Stray Soul

Seizing up the bear in front of me for a few moments, I could tell that, while it was smaller than me, it was as strong as I, and if I was a normal animal this would’ve been a fair fight.

But sadly for it, I wasn’t a normal animal and I didn’t mind bleeding.

Not giving the bear the time to decide if it wanted to continue its attack on me, and try to push me out of its territory, or retreat for now, I jumped on it, intend on tearing through its hide with my claws.

And the bear tried to retreat, but we were too close, and before it could get even a meter away from me, I managed to tear into its hide with my claws.

Though not too deep as its hide was quite thick.

Understanding that retreating or scaring me away wasn’t an option, the bear got moving with a roar, and freed itself from my claws, and, getting onto its legs, tried to fall onto me with its claws, trying to do what I was doing to it, to me.

But instead of trying to retreat, and save myself from the worst of its attack, I instead attacked it once more and aimed at its stomach.

Before I could reach it however, the bear was on top of me and was clawing me.

Not reacting to it further destroying my body, my claws teared its hide protecting it stomach, and I pushed forwards, my claws further penetrating its body, and entering into its stomach.

Then the fight, if you could even call it that, quickly ended with me pushing it onto the ground and tearing through its soft tissue.

And soon, I stood on top of a dead carcass with a system window in front of me.

*ding*

Congratulations! You have defeated Brown Bear (G) Level 50!

150 exp gained.

Congratulations! You have levelled up and become level 33!

Then I spent 10 of my 12 stat points on Intelligence and brought it up to 100, and spent the rest 2 on wisdom, bringing it up to 64.

With the 40 extra intelligence I had from the brains of—wait a moment let me just...

...

Okay, I now have the head of the bear I just killed, and with the 80 extra intelligence I have from the brains, I have a total of 1.800 mana capacity, and 124 mana regeneration per hour.

Which means that I only fully regenerate my mana every 14 hours... which is bad as I’d like it to be more like every 7-8 hours, but seeing as I do not enter fights that challenge me every 10 hours, I am willing to leave it like this for now.

Now, onto incorporating the bear’s body into mine... this is going to take a few hours...

Then, I got onto replacing my rotten and useless body parts with the parts I got from the bear.

Most of my muscles and old skin and scales were replaced with whatever I got from the bear, but my skeleton was still that of the Pale Lizard, so, while a huge part of my body was covered in a bear’s hide, a really large portion was still covered in lizard skin.

Though my tail had been long gone, due to the demon, so it was just covered over with some old scales, held in place with a few branches.

My deer legs, I had gotten from killing a deer a few days ago, were replaced with the bear’s legs, and my back legs too! So, the only lizard limbs I had were my head and front legs.

After I had replaced most of my body though, there was still quite a bit of bear left on the ground, in the shape of just bones of course.

While I was quite pleased with defeating a foe that was around the same rank as me in matter of 10 minutes or so, my fighting style was... still very animalistic, which didn’t really please me.

I mean... I can’t really help it now, can I? After all the best weapons I have are the ones that I can extract from the corpses of my foes, so it only makes sense that I use the tactics used by the predators that I’ve killed.

But I should be able to do more...

Hmmm...

While I was thinking about how to actually develop a fighting style that wasn’t animalistic, the first thing that came to my mind was my chest that had a primitive mechanism that acted like a crossbow.

I could very easily load things into it, and flung them out of my chest quickly, but the only thing that I had that could be used as ammunition was the Sceptre Of The Forest which was too valuable to be used as ammunition... unless it was for attacking demons.

Then it was just the right tool.

But if I had something like a long metal rod, I could use it as an arrow, couldn’t I?

Then, my attention wandered off to the bear’s spine.

“Hmmm... maybe I can just... use that spine as a weapon too?” I muttered to myself, and quickly freed the spine off of the bear’s bones.

It was... well, a spine. But it was quite long and, with some branches and vines supporting it, it could surely be used as a projectile... though, only against fleshy enemies as golems and skeletons wouldn’t be affected by it too much.

But even then, I couldn’t base my fighting style off of throwing spines from afar, as, while it’d be funny as hell to see a monstrosity throw a fucking spine at you from afar, and miss, it was also... not my kinda jazz, you know?

I am more of a close quarters guy, so while projectiles would help, they couldn’t be the end of my fighting style... hmm... wait a moment... why have I been sticking to the shapes of the animals I’ve been hunting?

The only thing I need to control a part of my body is for my soul or my mana cloud to be touching it, and while my body parts still do need a skeleton to support them, I can just... fashion any skeleton I want from combining parts from the bodies of other creatures, can’t I?

“...Is there anything I can use here to give myself another set of claws...” I muttered, wanting to start with body parts that were familiar to me, and then move onto more esoteric ones.

