Stray Soul

The forest towards the mountain was... well, the same as the one on the other side of the river.

I saw a few small and big animals, like deer, hogs, rabbits, etc., but none of them really came near me, and seemed somewhat vary of me even... can’t tell why though, not like I am puppeteering a rotting corpse of a deer with 5 eyes, that also has a literal bush attached to its flesh that’s covered with plates of black chitin.

...Yeah... I am totally not doing that.

But all jokes aside, animals hiding from me is a bad thing because I need corpses to bind to do anything. I mean, yeah, I can also bind to plants, but plants are generally really weak and can’t support much weight, and the ones that are not weak, wooded plants, can’t really be manipulated easily. So, I need the legs of something to at least carry myself and go from point A to B.

Maybe in the future I can just be a tree ent and stay in the remains of a tree, but that day is sadly not in the near future.

And to even become a chad tree ent, I’d need to either level up and get a lot of stat points, or just improve my skills which are proving to be a challenge even though I am practicing all night, every night, and I’ve been doing that for the past 5 days! No actually, I’ve been practicing for the past 3 nights, or 4 days if you will, not counting the one from when I was a rabbit because I didn’t really do a lot that night.

Actually, wow, all the shit I’ve gone through in less than a week... it can’t get any worse any time soon, right?

...To any god or demon willing to listen, I just want to say that I didn’t mean what I said, I accidently set that flag, please, o, please, don’t smite me or... send a... dragon or something after me, I don’t know. I mean, what can realistically happen in a forest that could make my life miserable?

Maybe a weird dungeon? A really angry fairy that is sad because I’ve desecrated its forest by being an undead in it? A dragon? I mean... maybe not a dragon but a stray wyvern or something?

I mean, for all I know, this forest, or the mountain I am going toward to, is absolutely teeming with wyverns and other draconoids, so... possible?

But hopefully I am just being unnecessarily paranoid, and nothing bad will happen.

Hopefully.

But ignoring the flag I just may or may not have set, I should probably start looking for a new body... well, not for today because I really don’t need a new body right now, but just stalking a herd of deer, or single animals like a hog or something as I can never be sure that I’ll be able to get my hands on a corpse whenever I need one.

But its not a problem even if I don’t get a corpse by tomorrow as this body should be usable for the next 2-3 days, 4 maybe if I push it, but definitely not 5.

Hmm... but what to do in those 2-3 days... other than stalking some animals that catch my fancy that is.

And yes, I’ll be going towards the mountains, but its going to be slow, and I don’t really feel any rush because... well, because there is nothing to rush over.

I have a nice body, this forest is plentiful with animals so as long as I don’t go full on psycho, I should be able to live here for decades or centuries without a problem, so, what to do then?

Walking through the forest, I started thinking about what to do to quell my boredom that came from knowing that I potentially had an infinity to do anything I wanted to... assuming I don’t die because of something stupid anytime soon or the sun doesn’t go kaboom in a few years, both are strong possibilities... one stronger than the other though I’ll let you decide on which one I am talking about.

Hmm... though I have a lot of time to do... virtually anything, I wish I didn’t have to worry about looking around and being on guard all the time, so nothing catches me off guards and jumps on me... wait... do I even need to be on guard myself?

I mean, yes, of course I do, but not like that. What I mean is, does my main soul have to be on guard?

I know for a fact that for some reason I can separate my soul into smaller parts, and those parts, while somewhat having a will of their own, are just me, and are directly connected to my main soul and I can kinda have multiple minds with them, each of which I can control separately.

So, what if, instead of moving my body myself and looking out through my eyes myself... what if I just made a ton of smaller souls to take control of each?

I mean... well, not a ton of them because I can’t really give every vine and leaf in my body a lesser soul, because that’d be just a dumb idea and would eventually lead me to losing a part of my soul, and I don’t know what’d happen if I lost parts of my soul so... let’s separate my body in to... 3 parts!

Movement, basically my legs and lower half, detection, my ears, nose, and eyes, and then the... everything else I don’t know how to classify, like the vines and the makeshift harness!

And obviously a part of the body is going to be left for my main soul, though I won’t be doing any menial labour myself and leaving those for the lesser souls.

Quickly stopping in place, I first started by incorporating my 5th eye back into my main soul, then started with separating the vines and all the other plant stuff into one soul, and as with my previous experience with making lesser souls, I got dizzy momentarily, losing control of my body for a second, but before long, everything was fine and I could feel my lesser-self taking control of my plant bits, not that it was all doing everything by itself because I was giving orders to it... but I wasn’t doing anything?

