Stray Soul

My mind immediately went into overdrive the moment I understood that the boar wasn’t planning on calming down after seeing a literal forest demon which, was fair.

But what wasn’t fair was the fact that I had to fight a gigat—pretty big wild hog while my body was in a less than ideal shape.

“And my mana...” I thought to myself, and quickly willed my system window to open.

Mana Points: 167/270

Less than ideal, less than ideal indeed... I might have to worry about my mana usage this fight, which hasn’t been a problem for so long...

Not to worry though, I am sure I can man—

But as I was monologing to myself, the wild hog, being the swine that it was, decided that I didn’t deserve being given time to prepare, and charged at me as fast as its small legs would allow it to do so, which was, surprisingly, very fast.

“Son of a—” I screamed, barely managing to jump before hog managed to make contact with my legs and put them out of commission.

Landing back down, I could see from the eye from the back of my head that the hog had stopped a few dozen meters away from me and started turning around.

And while I am not sure about it, the hog seemed to have less control over its body while charging than the big river bugs... which was normal because its mass was just that much greater than the said bugs, and, while it probably had a few skills that it was using or could use like the big bug, I really doubted that it’d have a skill to break its charge, or slow it down, so maybe I could use its speed against it...

The second I thought that my back eye locked onto the big... earth turtle or whatever that was visible behind the boar, and while the turtle was far away, I could potentially kite the boar into charging at the thing.

But there is a catch, and it’s the fact that if I ever wake up the turtle, it’d probably kill me too...

Then what to d—

But before I could finish my line of thought the boar charged at me once again, but this time I was prepared for it, so I was able to start running and dodge its charge before it could reach me and break my legs.

This time instead of jumping and praying that it wouldn’t hit me, I instead started zigzagging from one tree to another, forcing it to go around the trees in an attempt to get to me, which it was trying to instead of just running because boars are fucking stupid... wait, is there a difference between a hog and a boa—wait! Nope, now’s not the time to think about that stuff! Maybe after I either escape from it or more likely option, one of us dies!

But not now!

Shaking the useless thoughts of swine biology or whatever out of my head, I continued to make zigzags around the trees, and slowly make my way towards the big turtle, trying to dodge the wild hog that was trying to break my bones.

But I also needed a plan to somehow escape the wrath of the turtle as I just didn’t have the mana to escape from it, like how I didn’t have the mana to keep running away from this swine forever.

But what can I even do to escape from it! It’s a giant ass turtle that is... while probably slower than the bear I encountered, still faster than this hog and is probably more than capable of destroying trees by running at them!

Not like I can run away from it, or escape from it while alive... if that’s what I am trying to do that is...

Quickly taking another look at the hog that seemed to be even angrier than before, I started focusing on building up a plan to escape from it, and not have to bother with the turtle myself, while still using it to help me free myself from this conundrum.

After all, like what I said before, this hog didn’t seem to have that great of a control over its body while charging, so I could maybe trick it into coming near or even attacking the turtle!

Which... will be dangerous, but I am confident that I’ll be able to jump over, or evade, any attacks the hog throws at me... though not sure about the turtle, and I do not intend to find out if I can!

Continuing to zigzag around the trees, making my way towards the turtle slowly, slower than I needed to, while still paying attention to the hog because if it hits me, even slightly, I’ll probably lose a leg... at least.

After a few more minutes of barely avoiding the hog, I was ready to make a turn towards the turtle and either use it as a deterrent against the hog, or make the hog charge at it, and jump out of way and make my get away while the turtle killed the hog.

How was I going to escape the wrath of the turtle my self you ask? Simple really, I wasn’t going to, not because of some 1000IQ plan or whatever, I just couldn’t come up with a plant to do so!

...DON’T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT!

Anyways, I am just hoping that it won’t see me, or I’ll be able to act like I am dead because I just don’t have the mana to be able to escape the hog any longer or escape from the turtle.

...God, I hate goblins. Neither have I talked to them, nor do I have a way to communicate with them, so my hatred against them is just uncalled for and is just plain racism, but you don’t destroy a man’s brain in your first encounter with him!

If only I had my brain... everything would be so, so much simpler!

But no! William can’t have good things! Fuck me I guess...

Looking at the boar once again I saw that it was running behind me all the same, but it seemed to be slower than before, maybe it realized we were heading for the turtle? I mean, it was underground for a long, long time, but it wouldn’t be impossible for the animals in the surrounding area to be aware of it or have learned of it in the past few days, so it starting to slow down was more than understandable.

“...Might not have to risk anything...” I muttered to myself, starting think that the boar would just stop when we got close enough to turtle, and maybe even give up on taking its unrighteous revenge on me.

