Stray Soul

“Augh… I hate everything…” I said to myself after slumping next to a tree to rest for a bit after… everything.

Oh, and, in case you were wondering, no, the big mama’s horn wasn’t still stuck to this new body I was in. After a long and arduous process which I am not willing to explain, whether be it in detail or not, I was able to free myself from the big mama’s horn. But it did take a looong time.

How long you may ask? Well, too fucking long in my correct opinion. But just for you to understand how long actually passed, I’ll explain what I did first, so you may decide on an arbitrary number yourself.

The first thing I did after commandeering this new body was to try getting used to it, which I couldn’t do right away because a retard, whose name totally doesn’t start with will- and ends with -iam, decided it was a good idea to change the shape of my soul to suit the body of a rabbit, not even giving a thought to how hard it would be to actually reshape my soul in case I entered the body of something new.

So, after getting into this body, I couldn’t actually control it and had to spent like a year reshaping my soul to suit it. Am I exaggerating? Maybe… but that’s for you to decide.

The second thing I did was to immediately try and get myself out of the horn that was penetrating me, but I couldn’t do that due to a few simple reasons. First one of them being the lack of… you guessed it! Mana! So, I had to sit there, waiting for the magic juice counter to fill up, while a oversized bug was struggling for its life, just so I could actually help it to free itself so I could be free too!

Oh, and the second reason for me not getting myself out of the mama bugs horn was because, after a minute or 2 of my rabbit body dying, dozens upon dozens of hatchlings appeared and started climbing over me, and onto my old rabbit body and started munching on it.

And to say I was disgusted would be a massive understatement! So, I just started swinging my horn in the hopes of removing the rabbit corpse out of it, and after I was done, I was just going to ignore the hatchlings so I could remove the mama bug’s horn out of me, but to my absolute horror I heard a familiar sound just before I could start doing something to help my predicament.

I heard the sound of stones hitting stones and skittering legs… yep, you guessed it! More fucking mama bugs were unearthing themselves and coming here!

After a few minutes of waiting, I could see 2 of them standing valiant watch around the rabbit corpse, guarding the hatchlings that were having a snack against… whatever sad fuck was hunting these bugs.

And not wanting to become more of a shish kebab, I decided to be mindful of not stepping on the swarming hatchlings, which immensely hindered my efforts of freeing myself.

But, at last, after God knows how long, I was finally free…

Heaving a sigh, or at least the best sigh I could make with a rotting corpse of a bug, I started looking around me.

Other than the swarming bugs that were devouring the remnants of my previous body, I could see 4 mama bugs.

The 2 I had seen while still being stuck in the original mama bug’s horn, the original mama bug, which had a few hatchlings on its face that were probably eating all the egg yolk and white on its head, and another mama bug that was gazing in this direction from near the river.

Am I surprised that there are a lot of these bugs? Yes. Should I be this surprized? Probably no… I mean, they are bugs. Of course, there is going to be an absolute shit ton of them around. What the fuck was I even expecting????

“Ahhhh… I am starting really hate this place…” I mean, I know this place is a world of might and magic or some shit like that, actually I don’t know that because I’ve literally spent like 2 days here, but the constant struggle for life is just… exhausting to put it lightly…

I think my wanderlust is quickly disappearing… but not like I can do a lot to change my situation, I mean even the system doesn’t know exactly how I got here if we go by my title’s description, so I can’t really go back even if I wanted to now, can I?

Heaving another sigh, my eyes this time wandered towards the rabbit corpse that was being eaten by the hatchlings. It was nothing more than fur and bones now, but still, hatchlings were crawling in and out from any and all crevice’s they could find, trying to get every last flesh off of the bones so they could grow larger. And looking at the rabbit carcass reminded me of something. My own mortality.

“I could’ve actually died…” I thought to myself.

After coming to this world, with its magic and my new ability to change bodies, I thought myself immortal. I mean, wasn’t I?

In case I got injured, I could change bodies.

Lost an arm, leg, or anything else important? New body.

In a precarious situation? New body.

Anything and everything that could’ve threatened my lively hood seemed as if they could be solved if I just had a supply of fresh corpses, and I was planning on getting strong enough so I could turn this forest into that supplier of the said fresh corpses but, now I realize something… no matter how much I wish for it, I am still a mortal.

No matter how many bodies I get, no matter how many dragons I slay, levels I gain, ranks I go up, skills I gain, whatever I do, at the end of the day, I will still be a few hours away from dying because of the rotting bodies I occupy.

And if I just keep taking more and more bodies, what will happen is, I will just leave a trail of corpses, slowly destroying this forest. And what happens after I deplete everything in this forest. What happens then?

Do I give up, and let myself die? Do I just go to the next forest or whatever biome I happen to come across and destroy them too?

Then how will I be any different from the monsters and the dark lords I read about in my previous life?

