ALL NOVEL Sheep’s Clothing (2)
“Again!”
A wooden sword descended against a training dummy, striking the target three times in quick succession.
“Father…” The boy rasped despite being able to fulfill the order, “Please…”
“Again!”
The wooden sword descended again, striking the target three more times. The boy’s body burned with exhaustion and stinging flesh. He struck the dummy as many times as he was whipped. It was as if his hits were being mirrored onto his back.
“I-I cant–”
“Again!”
The boy swung his sword but as the tip landed on the target, a destructive slash was delivered onto him. In the end he failed to destroy the target before he himself succumbed to his father’s lashings.
“Take him away…” The man scoffed. The boy has had this exact same routine for many years, but every time his father looked at him with those eyes, all the injuries he sustained couldn’t compare to the sting in his heart. “We will resume tomorrow.”
Even if his back was breaking, even if the skin was being ripped off his being, he couldn’t help but reach out and plead. The pain of being abandoned hurt far more than having been abused. “Father…”
Perhaps that was his folly…
“Young master…Jeez.” A young maid shook her head, “The patriarch was too much again today.”
The boy looked at the young servant’s hands and saw them in the same state as his back. There were cuts, although small in comparison, littering her callused hands. Like he was in hardship under the patriarch, she was suffering underneath the mistress.
The young man suffered because he was too weak in his father’s eyes while the young servant girl toiled tirelessly because she was more beautiful than the man’s sister, an unacceptable truth in the matriarch's.
Although their statuses were as different as the sun and the moon, they bonded together. In their wounds, both inner and outer, they found solace in each other’s company. They trusted each other with the tears they couldn’t show others, and eventually that trust was more powerful than their bounds to that house.
So together they escaped out of a open window, running into the forest with nothing but themselves, the clothes on their bodies, and the currency they stole in jewels and precious objects.
Together they grew up in the wilderness, slaying monsters and completing quests as mercenaries, sometimes even as adventurers.
Ben dreamed of marrying Allissa, using the sword he abhorred so much tho protect her, while she used her knives to assist him from the shadows. He dreamed of putting a golden ring around her finger, until one day…
A monster appeared in their camp, a spider greater than a wagon in size with legs sharper than any blade he had ever seen, killing his lover with eight of its legs before tearing her apart.
Ben watched hopelessly in his groggy, traumatized state as the monster made short work of his other party members, sparing two of his front legs to feast on the body of his love.
All he could do was run away.
***
“What an interesting story…” The Journal chuckled. I could hear him clearly as if he was speaking to me. This time, he was underneath my bed, tucked in-between the board suspended above the floor. “To think that you wouldn’t even stir, or even grimace in your slumber. Do you even have a heart, you mortal?”
I opened my eyes at his voice. I had just watched the entire life of the man I had killed in the alley. While my body was in a state of rest, as if I was asleep, my mind raced as the memories of that man were replayed.
I watched it all.
I witnessed his first love, his traumas, his hardships, his loss, and his despair.
I felt as though I had been chained to this bed for forty-years in a body that was not my own. It felt like a lifetime had passed as I relived the life of a man nearly twice as old as I was.
I had a consciousness of being a separate entity but I was trapped in a prison.
“That better be worth it, Journal…” I coughed. I could barely feel my fingertips as I curled them. Despite not aging a day, I felt as though I’ve lived fifty years.
[ By taking the life of “Ben Faux,” you absorbed his experience with many weapons. ]
At the ring of that window, my skill tree appeared and another icon extended from the adventurer branch. The icon was blank however and it all disappeared after a few seconds. I was left staring at the ceiling of the building I was in.
“I don’t want to do that ever again…” I felt my brain physically aching inside my skull. “My head–”
[ By taking the life of “Ben Faux,” you absorbed a small part of his abilities. ]
[ Constitution has permanently increased by two ]
[ Strength has permanently increased by One ]
[ Profile: Hyun / Race: Demon / Profession: Adventurer , Scholar - (Soul-Bound Contractor), Civilian / Level: 6 ] [ Skill: Premonition ] [ Strength: 12 (+3) / Speed: 11 / Constitution: 15 (+2) / Intelligence: 20 (+2) / Wisdom: 20(+4) ]
My constitution went up by two, while my strength increased by one, it's the very first increase! But why does my brain hurt so much?? I don’t think it’s a fair trade at all.
“Remember that pain, boy.” The Journal chuckled, “Aside from absorbing the essence of a creature, you made that essence yours. Do you really think that that was all that happens to creatures in this world?”
Bah! A lecture in the early morning while I’m suffering from a post-level hangover… This journal really knows how to push my buttons.
But then again, knowing the fact that I offered up my memories and thoughts to this journal during our contract signing, it’s normal for him to make remarks to correct my thought processes.
