Chapter 3: Soul Stealer

The one with the shield stepped back.

"N-no! Lacan!"

The swordsman beside him, Captain David, lowered his head.

"Soul Stealer..."

Peace didn’t take the time to stare at the spectacle and instead scurried away with his newfound vitality. His strength was barely enough to carry him up the nearest tree, but once among its branches, he would be safe.

From his vantage point, Peace looked down at the three men.

’What’s happening?’

The two swordsmen slowly advanced toward the archer, their weapons drawn. Lacan stumbled away from them, backpedaling as though he had no idea where he was.

"S-stop!"

He tripped over an exposed root and landed on his back, crushing the vial beneath him. The corrupted Wisp spilled out and seeped into his spirit.

"Who are you people?! Why are you trying to kill me?!"

The swordsmen silently stood over the confused archer, whose voice trembled with tears.

Lacan began writhing violently on the ground.

His body spasmed. His back arched, and his fingers clawed into the dirt. A scream tore out of him, raw and guttural.

Just as abruptly, he went still and spoke in a solemn tone.

"O-oh... It’s all a dream. Ah, what a weird dream. It feels so real. A-and it hurts... It hurts so much!"

Less than a second later, a sharp metallic crack rang out. Lacan’s helmet flew from his head and vanished somewhere among the trees.

For the first time, Peace caught a glimpse of his face. He had short blond hair. His features were sharp and had probably once been dignified.

Peace barely had time to study them before the corruption reached his exposed flesh, twisting his face into a living nightmare.

His skin became a wild, inky black.

His pupils twisted like twin voids.

His jaw popped out of place and stretched into a gaping maw lined with serrated teeth.

Bones cracked and flesh tore as Lacan’s expanding body broke through his armor piece by piece.

One gauntlet split apart, followed by the skintight jumpsuit beneath it. From the destroyed armor emerged a thick, mangy claw.

He’d been corrupted...

And because he had consumed the corrupted Wisp of a Vanadar, that was exactly what he was becoming.

Peace watched, transfixed, as Captain David swung his sword in a swift arc and decapitated Lacan before the transformation could finish. The deformed body collapsed to one side while its fiendish head rolled across the cold, corrupted ground.

Yet even in death, Lacan found no reprieve. Black liquid spread across every patch of exposed flesh and continued consuming him.

Corruption did not cease its work merely because its victim was dead.

The two swordsmen kneeled before the beheaded, deformed body.

"Damned Soul Stealer."

"We can’t even retrieve his corpse."

Hidden above them, Peace could only stare in bewilderment at what had unfolded.

"Rest in peace, warrior."

The two men stood up.

The shield bearer glanced around.

"Where’d that vermin go?"

Peace reeled back and hid behind the leaves of the tree.

"It ran away... Knowledge of its existence is enough; we can return to find it some other time."

"Yeah..."

The men stripped Lacan’s corrupted body of every intact piece of armor, along with his weapons and tools. They stored everything inside a strange sack that held far more than it should have, then resumed their journey in the same direction as before.

Even after they disappeared, Peace remained concealed among the branches, trying to make sense of what he had witnessed.

’Soul Stealer...’

Their reaction had been too immediate and severe for the name to mean nothing.

’What if...’

When Peace awoke, he had simply found himself standing in the middle of the forest. That alone revealed little about how he had gotten there.

But what if he had taken over this body? What if this creature had once possessed a mind of its own, only for Peace to arrive and replace it?

And, if that were the case, then...

’Could other people have taken over human bodies?’

As twisted as the possibility was, hope swelled within him.

If he was right, then his sister’s chances of being alive had just increased. She might not look the way she once had, but she could even be human.

His own body complicated that theory, though.

More troubling was how little his new form bothered him. Being trapped inside such an absurd creature somehow felt... right. He felt no disgust toward his body, nor any desire to become human again. It was almost as though his mind forbade him from wanting such change.

Peace closed his eyes and summoned the status window again, looking over it carefully.

✖✖✖

Name: [Pax Garnier]

Tier: [9]

Rank: [F] - (EXP: 0/51)

Class: [Terror]

Traits: [???]

Resonance: N/A

Item Level: N/A

✖✖✖

’This is unfair, no?’

He knew what ’N/A’ meant... not available.

Resonances were one of the game’s central mechanics. By consuming a monster’s Wisp, a person could acquire a Resonance, essentially a unique ability derived from that creature.

Yet his status claimed he had none.

’I don’t even have a stat sheet?!’

No numerical benchmark like a normal character should have.

Was that vague Rank of F really all he was allowed to see?

In the game, that wasn’t something that ever changed about a monster.

That was bad. Very bad.

The only silver lining was the EXP gague next to it suggested he could improve that Rank.

But...

It also didn’t make sense.

’How do I already have a class and a trait without absorbing a single Wisp? Usually, your first Resonance determines those...’

A monster had a chance of dropping a Wisp when slain, and the first one a person consumed determined their Class. That Class then granted them an affinity for corresponding weapons, spells, and Resonances.

For example, if someone’s first Wisp came from a Tier 9 E-Rank Skeleton Archer, they would receive the Archer class. If it instead came from a Tier 9 F-Rank Skeleton Warrior, they would become a Swordsman.

Hidden and special classes also existed, but they usually required a high-tier Wisp as one’s first Resonance. For a player, that was practically impossible. Enemies of Corruption was offline, every playthrough began from nothing, and there was no way to carry a powerful Wisp into a new run. The only true chance to obtain one of these classes was the co-op mode... Still, that was immensely difficult due to the forced party system.

NPC party members were different.

A sufficiently strong player could feed a Wisp to them and unlock one of those rare classes.

Traits operated separately. They were unique attributes divided into two categories: Earned and Lineage.

Earned traits were side effects acquired from consuming certain Wisps. Unlike Resonances, they remained even if the Resonance responsible for them was later erased.

Lineage traits were hereditary and had a chance of being passed down to the individual’s offspring. Pure RNG in the game if a character started with one.

Either type could manifest as an additional ability, a bodily mutation, or something stranger. Their effects varied wildly.

But...

’[???]’

His trait wasn’t merely unfamiliar. It was completely concealed.

’I’ve never seen a locked one before... nor have I ever seen the class, Terror.’

While he was eating the Onno, the strange voice in his head had told him that he had reached 1/100.

Did that mean he needed to devour another ninety-nine monsters to unlock the trait?

For some reason, the prospect of finding ninety-nine more carcasses upset him more than being forced to eat them.

Speaking of that...

Peace was still ravenously hungry, and Lacan’s corpse below him, now fully transformed into a Vanadar, looked disturbingly...

’No! I don’t care if I’m a monster now, I’m not eating a human!’

He had been an ordinary human only moments ago. Peace couldn’t erase that from his mind and devour him, not even with the mental block.

He might have been at peace with his new existence, but consuming a human was the boundary that would truly turn him into a deranged monster.

And he wanted to be of sound mind when he reunited with his sister...

Without even noticing, he’d already bought so far into delusion that he refused to consider he might never see her again.

Once he rested, Peace rose and edged toward the trunk to climb down. Before he reached it, dizziness swept through him. He staggered across the branch, swayed, and fell face-first toward the tree.

But, instead of bark, cold concrete and broken glass broke his fall.

The jagged glass edges pressed against his cheek, biting into his skin and drawing thin lines of blood.