Alex’s view of the material world shifted as his mind was forcefully pulled deep within himself. He saw only darkness around him and then the faintest light that came with a piercing cold. Feeling as though his mind was diverging into a single point pressure built in his head. The compression that came from every direction made him certain his head would explode right then.

Everything finally came to a single point then expanded once more the pressure disappearing. A world appeared before him a world that had always been within him, within his soul. He was no longer in the cell but somewhere deep within himself. He raised his hand studying his palm.

He still had a faint connection to his actual body. Meaning this body was not real, or maybe more accurately this body was the convergence of his soul. His Soul Body was currently floating in a massive world. The space was strange expanding outward infinitely but had dense stardust-like clouds emitting seven colored light that gave the world density.

The stardust clouds were far away from his Soul Body. The space around him only held his body and the strange images he had seen. The images that had rushed through him were now neatly lined up before him. There were thousands of them, each one more impactful than the one before. This must be the opportunity.

All the images were like a picture frame. Focusing on one of the images he could see a giant creature about to be stabbed by a shadowy figure. As he focused on the picture, his Soul Body was instantly transported into the image, a scene played out before him.

He was within a massive forest filled with leafy trees. He held a strange power within the image, his view allowed him to take in nearly everything within the scene at once. Of course, his mind could only process so many things but things that would be hidden in the real world were laid bare before him. Allowing him to instantly spot a shadowy figure within a tree.

The shadow was the size of a human, sitting without the slightest movement upon a large branch. If Alex wasn’t omnipotent in this scene, then he would never have spotted him. There was a trail beneath the tree the shadow was waiting on. Expanding his senses down the trail, he saw the second living being in the scene.

A giant abomination was lumbering along the path. The giant was twenty or thirty feet tall and looked like an ugly male bodybuilder in the offseason. The giant had a pudgy look yet with every movement muscles rippled through the pudge.

Each stride allowed the giant to cross ten feet, a bloom of dust exploding out with every step. The giant’s every step was like a bomb going off as the forest shook. Very quickly the giant's ugly face reached the tree branch the shadow was upon. The shadow blended in perfectly with the tree making him impossible to see. The shadow had chosen a high branch, even with the giant's height, he was 20 feet higher than the giant’s head.

As the giant's body passed the branch, the shadow's body swayed forward, falling from the tree in a head-first dive. The dive allowed the shadow to gain speed quickly. Right before meeting with the giant he flipped. Rotating so his feet would hit the giant first. Two daggers came out from the shadow’s side sheaths.

Alex turned his focus on those daggers with interest, the scene around him slowing with his action. The daggers were both pitch black but a green substance coated the tip of both daggers. The shadow’s flip increased the power of the dagger strike. The daggers landed on each side of the giant's neck piercing directly into his carotid artery.

The shadow’s feet found purchase on the giant's back. Using the daggers as handholds helped him gather after falling from such a distance. Then he kicked off with both feet on the giant's back, his daggers coming free as he back-flipped away from the giant. The daggers being removed caused blood to spurt out from the giant’s neck. The shadow like a trained parkour artist effortlessly rolled as he hit the ground. His momentum allowed him to take off running and wasting no time hid behind a tree.

The giant bellowed, slapping where the shadow had been moments before, but he was already gone. The giant's body turned, looking everywhere but seeing nothing. The giant looked at the small amount of blood on his hand, frustrated but then continued on his way.

Alex could see that everything wasn’t as simple as the giant thought. The once confident motions of the giant turned to that of a stumbling drunk. Crashing into trees, until ultimately falling onto the ground face-first dead. A small explosion went off as an indent formed in the ground where the giant landed.

The shadowy figure flickered from the woodline moving to his kill. Right before he reached his kill the scene froze before Alex. Wait, I want to see it again. In a flash, the scene reappeared at the very beginning. Alex began contemplating seeing this. By focusing on a scene he had slowed the scene down. Now by wanting the scene to start over it did.

With this line of thought, he imaged the place in the scene he wanted. Instantly, the scene flashed forward to when the shadow was about to fall from the tree. He nodded his head happily and rewatched the scene a few more times. Finally, he left the image with a thought and moved on to another image.

A fair-skinned woman with piercing red eyes and dark hair swept through a battlefield. Her only companions were two thorn-like daggers. She was not an assassin, but the main killing force against her enemies. With each step, Alex swore she would be skewered by the humans she fought. Yet, with strange graceful movements, the weapons simply couldn’t find purchase on her body.

