Stray Soul

“William-sama! You must understand, this is a great business opportunity for the both of us!”

“...For the last time Ryuji, I will not be selling you the rights to the 5th floor of the dungeon.

“For a single delve, or perhaps a few days? Sure. For a year? No.”

“B-but William-sama!” Ryuji started screaming into my ear, and blabbering about how good of a business opportunity selling him the rights to an entire floor of the dungeon would be.

Not that I had any intentions of doing so, after all I had seen his reaction after I showed him the two arms I brought from the 5th floor, and there was only money in his eyes—not that I blamed him though.

The inscriptions that made the golem function were foreign even to Rifu-san, so he could get a lot of coin from simply selling the whole golem or parts of it to academies and towers in Rifu’s domain. And the wizards in there would give him quite the penny for the chance of decrypting, and learning a new magical language.

Not that I would sell him the rights to the floor though as he was shamelessly asking to keep 70% of any profits he made from the entire floor as he’d be doing most of the business which was... fair.

He’d be hiring people from Rifu’s domain to quickly best the golem, and perhaps bring it out of the dungeon without damaging its core, allowing it to be studied better.

But there were 2 major reasons I didn’t want to sell him an entire floor of the dungeon, the first being that I was already getting ripped off by him and that extra 10% reduction just wasn’t something I’d accept, and there was the fact of the artificial dungeon core.

I... didn’t really understand the ramifications of an artificial core as, as far as I understood, dungeons were uncommon, but not rare. You could find one in every other town or every 4-5 villages. And you could also transport them to places where more people could access them, and reap more benefits.

But apparently even the possibility of an actual artificial dungeon core existing was something unprecedented that would cause chaos across the globe... according to Heinrich that is.

Rifu-san on the other hand was sceptical to the idea as she had apparently tried to make an artificial dungeon core before, but met little success other than allowing her farmers to use slightly less mana while taking care of the more dangerous livestock.

But she’d still be sending some of her Lillies and a dryad to take a look if there was really an artificial dungeon core, and see if it could be replicated, and if it could, she’d be taking the artificial core for further study, and give me 2 normal dungeons cores immediately, and 3 artificial ones or more after she was done replicating them... not that we told this plan of ours to Heinrich, of course.

Perhaps he was believing us to just not take the dungeon core for ourselves, or maybe he already had enough information to create an artificial dungeon core himself, but he said seemingly everything he knew about this research station and the possible artificial dungeon core, which was definitely not something I would’ve done myself if I was in his place.

Or perhaps he just didn’t care we might take the core for ourselves? He may even try to break free of the magical contract we signed, and contact the gods of the pantheon of the sun, which would be problematic for us we’d have no option but to hand over the artificial core to them then.

Not that the existence, or non-existence of the artificial dungeon core affected me much though. If the core could be replicated, it would be out of my domain, and if it turned out to be a normal dungeon core instead of an artificial one, I’d just get to keep it.

Though, there may be a possibility of establishing friendly relations with the Solarian Church before Heinrich can get back here with his new research group as he said it take him somewhere between 9-12 months to come back here, and continue his research.

So, I had at least 9 months to go up north, save a few hundred people from getting massacred, turn down south, and establish connections with the Solarian Church. Easy, right?

Well... depends on the time it takes for me to save people from the roaming bands of Fox-men that have really rude things to say, and really sharp knives. But at worst it would take me 3 months to save a few hundred people from them.

I could, of course, always just spend the whole 9 months up north, saving people. And, frankly, I wouldn’t mind doing that. But the very, and I mean it, very few spies that Rifu-san has in the fox-men kingdom say that the situation is worsening by the day, and I will only have 2 months, or at worst 1, to actually be able to do anything to save people... before the kingdom detects me and sends a squad to hunt down the weird monstruous entity roaming their rural areas.

And the fox-men kingdom is... well, not a kingdom, but more like a country who has 2 monarchs, one being chosen from a council of nobility and the other being chosen from a council of clergymen, that try to get both the councils to agree with their way of thinking to move the country forwards.

And yes, a country that is basically being ran by 2 different factions that just wish the other one would die in a ditch is working perfectly as expected!

...Yeah, so, the country’s ruling elites, other than the monarchs, apparently constantly bicker, and try to assassinate each other. Big fucking surprise!

The only reason the current monarchs are not trying to get each other assassinated right now, and cause further chaos for the country, is because they were both selected by Tilk before she went on her current journey into the blizzard, and are brothers, but they haven’t been able to get their respective factions to work together and put a stop to things.

Tilk has apparently tried to fix the situation of her country, but has been so far unable to do so as giving too much power to one faction, or trying to separate the church and state in any shape, way, or form would just cause either one, or both factions to rebel against her.

Of course, most of the clergymen, and some of the nobles are willing to go along with whatever she says as she is their deity, but even her divinity is not able to save her from whatever bad decisions that she may make.

And, if she is too hasty with her decisions, she will have to kill a few hundred of the most important people in her kingdom, and will have to actually stay in her lands for once instead of fucking off to the north.

Ohh... the tragedy!

...Yeah, she seemed like a shit leader and deity. She apparently spent as much time as she was outside of her domain, as she was in it, but I still didn’t think leaving her people with a system as problematic as this, while going on periodical forays into the blizzard was an acceptable behaviour.

I mean, apparently all the other deities in the neighbouring lands just stay in their kingdoms and act either as their leaders, or defenders that watch from afar.

And not go headfirst into a fucking mana storm every few decades.

So, yeah, I was initially worried about incurring her wrath for “stealing” her followers, but at this point I was convinced she kinda deserved it.

*Creak~*

Creaking, the temple’s door opened, and Gram entered, and looked at me who was sitting in the corner of the temple, on the throne that Krone used to sit, with Ryuji blabbering some nonsense he couldn’t understand to my ear.

