Stray Soul

As I looked at the system window in front of me, congratulating me for gaining 2 skills, I had mixed feelings because neither did I want these skills, nor did I know that I could even get them! I was trying to get mana control which I imagine is an easier skill to get than fucking soul sense and manipulation!

I mean, how, how did I manage to fail this successfully?!

Ugh, who cares… well, I do but not like I can do anything about it now, can ı?

Shrugging off my confusion, I started testing my limb that I had improved with my new skills, and while it seemed normal on the outside, when I focused on my mana cloud, I could see it not moving as erratically as before, and neither did it use as much mana as before, meaning, if I did the same thing to my other limbs, and body, I should be able to wander around without all of my mana dropping out of it, which would be a pretty good thing as I am really not in the mood for my body suddenly stopping responding.

Now, I should probably start doing what I did to all my limbs, but before that…

Quickly, I willed my mana counter up to see how much mana I had regenerated.

Mana Points: 8/15

8 points… so I’ve regenerated 6 points since the last time I checked, huh? But how long did it actually take me to regenerate those points? Hmm…

As I started wondering about how long I took to… fix? Improve? Eh, I’ll go with fix for now.

Anyways, like what I said, as I started wondering about how long it took me to fix my control over my limbs, I decided to go outside and look at the sun, thinking it might help me make a rough guess about how long it has been since the lynx buried me here, but to my surprise, when I turned around instead of seeing a few rays of light penetrating the dirt wall that was blocking my way outside, all I saw was an absolute darkness, akin to the void that I went to whenever I wasn’t controlling a body, but this time I was at least sure I wasn’t in the shadow realm as I could control a body and feel my surroundings.

“What the… wait, did it already become night? How long have I been here for…”

As confusion hit me, because I seriously didn’t expect to be met with darkness, I decided to quickly fallow my memory, and break down the wall blocking my way outside, just to make sure if it was night and not evening or something.

“Damn sun, making my life harder just when I had started celebr—agh! “

But to no one’s surprise, my memory fucking sucks ass, so only a moment after starting to walk, I slammed my face into a wall in the burrow like a dumb ass.

“Fucking hell! Just as I was star—agh!”

And again. Surprised? No? Fair.

So, my life and death battle against worst enemy imaginable, darkness, started and I just continued to hit the walls again and again while trying to find the thin dirt wall. At one point, I thought about trying to infuse more mana into my eyes in the hopes of gaining night vision just to realize that I didn’t have mana control because the system fucking sucks.

And I continued to hit the walls for a few more times, until I felt that I had hit something that wasn’t as hard as the other walls.

“Is this the damn exit?” I muttered to myself, and started excavating the small wall of dirt with my claws which was, to no one’s surprise, pretty good at digging.

And as the wall crumbled, I was able to stick a bit of my head out, just to see the night sky from between the branches of the trees.

“W-wow…” like most people, I lived most of my life in a city where light pollution was just a fact of life, so most nights I would be lucky to see a few starts, but here… everything was so clear, and as I stared at the sky, I could see hundreds of starts shining brightly, but none of them were familiar.

There was no big bear, small bear or any constellations I could recognize, it was just… foreign. But that foreignness had its own kind of draw to itself, making me look at the starts for longer and with more care, making me inspect them and try to find patterns in them… not that I could mind you, as you can probably understand by the things I have done in the last few hours… yeah, definitely not the sharpest tool in the shed.

After looking at the night sky for a few more moments, I retracted my head back into the burrow because, even though I was mesmerized by the night sky, and wanted to go out into the night because it just felt nice, I could somewhat bring my 2 neurons together to know that an injured rabbit and the night weren’t the best of combinations…

As I retreated back into the burrow, I started thinking about what I should do that it is now night, the first thing that came to my mind was to sleep! But I didn’t feel any mental or physical fatigue… must be the pros of being a soul, possessing a dead rabbit.

So, I guess… just finish working on my mana cloud and soul? Doesn’t sound like it will take long but its something to keep the boredom away…

So, that’s what I started doing, I stretched parts of my mana cloud, then stretched my soul into it, and after doing it for like 4 times, I could finally use all my limbs without much problem! But I had also ran out of things to do…

What to do, what to do… I mean, I definitely am not just sitting here all night, waiting for the sun to rise as while I believe myself to be someone with a good mind, that much boredom might actually kill me, and working on mana control doesn’t sound like a good idea because… well, frankly, I just feel like I am missing something about mana control, I mean, I fucked up so badly at trying to gain in, I gained 2 skills that are not even related to mana! One just does not fuck up that badly because they are on the correct path!

And as for those said 2 new skills… call it a gut feeling but I feel like maybe, just maybe, I shoudn’t fuck around with skills related to souls a lot?

I mean, yeah, I did kinda manipulate my soul a bit just now, but even the first time I stretched my soul, I was pretty confident nothing would happen! And why you might ask? Because of 2 reasons; First, I was prepared to catch my mana cloud before it could retract into its position and the second, I was kinda sure my soul wouldn’t just ka-boom itself and erase my very being even if it was not in my mana cloud for a moment because ethereal body’s description seemed to imply that.

But right now… I am not really confident in fucking around and finding out with my soul. I mean, I could always just try to improve my control over my soul as both my skills are only rank Z, and because that is the lowest rank for any skill, I am pretty sure I can improve those skills without any problems! But I can’t really see a way or a reason for me to, like what I said, I don’t want to fuck around and find out.

