~~~Stanley~~~
Stanley drifted slowly down the hallway, Caffeine in his lap and whining at him. Behind, the sounds of muffled sobbing faded.
"The last time you did this, and I picked up strays, one of them died," he said to the pug. "You really want to do that again?" Though she had saved his life... did that make it good? Maybe for him, at least? Not for Samantha. Or was she doomed anyway?
Debuff Resisted: [Miasma]
Exactly.
Caffeine huffed with his chin on Stanley's knee and his eyes rolling up to stare at Stanley's face.
"Don't give me that look."
The pug whined again, a long slow whine.
"Was it the light? Did it feel nice for you, too?" It had been very soothing.
More whining.
Stanley sighed. "I think they hate me anyway... because I killed... or I guess didn't kill their mom?" That girl was bonkers. But then again, the entire world was bonkers now.
Did the kid heal the mom after he left? They were all brainwashed, so probably? Of course, that probably meant they burned that woman at the stake... Maybe the girl had a good excuse to be crazy? It also meant the kid was a really powerful healer. Stanley had crushed... Nevermind.
But why were they alone out here? This had to be near the edge of the dungeon... and what happened to the cult? Presumably, it had been wiped out. Likely by that same army of undead that almost killed him...
They were definitely far to the north. If he remembered correctly from the night before. Something he didn't want to do... What a shit show.
The undead were after her brother specifically... Did she know that? He'd seen something on her face when he mentioned them... and hadn't the skeleton said it wanted to recruit the purifier? But then, they seemed to want to recruit everyone... Was recruiting really any different from killing everyone?
Stanley stopped before leaving the building. He was weaker than before, had lost two skills, and gained a new one. Or maybe just improved the old skill? It was supposed to be an evolution of Psychokinesis... into Mind Over Matter. Technically, that was the same thing, right? Just a fancier name and rarity. His stats were lower now, though once he got some cores he would be stronger than before. A lot of cores...
His musings stopped when he realized where he was standing. Or floating. It was the truck stop. The same one he'd stopped at to grab food... the delay that got him trapped in this dungeon... Where it all started.
Nate, you bastard... Stanley took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. He'd almost died again. Caffeine might have almost died. But he'd also found and killed an invader... Did Nate know he would win? Or was he gambling?
He picked up a piece of metal from the rubble of looted shelves and didn't feel the infusion from his old Psionic Weapon skill. Stanley tried to remember what it felt like, tried to make it happen, and failed.
That was disappointing... he'd really liked that one. He'd really like the charge skill too. Fuck. I just got that skill!
Waving the piece of metal around, he couldn't tell if it felt slower or faster than before. He definitely didn't get the sense of it being a part of... him... There was something else, though... a stronger sense of where it was... and then something else when he sent it further down the hallway.
The domain? He didn't really notice the difference until it left and the metal got noticeably heavier. Not that he couldn't still throw it just fine, but there was a definite change about... ten feet away. He also lost the stronger sense of exactly where his weapon was... except he was still touching it with his mind, so he knew where it was... It was strange.
He was supposed to get an extra ten percent willpower in the domain... per level... so five-hundred percent? That would have been real handy when he had a skeleton in his face... or a zombie. There was a difference, but exact numbers like that were harder to quantify. Something to test. Maybe with a monster or something heavy...
Daylight was streaming through broken windows ahead, which meant he'd slept the night through. Though it looked like early morning from what he could see. He also got a look at the destruction outside... Damn.
It was a lot... craters everywhere... stretches of asphalt that looked like glass... and some humans picking through the wreckage of shattered semi trucks in the parking lot. His truck was out there somewhere... Wait.
Those trucks had been there since this all started... The humans were picking through the cores. His cores!
Stanley waited instead of charging out to kill them all. He was weak... Caffeine was weak. He didn't even know how weak. The pug had grown bigger in the shower... but his gray hair was worrying. If those messages were correct, then he'd dumped all of his stats into Stanley and his twin.
Only... if Caffeine got burned by the source, then he wouldn't have had any more attributes than they did... so it hadn't touched him? His gray hair had to be from saving them... right? You're a good boy, Caff. The best in the world. The universe! Because I was too weak to protect you...
Now people were stealing the cores that might help Caffeine recover! Oh, Stanley wanted nothing more than to go out there and kill them all! He almost died for that! Caffeine almost died!
But he couldn't let Caffeine get hurt again... it wasn't worth his rage if Caffeine ended up paying the price. He should go find some food... that was what the pug deserved. A treat. All the treats. Stanley's anger drained as he held the little dog in his arms and buried his face in the soft, gray fur.
"You're a good boy," he whispered, before sitting up and taking another peek outside.
