The conversation that the elegant man was having immediately stopped, and the people at his sides asked if everything was alright. He coughed a bit and said, “Everything’s fine, I need a moment to do something important, I’ll be back,”

The leader of the settlement of humans walked away from the group, while Theo and Zilch were silently following underground. When they were all quite distant and in the middle of large trees that covered their surroundings, Theo and the deathworm finally emerged from the ground, surprised that the ‘man’ in front of them didn’t seem to react in any particular way.

The regal leader was the first to speak, “State your business, beasts. Keep in mind that I’m not defenseless, far from it.”

Theo, in his Golden Ant form, replied, “We’re not here to harm you, or any of the other humans, for that matter. We just wanted to offer you a proposition,” He said while shaking his body to remove the dirt and dust on it. He shifted his mandibles to be longer and cleaned the antenna with them.

“What type of ‘proposition’?” The leader asked, the anomalousness around him intensifying for a moment.

Theo looked at Zilch for a moment and continued, “We…we are in a terrible situation, to put it simply. We have made enemies of the Monster Army, and the Civilized Races, naturally. We heard that you’re independent from the Confederacy, so we thought that we could both benefit from an alliance,”

The leader nodded and replied, “You’re the Shifting Death, aren’t you?”

Theo tilted his head, “The what now?”

The man sighed, “There’s a massive bounty on your head, along with a Soul signature too unique for it to be a coincidence. ‘The Morphing Death’ is the name that you’ve been assigned.”

Oh. It sounds kind of cool.

“That aside, why should I help a monster who killed innumerable humans?”

Theo clicked his mandibles in annoyance and replied, “It was an accident, alright?! I didn’t know it would do so much damage!”

The man stood motionless for a solid minute and nodded, conjuring a chess board in his hand and placing it on a waist-high stump near them, and pointed at it, “Defeat me in a game of chess, and I’ll help you with whatever you need. Otherwise, you will have to proceed on your own. Do you need me to explain the rules? Also, my name is Check, apologies for not introducing myself earlier,”

Theo shook his head as he already knew the rules and looked at the chessboard with a hint of confusion, but then sighed and walked over to the other side, taking the side of the black pieces. They resembled the ones used on Earth, with slight stylistic differences. The board and the pieces were all made of wood, and all looked quite minimalistic and blocky.

Check moved one of the pawns forward, and Theo dug into his training data to look for any chess algorithm. Not finding any, he had to resort to his own intelligence, since he also couldn’t train a chess algorithm from scratch, given that he didn’t have time to train it. Alright, I guess I’ll move the horse?

Check proceeded to move pieces in a seemingly useless manner, and the shapeshifter really couldn’t understand why he would move them that way. He was able to capture one of his opponent’s rooks, but just two turns later, the impossible happened. The seemingly useless and chaotic placements that Check had prepared all came to fruition once Theo moved his queen to a certain spot, and Check immediately attacked the king. As the two had exchanged many pieces before that happened, Prometheus couldn’t do anything to defend his king. Theo’s eyes flew open. What?! Where did that come from?

Check chuckled and said, “Checkmate. Not bad for a monster, though. I would say you’re around the level of an above-average professional.”

Theo sighed and walked over to Zilch with his head low, “I lost. This means he won’t help us. I had high hopes, but whatever, it’s done now. Let’s go back and…”

“Wait a moment,” Check said, “I was lying earlier. I won’t refuse your offer just for the game,”

Theo narrowed his eyes, “So why did you make me play it?”

Check shrugged, “No reason. Anyway, let’s continue our earlier discussion. Tell me exactly your situation,”

Theo nodded, pleasantly surprised, “There’s not much to say. I angered the Emperor, so he’s looking for me, most likely. You already know about the bounty, so there’s that.”

“And what do you need from me, exactly?” Check asked.

Theo shifted his legs a bit and replied, “To be our ally and to support us,”

Some kind of pressure appeared around them and the man asked back, “You’re asking me to become the enemy of the world?”

Theo nodded, “Yes.”

Check snorted, “You’re insane. I like that. But don’t expect this to be one-sided. You’ll have to do something for me before we even begin,”

“What is it?”

“Well, there’s this annoying monster on the western coast that I would prefer to be dead…”

- - -

Theo, Zilch, Sayuri, and Giuseppe were marching west, in the direction of where Check had told him about the weird monster. All they had to do was kill it and return, which seemed simple enough to the shapeshifter.

Giuseppe broke the silence, “Can we trust this guy?”

Theo looked back, “What do you mean?”

“Well, it seems kinda weird that when we asked for him to become an ally, he sent us on a quest to kill a monster so far away from where he is.”

Theo hummed. “Maybe, but we don’t have an alternative. I don’t like the fact that he’s an anomaly, literally, but he seems peaceful enough, for now. We’ll see what this monster is, and decide what to do from then. Plus, you have me, which means we can take on literally anything!”

The young man chuckled slightly and went silent.

“There was something strange about him,” Zilch added out of nowhere. “The way he moved, talked, and everything else… I don’t know. He looked more like a very smart golem than a human.”

