Stray Soul

Stumbling through the corridors of the dungeon, I tried to make my way to floor 0 so that I could leave the dungeon, and then go into the forest and, hopefully, find something with a pair of eyes, but before I could even get to floor 0, I managed to hit more walls than I am willing to say... and I also encountered a few rats and other critters, but I accidentally destroyed most of their bodies, so I couldn’t get their eyes.

Though the dungeon’s layout was quite simple, so I could easily make my way towards floor 0.

“If I ever meet the designer of this research station... I am going to shake his hand and thank him for making an easily navigable structure... then I am going to punch him in the stomach for deciding to build this place in a goddamn mountain... I mean, sure, it’s cool to have a research base inside a mountain, but did you really have no better options?

“There surely is a waaay better place to build a research station than inside a goddamn mountain...” I muttered, thinking how easy it’d be to leave this structure if it only had been built somewhere more conventional, like the surface of the mountain it was fucking built on instead of inside it.

Though Rifu-san would’ve probably removed the structure itself and the dungeon core in the research station... and with removing the dungeon core I don’t mean cracking it, I mean just carrying it somewhere else.

And yes, I was surprised too when I heard that dungeons could be transported elsewhere, but apparently, they can be!

But apparently, its also quite expensive to do so. And it’s not like you can put 30 dungeons next to each other as every dungeon absorbs some of the ambient mana near them. So, if you tried to do that, the dungeons would slowly starve each other out of mana.

But she said that it was worth it most of the time transporting the cores to nearby cities as dungeons are basically one of the easiest ways to get exp.

Anyone who goes into a dungeon gains exp from killing the monsters in it, and they bring out material from inside the dungeon, and thanks to those materials, the crafters that supply the dungeon delves can gain exp from processing those materials into something usable.

But she also told me that anyone could learn exp from... nearly anything really.

A warrior could gain exp from dusting his house, and a farmer could gain exp from building a house.

But after you get a class, things change, as the whole point of classes is specialization.

When you select let’s say... mage as a class, your class will start slowly evolving as you work, and you will gain more exp from doing things you specialise in.

So, while mage A could get less exp from enchanting items and gain more exp from fighting monsters, mage B could get more exp from enchanting and get less exp from fighting.

And as you rank up, your class specialises more and more, and you get a bigger exp modifier for the things you specialise in.

So, after some time you will lose the ability to gain exp from dusting your knife collection, but does it really matter if you get 10 exp even from a failed inscription?

So, if you ever get a chance to get a class, its just a no brainer to get one.

IF you get a class that is as even Rifu-san doesn’t have an idea what makes the system classify someone as “Sapient”.

According to her experience, some of her Ents have just woken up as sapiens one day have and gotten access to classes, but, while others have tried copying what they did in the days leading up to their gaining of sapience, nothing happens when they copy their actions in previous days, or months.

So, the only reliable method of getting classes as a non-sapient is priesthood, as with some divinity any deity can grant someone a class, and the deity themselves also gain a specialised class when they ascend to deity hood.

...Oh, and another method for a plant being to gain a class is to become a Dryad, but apparently a Plant being only becomes a Dryad if there are no other Dryads around, so its quite hard to make more of them.

Though she apparently has a few thousand Dryads under her, with Rifu-san herself too being a Dryad.

“But that information is not really useful to me now, is it?” I muttered to myself as I continued walking through the tunnels of floor 0.

And soon, I was out of the dungeon.

I had managed to get some eyes from the centipedes in the dungeon, so I could see... somewhat.

Centipede eyes aren’t really that much better than the ones I dropped in the dungeon, but they are still somewhat useful, and they at least are decent at detecting motion so... I should be able to get hunt something... right?

Looking up, I could see the vague shape of a yellow dot on the sky, and it seemed that it was only a few hours after noon, so may be 14:00 or 15:00 at most... maybe 16:00 even?

...And that is 2, 3 and 4 o’clock for people that can’t count past 12. No need to thank me citizens! Just doing my job!

“...They are definitely going to the lower floors without me, aren’t they?” I muttered to myself, seeing into the future like I always did.

Though I was going to hope that they held to our verbal contract—wait, none of them told me that they would wait...

Anyways, I am going to still hope that they have at least some sort of respect for me and stay there until I come back.

