Threads of the Soul

Stepping forward, Corvus clapped his hands together before rubbing them slightly. Bowing his head, he interlaced his fingers as he slowly drew apart his palms until his hands were making a sphere. He stayed like that for a few moments, making a show of "gathering energy" before finally thrusting his hands forward and launching the invisible, and non existent, energy towards the charred corpse of the titanic turtle.

Grasping at the air, he moved his hands like he was commanding an orchestra of the dead. His arms tensed and shook, as if they were bearing a heavy load and could barely manage to keep it in the air, as the creature's body began to twitch and move ever so slightly.

He was making a good show of struggling to turn the corpse into one of his undead minions, all while Seth secretly sent his threads over to actually take control of it.

At least, that's how it started.

You see, as soon as Seth tried to puppeteer the corpse, he suddenly felt himself in a new battle. This time, it was completely invisible and relegated to the plane of the soul. Remnants of the beast's tyrannical soul were still lingering in the empty vessel. Not just the main core, which he had left to eat until after they were somewhere safer.

The core remained, weakly tethered to the corpse, but that's not all that was fighting him. It was as if each muscle, each fibre of the Drake's very being was filled with that same energy.

Honestly it made sense now that he thought about it. If a soul had been in a body for a lifetime, why would this strange form of energy be confined to a single fraction of its being? How else would others be able to gain spiritual points by eating normal meat if they couldn't directly consume souls like he could?

It was like radiation, gently emitting a fraction of its power over a period of time, letting its energy seep into every inch of its vessel. The longer it was in the vessel, the more it invaded it as the core further decayed. In this case, however, it was a powerful source that was overwhelming the vessel with an ocean of energy in a short amount of time.

Seth grit his teeth, glad that he was standing at the back of the group so that no one noticed him as they instead focused on Corvus. Yet his internal struggle was subconsciously projected onto his loyal puppet, who was straining non-existent muscles as he tried to wrestle with the will of the deceased creature.

The foreign soul energy began to crawl its way up his threads. Invading them, and himself, inch by inch, like an infectious disease. Corroding away at the soul energy that made up his threads and replacing it with its own.

'Like hell I'm going to lose to a damn corpse!'

Letting out an internal war cry, his energy surged forward like a tsunami, devouring the invading force and pushing back into the corpse. All the while, he created new sets of threads, wrapping them around the remnant soul core. While his main threads invaded the corpse and tried to bring it under his control, the spare sets began to tear off chunks of the core before slurping them up hungrily.

[Your Spiritual Score has increased.]

With every chunk he tore from the blazing sun within the corpse, Angel whispered into his mind. Slowly but surely he whittled away at the remnants, devouring chunks to strengthen himself, until eventually the corpse shuddered once again and began to stand up on trembling legs.

Letting out a sigh of relief and subtly wiping away the sweat that had accumulated on his forehead, Seth had Corvus lower his arms and turn towards the group triumphantly. The ground beneath them trembling with each step of the colossal puppet as it approached, looming behind the silhouette of its new 'master' and shrouding them all in its shadow. With a hint of amusement in his strained voice, Corvus grunted once again.

"Your ride awaits."

***

Traversing the city on a kaiju was one of those things that many people wouldn't have even thought to fantasise about, and none had ever expected to do. Of course, for those who had fantasised about it, there was no doubt that they would have dreamt of a more comfortable experience than the one the group was receiving at the moment.

Unsurprisingly, a hard shell made purely for defensive purposes was not the most luxurious seat in the world. Just climbing onto its back was a pain, so the constant risk of sliding off and having to climb all the way back up would have been enough discomfort, yet life made sure to give them true pains in the ass just to make sure that they never got used to this monster riding sensation. At least not until they found a more comfortable ride, that is.

Sparing a glance at Omelette, who was curled into a ball in the middle of Seth's lap as he gave the little pest some pats, Seth couldn't help but chuckle at the thought of riding him. He assumed that the little blighter would eventually get that big, I mean he did come from the union of those two ridiculously sized ravens. Those were certainly big enough for him to ride, so even if Omelette was the runt of their species then surely there were some Wyvern riding adventures in his future. Right?