Focusing my attention on the path forwards, towards the turtle, which was sleeping, I felt a bid bad for the critter as I was going to wake it up from its... hibernation?

But its spring or summer, why wouldn’t a reptile hibernate in winter, and hibernate in summer instead... don’t think about it, Will, you’ve learned better in the last week or so.

Though I felt bad because I was going to wake up the turtle from its hibernation for a second time... I felt like it was justified because it broke a few ribs of mine the first time I woke it up, so it was only fair I was getting a pay back.

And what made my first interruption to its hibernation righteous?

...Moving on, I started to slow down a bit, not wanting to wake up the turtle myself, while also keeping an eye on the hog behind me, not wanting to have my knees broken while this close to success.

As I slowed down, I was expecting the hog to either slow down, and come to stop, or start charging faster in an attempt to hit me, but being the swine that it was, the hog decided to instead charge faster and faster at me the moment it saw that I was slowing down.

“Well... can’t say I didn’t warn ya... not that I actually warned you, but still.” I muttered to myself, and got ready to jump the moment the charging hog got close to me, but while I was doing that, I willed up my mana counter once more to check out how much more mana I had because, while this chase lasted no more than a dozen or so minutes, I had still usen a lot of mana to escape from the hog.

Mana Points: 72/270

“Ugh, nearly a hundred points, huh? Well, glad that this charade didn’t last for longer...” I said to myself and focused fully on the hog that seemed to charge faster than ever before at me, maybe a skill, maybe just pure determination, guess I’ll never find out.

Then, as the hog got closer and closer to me, I started pumping a couple of points of mana into my legs, wanting to make sure that I could jump high up without any problems, and when the hog got relatively close to me, I gave all the power I could to the surely rotten and dried muscles in my leg, and jumped, and got a few meters above the ground easily.

But, after a few moments of waiting to see the hog run past from under me, nothing happened.

“Hmm? What’s goin—”

*BANG*

*swoosh*

After I felt something hit me while I was in the air, I started flying towards the ground near the turtle, and as I barely managed to look behind me, I saw the hog, falling to the ground, and quickly pieced two and two together and understood that the hog had somehow managed to jump up, and ram into me while I was in the air.

Did it perhaps understand I was trying to trick it into attacking the turtle? Nope, probably not, it probably just understood that the only real way I could escape from its charge was to either run behind a tree, or jump up, and used its few neurons and managed to come up with a plan to hit me... clever.

But I didn’t have the time to talk about how ‘intelligent’ the hog was, as I was flying through the air, and was probably going to hit the turtle...

“...This is going to hurt.” I muttered to myself, moments before I hit the ground near the turtle, and though I didn’t want to, I tumbled forwards, and hit the turtle’s shell.

*bonk*

The moment I stopped, I tried to regain control of my body and tried to get up, but before I could even make an attempt to start running away, I saw that the turtle was looking at me.

“...You know, you look really beautiful when you wake—” but before I could try and give a few words of kindness to the turtle, it hit me with its front leg, throwing me far away.

*BONK*

*swoosh~~*

As I flew through the air, most of my bones broken, I was very unhappy to say the least, but I found solace in the fact that the turtle hit the hog too, and threw it towards a tree, and then proceeded to retreat back into its shell and went back into its summer hibernation... why was a turtle hibernating in summer? Don’t know, don’t care.

*THUMP*

Ungracefully hitting the ground, I felt a few more of my bones break, and tried to move my body, to no avail.

My muscles, already rotten and dry, could take the punishment no longer, and just gave up. However much I tried to move them, they wouldn’t respond, and my bones were worse. I was basically a crunchy sack of rotting flesh right now.

Crunch coming from the bones and the branches.

Talking about the branches, they were still usable!

I could manipulate them to my will, however I wanted to...though they were slow, very slow. So, I could still move... somewhat.

Removing one of my eyes from their sockets, I used it to look around me, and towards the turtle and the hog who had a sizable pool of blood surrounding it.

After a bit of thinking, I decided to give up on the deer carcass that had outlived its usefulness by far and started to detach my branches and soul from it, not forgetting the eyes, of course... and the papers.

Slowly, I became ball of brown and green, and started to craw through the forest floor, and towards the hog’s corpse in a mass of plant matter, looking more like a caterpillar than the undead I was... a gigantic caterpillar made out of branches and leaves, mind you.

And why was I crawling towards the hog’s corpse? Well, because, while its bones were probably as broken as the deer’s, its muscles were still usable...probably, so I could just reinforce its bones with my branches and be able to move.

