The soul flickered as it was cast through several tubes. The tubes weren’t physical but instead constructed purely out of mana. The tubes twisted and corded over each other like a group of snakes in a hole. While there were many of them, they all led to the same place.

“It’s the first one from the group from Earth,” a worker shouted. He looked at nature’s magnum opus flickering about with disinterest. He had seen it many times before.

“That’s pretty good,” another worker said. “They managed to last almost a full day,”

“Right,” the first worker responded. “The top of humanity, eh? Imagine—“

“Shut up Bill, keep your dreams for another day.”

Bill went into a slump at this and sat quietly on his seat.

****

Time passed by and soon it had been a full two hours since the soul had arrived.

“Hey Jay, the body still ain’t here,” Bill said.

Jay roused from his nap and looked at the soul still flickering in the middle of the large tube.

“Get the book,” he said relaxedly. While he looked calm on the outside, this was quite a stretch from the truth, after all, this wasn’t a situation that should occur. Ever.

Bill rushed out of the little room they sat in and ran down the corridor. He went past the guards and into the lowermost layer. In there he skimmed through the titles of many books until he found the one. It was dusty from years of laziness, not a single day spent stretching its pages. He grabbed it and made the journey back.

He rarely made this journey at all. Both he and Jay were experienced after multiple years at the job; they had initially used the books when starting out at the job but had stopped using them after a year or two. If Bill was to be honest, the fact that they had to refer to a book after years at the job was slightly terrifying.

He eventually made it back and threw it at Jay, who caught it with one hand before shooting to the contents page. It was neatly titled ‘What to do in the case of a body-less soul.’, and the casual, cursive the writer wrote with made Jay’s performance a little less forced.

****

Time slipped past once again and before they even knew it, it was almost time for their shifts to end. Not that they could, anyway. At least not today; at least not till this problem was fixed.

Jay had spent the time skimming through the book, looking for certain signs and hoping that he wouldn’t find others. His demeanour was relaxed but also sharp now. The worst outcomes didn’t seem to be in play right now, something Jay was ever-grateful for.

Bill had spent the time looking at the screens, and periodically looking down the tubes themselves. He hoped many things: that it was just a prank; that it was just an accident; that it wasn’t at all serious. But unlike Jay, he hadn’t calmed down as time had passed, instead he had devolved down into biting his nails now.

“I think I got it,” Jay uttered.

“Is it bad?” Bill asked. He had tried to keep his voice steady but had royally failed at that.

“Thankfully not. I hope.”

Bill felt the hot and stuffy air leave his body through every available orifice.

“What is it then?” Bill finally asked. He had started out by asking of the severity, after all, knowing the soon-to-be status of his life and job was more important than the details.

“Well, seeing as there is an absolute lack of signs accompanying the soul, there are three possibilities:

One: The body was completely destroyed. Unless they’ve quietly added an absolute monster to the training ground’s roster, this is impossible.

Two: Something happened on the training ground that shouldn’t have.”

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“And considering the fact that we haven’t had any calls yet, that’s also impossible,” Bill finished off.

“Yep,” replied Jay. “Three: Someone’s using a spell to hold the body back. Now there’s a lot of spells that could cause this but the most likely one is necromancy; if someone else owns the body now, then the body won’t follow the soul.”

Bill sunk into his seat at this. “So what do we do?”

There was a silence as Jay thought on the question. “Send the soul back?” he finally said.

“Same as I was thinking. Wash our hands of this and hopefully, we won’t be haunted by it.” Bill said with a smile. He then got up and walked to the buttons. He fired his own mana into one, causing a reaction in one of the cores. The core shot out more energy into another larger core, and this chain reaction carried on until the largest one was activated.

Bill pressed down another button and twisted a joystick 180 degrees. The soul that had been in the tube was now gone, replaced by nothing. The two of them had acted well, to save their own arses that was…

****

He became and everything was. Where there had been nothing, now there was.