I mean, what good is improving my control over manipulate soul when it works nicely as it is now? I just don’t see a reason to medd-

Before I could finish my sentence, and move on to thinking about other things, I heard that familiar ding sound I had gotten used to over the day.

*ding*

A side quest has been created by the system to encourage you to expand horizons.

Side Quest: Meddling with the Unknown (S)

Description: Only a few people can claim to have sensed a soul, and even less can claim that they have manipulated a soul successfully, but yet, against all odds, maybe through sheer luck or perhaps something else, you have done what many grand sages and magicians thought to be improbable or impossible. But what will you do with this newly attained knowledge of yours? Will you look the gift horse in the mouth, and reject it, or will you pursue what many don’t dare to pursue?

Quest Completion Conditions:

- Learn, discover, or come to a realization about new knowledge on Soul magic and souls in general.

Quest Failure Conditions:

- None

Quest Rewards:

- Exp and potentially skills based on improvements made on soul related skills, or learning, discovery, or realization on knowledge related to souls.

Accept / Reject?

As I listened to the feminine voice of the system and took a cursory glance through the system message, I had… conflicting feelings to say the least.

At one hand, I was pumped up! This! This was what fantasy is supposed to be! Discovering ancient and unknown magics, while traveling the world and seeing literally magical sights and monsters? Hell yeah!

But on the other hand, did I really want to pursue soul magic? Now, call me stupid, but, in many fantasy settings, soul magic is… kinda fucking evil. Necromancy? Enthrallment? All kinds of dark and evil shit? All of them falls under soul magic… and sometimes dark magic… and shadow magic too… man, fantasy authors are really unoriginal with their ideas, aren’t they? I mean, why would people constantly reuse the same ideas even though they have been done like, I dunno, a thousand times by many different people? Isn’t the whole purpose of creating a world to explore different ideas and have fun? Why don’t people just stop saying ‘dark magic, bad’ and instead come up with more creative ideas and concepts for magic, and superstitions on magic instead of reusing this over-saturated and unoriginal concept?

But what do I know! I am literally a fucking soul controlling a rabbit’s corpse… I really hope this world isn’t one of those cookie-cutter fantasy worlds and people actually have reasons to hate certain types of magic, if they do that is. But I won’t know that until I’ve made contact with… hopefully human, or humanoid sapiens.

Hmm… now do I accept or reject this quest… it doesn’t seem to have any downsides, and even if the novels I’ve read are even 1% accurate, and people really do hate soul magic in this world, as long as nobody can see my status screen it shouldn’t be a problem… wait a second, system, can people see other’s status screen via skills like Inspect?

*ding*

Though there are ways to look into someone status screen without their permission, the easiest would be to just ask someone to show their status screen to you. And while you can remove things such as skills, titles, and quest from being seen when you are showing your status screen to others, people with a keen eye or skills can realize that you are hiding things from your status screen.

Huh, so I should maybe be a bit worried about people looking into my status screen and seeing that I have quests and skills related to souls...

As I started thinking, I looked through the quest once more, just to realize something.

“Wait… quest, how many times can I complete this quest? Only once or…?”

*ding*

This quest can be completed, and rewards gained as long as you have it in your quests, but beware, when you willingly remove a quest, or reject a side quest, you will not be offered it to you again for a very long time.

So, I can gain rewards from this quest multiple times… and I can also remove or dismiss quests, whatever you call it…

I—I might be being stupid, but I don’t really see any reason not to accept this quest. I mean, yeah, maybe I’ll never ever complete it even once, but, if I suspect someone of trying to see my window through ‘other means’, I can just remove the quest, and not like I have many things to do while I am a literal fucking rabbit so might as well try and gain some exp out of this… and not like I am going to get a human’s body any time soon… not that I am sure if I’d ever even possess someone’s body, I mean, that just seems… weird, and inhumane.

After finishing my contemplation, I mentally pressed the accept button, for nothing to happen, because for some reason the system really sucks. But when I willed my system window up, and looked at my quests, I could see my new quest.

Name: William Race: Stray Soul (Rabbit)

Level: 4 Exp: 0/4 Rank: Z

Health Points: 0/10 Mana Points: 14/15

Strength: 0 (0)

Vitality: 0 (1)

Agility: 0 (3)

Intelligence: 1 (0)

Wisdom: 6 (0)

Charisma: 0 (1)

Free Stat Points: 0

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)

Nearly full mana huh… maybe I’ll be able to use that mana while I just stay here…

…

..

.

As the sun started rising on an un-assuming forest, light started pouring into a burrow beneath a tree, and in that burrow, in one of the corners, if you looked carefully, you could see a rabbit, who had a hind leg that seemed to be eaten to the bone, and if one was magically attuned, and could see mana, when they looked at the rabbit, they would see a weird foam of surrounding the rabbit, that seemed to be made out of a myriad of colours.

But deep inside the mind of the rabbit with dirtied and bloodied white fur, a storm was raging.

I HATE THIS I HATE THIS I HATE THIS I HATE THIS I HATE THIS I HATE THIS I HATE THIS I HATE THIS I HATE THIS I HATE THIS

I HATE NIGHTS!

I SWEAR, ONE DAY, ONE DAY I AM GOING TO GO BACK TO A NORMAL CITY, AND LIVE OUT MY LIFE IN A CONCRETE BOX TO ITS FULLEST!!!

FUCK NATURE, FUCK ANY AND ALL FANTASY WORLDS!!!

FUCK NOT BEING ABLE TO SLEEP!!!

FUCK ALL OF IT!!!