Even if he could eventually learn to ride his swords and fly like that, there was just something so appealing about the thought of riding on the back of a powerful Wyvern or Dragon as it soared through the air and scorched your enemies.

'We'll get there someday little buddy.'

Gently caressing Omelette's head, he went back to the issue at hand. Walking. Yes, even when sitting down and relaxing with everyone else, Seth still had to deal with the burden of walking. In fact, Most of his concentration was going towards just the process of walking the giant turtle. While walking as a human, and by extension his humanoid puppets, was a subconscious effort at this point, since he had done most of the heavy lifting as a toddler learning to walk, he didn't have to think about the process in the slightest.

But even with his few years of experience crawling around as a dumb little baby, Seth hadn't ingrained the process of quadrupedal movement into his subconscious. He just never thought it would ever come up in his life, clearly he was naught but an ignorant fool.

He was just thankful that it was a slow, lumbering creature that he was in control of rather than a fast moving beast like a wolf or a cheetah, if he somehow ended up encountering one of those. He had no idea how those things run properly.

There was also another issue at hand. Beyond just being a difficult task, Walking was exhausting.

Even though his actual body was sitting atop the indestructible shell doing sweet nothing, just enjoying relaxing with his adorable pet laying in his lap, he wasn't actually regaining any energy. In fact with every thundering step he felt gravity tugging at him a little stronger. His eyelids drooped ever so slightly more and his breathing became ever so slightly heavier.

It was less like he was actually doing the walking itself, and not that his body was taking the burden of it, but instead that every 5 minutes in control of the colossal creature felt like an extra hour he had stayed awake. Luckily Seth, through the incompetency and non existent nature of his own sleep schedule, was used to prolonged periods of time being awake so he had some natural resistance to the process.

But every step he took, every trickle of energy being slowly drained out of him, informed him that this was not a viable puppet for the time being.

'This thing… It's a higher tier… Isn't it?'

[Correct. At the time of its death, the creature known as the Shelled Drake had recently ascended to the next life tier. If it had been given time to settle into its new state or had been a more powerful being in its origin, then it is likely that you would have died upon trying to puppeteer it.]

'But… Why haven't I felt that kind of resistance before? Surely I would have felt it by now.'

[The puppets you have previously taken control of have either been from spiritually weaker corpses, in which you overpowered the remnant energy, or from non-living entities that never had any to deal with.]

'Yeah… I guess you're right. I still can't believe that I could have died just from trying to puppeteer a damn corpse.'

[Recommendation, to avoid the increasing likelihood of death from such scenarios, you should stick to non-living entities or entities that you are confident are lower in spiritual strength than you. Any corpse of a higher tier should be considered food only. Don't play with your food.]

'I agree. Recommendation taken into account. Don't worry, If I'm gonna die then it's not going to be in such a stupid and avoidable way. That's for sure.

But on the plus side… Taking this thing on increased my score, right? D'you mind giving me a look?'

[Certainly. One moment.]

[Name: Sephtis 'Seth' Quinn

Species: Gaian Human

Biological Score: 92 Elemental Score: 70

Spiritual Score: 174 Psychic Score: 50

Mutation - Puppeteers Thread, Spirit Animal

Requitals: Life Lantern, Ravens Raiment, Expeditious Ratreat, Grizzly Reminder, Kiss of Death

Bonds: Omelette]

'Damn, a twenty point bump just from that? That's much better compared to just the two I got from the damn goblin thing. Why did the rest of those bastards have to melt? I could have maxxed out if they didn't'

With shockingly convenient timing, just as Seth was finished analysing his new stats and cursing the cruel god of fate that was weaving his destiny, he heard Astra call out from her position atop the Drake's head.

"Slow it up bird man. We're here. Welcome to your new home."