Stanis was struck still by all the information that bombarded him. But before he could put all the thoughts and ideas in order, before he could remember his own memories, before he could even catch the slightest of bearings, he was punched across the chest and thrown to the ground.

He landed in an unsightly manner and immediately recoiled back: leaping to his feet and retreating backwards before whatever had just struck him got a chance to chase.

The information that bombarded him was still too much, but gradually going down. Eventually, he could finally focus on the scene surrounding him.

Around him was his group from training, alongside the instructor. In front of him stood Berry, unarmed as her hammer lay a few metres back. In his mouth he tasted blood. In his hands he felt his skin peeling off. His nose was definitely broken and his knuckles definitely bruised.

But before he could think straight, he felt a burning order strike his head. It was like he was a puppet on strings as he followed the order to the t, scrambling across the ground towards Berry with his arms wide open. He was told to be open in order to trap Berry. But just before he reached her, just before she punched him across the face, he turned direction and rolled to her left.

His mind hurt like hell as he fought back, but fight he did. The release of pain was too sweet a gift to ignore, but it was also too sweet for Stanis to stomach. So what if the order burnt through his mind? The taste of free-will was far more palatable, anyway.

And yet, his taste of freewill was cut short by another order. Turn around and sprint towards her. Trip her up, it said. Before he could even think about the meaning of the order, he was already acting upon it. But just like last time, he caught his body in the last second and changed course, skidding across the rough ground before falling over.

Berry, who had been ready for the last arc of the fight, the part where she lost, was lost for words as she watched Stanis fall over once more. One second he had been fighting her stupidly, sure, but also fiercely. The next he was struggling to even run straight.

The fight’s little audience reacted similarly to her, confused at the change of events. But slowly, one by own, they each began to catch onto the situation.

Stanis felt the pang of another order but this time fought back before he even understood it. Whatever it was, he wanted no part in something he couldn’t even think about. But unlike the last two times, this time the order fought back as well, fuelled by something mysterious behind it. But just as it fought back, so did Stanis. He aimed for whatever was fuelling the order and heard a squeal from across the field.

He felt the order break, and thus cocked his head towards the sound. He saw Jen with her hand across her head, clutching her skin tightly. The other hand was pointing towards him, her lips mouthing another order.

He prepared to resist.

Stop her charge it said. The order this time had close to 10 times the amount of mana the previous ones had. And as Stanis resisted, this amount quickly grew to 100 times, before eventually breaking.

Surprised by the sudden calm, Stanis finally opened his eyes and saw Berry running across the field, ready to smack Jen onto the ground, and grinning all the while. And in the next second this was exactly what happened. Of course, not exactly as it was a lot messier with a lot more resistance, but the notion behind the thought was still there.

Jen didn’t try and order Stanis this time, instead focusing on pushing Berry back. But Stanis already had her link, and the fact that the two of them were connected till death didn’t help Jen. He bit his tongue in order to numb himself before forcing the entirety of his mana pool against Jen’s link.

The screams started out as loud and shrill as a cat’s obscenities but eventually died down, until they were simply groans. Jen was lying on the ground, injured beyond anything before. The instructor hadn’t stopped the fight at the usual signs of damage, instead he had allowed it to continue until she was just a few breaths from death.

Berry sat by her side, her fists thoroughly bloodied. In fact her whole body was bloody, a lot of it hers but most of it Jen’s. But worse off than her was Stanis who lay as good as dead across the ground. He had overdrafted himself by far in an attempt to hold Jen down. While it had barely worked, mainly due to Berry’s assistance, he was still out of it right now.

The instructor clicked his tongue as he walked over to Jen, before gently pouring down the mana-water down her throat. His gentle touch grew into an ironclad hold as her unconscious struggles grew.

He then went across to Stanis and did the same, before walking back towards the other two. He had told Jen before the fight, in fact the second she had walked out of the teleporter, that having an intelligent undead would be difficult. Dangerous even when you had one as strong as Stanis. But the arrogant girl hadn’t listened then: hopefully she would listen from now on…