I found out that I could move around souls on the shelves with my thoughts so I moved Mook’s soul to the front of the store and stood there for a bit to think about whether I wanted to physically confront souls or just wait patiently. Damnit! How many years is it gonna take if I just keep sitting back and wait! I’m done with that, I’m tired of waiting, it’s time to take action. I stepped outside to take a good look at the wasteland.
There were a small amount of varying colored souls floating about the wasteland. Even though getting souls like this will force me to remember everything about the souls, at least it won’t affect me emotionally so I can deal with being able to perfectly being able to recall someone or something’s past. I headed towards a ocean blue soul that was the shortest distance from the shop. When I approached it the system asked if I wanted to store and stock this soul, I just accepted it and everything went black.
POV change to Chaka the merfolk.
I first opened my eyes and obtained sentience after a year of birth. I was the latest to awake out of my brethren but it didn’t bother me as I looked at my parents. They looked relieved that I was awake. My mother has long, deep blue hair, with blue eyes, and scales. Her lower half like mine was similar to a fin on an….aquatic being? I wasn’t sure but it was something like that and the upper half was more fleshy?
Especially in the chest area. My father had similar features except he was barren in the chest area and had a weapon on his lower half that was barely covered by a weird physical green substance? I had my first meal in the form of some plant I had no knowledge of but tasted good. My mother and father called me Chaka which I assumed was some form of identity for myself that they gave to me. I was extremely happy with this and swam circles around my mother before resting in her arms again. Mother and father gave me beaming smiles as I slowly fell asleep.
I woke up abruptly to smell something I haven’t smelled before that was akin to metal? It was a red like liquid that was floating from my father as he was slowly closing his eyes with something in his chest. I thought that the big thing floating above us was helping father sleep so I started to swim towards it but mother quickly grabbed me and started swimming away while crying.
It was then that I found out that something, scaleless was taking away father. I screamed to the top of my lungs as I reached out my hand towards him. One of the scaleless beings looked towards me and my mother before propelling an object similar to the one in father straight at us. Mother tried to protect me but it pierced straight through her before reaching me.
POV change to MC
I was visibly sweating as I realized how real that actually felt. Even though in real time there were only a few seconds passing I felt everything that was happening at a higher extreme than the mermaid that died! I swear if the system didn’t keep me sane I would be clawing at my face right now. I actually felt like I was physically asleep in a coma state for a year. I could vividly smell the blood from Chaka’s parents, and for the first time, I know what it feels like to get harpooned square in the dome of your head.
I shuddered thinking about it. While I was having my mini existential crisis, the soul floated into the store and the system cleared up my emotional turmoil after. I took a few deep breaths. In. Out. In. Out. When I finally calmed down, I made note to never let Joul experience that and to prepare myself beforehand for the intense realism incase I have to deal with longer memories in the future. Right now we only have two souls in stock and I want to have at least six before we open up shop. Before I went to another soul though, I went back to our new home to see what Joul has cooked up.
When I got to the second floor and reached the kitchen, Joul ran up to me with a beaming smile, while I was assaulted by the tenderizing smell of perfect, medium rare steak of some kind. There was also mashed potatoes, corn, and biscuits. I was salivating at the food on a small table for two people filled to the brim with plates. It looked like there was plenty of leftovers on the kitchen counter as well.
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Joul spoke up and brought me back down from my daydreaming. “Hun, this cooking skill is insane! I could make buttered toast and have you say it was the best thing you have tasted in your life! We should add a menu and sell food to customers as well. From what the system told me, it would rate each dish and price it accordingly. Also did you get any souls while you were out?” When she asked that question as we sat down to eat, I explained to her my little ‘adventure’ out in the wasteland and told her I would buy her a board to decorate as a menu for the storefront later. “I’m tempted to see what touching a soul from the wasteland is like but since you said it was so realistic I’ll just stick to taking my chances with whatever souls turn up naturally. Your thinking is probably right when you say that souls will take a long time to appear in stock naturally.
My guess is that this will increase with our rank. I also noticed that the souls are ranked based on the being and their history. Like the first one that came naturally was only of the ‘crude’ quality, and the same goes for that mermaid as well. If your wondering how I know about that one, I can take stock on all souls at anytime by calling up the system interface. The known ratings as far as the system will tell me are: crude, mediocre, basic, intermediate, advanced, epic, legendary, and mythical. Apparently there are even more ratings but the chances of us encountering souls like that are almost nil. I tried my best to ask as many questions as possible to the system that it could answer. Each rating has a base price that is determined by its rarity that increases based on the history and type. That is all I could learn from the system itself so far other than we will be able to learn more as our rank increases.”
I slowly took in everything she said as I finished up eating. Basically, Higher quality with better story equals more money. That’s probably why what I was shown was so short. From what I saw by checking the base prices of ranks: Crude’s base price is 20 dae coins and can vary up to 150 based on the history. Type doesn’t matter for crude quality since they are all, for lack of a better word, bad. Mediocre starts at 150 and can go up to 500. Basic goes from 500 to a thousand and this can actually be determined by the type as well as the history.
Intermediate is where is makes a big jump from 1,000 to 50,000. Apparently a vast majority of souls are at this rank. The rest of the ranks eventually reach very high numbers but not even a mythical soul is anywhere near the price of a miracle pill. I shudder thinking about how much of someone else’s life I will have to live through to gain a mythical soul. I doubt I will get to a rank where I will get one naturally for a long time. Joul and I decided to enjoy each other’s company and rest for the day since we were both mentally fatigued. The cleaner golems finished their jobs and apparently did so well that the leveled far enough to evolve? According to Joul, it’s similar to those games where you capture monsters and have them fight to level up and evolve.
I have played games like this in the past so I understood her analogy. We decided to relax in the bath before turning in for the day? Night? I don’t know and will probably never know since this damn place has no day/night cycle or any form of life outside me and Joul. After enjoying a nice, pleasurable bath, Joul cooked some bacon, eggs, and hashbrowns. Mmmm hashbrowns, damn almost had a foodgasm before I even eat. That damn advanced cooking skill of her’s is driving me insane. She came downstairs with me this time and I saw no change to our soul stock from yesterday. Earlier I discussed with Joul that I should try and examine the rarity of the souls before deciding to stock them, even if I may feel the memory of the various moments up until their death, my actual physical body won’t be affected so I braced myself to man up and just do it.
As we walked outside into the wasteland, I noticed many more souls of varying color were here today in comparison to the small amount yesterday. I started to look around with Joul for at least a basic rarity soul since a thousand dae coins went a long way at the start. We won’t be able to buy any nice upgrades until we get at least five thousand but the sooner we get there the better. Joul reminded me to take my time though since we don’t really have a time limit. The immediate goal for us is to save up and purchase a ticket to a dungeon so we can level up and gain souls from those monsters.
Even if they aren’t worth much at first it will serve us to train against fighting monsters so that we can take on harder dungeons when we can afford them. In the system shop, dungeon tickets have a five time usage limit and the price varies depending on the difficulty of the dungeon. Joul discovered that we could purchase golems for combat that level up but they are extremely expensive and sadly we won’t be able to use our cleaner golems for it either since they can only be used for that purpose and self defense.
Back to the subject at hand, Joul found a basic quality soul that was a bright red in color. I also came to find out that I could speak to Joul mentally through the system, that was very helpful in case we weren’t near each other and needed something. I braced myself and chose to stock the red soul before the scene around me changed once again.