And this is only their second day in the dungeon, so they could take a few hours off of their exploration to wait for me, right?

Then I quickly got to moving, and started moving towards west, where there should be quite a few animals around as, as you may or may not remember, the surroundings of the dungeon’s entrance are basically empty of forest life as the animals probably realise whatever is in there can enthral them.

So, I had to travel for at least an hour before I could even hope to encounter any animals, and then I’d have to hope that it was an animal with good eyesight, and preferably, with some good meat on the bones as I’d rather like it if I could replace the rotten and burnt parts of my body.

But if I know my luck, I am just going to encounter a Lynx, 2 squirrels, and a hornet in the next 24 hours.

“Ahh... the woes of being a reincarnator... nothing ever goes in your favour!

“Other than the times where plot armour kicks in and every other bad thing that happens to you turns out in your favour for some reason. That is quite great honestly.

“Though I would also like it if my body never got destroyed again so I could continue stacking up body parts from a myriad of creatures and become an abomination to be reckoned with... though just living through the day is welcome too!” I muttered to myself, and then moved inside of my body and let my lesser souls do the walking and looking around for any animals as walking everyday for the past month or so has been... really fucking boring honestly.

I would’ve liked if the system gave me a boost of dopamine every time I levelled up, but this is not that type of world, and the only enjoyment I get out from levelling up is seeing my mana counter go slightly up.

“...At least I am still not a masochist, or a battle maniac! So, that’s a positive... I guess.” I said, and just started tinkering with my soul and mana cloud like I always did.

And about my progress on my magical projects, I had managed to make a mana wing design that were... “Viable”.

I could get my mana wings to generate enough lift to keep themselves up in the air and, hopefully, my soul too! So, if I had to leave my body for whatever reason and had to navigate through air, I could... somewhat... not that I would want to unless it was absolutely necessary as I still don’t have any magical attacks or a good enough mana sense to be able to navigate by relying on it solely and find corpses to enter.

Though my man sense had improved greatly as I had made improvements on my earlier “Active Mana Sonar” attempts, and I could roughly feel the shapes of the objects nearby me by expelling mana from my body and catching the mana that reflected off of the surface of the things it hit.

But this consumed... a lot of mana. Like a dozen second. And, though this development had caused the system to increase my Mana Sense to (H) from (Z), it was still not a viable way of sensing mana, for me at least, as, unlike normal people and creatures in general, if I lost all of my mana, I’d die.

So, spending tens of mana every second to get a blurry picture of my surroundings? No bueno.

I needed to now develop a passive sonar like ability, but I wasn’t sure how to do that... not that I even knew how passive sonars worked back on earth though.

I mean... its probably close to an active sonar in principle. So, I’d only have to sense the ambient mana that bounces off of other things and comes to me, but the main question is, how do I know if they’ve bounced off of something, or if they are just another piece of mana swimming through air?

The way I sense shapes with my current mana sense is by, like I said, expelling mana outwards from my body, and waiting for pieces of mana that are faster that the others in my surroundings to hit me.

And by just counting the time it took those fast pieces of mana to return to me, I can make out a rough shape and distance between the object I am feeling, and me.

...

“I can’t think of a way to turn this into a passive sonar... I mean, half the time I am wrong with my predictions using my current active mana sonar... so the only way to improve it is to just... keep experimenting I guess... not that I really want to as it uses a lot of mana...” I muttered.

But after a few moments of thinking, I decided to send a single burst outward in an attempt to gain further insight.

“Mana expelled. 1...2—” As I was counting, I sensed a lot of fast mana particles hitting me from my back.

“But there is nothing at my back...? I mean I’d see it if—oh wait, I didn’t replace my eyes behind me, didn’t I?” I muttered and not a moment later I came to that realization, something hit me from behind and threw me forwards.

Tumbling forwards, I quickly stabilised myself and turned around and caught the charging bear’s paws in my claws and pushed it back.

And as it stepped a few steps backwards, I was able to inspect it for a moment and saw that it was just a normal bear. Just a brown one this time instead of black.

“...Great. How original world! Couldn’t you’ve at least thrown me a magical bear instead of a normal one?

“...Not that I mind this as this one should be quite helpful...”