Maybe they'd just got here? Looking out there, Stanley thought he could see a few cores glittering in the shadows. He needed cores... Caffeine needed them. Maybe if he kept his distance while grabbing what he could? Avoid a fight. At least until he got his attributes back up... his next thought sealed the plan.
There's an E-grade core out there!
That was a problem. What if someone like Nate got ahold of it... if they used it to hit E-grade... Fuck!
Stanley flew outside quickly, hoping no one had found it yet. He also went straight up. Lots of people didn't look up. They might not even spot him while he grabbed the cores.
The long shadows of early morning helped a lot, and he could pick out glowing cores everywhere. Like a field of stars. He grabbed them, whipping them up as fast as he could, hoping none of the scavengers would notice.
He felt better every minute as the cores flew in and his attributes crawled upward. There were a lot of cores... How much did I kill last night? Stanley couldn't remember very much of the actual killing part... it was all rather... bright. And angry. His memories were angry... just trying to remember them was pissing him off...
Stanley considered giving cores to Caffeine over himself. Seriously considered it. But ultimately used them himself. Until his vitality hit two. Then he gave everything but the willpower to Caffeine.
He didn't want Caffeine to fight. He didn't want him to fight ever again... but that was an unrealistic dream. Someday, Caff. I'll kill everything, so you never have to. Snacks and belly-rubs all day. Forever.
But for now, Stanley only needed willpower. He'd even things out later, when it was safer.
Lee still slept in the distance. Stanley could feel that much... and he felt better than before. More… There.
Stanley knew Lee had burned with him. He was also positive that Caffeine had been giving his attributes to both of them... Though he was afraid to think about it in case the fucking system tried to punish Caffeine for reaching past the dungeon wall... it wouldn't do that, would it?
As for whether Caffeine could actually do it... he could. Stanley knew he could. He'd seen Caffeine growling at... static? What? Stanley flinched. That was... Something just fucked with his memory! What the hell was...
He spotted a core at the center of a glassy crater and instantly knew it was the E-grade. Something about the crater sparked in his memories... memories... static... NO! Fuck you! What the hell is...
The core thieves were approaching the crater.
Stanley tried to drag the core up... it didn't budge, but the ground shifted...
He dove for it, flying fast as he dropped into the crater. A sliver of the core shone out from the layer of smooth black glass that covered the ground. Glass that was in the shape of an alien skull right at the center...
There was just enough of a gap to reach a fingertip between obsidian fangs...
Skill Shard[E-grade]
Soul Sight (Rare)
The eye is the window to the soul.
Allows the user to detect and gaze upon the souls of others, but lets others gaze upon the user's soul through their eyes while skill is active.
Leaves the user more vulnerable to soul attack while active.
Skill Level Effects (Novice)
+1% Effective Soul
Requirements:
Visual Processing Organ(s): [Requirement Met]
Soul: [Requirement Met]
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Stanley claimed the skill and felt the energy flowing into him as he blasted himself back into the sky. Only something strange happened.
You do not hold Full Dominion over your Twin-Soul. All involved parties must agree.
What the... He heard shouts that rapidly faded into the distance as he soared higher and higher. It only took a second before... he felt Lee wake up.
All parties agreed.
New Non-Class Skill(1/3): Soul Sight (Rare) - Level 1 (Novice)
Did it ask Lee? Does he get the skill too? That was the only thing he could think of; the needing Lee's permission part, not sharing the skill. The system wouldn't be that generous.
He activated Soul Sight.
Below he saw glowing colors that hadn't been there before. He saw... Souls.
It wasn't just the ones outside stealing his cores, he could see two inside the building, through the roof... one of them a brilliant gold.
Through the roof...
Now he knew how that skeleton had chased him so easily... all his attempts at hiding had been useless. Though it appeared this wasn't the skill it had used to attack him...
None of the thieves chased him into the sky, and Stanley swept his gaze in a wider arc, trying to see what he could see.
He saw more souls in the surrounding area, but after a certain distance, he wasn't sure if the spots of color were souls or just spots of color. So the skill probably had a range limit... if only one imposed by his own eyes.
Strangely, Caffeine didn't look any different... which might have had something to do with Stanley's own body showing no glow in his new sight... Could he not look at his own soul? Caffeine was Soul-Bonded, so maybe it included him in that?
From his very brief testing, Stanley was already glad he hadn't taken the attributes. Four more points when he needed a hundred just wasn't anything special, and he wasn't about to save the core for when he got closer to E-grade. That was too far away... maybe if he hadn't nuked all of his attributes down to nothing. Then it might have been worth saving.
There was also the fact that it was stuck in the ground and surrounded by human monsters... Okay, fine. Maybe they weren't monsters, but that was so unlikely. At the very least, they were dirty fucking thieves. Though he would probably do the same thing if he found cores lying around...
