Stray Soul

“That should do it...” I muttered to myself after finishing reinforcing my neck with bushes so it wouldn’t just snap while I was walking.

Getting up from the ground, I took a moment to look at the sun that was rising, before doing one last check on my body that I had enhanced—improved?

Whatever the word for what I’ve done is.

Basically, I unearthed a few bushes and then manipulated them into filling the role of my flesh and hide in the areas that didn’t have them due to a particular undead and, now I looked more plant than deer as most of my body, and neck, was covered in leaves and branches from the said bushes that I unearthed and manipulated.

Taking a few steps in random directions, I tested if the addition of this amount of wood had done anything to my body and it seemed that it hadn’t done anything noticeable on first sight, or first test at least.

I felt that my neck and body were stiffer which was... understandable to say the least, but my mobility shouldn’t be affected majorly, so, my plan of going after the biggest of the river bugs was probably going to go according to the plan!

Well, unless lady luck decides that I’ve had enough fun in this life and decides to drop a dragon on top of my head which... I hope won’t happen, but you can never say what will happen. Afterall, luck is a bitch, and I don’t feel that lucky in my chances of being... well, lucky.

Moving onto the branches that I designated to be my limbs... or intended to make my limbs, they were... less than what I expected.

While, they were limbs, and technically usable, their slowness, and stiffness, didn’t allow for them to be fast. So, while, yes, I could use them to hold a spear, or a bug horn, that’d be the only thing they’d be able to do.

Well, unless I put an absurd amount of mana in them, which I couldn’t do because a certain goblin, who shall remain unnamed as I do not know if it has a name, or if goblins even have names.

For all I know, this world is like those other worlds where being giving a name makes you the protagonist for some reason.

So, I’d rather not super charge someone I fully intend on beating the shit out of in the future.

“I should get going...” I said to myself after a few more minutes of testing my new and... mostly improved body.

As I set course for... where I assumed the river was, which was located west, I let my newly re-detached lesser souls take control of my body, and no I don’t know if that is the correct use of ‘re’ or not, and then I started to pay attention to the surrounding forest, trying to roughly figure out where the wildlife ended, and where it began.

After walking for... maybe a kilometre or less, I once again began hearing the noises of birds and bugs, for some reason I couldn’t put my finger on, animals were somehow able to sense the presence of the dungeon and keep away from it... which made sense, as I’d assume not many beings would like to be enslaved to the will of a literal glowing piece of rock.

Though I wonder, how do they sense where the dungeon is, or if it’s a dungeon, and not something else and, shouldn’t a dungeon pull critters, instead of pushing them away?

As far as I’ve seen, the dungeon has at least 3 kinds of monsters inhabiting it, centipedes, skeletons, and golems, which probably are not the only monsters inhabiting it, but no matter if it only has 3 types of defenders or not, wouldn’t a dungeon want more animals to go into it, whether it be to somehow turn them into monsters or to use them for exp?

Though I am not sure if a dungeon would have access to the system... or its monsters for that matter...

Its still no brainer for it to at least attempt to draw in animals, no?

...Eh, I’ll learn eventually about the mysteries of this dungeon, or dungeons in general, no need to think about things I literally have no way of knowing or learning anytime soon.

Letting my lesser souls take care of my body fully, I started channelling man—no, that’s not what I did because, like what I said before, a certain goblin that shall remain unnamed decided to destroy my brain, so I didn’t exactly have a good amount of mana to just use for whatever, I needed all the mana I had to continue moving, and stock some up just in case something decided to take a bite out of me, so what I’ll be doing is... just focusing on my soul I guess.

Turning my attention towards my soul, I started improving my mana cloud network, or whatever, as I often did, trying to improve it more and more, but as I was getting into the groove, and starting to improve my soul faster and faster, something hit me.

“Wait, why don’t I steal from nature?” I said to myself, because, as you may or may not remember, I have done a very rough inspection of the souls of some plants and bugs, and while plants have weird inconsistencies and differences between them, every bug I was able to get my hands on at the time had one thing that was there, no matter what type of bug they were.

Their souls had this centre, soul heart, mana heart, soul core, mana core whatever you call it, and their soul seemed to extend from that single point outwards, so... shouldn’t I just steal mother nature’s homework, and just decide on a centre point for my soul, and expand it from there?

Maybe I should make the soul for my lesser souls different depending on what they are possessing, a clear centre for the ones that possess animal parts, and lines or whatever for the ones that possess plant parts.

Not knowing if there was even a reason for the difference between the souls of other beings, I decided to test it out by manipulating a small part of one of my lesser souls, the one that was controlling my totally useful limbs, and turn the part of my soul inside it to resemble that of a bush, which it was originally.

Taking control of my whole body once again, I looked around me and soon saw a few bushes which was not weird as, unsurprisingly, forests happened to have quite a few of those.

Quickly moving towards the closest one, I proceeded to extend one of my bushy limbs at it... and then decided to just touch it with one of my hooves as I really didn’t want to wait for the wood to extend itself enough to be able to touch the bush.

Quickly extending a bit of my soul into the bush, I was overwhelmed by the complexity of the soul such a small plant had for a moment, but just for a moment as I quickly started to copy the soul structure... or is it the mana cloud network?

Eh, who cares.