As I crawled towards the hog’s corpse which was not really that far away from me... or at least it wouldn’t’ve been if I could fucking walk!

Anyways, as I crawled towards the hog’s corpse, I tried to make my branches at least somewhat efficient in moving, and tried to make them faster but alas, it was basically impossible to move at any rate faster than a crawl with just plant matter, maybe in the future I may have enough experience to make plantmaxxing a viable strategy, but for now, I think I’ll just stick with flesh and bones as cellulose is just a bit too stiff for me.

After a few minutes of crawling, I was able to finally touch the boar with my branches, and I then proceeded to cover it with my branches and if anything saw me while I was doing that, they’d think there was a bleeding bush where I was.

But, not paying attention to the weirdness of my situation, I proceeded to focus on the corpse of the hog and after I possessed it, and tried to move it, I understood that the situation at hand was worser than I initially thought.

Only a few bones in the hog’s body were relatively undamaged, everything from the legs to parts of its skull were broken and shattered, but thankfully, most of its muscles worked, they just lacked something to attach themselves onto, which was important as... well, muscles can’t really do anything without being attached to a bone... other than the muscles in an elephant’s trunk. They are weirdos.

Anyways, after a few moments of contemplation, I started to dig my branches into the hog’s flesh and used them to fill in the gaps between broken bones, making them somewhat usable once again, and manipulating my soul so that it fit the abomination I was creating.

After a few hours of work and worrying about if I was just destroying the remaining parts of the hog’s body or not, I was finally able to move once again.

As I rose up, forcing the flesh and wood in my body to cooperate with each other, I noticed that the sun was setting down, and the world was overtaken by a golden colour, but I didn’t pay much attention to that, instead I paid attention to my surroundings.

The blood on the ground was dried, and I could see a few bugs on it, looking at where the turtle was, I could only see its shell, it still hibernating, and looking at my legs, I could see dried blood and a few stray leaves penetrating the flesh and hide of my legs.

Which seemed to be a common sight for across my body, as when I used one of my extra eyes to look at my body, I could see branches and leaves coming out of seemingly random places on my body, which weren’t actually random as I spent an entire afternoon working on this masterpiece of a body!

And I won’t have anyone saying that this body isn’t a masterpiece!

But other than looking as if some branches and leaves were penetrating my body, some parts of my branches were clearly going inside the body and fusing with it. And it would be clear to any being capable of thought that this body was really fused with a few plants.

“Oh yeah... forgot to do that.” I muttered to myself as branches from inside my skin started to tear the skin and fur at the bottom of my stomach, and soon, my guts fell right out with some left-over stale blood. And not soon after the guts fell out, I cut everything that were connecting them to me, and closed up my gut once again with the help of my branches, and the branches could be seen from outside my body near my stomach as they were what sew it shut, which wasn’t a problem as they weren’t the only branches that could be seen from outside my body.

Then, I just moved away from the pile of guts, which attracted a lot of bug’s and bird’s attention, and took my extra items with me.

Which were the few pages of loose paper which may be of use to me some other time, and 5 eyes.

Looking through the eyes, and comparing them to my new ones, I was sure that the eyes I possessed decayed like the rest of my body, they just didn’t deflate like how normal eyes deflated when they decayed.

And these 5 eyes, while still usable, didn’t give that great of a vision... but they were still usable and, being the eldritch being in training that I was, I decided to keep using them, and the hybrid eyes were useful even if they didn’t work at their full capacity.

Then, I proceeded to open up 2 holes in the front of my head for 2 hybrid eyes and placed a branch at the back of my head to hold the other one and put the 2 deer eyes at the sides of my neck, holding them there with branches like the hybrid eye at the back of my neck.

And finally, I proceeded to roll up the papers, and open my chest cavity once more, and pulled them in to be held by another branch.

Moving around a bit to make sure everything was in place, I plopped to the ground far away from the turtle, and just sat there, watching the night come and star gazing.

“...At times like these, I really wish I could just sleep...”

Name: William Race: Stray Soul (Chimeric Creature)

Level: 14 Exp: 28/31 Rank: H

Health Points: 0/198 Mana Points: 270/270

Strength: 0 (11)

Vitality: 0 (19)

Agility: 0 (13)

Intelligence: 27 (10)

Wisdom: 29 (6)

Charisma: 0 (7)

Free Stat Points: 0

Skills: Ethereal Body (S), Mana Sense (Z), Bind (Z), Soul Sense (H), Soul Manipulation (H), Mana Control (Z), Mana Strengthening (Z) +

Titles: Reincarnator (S), Otherworlder (A)

Quests: Meddling with the Unknown (S), What Lays Beyond? (C)