So there are people still alive in the forest. Three at minimum, most likely more. That's good for them, I suppose.
What isn't good is the paranoia they caused me by running off without giving me a single damn second to explain myself. Do they think I like looking like this? That I wake up in the morning, gaze at my stitched-up, barely cohesive flesh suit, and go, Ah yes, peak aesthetics.
I don't fancy getting an arrow, a fireball, or—God forbid—some holy magic shoved through my skull just because someone hiding in a bush thinks I'm a monster. I mean, come on! I shouldn't even have a level over my head. Isn't that, like, the hallmark of a fellow friendly human?
Truly, the art of judging books by their covers is alive and well.
There's no use crying over spilled milk, though. I'll just need to get stronger—strong enough that nobody can pull anything before I can explain myself. And to do that, I need more experience.
More bodies.
Luckily, nature is generous today.
Three wolves—alive, breathing, fresh—circle around three others. The others are... less alive.
The undead wolves don't breathe. They don't bleed. They move even when half their ribs are missing, even when bones snap and flesh is chewed off. They simply keep going.
It is, if I do say so myself, beautiful.
One of the live wolves leaps at an undead one. Its jaws clamp down, crunching into the rotting flesh, severing the front leg in one brutal snap. The undead wolf stumbles—only to keep moving, unfazed. Its broken stump scrapes against the dirt as it lunges forward, ripping a chunk from its attacker's throat.
The living wolf gurgles, staggers, then collapses in a mess of twitching limbs and pooling blood.
Nice.
All the while, I am doing laps around them, controlling my flesh suit to move faster and more seamlessly. Each twitch of my real muscles sends commands through the neural pathways I've crafted, adjusting tension in sinew and bone aided by my will. With each circuit, I push myself further, faster. The suit responds, my movements becoming more fluid, more natural. It took a while to get the hang of it, but now? Now I can move.
Sure, my head feels a bit woozy. Scratch that, it feels like it's going to explode, but I keep on going. Pressure builds behind my eyes as I maintain control over my true body while simultaneously refining the movement of the mech. It's like trying to pat your head, rub your stomach, and solve differential equations all at once.
The last living wolf-a younger one with gray-flecked fur-realizes it's outmatched. It turns to flee, but my creations are already moving to intercept, cutting off its escape. The wolf backs up, hackles raised, teeth bared in a final show of defiance. It lunges, taking a jawless undead by surprise, tearing off what remains of its face. For a moment, it seems the wolf might escape. Then the other two are on it. One with the missing leg drags itself across the ground with surprising speed, latching onto the wolf's hind leg. Another with a hole in its side attacks from the front. The living wolf fights valiantly, but it's three against one.
The last living wolf dies in a spray of red.
[You have killed a Wolf - lvl 3]
The undead ones don't stop moving. They turn to me, their half-missing eyes locking onto my form.
Ah.
Right.
They really don't like me.
They drag themselves toward me, some crawling because their legs are broken, others twitching from their injuries. I don't let them get close.
A quick stomp here. A skull crushed there. One by one, I snuff them out, their unnatural existence flickering out like dying embers.
Each time one dies, a fresh spike of exhaustion slams into my skull like a hammer.
I don't care.
I reach inward, pulling at the wisps of their souls before they dissipate. My grip is firm, precise. So precise that one slips through my fingers—damn. Another vanishes before I can reel it in.
By the time I'm done, I've only managed to capture one of my original undead's souls.
The rest? Gone.
Too slow.
I miiiight be getting a little bit tired, and I'll have to bury myself soonish. Souls do tend to become a bit more fragile after repeated transfers between bodies, but I'm sure this one was on me.
I wipe a hand over my face—an unnecessary gesture, considering I don't sweat anymore for some reason, but old habits die hard.
It didn't take long to figure out that my undead attack anything near them, not just me. If some unsuspecting real wolves decide to sniff them, congratulations, they've just started a war.
Of course, they still attack me afterwards but...the experience of what they kill gets redirected to me. This is the reason I am now a proud level 6 with 24 points in Constitution.