…

..

.

…No.

No, I will not be a mindless force of destruction, even if my life depends on it, if it just means to kill just because it was convenient to me, I will not. That’s it.

On earth, I always thought that I’d try and survive if I was in a precarious situation. But there would always be a limit to what I’d be willing to do to live.

If I were to ever be caught by saw, I’d just let myself die because some fates are just worse than dead.

If I were to ever need to eat another person, I’d die with them, or let myself be killed. Because I would know, no matter what happened in the future, the survivors guilt I’d have wouldn’t let me live a happy life.

If I were to ever need to do something, anything, that’d go against my morals, whatever those things maybe, I just wouldn’t do it, even if not doing those things meant dead.

While I do understand why people would do things I consider immoral, I am just not a person that’s willing to do immoral things.

And if living means killing everything and anything that comes my way, just to live for another day with the worry of seeking another thing to kill so I can live for just a bit longer, I think that’d be my limit.

Not that I am saying I am going to commit suicide here and now though, hell no.

I might not be willing to do immoral things, but I am not willing to give up on my dreams of this world yet either!

I am in a fantasy world for fucks sake! I need to slay a dragon, save the princess, help the kingdom or some shit like that, I am not going to give up on every weeb’s dream just because of something immoral I might do in the future because of desperation!

“Yup, I am not letting myself become a virgin dark lord, but I am also not letting myself die either!” quickly giving power to my buggy legs, which I had 8 of, I quickly got up and willed open my system window.

Name: William Race: Stray Soul (Adult Chitinous Bug)

Level: 5 Exp: 0/5 Rank: Z

Health Points: 0/19 Mana Points: 20/23

Strength: 0 (2)

Vitality: 0 (1)

Agility: 0 (4)

Intelligence: 1 (1)

Wisdom: 6 (1)

Charisma: 0 (2)

Free Stat Points: 2

Skills: Ethereal Body (S), Mana Sense (Z), Bind (Z), Soul Sense (Z), Soul Manipulation (Z)

Titles: Reincarnator (S), Otherworlder (A)

Quests: Meddling with the Unknown (S)

Quickly looking through my status window, and seeing that I had full mana, I started thinking about what I could do to solve my problem of constantly cycling through bodies.

And after thinking about multiple scenarios and coming up with things I can do in the future, I came to a conclusion, and said…

“Yup, my current skills are all shit!” I mean, they just fucking are! None of them could help me with my problem of using a lot of bodies, but one of them was still giving me a sliver of hope, and it was Bind.

I quickly opened Bind’s description once again to refresh my mind.

Description Bind (Z): Allows the being in possession of it to bind their soul to things that don’t possess a soul.

It says that it can bind my soul to things that don’t posses a soul, so does that include rocks? Earth? Plants?! Could I become a rock golem, an earthen defender, or a tree ent/dryad?!

So many questions and so little answers… but like what I said, so many questions and so little answers. I don’t actually know if I can become a golem or anything like that, and if I can’t become a golem but still manage to enter a rock, would I still do that?

I think not… because, while I don’t want to leave a trail of corpses behind my wake, I also don’t want to become a glorified vegetable.

So, I need to somehow find a way to get a corpse, and then keep it alive or at least keep it from rotting too quickly.

I’d like to say necromancy is gonna be useful but… I don’t want just another corpse, I don’t want to be an eternal undead, I want to live and have a living body.

And while I don’t have the capacity to do something like that right now, that doesn’t mean I never will!

So, what I need to do now is, finally get mana manipulation, start experimenting with magic, souls, and keeping bodies alive, and maybe rejoin polite society?

I mean, I don’t think people, if they even exist, would like a literal undead living amongst them, but maybe if I manage to make a living body for myself… why not give it a try?

But before I start any of my plans, I need to do one thing and that is…

“…To gain more levels and stats…” look, I know I said I don’t want to leave a trail of corpses behind me, and I am not going to do that, but I am still too weak to accomplish my goals, so if I want to have even a chance of accomplishing my dream of being a giga chad stray soul that doesn’t keep changing bodies, I need to be strong enough to be able to defend myself and have enough mana and mana regen to experiment with magic!

“But I don’t want only Intelligence and Wisdom now, do I? No, I do not!” saying that I immediately re-assigned some of my free stat points to strength, but immediately after I tried to do that, a system window appeared in front of me.

*ding*

Because you do not posses a physical body, you cannot increase physical stats.

…WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN?!?! I LITERALLY HAVE A BODY YOU FUCKING DUMB FUCK!!!

*ding*

Correction. You cannot increase physical stats as a being that is not physical.

WHAY THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN?!!?

I SWEAR, ONE DAY, ONE FUCKING DAY!

I WILL FINALLY KILL WHO THE FUCK MADE YOU!!!