In Source, monsters would drop loot as designed in their loot table, but here in this world, their material possessions would be left behind, not just a few pieces of predetermined items. Of course, experience can be earned by slaying enemies but is that all there is to it?
I mean, if corpses disappear into smoke, why are there undead monsters in the same form?
“When you perish, your… I cannot speak the word, unless you’d die…” The Journal sighed, “Mortals, so difficult.”
“Why don’t you start using my language to explain?” I just rolled my eyes. I don’t like how this book would keep asserting my lower status in comparison to him. “I'm not stupid, I understand the concept of limits.”
I mean look at me! I’m bedridden!
“Very well, unlike that game titled source, creatures in this world aren’t just points of experience. For the lacking terminology, the soul of a creature upon death is taken back to the cycle of life, where it carries on.”
“Like reincarnation?”
“Not quite, but yes. However, that was a long time ago in the Tranquil Era.”
I blinked at him, what did he mean by that? Does he mean that there shouldn't have been monsters?
“Souls of living beings that was created by both Morn and Eve would be reborn, without their old memories to carry out the fate that was set before them.” I pushed myself up from the bedding to sit up straight. The information I was hearing deserved my consciousness's full attention. “But Eve siphoned the essence of the deceased and created a pestilence upon their creations as punishment.”
“Punishment?” I asked, “That means the creations committed a crime deserving as such, but how capital of a crime was it that it brought its wake at the cost of the generations to come?”
“Because the creations who were given free will and thought began to act blasphemously. Specifically one."
Wouldn’t that be natural? In society, there will always be those that seek to be different, who feel the right to be special. “Why?”
“You must be familiar with the tale of Nimrod the Rebel? Of Your world?” The journal asked me although he knew I knew the answer.
It was a biblical tale taught in Sunday schools, how a prideful man with the same name declared his decision against God. As such, he designed a great tower to ‘reach’ God. God’s punishment on his blasphemy was to confuse the language of the times, creating hundreds from the one human language, stopping the construction of the building.
This in turn caused many to gather with their common speakers and dispersed to populate the earth as they were commanded years ago. In one decree, a man known as a mighty hunter and king was reduced to a simple word that described him. “Rebel.”
The sad irony of it all was it perfectly explained a frequent parable in the same book. Nimrod was mighty in the sight of the Lord, the first to be called a mighty man, a mighty hunter before the lord.
But pride overshadowed him. He sought to become God and suffered the consequences there after.
Now, with all that in mind, what did this world’s Nimrod do that the rest of the entire world would have to suffer as a consequence? How heinous of a crime did this Nimrod do that souls that originally were destined to reincarnate, and all that come after them, now be sentenced to become a husk of pure instinct and suffering?
“...Yes.” I gulped. “What did this world’s Nimrod do?”
The book grinned before speaking into my head.
But I didn’t comprehend his answer.
I couldn’t.
The answer simply transformed into a pain so great, my existence felt like it was being torn.
But I didn’t die.
I didn't cry out in agony or anything.
My soul simply locked eyes with something it should’ve had.
And it stares back.
A barrier, a wall, no mortal should ever cross.
An unexplainable gap.
Infinity.
“Congratulations, you have been deemed an existence powerful enough to listen to that word. Not that I think that you’d be able to understand much less comprehend, but I doubt you’d forget the taste of divine retribution.”
I felt cold sweat pour from every pore of my dehydrated body.
Whatever this world’s Nimrod did, is none of my concern.
I only looked aghast into nothingness, thinking about the journal.
What the hell did you make me do?!
And how does that relate to me absorbing the essence of Ben Faux?
“Was I absorbing the essence of Ben Faux really that capital of a crime?” I shivered, my mouth drying up instantly…
“No,” the Journal answered simply. But that did not reassure me at all. “You simply entered into the same bounds. By absorbing the life of Ben Faux, you stepped onto the thin line our Nimrod crossed.”
The Journal sounded confused, “Do you not remember? Morn considers all life precious.”
Then it hit me. The Sun god did not mean the physical lifespan of a creature as it’s life, but its essence into the cycle of Life.
I consumed the soul of a precious creature, forcing its path to deviate from its sentence into being a creature of the night, into power I consumed for myself.
“I don’t think I want to use this power anymore…”
“Ah, cowardly talk.” The Journal waved away, “It isn’t against the world's rules anymore. There is no more cycle to being with, thanks to Nimrod, as such what you did was not illegal. You simply were the first to do so.”
I looked up at the ceiling, in hopes that the two beings above could see my plight.
“Congratulations, brat. You are the first to ever attempt and succeed in performing [True Soul Fate Acquisition]”
This Journal is borderline blasphemous!
What the hell did I contract?!