind of low, only half that of normal humans. Maybe it’s because I’m only a fragment of a soul. My perception is shit cause I don’t have any senses besides my spiritual perception, whatever mystic mumbo jumbo that means.
As I’m looking through my skills, I come to realize something; this stupid system is seriously lacking some detailed explanations. I mean, all of my racial skills were described with a single sentence… If I’m strong enough? How strong is enough? Give me some hard numbers here… I guess my inner engineer is showing huh?
Besides skills, apparently I also have acquired statuses. Endurance and Willpower. No descriptions. Just a 30 and a 20. Well, I do have some guesses as to the nature of these stats, but the system is tight-lipped.
With my introspection finished, and nothing else to do in this pitch black space, I guess I’ll just keep absorbing any soul fragments that come into contact with me.
BAM!
Ahhhaha… As soon as I think this, another soul fragment slams into me and sends me spinning at what could be dizzying speeds. I could be rotating at snail’s pace too. That lack of time perception really messes with my sense of velocity and acceleration. Nevertheless, I eagerly absorb the soul fragment in a beautiful spiritual rendition of a feasting macrophage that would make my old high school biology teacher proud. The lances of pain come again and I force this soul fragment into submission.
The 300 souls within the cauldron rushed madly back and forth, rebounding off of the cauldron’s black walls and each other, screaming loudly with each collision. Occasionally, a sliver of blue light could be seen flashing amidst the surrounding multi-colored fragments swallowing one after another.
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AN: This stuff is my first shot at writing, I have the first arc kind of planned out, but my chapter estimations and pacing are probably totally off. I would say expect around 1-2 chapters a week, I really just work on this after I'm done reading the most recent chapters of douluo dalu, ATG, and stuffs. BTW I'm letting you guys know ahead of time, I'm going to try to keep the rpg element somewhat minimalistic; like Athena says, the system is there to measure and teach, not a direct injection of power. Please leave a comment with any suggestions/criticisms or random thoughts. Thanks!