Souls are confusing, and I am just going to ignore whatever is going on with them until I come across answers, because having a part that is fallowing my will without me needing to... will it to do things is... weird.

But not letting the weirdness of my situation get to me, I quickly moved to the detection part of my body, cutting everything above my neck into another lesser soul, and then ,like before, I felt a momentary dizziness, but soon enough the feeling faded away and I felt yet another lesser soul take hold of my sensory organs and start watching the environment for signs of anything which was... weird because I was making it do that, while not actually doing it... like what I said before, just going to ignore it and act like it doesn’t exist!

Then, after making sure that nothing was watching me, I laid down and started cutting my lower side to make another lesser soul, and with the experience from the other 2 I made in quick succession, I was able to do it without any problems, and after a short bout of dizziness, I got up—or my lesser soul got up and started controlling the legs to make sure nothing was out of ordinary.

And nothing was! Finally, I could just let my... interns do all the job of keeping me alerted, moving, and carrying my things while I myself... worked on improving my skills... and spent most of my time in a seemingly endless void that was everything that I could sense with my mana and soul... maybe I should change places with one of my lesser souls?

I mean, if they are capable of controlling parts of my body, they should also be capable of thinking, no?

So, sitting back down, I tried to coerce the lesser soul that was controlling a plant into starting to improve my skills and... it didn’t understand me.

No, it understood what I said and wanted it to do clearly, very clearly, it just... couldn’t do what I wanted it to do... why though?

Hmm... it is probably because it’s still me, right? I mean, I am basically asking myself to do the tasks I don’t want to do... which my lesser souls literally cannot do because, like I said before, they are just extensions of me, so if I want them to do the things, I don’t want to do... I’ll have to do them... myself.

You know, maybe having lesser souls isn’t that good of a thing if they cannot even do something simple as complex thoughts.

What? They’d be basically sapient if they could produce complex thoughts like me, and I’d just be a slaver?

Counterpoint, I am a reincarnator in a fantasy world and if anime has ever teached me something, that is that every reincarnator, whether they be a saint or a demon, needs to participate in slavery one way or the other, so enslaving myself wouldn’t even be the worst thing that I could as I’d be just larping at that point.

Which would be just based, and the most moral thing anyone in a fantasy world has ever done by my knowledge.

“I should really continue on my way though...” I muttered to myself, deciding that I wasted enough time just sitting on the ground and doing nothing.

Not because I had already become one of those masochist protagonists that only thinks about getting more and more levels and pushing themselves forwards to eventually become a giga chad or have a mental break, no no, I was just aware that eventually I’d have to start working on my skills... however much I tried postpone it, and I wanted to start because I knew that once I’d get in the groove, I’d like experimenting with random stuff, and my lesser souls would have my back even if I wasn’t paying attention, so there was no need to worry about getting jumped.

This place was, thankfully, not London... not that I’ve ever been to London, but I knew this place was far, far safer than the city popularized by people stabbing one another.

Then, without further ado, I started pushing myself up, wanting to get going.

But as I was doing that, my hoof slipped on the ground for some reason. Not slipped as in there was mud or something from last nights rain, no, it was more like the slipperiness of metal, or just a wet floor.

But the forest didn’t really have anything like metal or marble, so there wasn’t any way for me to experience that, no?

Then, I got up more carefully, and just started moving the dirt and grass that was in the place where hoof had slipped, my curiosity over taking me.

And soon, I couldn’t move the dirt no more, there was... something blocking the way.

Had-had I finally discovered the o fabled dungeon? Or an ancient cache of magical materials that I could graft onto my body to become the god I was always meant to be?

Or did I accidentally wake up a giant ass turtle that dwarfed anything else I’d ever seen before?

Yeah... I am just going to let you decide on what actually happened... and only now do I realize my folly, as the earth beneath my hooves shake, as the monstrosity of immense size raises its head, only now do I realize the mistakes I’ve made, only now do I realize that my curiosity of the unknown overtook my mind, filling it with images and thoughts of wonder and the question of if I could? But never, with a single thought of if I should...

But seriously, this thing was massive, but... hopefully not aggressive?

I mean... I know how grumpy I can be after getting woken up by someone but... I really, really hope that also doesn’t apply to turtles... or is it a tortoise?

But I’d also say its back is pretty flat so a turtle? But it doesn’t live in water so why does it even have a flat shell?

You know what? Cut, cut the show! I am not going to sit here and think if the thing that’s about to squash me is a turtle or tortoise.

...I SAID CUT IT!