On the other hand, every stab of her thorn dagger hit a vital point on the enemy. They dropped to the ground dead as she passed them. Each move was done with the fluidity of a master seamstress piercing needle through silk. The fallen enemies in her wake weaving a tapestry of death. When the final enemy fell, Alex saw a crimson rose bloom across the battlefield.

The scene left a deep impression upon him but he did not feel a true connection with the scene. One that sparked the ember within him to brighten and so when the image finished he moved on to the next one.

An ebony-toned man floated in the air, strands of his long white hair floating behind him. He had slightly pointed ears and eyes like diamonds. With a wave of his hands, crystal shards formed and flew down, killing hundreds of attacking beasts.

The scene connected with him even less. He continued moving through new images, feeling like he was watching a movie. He had never connected with movies since young, they had never made him feel anything. Movies were boring and uninspired, just like his own life was. Had been? He felt a tiny spark within him at some of the scenes but most simply made him bored. Only a rare few scenes made something light within him.

He began speeding the scenes up watching them at double then triple the speed. Moving to image after image becoming more uninspired as time passed. Yet, there was also a sense that with each scene he was getting closer to something. Something that was still missing even after hundreds of images.

A red-haired and blue-eyed man used light and crystals to reflect himself in strange ways. He confused his enemies as they slashed down at false bodies, daggers appearing in the attacker's temples.

A bat flitted through the night unseen by the prey it was tracking. By the time the razor-sharp fangs landed on the prey's neck any chance of life was forfeit. As the bat flew away, the enemy was dead on the ground completely drained of blood, never having known what killed it.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Scene after scene, beasts, humans, elves, dragons, and more appeared before him. Ancient beings tore apart realms, and yet, like an itch he couldn’t scratch, nothing connected with him. Something was missing, he thought shifting to the next scene his Soul Body freezing in place.

Fear gripped him, his heart rate spiked, and adrenaline began coursing through his veins. Fear deep within his soul that made his physical body respond in such a way. Yet within that fear something else finally bubbled up within him. The fear seamlessly transitioned into excitement. An all-encompassing excitement that left him staring bright-eyed at the scene before him.

In the scene, a snake wove its body through a forest. The snake’s body was so large the trees looked like stalks of grass it was avoiding. The movement seemed so simple and easy, as though the snake's body naturally took the best path. There was no hesitation in its movements. No second guessing.

To Alex though, what truly caught his attention was the two piercing yellow eyes of a demon. They were cold and calculating without any emotion. They scouted out the area around prepared for anything. While also preparing for a hunt of their own.

The snake slithered to a tree so large that even the snake seemed small in comparison. The tree was hundreds of times bigger than the other trees. The snake effortlessly climbed the tree, curling upon a branch and settling down. The body that only moments ago he could see clearly, simply disappeared. Alex knew the snake was there. He had complete control in this scene and yet his senses told him there was simply a large tree and nothing else.

Within the scene, time quickened outside of Alex’s control. The sun moved across the sky nearly going down. Time went back to normal as a Buffalo came into his view. The buffalo’s size made having called the snake large, be like calling a garter snake large in comparison to a human. The buffalo grazed upon the top of the leafy trees like a cow grazing on grass. Anything the bull's eyes landed on was taken and devoured by it. Each step crushed trees that had lived for hundreds maybe thousands of years.

That is until the bull came upon the giant tree. The buffalo looked around and then reached its neck up to eat the leaves on the giant tree. Still able to reach the lowest branches the buffalo began munching on the massive leaves. A few mouthfuls in the buffalo’s body relaxed, reaching up to bite down. A flicker appeared as the snake finally moved.

Alex watched in awe as the undersized snake didn’t hesitate flashing forward and sinking its dripping fangs into the neck of the buffalo. Venom surged into the buffalo's veins. The body of the snake twisted around the neck of the buffalo to continue injecting its venom.

The buffalo was not idle, slamming the side of its head into the massive tree. The snake was smashed between the tree and the buffalo. With cold yellow eyes, the snake did not stop, continuously injecting venom and squeezing tighter. The snake's body seemed unfazed by the damage, glinting scales protected against piercing damage. The flexible body of the snake morphed into the position needed to protect internal organs as it was slammed against the tree.

To Alex’s surprise, the buffalo only managed to slam against the tree one time before falling. The snake appeared to have endless venom as it continued injecting poison into the veins of the buffalo.

The buffalo only managed to lie for a few moments before its body completely slumped to the ground, dead. The snake naturally slid off the buffalo's body opening its mouth to an impossible degree and devouring the buffalo whole.

