I was back in the guard’s—Martin’s—house, having waited through the night for the morning to arrive. I hadn’t slept since I did not need sleep.

After killing the kidnapper, I returned to the town and made a few rounds looking for any of the others. Having found nothing after a while, I returned to the house, worried that someone might check in on me, only to find the room empty.

Now that I was actively focused on capturing the kidnappers, the blessing had simmered down with its warnings. As long as I was taking exterminating evil seriously and didn’t intend to avoid having to do anything, I could take all the time I needed, which was a massive relief.

As long as I was making a reasonable effort to solve the problem, I had far more flexibility. Being unskilled or slow to handle it wasn’t an issue as long as my intent was in the right place.

Currently, I intended to keep my identity a secret. Not for privacy's sake but because I genuinely believed that that was the right thing to do in this case. Playing the role of a young, naive boy put me in a far better position to deal with the kidnappers.

If anything, actively exposing myself as a mighty hunter of evildoers was an excellent way to get the ring to turtle up and hide their activities while I was still here.

Given that I needed no sleep, I hadn’t spent the night idle. There was plenty to experiment with, but I opted to test what I could do with my symbiote.

Having a symbiotic relationship as a title-slash-skill of sorts was great since I could effectively telepathically communicate with my little friend. It made it easy to convey my commands in the form of a straightforward mental image of what I wanted it to do, and although brainless, my servant had no trouble understanding my intent.

I had learned quite a bit.

I could effectively use the cancer as a sort of whip or long-range appendage by allowing it to move through my arm and out of my palm. I could do the same for my feet and even my eyeballs, which was quite freaky.

My shapeshifting roughly obeyed my desire, but it was specialized for disguises and not body modification. Still, with a bit of help from my new best friend, I formed channels through which it could easily move.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t use my skills through the cancer, but that didn’t mean that it had no skills of its own.

Question—how did a creature without a soul possess skills?

All of mine were stored within my soul, so that naturally led me to the conclusion that a soul was quintessential if one wanted to have skills. I knew very little about the magic of this world, but I was confident that this guess was correct, primarily because the symbiote pretty much borrowed my soul to store its skills.

I had to admit that I had paid too little attention to my [Symbiote] title. Namely, because I was trying to forget that it was there.

Now that I was taking a much closer look, I could tell that it also acted as a form of “storage” for all the skills the cancer had. And if I focused on it, I could even see its status.

Name: [None]

Race: [Archdemon Cancer Cell Biomass]

Alignment: [None]

Class: [N/A]

Passive Skills: [Regeneration: B-rank]

Active Skills: [Devour] [Morph]

Titles: [Symbiote] [Otherworlder] [Oathsworn]

Master: [James]

Symbiote: [James]

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While my soul could be used as a way to store its skills, it seemed that my little friend simply couldn’t have a class. I was a bit disappointed. How wild would it be to have a cancer that was just like… a wizard? Or even a support of sorts?

Its skills also roused my interest.

[Devour]

You can devour organic substances. Consumed flesh can be directly incorporated into your body.

[Morph]

You can morph your body at will.

I’ve seen both in action, and they were faithful to what was stated here. I hadn’t seen it “incorporate flesh” into its body, however, and according to the description, that part was optional. Did that mean that it could theoretically become gigantic? That could be useful.

But it could also be dangerous.

The only other thing that caught me by surprise was that it also had the [Otherworlder] title, which I… well… I supposed it made sense.

A light knock on the door roused me from my thoughts. Based on the knocking, I presumed that the person on the other side was Amelia, Martin’s daughter.

“Hey,” Martin said as he poked his head into the room. “Did you rest well?” he asked.

Or not. It seemed that raising a daughter made a man capable of being rather delicate.

I chuckled a bit, getting up into a seated position on the body and shifting the thick, coarse covers off my body. “Yeah,” I confirmed. “It was a bit hard to fall asleep, but I’m ready for anything!”

“Attaboy,” the man cheered, opening the door and entering the room. “Amelia is waiting for us downstairs. I have work soon, so we should hurry.”

“Huh?” I asked dumbly. “Hurry where?”

“To the temple, of course!” the man said, frowning at me as if it were obvious.

“Oh…!” I wasn’t expecting that they would be taking me immediately.

I wasn’t sure whether to be thrilled or afraid. A temple was possibly dangerous for me, but given what I'd heard, I had no viable excuse for not going.

Granted, that didn’t mean that I’d go in no matter what. I was prepared to bolt and hide somewhere if anything about the temple felt slightly off or dangerous.

We met up with Amelia and headed outside. Only around 10 minutes later, we stood before the local temple.

The building… it was shabby. It looked old and worn down as if it hadn’t been maintained in decades. It was quite small, too, and nothing about it felt off. In fact, I didn’t even really feel much good energy coming from it.

We walked right inside and met up with a cleric. It was a man clad in white, pearly robes.

For a long moment, I had half-expected to sense that the man was evil. Not for any good reason; it just felt like a natural progression to the whole kidnapper ordeal. Thankfully, the amulets hanging around their necks were ironclad proof that the temple had nothing to do with the disappearances.

“Who have you brought me today, good sister?” the man asked, grinning from ear to ear as he faced Amelia, then me. “How old are you, boy?” he asked me.

Uh-oh, I thought. What should I say here? People clearly thought I was younger than I had been when I looked like this, and perhaps this was an excellent opportunity to deliver on those expectations.

However, I didn’t want to push it too far, so I settled on a safe number and gave my answer. “I’m 16,” I said, showing no hints of deception.

Not a single person seemed surprised by that. For some reason, that hurt my feelings just a little bit.

“Have you come here today to receive a blessing?” the man asked. “Or are you here to have a curse removed?”

“No, brother,” Amelia said, smiling gently as she touched my shoulder. “He’s here to receive a Pendant of Purity.”

The man frowned. “What?” he asked before catching himself. “I, uh… Are saying that he is a good-aligned?” he inquired with quite a bit of surprise.

Amelia nodded.

“How does he not have a pendant at 16 years of age?” the man asked again.

“My parents,” I answered. “They weren’t very trusting of the temple.”

The man’s eyes widened for a moment. “That is… I am sorry to hear that, good boy. If you would,” he said, gesturing at the small corridor behind him. “Please follow me.”

I was taken to a small room. Right in the middle of it was a round crystal.

“Please, if you will,” the man said, “place your hand here.” He gestured at the round ball.

But just as I lifted my hand, I paused. “Hey… Uh… What does this thing do?” I asked, just in case.

“It is there to register your magical imprint,” the man said, smiling. “Worry not; it will not hurt you in any way.”

I resisted the urge to sneer at that. Right. I didn’t for a second believe that putting my hand on this magical ball was risk-free.

However, I could not refuse to comply without being incredibly suspicious.

Suddenly, I got a sense from my blessing. It was urging me to put my hand on the ball. This was completely disconnented from the moral compass that was built into it. I immediately reacted to that. “Uh…” I hesitated, my mind rushing for an excuse not to touch this ball.

“Is there something wrong?” the cleric asked me with a frown.