Theo nodded, “I noticed that too. But I don’t think a golem would ask me to play chess, so I think we’re safe. What do you think?” He asked Sayuri.

Stolen novel; please report.

She replied, “Doesn’t matter. We need to get stronger. That’s all that matters. Fighting that powerful monster will refine my swordsmanship,”

“Of course, of course, plant buddy. We also need to start collecting cores from monsters, I’m all out. Plus, this is a good opportunity to test my Soul ability,”

Zilch titled his head, “The ability-stealing one?”

He shook his head, “That’s [Prometheus First Art]. What I’m talking about is the second one. I wanted to take advantage of my Replication affinity, so I’ll see how far I can take it. We’ll see if it works how I planned when we arrive,”

They all nodded and observed the surroundings, which were still comprised mostly of green and luscious vegetation. Check had told them about a safe route through the Confederacy that would allow them to safely arrive at their destination. They had suggested moving underground thanks to Zilch, but the anomalous man had shaken his head and explained the large number of Earth Technicians that continuously monitored and defended the ground below. I guess Technicians here are like..mages? The best mages or something. The General also said something similar.

The group spent the next five days traveling over the large swathes of vegetation, which was mostly green with some patches of yellow. They found multiple monsters of any type such as giant insects, murderous plants, and metallic birds. They killed all of them and even managed to collect enough Cores to allow Giuseppe to tier up to tier four, even though the young man didn’t have any ability or any noteworthy technique. Yet.

Finally, they managed to arrive at their destination. It was a coastal area, with smooth, soft black sand under their feet and dark waters slowly moving into the sand and retreating in predictable patterns. No tides without a moon.

“Alright, the monster we’re looking for should be somewhere underwater near here. Check recommended we bait it outside the water and fight it on land. It is a crustacean creature, tier six, that has armor made of smooth rock. Here’s the plan…”

Fifteen minutes later, and they all were ready to fight the creature that they had come here to defeat. Theo, Zilch, and Sayuri were nowhere in sight, while Giuseppe was lazily swimming in the water hundreds of meters away from land. A thin and almost invisible string was attached to his waist and connected him to a spot in the sand. The young man swam in various directions, looking around and below the water. The sea was so dark that light barely breached it, causing it to look almost black. Tiny movements below the surface attracted his attention, but they disappeared soon after.

After ten minutes of the harrowing experience, the waters stilled immediately, as if a switch had been flipped. Giuseppe looked around with a hint of nervousness in his eyes. Even an immortal man wasn’t immune to the terrifying nature of the unknown, after all. Then, tremors began appearing on the seafloor, causing waves to expand from its center. Theo could see Giuseppe gulp and look behind him with a hurry in his movements.

“Almost here…” Theo told the others.

The tremors suddenly disappeared, letting the waters return to their previous calm. But, it wasn’t because the monster had gone away. The opposite. Sayuri used her real arm to hold the pommel of her sword, her prosthetic acting more as a temporary replacement until Theo managed to learn monster plant anatomy enough to grow her missing arm. Zilch was breathing slowly, his attention focused entirely on the objective.

Then, all hell broke loose.

In the span of half a second, many things happened at once. Theo’s Soul sense, which was part of his Supernality sense, sensed a tier six soul rapidly approaching the immortal man, and right when he was under him, he pulled with all his strength on the fishing rod he had created. The water around Giuseppe exploded with such violence that seemed as if a massive bomb had exploded. While Giuseppe was being dragged backward, the water in the air fell down and revealed the figure of the monster they needed to kill. It was roughly crustacean, as big as a small house, with two massive, curved thin claws with serrated teeth on them. An elongated body with segmented plates of armor on its surface opened up as if stretching. The creature looked as if it could fold down into a spherical shape, which was where the armor was, covering fleshy and soft insides. He couldn’t see any eyes on it, but a disgusting mouth full of small arms adapted to feed the creature.

Lastly, a massive cloud of Influence emanated in a hundred-meter radius around the creature which seemed to only smell absolutely foul, resembling rotten fish that rested in the sun for days.

Why is it so big?!

Giuseppe was still being dragged as quickly as possible toward land, but the creature didn’t see anything suspicious with it and furiously ran after him, swimming forward with its tail, clamping its claws just centimeters away from the young man, who began cursing while skipping in the water like a skipping stone. When he reached the land, he immediately tore the string from his waist and ran to a certain spot in the sand. The other three were still hidden away. Giuseppe ran much, much faster than any human on Earth could, thanks to the tier-ups. The young man looked at the massive monster behind him and sped up even more.

He jumped over a patch of sand that looked the same as any other and turned around, looking with a tense expression. The armored crustacean furiously chased him, raising its right claw in an attempt to bisect Giuseppe in half, but right that minute, the sand under its many skittering legs exploded downward, causing the monster to fall down into a large pit, slightly shorter than itself. Sand fell down into the hole from all sides, causing an additional weight to hinder the monster’s movements. It was a tier six, so it was likely very minor, but any advantage helped. Only its head and the tip of its claws emerged from the pit, and while it was recovering, three figures exploded from the ground nearby.