The real deciding factor for him in that one moment he'd had to decide was that it was soul magic. Before he lost his charge skill... soul magic was the only thing that could stop him. That meant it was more powerful than everything else... or so he assumed.
A nice perk, and one he'd been hoping for, was that it let him spot souls from far away. Letting him spot monsters through walls was even better than he'd hoped. If it let him see more... like, say, if someone was planning to ambush or attack him... that would be a nice bonus.
He didn't know if that was how souls worked yet, but he would find out... though, it should be. Unless the soul thing was only some stupid magic bullshit and didn't actually have anything to do with an actual person's... inner self? For all Stanley knew, soul magic might have nothing to do with anything popular culture ascribed to souls. It might just be another aspect of magic... like fire.
It was also still the only one that got through his Psionic Charge... so that had to mean something.
Caffeine shifted in his lap to look toward the ground, and growled.
That wasn't a good sign...
Stanley descended, slowly at first, then faster when he saw what was happening below.
He knew the golden soul belonged to be the boy that saved him. It had the same... feel. Now it was outside the building and far too close to the large group of different colored souls Stanley had just pissed off by snatching his own damn cores... Dirty thieves.
Stanley owed the kid more than to let him get killed by a bunch of core stealers...
The idiots weren't even looking up when he dropped in on them... all focusing on the two coming from the building. Stanley's new Soul Sight didn't mesh well with his attempt at a visual examination, swathing their entire bodies in glowing colors. So he did what he'd been doing for days now, and touched them with his mind. Samantha's voice whispered in the back of his mind, and he hesitated... Maybe they weren't monsters.
One of them looked up right as another said, "Your friend stole our cores..."
Their cores... a blatant lie. A threat to Zeke.
Stanley's new effective willpower was worse than before, even though his bonus percentages had increased. But getting angry still boosted his power, and hearing the prick accuse him of stealing his own damn cores... that made him real fucking angry.
He still had the piece of metal from inside the store; his knife and spear were missing... or, more likely, stolen! He could now see the spear in one thief's hands. That pissed him off even more...
Samantha's words about power and being the bigger man rang in his head, but he ignored it. They'd had their one chance to do the right thing.
Stanley was weak. He wasn't the strongest anymore. He couldn't risk any of them getting an attack off. Couldn't risk that they might have something truly dangerous. He didn’t have the luxury to be merciful.
So he threw the jagged metal, threw it hard, starting with the man staring at him and opening his mouth as his hand lifted.
Stanley killed them all as quickly and efficiently as he could. With a spike through the head.
It was fast enough, and he watched their souls fade away as he snatched up the spear... then stopped.
The spear was glowing... He turned off Soul Sight, and the glow vanished. What the hell?
He reactivated Soul Sight and felt a chill looking at the glowing spear. It has a soul?
Caffeine bounded from his lap, and Stanley let him go as something else caught his attention. The cores were glowing as well. Not the normal blue they always had, but new little splashes of color alongside the blue.
That was... cores had souls in them? Sure, it was tiny compared to what he'd seen in the living people... but then he didn't even know what souls were. Could be like he thought before, just another form of energy. Like mana or his own psionic... stuff.
The glow on the spear was probably what burned the undead... just magic. It wasn't Samantha's soul... even though he'd shoved her core into the wood...
Stanley studied the spear, looking for the hole he'd made, and couldn't find it. The wood was unblemished, shiny, and smooth. As perfect as the day she made it... though a much darker hue. Reddish. Like blood...
You do not hold Full Dominion over your Twin-Soul. All involved parties must agree.
What the... I agree? Nothing else happened. Had Lee just learned a soul skill? Given that he didn't get whatever skill it was... Lee probably hadn't gained Soul Sight either. Figures.
Caffeine was extorting pets from the golden boy, and staring at his soul gave Stanley a sensation of that same feeling he'd gotten from the purified light magic. Warm. Soothing.
His sister had a silver glow. It felt... sharp. Metallic. Weird. It didn't look sharp or metallic. It felt that way... and he could almost smell ozone... Very weird.
It might be useful information about her. Stanley knew she had a chainsaw that worked... there'd been a flashlight, too. So maybe her class let her do something with machines? Or electricity? It was the first sign he'd seen of any working technology since this all started...
She was also glaring bloody murder at him while her brother got a tongue all over his face from the happy pug. Or was she terrified? Maybe both?
Stanley left them with Caffeine while he grabbed the rest of the cores. Caffeine should be fine... while he was weaker now, the kids probably wouldn't try anything. The boy was enjoying the attention from the pug, and his sister wasn't brandishing her chainsaw anymore. Though she was carrying it. Together, it meant Caffeine should be safe.
Debuff Resisted: [Miasma]
What... that's not...