That's the good, fantastic, cheat-like even...if they didn't drop dead if they end up 100 meters away from me or so.
I've tested it five times, and every time the soul simply pops out of the body and begins unraveling like normal. I'm still getting hit with instant migraines though, and Constitution doesn't help as much as I hoped it would.
Neverthematter, I take 2 souls of the freshly killed wolves. Fresh souls dissipate slower than used ones. They are like... vegetables, I guess. Fresh from the garden versus left in the fridge for a week.
The new souls struggle against my grip-mental grip? Spiritual grip? Whatever you want to call it-fighting the inevitable as I draw them into the Well.
Now that it's full once more, it's time to get to work...ehh, continue working.
I kneel beside the fallen bodies and start mending.
First, I set the bones—twisting, shifting, molding them back into shape. Then I reallocate the flesh. The stomach? Not needed. The intestines? Completely useless. I convert everything into raw muscle. Thicker limbs. Reinforced jaw structures. Enhanced mobility. They might be mere puppets for souls, but as I've come to learn, the strength of the body somehow carries over into undeath, at least partially.
Their forms become leaner, stronger, streamlined for efficiency.
As I work, I add some extra mass to my own flesh mech. A little reinforcement never hurts.
This has been my routine for the past few hours.
Raise the dead. Make them fight until they drop. Harvest the souls. Rebuild.
Rinse and repeat.
It's an elegant cycle, if I do say so myself.
Of course, it has nothing to do with the fact that I tried following those guys from before and got left in the dust. Absolutely no relation whatsoever.
But if I just happen to be training my movement speed alongside my fleshcrafting, well.
That's just a coincidence.
At the end of it all, there's one undeniable truth. Few things are as good for solving problems as personal power.
Someone tries to kill me? I make myself tougher.
They sneak up on me? I sense their flesh before they get close.
Random bullshit magic? I'll get enough Constitution to parry it with my pinkie.
Okay, maybe not quite that extreme.
But the idea is there.
I'll just become so strong that I can focus entirely on the wonders of fleshcrafting without getting interrupted by inconveniences like danger, death, or annoying people running off before I can talk.
I sink into my Soul Well, reaching inward.
The trapped souls squirm, bewildered, confused.
I don't care.
With one sharp pull, I yank them out, fracturing them slightly in the process.
They wail.
Then I slam them into their freshly prepared bodies.
The corpses twitch.
Limbs spasm.
They rise-slowly, awkwardly at first, then with increasing steadiness as the souls settle. One shakes itself, like it's trying to dislodge water from its fur. Another paws at the ground, claws digging furrows into the soft earth.
The third-the largest-simply stares at me, silently.
But I am already "sprinting" away. I know this song and dance, and I don't feel like getting my heels bitten for the 7th time. They'll follow. They always do. And once they catch up, they'll try to kill me, then each other, then anything else that moves. It's their nature now-or rather, the nature I've imposed upon them? I'm not sure yet.
On an unrelated note, one of the voices says I should shove a soul in a brain-dead body with functioning organs and see what happens. I wholeheartedly agree, but that's for later.
The forest blurs around me as I run. My flesh mech moves with something resembling grace (if you squint really hard) through the underbrush, ducking low-hanging branches, leaping over fallen logs. Behind me, I hear the crashing pursuit of the undead. They're not subtle. They don't need to be. They feel no pain, no fatigue. They'll run until their legs break, and then they'll crawl, which I quite respect.
My skull throbs. My body wants to stop.
I ignore it, and as I run, I reinforce my cerebral veins and arteries that seem to really wish to weirdly burst even though I am manually beating my heart at the perfect rhythm (it kept on stopping from time to time which was annoying).
That's so fucking weird, like this weird buzzing I keep feeling and these migraines every time an undead wolf dies.
It's almost like—
Something clicks.
A little bit of something in my chest. It's like flesh perception in a way, so I recognize the feeling even before my mind interprets the system notification in front of me.
A pulse of faint energy that flows through me.
Not flesh. Not blood.
[Mana Perception lvl 0 - Mana Perception lvl 1]
Oh.
Ohhh.
Yeah.
It's all coming together.