Everyone had a status screen. It showed their name, species, attributes, skills, and so on. The higher level one became, the larger and more detailed the System display became. For some, that would be the only communication they had with the System. Well, that and System notifications, Brivaria supposed. Beyond the status screen were hundreds of others that required certain skills, traits, backgrounds, items, and more to attain. These weren’t rare things. Many people got them and Brivaria had a few of those herself.
In addition to the status screen, she had the inventory screen where she could search through her inventory. It provided a visual representation of what she was carrying and even named the items in her inventory if she knew their name or the name wasn’t obscured for one reason or another. Dungeon-gained items would be unidentified but many others would give their name and a little information. The screen wasn’t necessarily essential to the skill as the angel could will any stored item to appear before her or in her hands. Of course, to do that she had to know about the item and, with the large collection of random objects she was now storing in her inventory, remembering everything was getting tricky. The winged girl was thankful for the screen simply reminding her of the existence of items in her inventory.
Next Brivaria had Giselle’s herd screen. This was a new screen that she’d never seen before Giselle acquired the Heart of the Herd skill. It showed everyone in their “herd” as well as some vital statistics though the display was visual rather than numeric. This very screen was partially how Brivaria knew Kseniya hadn’t been dying earlier. Even if the lamia had looked to be in bad shape, her status on the herd screen had shown a decent amount of health remaining. Health could and did disappear quickly after a severe injury but if the indicator wasn’t shrinking drastically then the angel considered it a good sign.
The herd screen didn’t give any details on how near or far members were but it had a few indicators of distance. For one thing, the portraits of her friends had disappeared while in the Between. The herd screen itself remained showing that Brivaria was part of the herd but it seemed like the status display did not function across the universe. Likewise, Giselle provided a team-wide attribute buff to those nearby so the screen also showed when that was active. Brivaria could somewhat gauge distances by seeing whether or not that buff was active though they hadn’t done any proper testing on seeing what that limit was. The angel also hadn’t seen the description but she assumed its range was boosted by presence as many often were.
Finally, Brivaria had her newest System display—Soul Exchange. It appeared after the death of Keller. At least, that was when Brivaria noticed it. If pressed she wasn’t sure if it had appeared alongside her selection of the Energy Drain skill or upon gaining a soul. For that matter, she was still fairly certain she had not selected that skill. She’d been very close to doing so in the moment but then resisted or so she’d thought.
The angel’s first, up-close taste of corruption while in demon form was stimulating to say the least. No pleasure she’d ever experienced compared. Even the most delicious food she’d tasted on Zlithia paled in comparison. She wanted to jump into a pool of that corruption, breathe it in, soak in it, and let it infuse into her very soul. The moment when she’d killed Jeffrey Keller was one of raw, undiluted bliss. Energy Drain activated to rip out his soul and it was everything the angel had ever wanted.
Upon contemplation, Brivaria suspected she did know how Energy Drain activated. Memories didn’t come from nowhere and the angel suspected Meridian Fang was pulling them from the slain creature’s soul. It was very likely that Meridian Fang and Energy Drain worked in tandem with the former pulling the soul out and the latter devouring it. She’d have to look into a way to turn that off, if she even wanted to.
The Soul Exchange screen should have horrified Brivaria and, indeed, it did offend her angelic senses. It was exactly what it sounded like. It was a screen where she could exchange souls for boons. Half was akin to her inventory screen where she could view the individual souls or a listing of the ones she possessed graded by tier of power, level, and other factors. One of those other factors was rarity and the angel struggled to comprehend how any soul could be less than perfectly unique. It went against everything she believed yet here it was, codified by the System no less.
In addition to the souls she possessed, there were also things she could do with them. There were headings for rituals, curses, and various empowerments. It reminded Brivaria of all the things a magical catalyst was capable of. Magical catalysts were physical objects infused with mana and capable of channeling that mana into a functional skill or spell. It seemed like there was a whole lot that one could do with souls though Brivaria had none of it.
