Chapter 4: 4. Soul Eater

A couple of minutes passed, and there was still no response from the System.

"Maybe it only works in the right conditions?" he assumed, giving up on trying to activate it.

"For now, titles should be the least of my worries. To get out of here, I must get a lay of the land."

Lucian picked a direction and began walking towards the nearest mountain. Hopefully, he could get some answers somewhere around here.

Walking toward the mountain, he realized that the creatures that littered the land took no heed to his odd, if not weirdly cute bubble-like soul-body floating through the area. Sometimes, he would even walk past one of the scaly creature's arms, right under its eyes, yet, it didn't even acknowledge he was there which was fine by him. As someone important had once said, "the fewer complications, the better."

And he was a big fan of simplicity.

He walked for far longer than he expected, reaching the base of the first mountain where Lucian saw the first humanoid he's ever seen in this world. Lucian picked up his pace, hoping to find an answer to his question of finding a way out of this realm.

As he got closer, he saw that the person looked very similar to a human apart from the large wings and spiked tail folded behind him. Horns sprouted from his head, and his eyes were completely red.

"A demon?" he thought. Even its skin had a red hue over it confirming Lucian’s hypothesis in his mind.

It stood in attention with a weapon in hand as it surveyed the plain. It seemed to be guarding the mountain, which didn’t make sense. Lucian suspected the exit might be over the mountains.

Soon enough, the demon also saw him surprisingly. He did not expect the demon to be able to see him since every other demon or monster- whatever they were, seemed pretty ignorant of his presence. Hopefully, it was friendly.

Who was he kidding? It's a Demon. He was pretty sure friendliness broke some kind of demon law in their books.

The demon seemed shocked to see him and started sprinting toward his location. Seeing his reaction, Lucian frowned. Was he not supposed to be here? Lucian decided to play it safe and grasp the situation first before reacting.

"WHAT IS IT DOING HERE?!" The person Screamed.

"FUCK! If Cerberus found it here before me, I would be beyond dead! Literally!"

"Good thing I was here. Now let's get you back in line there, buddy," as he reached for Lucian, calming himself down.

Lucian's first instinct was to avoid his grab. However, he forced himself to stay put as the creature's scaly hands grabbed him.

Rushing back to the base of the mountain, the demon touched the bottom of it.

Suddenly, it began opening up an entrance where it casually walked through and shocking Lucian to no end.

Underneath the mountain's base lay an ample space as far as the eye can see. Lava flowed through the rocks on the top half of the entrance as bones of different kinds and sizes littered the space. In some places, even flowers grew comfortably, which Lucian found incredible, especially in the inhabitable conditions the area was in.

Compared to the previous area, the heat was nearly doubled which showed in the heat waves active everywhere around Lucian. However, it seemed like the demons didn’t seem to notice this at all. In fact, some looked like they were enjoying the incredible heat.

He knew if he had a normal human body here, he would be beyond burnt alive, which made Lucian slightly glad that he didn't.

Demons scrambled all around in haste as they worked through completing different tasks that Lucian would assume was how the place was kept running.

The demons worked through different caves on the side of the mountains with seemingly ordinary tasks from the scrolls in their hands. However, some were holding various weapons as well.

Before Lucian could gather any more information, the demon holding Lucian flew downward discreetly with haste until he eventually reached a humongous path of rocks floating through the area that led further into the eternal darkness below.

Although dark and gloomy, the path had a seemingly ancient charm to it, Lucian thought as he got closer. The rocks seemed to be held together in the air by a silky black form of energy that reminded Lucian of polished obsidian. It radiated with a calming yet inevitable force that extended through the path, reaching farther than the eyes could see.

On the path, billions of souls of different sizes, shapes, and colors floated in place, moving down with a tug from the obsidian energy.

Dropping down to the beginning of the path, the demon carefully released Lucian.

"That should do it. Now Apollyon needs to fi....." the demon let out a sigh as he began to mumble something, flying back up to the surface of the giant cave.

After waiting a couple of minutes, making sure the demon was far enough away, Lucian finally took another look around the area. From his perspective, it seemed like he had landed on a giant island.