I had continued to improve my current body over the past week and a half I had spent outside the dungeon, and a week ago Heinrich and his friends had left the dungeon, and the regular dungeon delves had started.

My current body was still a humanoid one, that I had only made a few improvements to. Like adjusting the shape and size of my feet, hands, and other body parts.

I still had claws, but they were retractable, like the ones Wolverine had, and if I wanted to, I could always just cut a few of the tendons that connected them to my arms and use them as projectiles to shoot out from my hands.

And they could always be replaced by sharpened bones, so I wouldn’t shy away from using them if I could.

And other than my retractable claws that were both in my hands, and feet though those couldn’t be used as projectiles, I still had an assortment of eyes and ears through out my body. Though most of them were hidden by the branches and vines that covered my body, and acted as my skin.

“Ahh... You are here, Gram. Are the things I wanted you to make ready?” I asked Gram, who nodded and motioned me to come outside, then I got out of my chair and, followed him outside.

Though I had to duck under the door as I was anything but short. I believe my current body is around 250 centimetres tall, allowing me to tower over most people, though I was still using the spine of a bear so there was a possibility that some monsters or animals were taller than me.

And as I got outside, I saw a cart filled with a steel long sword, mace, a halberd, and a steel short sword as a backup weapon. All three made specifically for me, with the shortest of my weapons, the short sword, being 100 centimetres long, which is the normal length for a long sword, and the longest of them, the halberd, being 400 centimetres, or 4 metres long.

They were all also made from the assortment of weapons I brought outside as I left the dungeon.

Of course, this was not all the steel the goblins got from melting the weapons down, but I chose to let them keep the rest, as the goblins having access to better armour and weapons meant that they could do better against the monsters in the dungeon.

And in another cart, was an armour made from the brass I brought up from the 5th floor. Though these had not been melted, but instead cut from the whole arm of the golem, and reshaped using hammers to act as armour for me.

Why had I chosen to make the goblins take the long route of making me brass armour instead of just steel, even though brass is weaker than steel?

That is because the brass that made the golem is filled with mana, allowing me to pour some of my soul, and mana cloud into it, and strengthen it using my skills.

Then, why not smelt it? Because for some dumb reason mana leaves metals when they are melted.

You can’t just harvest mana rich iron, and turn it into a magical armour, no. You have to either bathe it in mana, or use mana crystals to power whatever enchantments you put on it.

Though even if I couldn’t use my mana to strengthen the steel, it may have been better to use it to make an armour for myself as I am going to have to pour a lot of mana into the plates that make my armour, otherwise they are going to get misshapen. Easily.

Though, its just a plate armour, and the goblins made more than enough plates so I can always just take some extras with me, and replace the brass plates if they cannot be fixed.

And how are you going to carry all these extra plates for your armour, and weapons William, you ask?

Well, golems.

After I realised that I could take control of the endoskeleton the floor boss had, I thought why shouldn’t I be able to do the same with the normal golems?

And, lo and behold! I could!

And now I have 50 golems helping around goblin village, that have fully replaced their old undead.

And defeating that many golems helped me rank up, and become and F rank! But after reaching F rank, the system did what it does, which is to make my life miserable, and started cutting the exp I gained from killing every G rank that was 21 ranks and lower than me. Which only allowed me to reach level 63, instead of anything higher.

Though, I was already pretty strong.

Level: 63 Exp: 40/445 Rank: F

Health Points: 0/803 Mana Points: 3.200/3.200

Strength: 0 (100)

Vitality: 0 (80)

Agility: 0 (130)

Intelligence: 240 (80)

Wisdom: 184 (80)

Charisma: 0 (120)

Free Stat Points: 0 (186)

Skills: Spirit Communion (C), Ethereal Body (S), Mana Sense (G), Bind (G), Soul Sense (G), Soul Manipulation (G), Mana Control (G), Mana Strengthening (G), Wings Of Mana (G)

Titles: Reincarnator (S), Otherworlder (A), False Idol (G), Soul Shepherd (F)

Quests: Meddling with the Unknown (S)

And after I reached rank F, it only took me a few days to increase my soul sense and mana sense skills to G.

And how had I increased my stagnant skills to G rank so quickly? Well, I was always working on soul sense. I just had the opportunity to probe the souls of a few sapiens, and after that, I was able to increase my understanding of souls, and increase my souls sense skill.

As for my mana sense, I had decided to steal a few tricks from the book of the boss golem. Specifically, how it used its own mana to control the ambient mana around the whole floor.

Of course, I wasn’t as good at controlling the ambient mana as the boos golem as it was specifically made for that purpose, but I was able to control the ambient mana a few centimetres around me to a degree. Though, not to a good degree, but I felt my knowledge of mana deepen by the second every time I pushed mana outside of my body to cause the ambient mana around me to spin, which first caused my mana sense to increase in rank, and hopefully in a few weeks it would also allow my mana control to increase in rank too!

And I was kinda giving up on the passive sonar idea for now, and focusing more on a really shitty active sonar that required the power of a thousand suns to see the fishes a few meters below it.

Though I hadn’t fully given up on the idea of a passive sonar, but I realised that if I wanted to actually develop my mana sense to resemble something like a sonar, I would need the help of at least a magician.

And no, Rifu-san doesn’t really count. She teaches me languages, and basic things, and has given me a few books on magic, that I can barely read, but I need a proper magician to help me, not a deity with powers beyond my comprehension that I haven’t even met face to face yet.

But I’ll have the time to find a partner in crime in my journeys.... but there is something I don’t have time for and that is the fact that... the goblins are asking for me to choose a priest.

But I still don’t have any goddamn divinity!