“[Prometheus Second Art, Soul Recycling],”

Theo immediately activated his Soul Ability, but this time, differently. As usual, a floating mark appeared above the monster, but this time, it looked significantly different. Unlike the past, where the mark looked somewhat like a circle, this one was more like a triangle with complicated engravings in it.

“Remember, don’t kill it until I say so!” he repeated to his companions, to which they all nodded.

Theo grabbed Achilles, the combat algorithm, from his database and instructed it to fight the monster, although without killing it. Immediately, the golden ant sprung forward, landing on the monster’s back, swiping with his mandibles at the weak points in between the armor. Sayuri slashed with her sword, activating her Soul ability, which caused a blade of highly pressurized water to fly forward from her sword and hit the claw’s joint, deeply injuring it. Judging by how she narrowed her eyes in annoyance, she had planned to sever the claw altogether. Zilch stood behind the monster, moving the sand in ways that caused it to lose its footing, occasionally sending his golems to hit the crustacean’s legs. Giuseppe couldn’t do much except attract the monster’s attention.

While Achilles, Sayuri, Zilch, and Giuseppe were busy fighting with the monster, Theo was busy with something else. His Influence radiated like waves, passing through the Soul of the monster and coming back to him to provide precious information. He also analyzed its DNA through the spilled black blood. Amazing. This creature is barely smarter than the average crab, but it managed to create a Soul ability to attract some specific species of fish to it. I guess the putrid smell keeps dangerous predators away as well. It can close up in its armor to look like an unassuming rock, and strike when prey least expects it.

Theo looked up, but the mark still wasn’t lit up.

What? What else do I need to know?

Since Theo hadn’t used this facet of his ability yet, he wasn’t exactly sure what he was doing wrong. Saul was strangely silent on the matter. Since Soul abilities were sort of contracts between the mind and the Soul, no one knew how they worked in their entirety, since Souls liked to be secretive about the specifics. What he did know, though, was that he wasn’t aiming to steal the monster’s ability.

The monster had finally recovered from the pitfall trap and was now towering over the entire group. Even Zilch looked tiny near the massive creature. Sayuri was dodging and evading the monster’s strikes by centimeters, retaliating with elegant and refined counters. Zilch had managed to tear off a couple of the creature’s legs, causing it to lose balance. Giuseppe tried to dodge one of the claws but he was too slow and got bisected at the waist, his organs spilling into the black sand around them.

I know this thing’s DNA and Soul ability. What am I missing?

At that moment, Saul decided to give Theo a hint, “Have you ever thought about how the Soul interacts with the body?”

Oh!

Theo then focused much more on the monster’s Soul, studying how its Influence waved between the creature’s cells, integrating into them as it did in any other creature, fueling them and strengthening them. I actually never thought about it. What even are Souls, and what do they do other than abilities and techniques? And where does Influence even come from? From what I can see, it seems like it’s…a supplementary upgrade to the body. Actually, is it even supplementary? When I broke the Souls of those priests, they didn’t die, but they lost the light in their eyes. So, how does a creature survive while being tier zero, where the Soul has no Influence, and therefore cannot supply the body with power? Some tier-zero creatures that I’ve seen shouldn’t be able to exist due to their weird anatomies.

The creature lost half of its legs and fell on its abdomen, continuing its assault, regardless.

Wait a moment… Theo noticed extremely minute fluctuations near the monster’s Soul, and every other Soul for that reason, that he had never noticed before. Minuscule amounts of Anima, the ‘world’s Influence’, were being absorbed into the Souls, which then converted it into Influence. The rate of conversion was astounding, that being one unit of Anima for fifty units of Influence.

With that, everything clicked together for the shapeshifter. He finally had a complete image of how Souls affected biology, and specifically, everything he needed to know about the crustacean monster. The triangular mark lit up, showing that his ability’s condition had been met. Prometheus smiled internally.

“Kill it!” he shouted to the others.

Immediately, something changed in their group. No more were they simply stalling, waiting for Theo. Sayuri ducked under the monster’s strike, cleanly severing both of its claws with two swift and calculated strikes. Theo climbed even higher on the monster’s back, reaching for its head, while it was doing its best to throw Theo off by shaking its body. Unfortunately, it wasn’t successful. Theo climbed on the thing’s head and stabbed its brain through the back of its head. The crustacean stopped moving and fell down, no more than a pile of meat. At that moment, a ghostly version of the same monster rose from the corpse, and looked at Theo. Then, a massive coin made of Influence appeared in the air, and spun, faster and faster.

Come on, come on!

When it slowed down, it fell to the ground. It was Heads. The coin spun two other times, both landing on Heads.

Yes!

The ghost crustacean then was absorbed into Theo’s Soul, like water flowing down a mountain’s side. His ability had worked!

Prometheus immediately summoned his first Mirror, the name he had given to the summons made of Influence. The ghost of the massive crustacean immediately stepped forward, still as only the dead could be. Summoning it emptied Theo’s Soul, but it was worth it. The best part was that there was no limited duration. There were many drawbacks, naturally, such as the fact that once destroyed it was lost forever, or that Mirrors couldn’t use Influence at all, but it was still a strong monster under his command!

With that, the group made their way back to the mysterious man.