While Brivaria had the headings for such things, they were subdued rather than bright. It was much the same effect as she saw when activating and deactivating constant skills in the System interface. When deactivated they would be dim. That was how many of these headings looked. She tried mentally activating the rituals section just to see what would happen and then received a strange notification from the System.
Soul Rituals not possible. Requirements not met.
She tried using a couple others and received similar messages from each. In every instance, the System told her that the requirements were not met. She wasn’t certain whether to be annoyed or relieved. Would she have used such tools if she possessed them? She thought of her angelic overseer, Balthazar, and knew that he would resonate with utmost distress if he learned she possessed such a screen let alone had already drained two souls.
She had, in fact, drained two souls. While Keller had been overflowing with corruption, the second male cultist had not. His transformation had been slower, weaker, and Brivaria’s team put a stop to it immediately. She’d used Meridian Fang and Energy Drain but, while it had been pleasurable, it wasn’t in the same way Keller’s death had been. Also he knew even less about the cult than Keller so that was a bit of a disappointment too.
It definitely seemed that the more corrupt a soul was, the more palatable the soul was. Then again, maybe it was just souls that were neither pure nor fully despoiled that were less satisfying. Brivaria had always heard that some demons especially enjoyed slaying the innocent for reasons that potentially made a lot more sense in the context of stealing souls. It made Brivaria sick with disgust but also a little curious about the difference and then sick again at her own, morbid curiosity. She wasn’t supposed to think like that!
Despite the size of the Soul Exchange screen, most of it was useless to the winged girl. After some experimenting, it seemed there were only a few options available to Brivaria. The first was the most obvious option that such a screen would have—release. She could free the trapped souls without using them in any way. The second option was “extract” and when she pressed it for more information, the System provided one.
Soul Extraction
You may extract power and experience from souls in your possession. Upon doing so, you will gain a portion of experience needed for leveling based on the level, quality, and compatibility of the soul. Higher level souls and souls with affinity that more closely match your own will give more experience.
It wasn’t clear based on the description what would happen to the soul upon performing an extraction nor how much of this “experience” she would gain upon doing so. If it freed souls and gave her more power then that would be ideal. Win/win for everyone involved. She’d killed Jeffrey Keller and the other man for wholly justifiable reasons but complete annihilation seemed like a far worse punishment than either man deserved for their crimes.
The third and final option was the one Brivaria somewhat understood already—Soul Infusion. When the System used the word “infusion”, it was usually in the context of using one thing to make another stronger. For example, Brivaria infused various forms of decay into her claws to strengthen them. She infused magic into her sword to strengthen it. The options here were to infuse souls into her attributes to, as predicted, strengthen them.
Attributes were fixed based on one’s level, race, and so on but they could be magically improved. There were skills that increased attributes as well as items. The skills were generally frowned upon because attributes had a limit to which they could be improved. Brivaria wanted to say it was 20% of the base value. A low attribute could never become a high attribute but it could become slightly less low. Generally people preferred magical items for such things as skills only became more powerful and versatile with time while equipment could be swapped as needed. Of course that was if one could get said equipment.
Items that enhanced attributes were common in some universes but very uncommon in others. Zlithia fell into the latter category from what Balthazar had told her long ago. The System didn’t give out the necessary crafting skills needed to produce, let alone mass produce, enhancement items the way it sometimes did in other universes. On rare occasions a dungeon might create such an item or mana might condense into such a way as to form one naturally. Unfortunately being rare didn’t necessarily mean they were good.
One could normally only wield so many items of power before they suffered a backlash. Worse, some magical effects were naturally opposed to one another creating immediate and sometimes fatal dissonance. At low levels, this was particularly important as most could not wield more than a few items of significant power. When it came to choosing those items, if one had a choice between a belt that could forestall death or a ring that gave two points of physique, usually the belt was chosen.
As a result, there was neither great demand for attribute enhancement items nor great supply. Both of those things combined to make Soul Infusion potentially very powerful. If Brivaria could increase her attributes, even by a little, without running afoul of rules around what magical items she could use then that would be quite potent. Of course, there was the small matter of using literal souls as fuel. She made a sour face at the screen even as she stroked Trixie’s back.