He flew back toward the duo. Nothing changed. He flew away.
Debuff Resisted: [Miasma]
The purifier... is that why they wanted him? He needed to test this. Stanley flew upward until he spotted a concentration of souls in the distance. Then he hesitated at the sight of Caffeine back on the ground. The solution was obvious.
"You're coming with me."
They both made noises when he pulled them into the sky. The boy's yell trailed off quickly. "Eve, we're flying!"
"This is not fucking okay! You insane monster!" Eve screeched, with her eyes squeezed shut. Then she opened them and her white skin went somehow paler than before. "Oh... god... put me down, you fucking lunatic psycho!"
Stanley rolled his eyes and did what she wanted. They'd arrived.
"What the hell is wrong..." she kept yelling anyway.
She stopped when something that looked like a cross between a gorilla and a spider launched out of the cave ahead. Her chainsaw spun to life... and then whirred to a stop when the dead creature flopped to the ground a dozen yards away from a spear through the chest.
Stanley waited for it to rise as a zombie... and then remembered that the miasma was probably weaker out here. They were pretty far from the city...
It still stirred and climbed to its feet, the hole through its chest oozing blood as it turned toward them. The zombie was no red eye, and it shambled toward them at a very non-threatening pace. It also had a soul... a new one.
He'd watched its original soul fade away and into the core now in his hand. The new one was not the green, earthy smelling soul it had while alive. It was dim... black. Rotten.
Eve's chainsaw spun back to life while Caffeine growled at the zombie.
Stanley left it to her while dragging another living monster from the cave. It was heavy... but doable. A weak F-grade was nothing compared to the monsters he kept running into...
He brought the new one over next to the purifier while also making sure Caffeine wasn't trying to fight the zombie. He wasn't.
Eve cut the zombie down without difficulty, her chainsaw going through its head and most of the body below, before she backed off. Then she saw the monster dangling next to her brother. "Zeke!"
"Do your light thing on it," Stanley told the boy while blocking Eve from carving it up. "I want to see if it still becomes a zombie."
"Why didn't you just fucking ask?" Eve growled at him, finally giving up on trying to kill the thing.
"Does it?"
Eve glared at him while Zeke hesitantly touched the struggling but immobile monster. Her glare lost some of its edge when she said, "I... don't know."
Stanley rolled his eyes and killed the creature with a spear through the chest. Then he dropped it next to Zeke, where Caffeine continued his sniffing more vigorously. "Don't eat it yet, Caff."
The pug whined and turned away when Zeke knelt to pet him. "Is that his name? Caff?"
Caffeine wagged his tail when Zeke said his name. "Yea, it's Caffeine."
Eve moved to stand over her brother again, eyeing both Stanley and the corpse with hostility the whole time. "What do you want with us?" Her gaze slid down to Zeke briefly before coming back up. "What do you want with him?"
"That skeleton..." Stanley shivered, closing his eyes briefly at the memory his words stirred. "That... thing, it wanted him." His own gaze moved away from Eve and to the still dead monster. It should have turned by now... "I think I know why, too."
"What, so you're going to protect him? Because you care so much?"
"Hell no!" Stanley glared at her, teeth grinding with rage. Though he wasn't actually all that upset with her.
'It's the only way any of us survive...' That's what Nate said to him with his little cryptic story that sent Stanley nearly to his death... Fuck you, Nate!
The undead knew about Zeke. They'd sent an army after him... at least, Stanley assumed, it was for Zeke. It was only Nate's bullshit that landed him in the army's path... wasn't it? Or had they been after him as well?
Were they hunting him because he'd killed that talking zombie? The skeleton had mentioned his soul. The skeleton knew Caffeine was the beast lord...
Wait... It had said that Caffeine 'nearly' destroyed a Morg something. Was it talking about the zombie? Nearly destroyed? Had it not actually fucking died!? All that pain... Samantha's death... Caffeine's suffering... All for Nothing!?
A big tongue smacked him in the face.
Stanley blinked, his fists relaxing and jaw unclenching. The skeleton was definitely dead. He'd gotten a notification not only confirming its death but also that it was an invader. He'd gotten its core...
The zombie dropped a core, too. But no notification. He remembered Caffeine clawing apart the corpse at the end... digging. Was he chasing the real monster? Was it not actually the zombie? A parasite? Maybe one that bailed out when it lost the body?
Caffeine whined at him and then swung his head to stare off into the woods.
Stanley followed his gaze and saw the two souls receding away, one gold and the other silver. He also saw numerous glowing souls beyond them in the direction they were running. "I know, Caff. Let's go save the idiots."
He pulled Caffeine into his lap and put the spear through the newly awakened zombie's head before it could stand up—it hadn't turned until the boy left.
Then he flew after the siblings.