Souls surrounded him from left to right as he waded through the crowd slowly.

Eventually, he stopped behind a soul that was in front of him. Compared to him, the soul in front of him was much larger in size and seemed to have a small number of runic symbols in its center. It also radiated a blue color that made him feel refreshed when he got near it.

"Hello, can you tell me what is going on here?" He asked the soul as discreetly as possible. He waited for a response.

"..."

However, it seemed it might not have been in a chatting mood.

"Hey, you there?"

"..."

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"Hey, how about you? Do you know what going on?" he said as he took a look at a nearby soul. He tried to nudge the other soul with his will, but he also got no response. He got close enough to touch physically when he heard a familiar sound...

*Ding*

...he gave a final nudge hoping to wake it up. It moved forward but still no response, which he found odd. Were they forcefully put to sleep once they were put on this path?

Thinking back, he realized that the demon paid no heed to him this whole time. He didn't even seem to have the stray thought that he was alive whatsoever, which also reminded him where he was.

"When people die, they are judged on their lives. Their souls go to the Underworld, and they begin reincarnation there. Putting the two together..."

"These souls are in line to get reincarnated. As they are dead, they are inanimate. I didn't die, so my consciousness is still here. Which means..."

He looked back to his System screen.

[Soul Eater accessible. Focus on your target to activate]

Lucian grinned. This was getting more interesting by the second.

Lucian stepped back from the soul as he analyzed the System's message. The notification only popped up when he was close to a soul. Considering the name of the skill, it seems pretty self-explanatory how it worked. However, what was still in question was how long it would take to use it. Believe it or not, slowly eating away at some random guy's soul in the middle of a giant cave filled with demons doesn't seem all that safe. Who knows what trouble he would encounter in the Underworld of all places if he were caught?

He looked around the cave to survey the area. From the looks of it, the demons didn't frequent the area much apart from the 1 or 2 that fly deeper into the cave ever so often, most likely to complete their duties every 10 minutes or so.

"The last demon left about 9 minutes ago, which means another should pass by in a minute or so. I'll wait till that demon passes by and work from there," he mused as he got in place behind the blue soul, ready to start.

Looking at the blue-colored soul, he noticed it was about 25% bigger than him. Whatever it was before, it seems to have inherently been affected by the traits of the person who owned it.

However, it seemed that the further it was pushed through the path, the less apparent its traits grew, if only very slightly. Lucian hypothesized that by the time it reached the end of the path into reincarnation, it would be a plain soul similar to himself.

"I wonder how far the owner of this soul reached in his life before he died. He's already much stronger than I am and seems to be one of the weakest souls here." Lucian thought. If soul eater could get him stronger than this guy, this title could bring even more benefits than his other three titles combined!

Soon enough, a demon carrying a set of items passed by quickly, obviously in a hurry to complete his task. That was Lucian's signal to begin. He got closer to the blue soul, expectedly getting the prompt.

[Soul Eater accessible. Focus on your target to activate]

Like the System told him, he focused on the target, which immediately began to create a suction force. Wisps of blue soul energy made a tether between the two as the blue soul grew smaller.

[Soul Eater has been activated. Process projected to the completed in 4:54]

[4:53]

[4:52]

Lucian began to feel slight tingling over his whole body the longer the process went on.

....

[4:30]

Suddenly Lucian felt Sharp pain over his whole body. The pain was so unbearable that he almost screamed out loud, and it seemed to get worse by the second! Moving back to the system screen, he willed Soul Eater to stop the process.

[Soul Eater cannot be Interrupted until completion]

That wasn't good.

Lucian tried moving farther from the target to interrupt the process. However, he was stuck in place, unable to move a single inch from his position. The pain grew more severe by the second.

His only option was to wait for Soul Eater to end. So, bracing himself for more pain, he grit his teeth, hunkering down to prepare for the pain about to come.

....

[2:17]

Lucian felt like he was slowly losing consciousness. His mind slowly got foggy as the process continued. Unable to even think, he hoped it would be over soon.

[0:53]

“...” Lucian

[0:02]

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