I then quickly started to copy the shape of the bush’s soul onto my branches, as well as I could as... I don’t want to say the shape of the bush’s soul was more complex than anything I could hope to even be able to copy, but the bush’s soul was more complex than anything I could hope to be able to copy.

Instead, I decide to only focus on the nitty gritty of the soul, copying the most basic and fundamental aspects of it that I could see as I was sure that I wasn’t able to sense the whole soul, why? Don’t ask me because I don’t have any idea to why that is the case.

Is my skill too low level? Or is it just a skill issue on my part? Aint got a scooby.

After copying the soul of the bush as best as I could onto a part of the woody sections of my body... I couldn’t see any difference.

Well, I could sense that... something was different, but I couldn’t sense anything concrete, so, while I think focusing on the souls of other beings, and copying them, will be important to me in the future... I have to dedicate entire days, if not weeks, on copying them, which is an amount of time I currently do not possess and might never possess as trying to decipher something for weeks, while only being able to use my current body for a few days at most is what we call a bad move.

At least for now. You can bet that I’ll be back to soul research when I have a body that won’t get destroyed in a few days or have a way to get a lot of bodies quickly.

But for now... I am just going go continue on my way to the river.

Saying that, I fixed the patch of soul I experimented on, and just kept improving the parts of my soul that were of my own design.

After many, many hours of me just walking, tinkering with my soul, and resting occasionally, the night came and with it came clear signs that this body was at the edge of its usefulness.

My legs only moved because of the mana I forced into them, their muscles gone dry long ago, small tears appearing with every step I took, and the bugs, as in germs, on my body that were eating it away didn’t help either.

Though my sense of smell may be severely weakened because of my ethereal state, I could still smell the vile air around me, it barely igniting the synapses in my destroyed brain.

“I really need to kill one of those river bugs tomorrow...” I muttered to myself, starting to feel a bit worried for my wellbeing as I wasn’t sure what would happen if more than one of those big bugs attacked me while I possessed a body as decayed and rotten as this.

Though there weren’t many things I could do as the bugs were sadly the weakest creatures I could think of that could contain my soul.

Which was just sad as they really didn’t seem to be that strong at all.

Then, I continued to walk through the forest, the eyes of the hybrids still working after many days we were together, which was... surprising to say the least as I didn’t assume that they’d last for this long the first time I put them on this deer’s body.

Who knows, maybe they’ll even last longer than the next body I get too?

...Probably not but, hey, a man can hope!

Walking and walking, soon the sun rose up over the forest once again, and after a few hours I saw the unsightly sight of the gigantic turtle who had thrown me at a tree... and remembered my first encounter with goblins and how they’d stolen my deer.

...Was I still a bit grumpy about the situation? Yes, yes, I was. I definitely was.

But seeing the turtle meant one thing, I was relatively close to the river... and with relatively close I mean a few more hours of walking, which should mean that by around noon or so I would be at the river, and hopefully, fighting against a big bug... a single big bug if possible... if I encounter more than one, I’ll focus on one of them, and ignore the other.

Deciding to take one last rest before continuing on my way to the river, I sat down quite a bit away from the turtle, which had become a pseudo landmark for me.

Then I started to think of how I was going to beat the big river bugs, and while I could probably recreate what I’d done in my last battle against them... I kinda wanted to keep my hunt’s body, so it having no head would be a problem... wait, no, it fucking wouldn’t.

I am literally a soul capable of manipulating flesh and wood, I can just put a few branches into the head and the neck of the bug I decapitated, and then just connect them, spreading the branches around so as to make sure that the head wouldn’t just pop off while I was walking around.

So, yeah, I could just decapitate the bug like I did last time, though I wonder if I’d actually be able to do that as my limbs are not as flexible as they were then... with them being made out of wood and all... still not sure why there is a difference between wooded and not wooded plants tho, aren’t they all just cellulose or whatever?

Shouldn’t they just be at the same level of flexibility?

Hmm... yeah, I don’t have any idea why things are the way that they are, just going to say its magic like a 15th century peasant and move on.

*crack*

Quickly turning towards the sound of a breaking twig, I started raising myself off of the ground, and when my head turned towards the sound to see what it was... I saw a hog that was bigger than me, a lot bigger than me and looked like a real monster though I knew hogs as big as it existed in the real world.

It had dirty black-brown hide, and a really big tusk, a comically big tusk even, it almost resembled the horn of a ram instead of the tusks of a pig, though it would hurt the same non the less.

Seeing that I had suddenly gotten up, the wild hog turned towards me in all of its glory, and for a moment, I understood the plight of King Richard III, and pledged to no longer call him a dumb king for dying to a pig of all things.

But maybe I needn’t feel plight for him as the hog seemed to get angrier and more defensive the moment it turned towards me.

“But I didn’t even do anything to it...” I muttered to myself, hoping to find a way to escape from the wild hog as I really didn’t want to fallow in the steps of king Richard, but as I was looking around and at the hog to find a way out, I saw a streak of red on the side of the hog, the sign that it was probably scare—nope, not scared, just pissed off that something would even dare to injure it, and looking for something to let off his pent up anger at...

After all, hogs were really determined to bring anything and everything that dared hurt them to hell with them, and I somewhat understood where the hog was coming from when it got angry at me because I would be defensive and aggressive if I saw a deer covered in branches and leaves, with 4 eyes looking at me...

Seeing that the hog was preparing to attack me, the only thing I could think of was...

“This day may be worse than the last one...”