The body of the buffalo did not take up as much space in the snake's body as Alex would have thought. Even then the large lump in the body of the snake quickly disappeared. The most likely cause was the buffalo’s body was being corroded at an insane speed quickly turning into nutrients for the snake. Within a few minutes, the snake was finished. Dark spread across the scene as night fell. Two yellow eyes glowed within the darkness as the snake slithered off preparing to hunt its next prey.

Alex's thoughts whirled, his thoughts running through the scene. He knew snakes could devour prey much larger than them, but this was way past anything a snake could do on Earth. He had seen many supernatural things in the images. Things that would be considered magic.

Yet, this struck him the deepest, making his strange new reality feel more real than moments before. He had so easily accepted this as a hidden opportunity, yet he never wondered why or how. He had entered a place within his soul and was given full control and it simply felt right. Well, this is my Soul World, why wouldn’t it feel right? He once again explained his worries off easily, maybe too easily, but his thoughts quickly went back to the snake.

Compared to all the other images, he had connected with this one the most. The snake had inspired him and left him feeling that maybe this new life really would offer him something his previous life hadn’t. When he looked into those cold eyes of the snake, he felt a connection. He had felt the tie between it and him, as though he was looking at one of his own kind.

He moved back to the beginning, playing the scene a second time. Picking up things he hadn’t considered when watching the first time. The direction the snake came from, was the same direction the buffalo would come from. Picking the tree was a calculation that the buffalo would be attracted to the giant tree.

After all, the tree was the largest thing in the surrounding thousands of miles. The snake had not just climbed the tree, but looked for any enemies within the tree. Sitting in the same position as before, the snake was ever vigilant, not losing awareness of the surroundings a single time.

Even as the buffalo was struck dead the snake was ever vigilant, not letting its guard down for even a second. Looking in every direction for enemies before swallowing the buffalo. There was a simple thought in these actions. The snake was the hunter and would never become the prey.

Calculating and intelligent every move of the snake had been planned out. The snake left nothing to chance, leading its prey to death. The timing of the strike, the poison, the chosen location, striking from the shadows. He would not forget this level of insight and foresight.

Alex started the scene over again, each time looking for additional inspiration. Why was he shown this scene? Why did it connect with him? The snake struck, ripping into the buffalo. The body of the snake went from motionless to full of momentum, striking so hard its fangs pierced through the strong fur and hide of the buffalo. He watched just that strike dozens of times.

In the other images he had watched, each fighter had used daggers. Only no matter how well they used the daggers, that was all they were, daggers. The snake on the other hand had fangs, similar in use to daggers but a part of the snake.

One used daggers as a weapon and the other became the daggers, this made all the difference. He didn’t want his future daggers to simply be a weapon he used. No, he wanted them to be a part of himself, like his hands or feet. Of course, that would be easier said than done. He hadn’t even held a set of daggers. Yet, he wanted that connection.

The fangs weren’t the only difference he noted. The other fighters used armor. Yet, the snake used scales. Every part of the snake was used in fighting, the powerful body, strong scales, sharp fangs, and deathly venom. Even the senses of the snake were on a higher level than the hundreds of other fighters he had seen. The snake fought with its body perfectly, not trying to overpower a stronger enemy.

He closed his eyes, imagining what it would feel like to hold a dagger in each hand. His father had told him that science showed imagining an action in your mind could be nearly as effective as actually doing the action. He didn’t know why that piece of advice entered his mind at that moment but with a fight hours away he might as well practice it.

He imagined two daggers in his hands and then imagined striking as the snake had. He imagined going from motionless to moving forward in an instant. He imagined how he would move his feet, how he would strike, and how he would dodge.

Doing this exercise one time would not allow him to commit these movements to muscle memory. But he always could imagine something and then do the action very close to what he had imagined. He had been extremely good at sports when he was younger.

Over time he had found them pointless, unable to find any emotional stake to make him play. Sports were simply games there were no stakes except for social, which he had never cared for. He was uncertain what would come out of him in a life-or-death situation. Well, that wasn’t completely true, fighting that fool with his three friends had gone nearly exactly as he had imagined.

He went back and forth between watching the scene and imagining himself doing the action the same way. Well, in a human’s body not a snake’s body, so as close to the same as possible. Back and forth he went watching then doing. Just as he felt he was getting somewhere, a cold hand shook him out of his Soul World.

“It's time young man, the fight is about to begin!”