“How do you have this?” Akashic asked. The demoness appeared next to Brivaria and her eyes were looking into the air as though looking at the screen right alongside the angel. Brivaria wanted to reply but Cordelia, Nyx, and Kseniya were engaged in a very cheerful discussion that the angel did not want to interrupt. It was a rhetorical question anyway and Akashic continued speaking a second later.
“Normally demons will take a Soul Siphon or Soul Exchange skill after entering the second tier of power at level 100. You should not have this at your level. Even with the infernal seed giving you access to some demonic skills, you should not have this and definitely not with Energy Drain alone.” Brivaria really wanted to say something about how Akashic was the one who got her into this mess and should know how this worked but held her tongue.
“Move the larger soul into your Presence attribute. It will not consume the soul. You’ll be able to move it around or release it later if you so choose.” Brivaria would have told the demoness no to that suggestion if not for the clarification. Akashic likely knew Brivaria had no wish to eat souls or follow some other similarly dark path. She may have the decay, corruption, and unholy affinities but she had to draw the line somewhere. Granted that somewhere was sliding a little further back with each passing day.
The angel did as instructed. When she selected the Soul Infusion part of the display. It showed her a listing of her six attributes with horizontal bars next to their names and a pair of numbers at the end of the bar. For presence it showed “0/18” which made sense since 18 was roughly one fifth of 91. Helpful numbers were also added to the two souls she had. Keller’s soul had a 4 and the other one had a 2. She moved Keller’s soul into the presence and the bar next to presence filled. The numbers at the end became “4/18” just as both girls expected.
She went to move the other soul into the presence bar and noticed that its value changed to one as she did so. The total became “5/18” rather than “6/18” and Brivaria furrowed her brows. It was even more strange because she took Keller’s soul out and it became “2/18” as the smaller soul reverted to its previous value. Akashic explained.
“Each soul you add after the first is reduced by an amount. The second soul is reduced by 1, the third soul is reduced by 2, and so on. They’re automatically arranged from largest to smallest. It’s the System’s way of preventing you from killing 500 low level creatures and filling up every bar.” Brivaria gave a subtle nod that she understood.
Akashic also went on to explain that the value of a soul was generally equal to its level divided by 10. If Brivaria killed 4 creatures of the same level as herself, she’d get a total of +10 from slotting them into a single attribute (4+3+2+1). She’d be at 10/18 in presence. As she neared level 100, it would become easier to reach the thresholds assuming she was fighting and killing beings of levels approximately equal to her own.
There were entire lines of skills and classes that revolved around this System screen, Brivaria learned. Surprisingly, according to Akashic the most frequent users of these were demons that avoided direct combat. Corruption and temptation demons would specialize in skills that rendered victims helpless or even willing to be drained. That was terrifying to consider. The battle-focused demons sometimes acquired Soul Exchange as a +20% bonus to all attributes was fairly strong. It was only sometimes as, for some, it cost half a dozen skills to meet System prerequisites to unlock the exchange thus making it a more tenuous proposition. That didn’t even include the time or work necessary to charge it. Killing dozens of creatures at one’s own level was typically very difficult.
Since it wasn’t hurting the souls to stay where they were, exactly, Brivaria put the four into spirit and the two into endurance. Her maximum health and mana went up but the current values did not so there were no infinite mana shenanigans possible. She also turned a deaf ear to Akashic’s excited chatter. The demoness thought this was unexpected but delightful. Even at her most demonic and accepting of demonic things, the angel was still put off by the whole situation. The fact that she’d enjoyed the draining process so much was also deeply shameful.
Trixie looked up at Brivaria as if sensing the internal distress and sat up to lick the winged girl’s face. Angel or demon, Trixie always looked at her with happy, if sometimes concerned, eyes. Brivaria hugged her dog and felt better.
“Brivaria, are you listening?” Kseniya asked. The tender moment was over as soon as it had begun. The angel had, in fact, not been listening for a time. She looked sheepishly over her golden pooch.
“Uh, would you say that again?” she asked quietly. The sorceress sighed and Brivaria rejoined the group in the present. She dismissed the screen and focused on the thing she needed to—her friends.