But the only thing nearby was just a rotting pile of stuff that I didn’t need.

But before setting off, I still took the ribs of the bear and started experimenting with them while making my way back to the dungeon.

I used a bit of flesh and vines I got from the forest to make the outline of a... really fucked up claw with a few ribs, and then I put muscle onto them, to make moving easier, and I covered it in more branches and leaves to act as a sort of skin.

And then I moved it and, even though the only thing that could be part of a hand was a few bits of flesh, the pseudo claw/hand I made still moved.

Though I couldn’t test it much inside of my ribcage, due to the limited space, I still figured out that it could be used to grab things. But it was weak.

I hadn’t used enough muscle to move the pseudo-claw, and while plant matter could be moved much more freely than muscles, they were pretty hard to move, and just weren’t as great as bones and muscles for movement.

But I could just make a claw like this... and after a bit of experimentation I should be able to make a claw that worked better, not that I especially needed an extra claw right now, but it was just experimentation with my abilities.

“Hmm... should I make a humanoid body for myself?” I thought to myself as... having a humanoid body, that didn’t have hard time moving through door’s, would be a heaven send!

But also, a small body wouldn’t be that great as, it’d suck for battles.

My main way of winning fights was mostly using my bigger size or mind to overcome my enemies, and as most of my stat points came from the sheer mass of my body, just becoming a small humanoid would be... dumb.

Though I always just make one, and put a lesser soul in it... which... actually wouldn’t be that bad of an idea now, would it?

Though making a full-on humanoid body would be much, much harder than making a barely functional claw... but I should be able to slowly make my way towards a humanoid body.

And, if it ever seems too hard to do, I can always just add more muscle and bone to whatever I am making and cheat a bit.

Afterall, I only need to add another pair of legs if my “humanoid” body ever becomes too heavy to stand upright. Then I’d be making more of a... centaur or something else, but hey, if you have a humanoid torso, you are a humanoid.

That is probably factually wrong, but I am going to act like it is right.

As I reached and entered the dungeon around golden hour, I lost all hopes that the adventurers would be on the third floor, so instead of charging into the dungeon, and hoping to reach the third floor as quickly as I could, I decided to take a step back, and release the 7 souls that I still had inside of me.

Getting a few meters away from the dungeon’s gate, I reached out to the pocket where I kept the souls and pushed them all out into the air.

Like before, I still was not sure what exactly was happening when a soul disappeared, but after Rifu-san revealed to me that to become a god one needed to create a paradise, I asked her what happened to those who were not followers of any god, and, though she didn’t have any experience with souls and where they went after dead personally, a cardinal she talked to said to her that the souls of any nonbelievers and sinners would be cast into the abyss, and their memories would be wiped and they’d wake up in new bodies.

Which was a very ballsy thing to say straight to the face of a deity, but the dude was also a cardinal so he probably believed that he would not be harmed.

But, whatever the beliefs of the pantheon of the sun was, their belief in the existence of an abyss where nonbelievers and sinners would go to was the same for the followers of the Dark Lord, but they saw the process of going into the abyss as both a punishment, and simply the next step in one’s progress through life.

You were born, lived, died, lived more in Tartarus, the paradise made by the Dark Lord and the gods under him, and then reincarnated.

So, I could say for sure that there was something else after they disappeared, so I didn’t have too much of a problem like the last time with letting the souls go.

And as the last of the souls left my body, and disappeared into the abyss... I think. A system window appeared in front of me once more.

*ding*

Congratulations! You have gained the title Soul Shepherd (F)!

Congratulations! You have levelled up and become level 34!

Not expecting to get a title from this little, I clicked on the description of the title quickly.

Soul Shepherd (F) Description: Willingly guide at least 10 souls into the afterlife. Consecration of bodies through burning, burying, or any other divine action does not count towards the total number of souls guided.

“...Well then. I guess I am just going to... continue stripping the souls of the death off of their bodies and flinging them into the abyss like usual?”

For a few moments, I continued to inspect the description, and looked for any information it may have, but after a minute or so let it go, and allocated my free stat points.

This time, I put all only half of my stat points into intelligence and put the other half into wisdom. Bringing them up to 106, and 70 respectively.

Then I entered the dungeon and over the course of an hour, made my way through the floors and quickly reached the third floor, where I had left the adventurers and...

“Yep, they are fucking gone!” I said out loud, not that anyone could hear me, or understand English.

Sighing for a moment, I was preparing to start my journey to the lower floors, but as I was about to leave, a note on the ground caught my eye.

Extending a branch, I grabbed the note off of the ground and looked at the words which were written in a language I was sure to be imperial.

“Too fucking bad I am fucking illiterate in Imperial! For god’s sake couldn’t they’ve at least written a rough map of which floor they’d be going to...”