Lukas stirred.

His entire body felt as heavy as lead, an acute sense of lightheadedness making it difficult to think. Rubbing his temples, Lukas forced himself up.

His neck felt strangely numb...

BLURP!

Lukas blinked. Laying against the wall next to him was the bat, its wings splayed out in an incredibly leisurely manner. It looked perfectly comfortable where it was, completely uncaring of his nearby presence. He took a closer look. It seemed to be… moaning pleasurably?

And then the memories started coming back.

The strange black, bat-like thing had rammed into him, biting into his neck.

Lukas looked at the bat’s inflated stomach.

Is that my blood?

His fingers instinctively reached for his neck and brushed across two narrow grooves, likely puncture marks from where that thing bit him. If he hadn’t felt them, he probably wouldn’t have even realized they were there.

He looked at the bat again. It was ignoring him completely, obviously not considering him a threat. He hadn’t been able to move at all back when it bit him, and even now the numbness in his neck had not fully faded.

Which meant it was paralytic… or poisonous.

Lukas paled.

Animal bites were threatening not only because of possible venom and toxins, but also because they were carriers for a litany of diseases, like rabies.

Fuck.

This was dangerous. He didn’t know where he was, and while he wasn’t experiencing any symptoms, this kind of disease could lead to death if untreated.

The bat blurped a second time.

Lukas’s eye twitched.

Well, at least it was now leaving him alone, choosing to go to sleep after having its fill. A perfect opportunity for him to get as far away from this thing as possible.

Another person might have decided to confront it, to get revenge on the creature that had attacked them. Lukas, however, was prepared to be the bigger man. Live and let live, and all that.

Lukas carefully got to his feet, his eyes never wavering from the bat snoring happily on the floor. Then, slowly, he backed away from it. The bat’s ear twitched before it sat up groggily and stared at him.

Blink.

Lukas stared at the bat.

The bat stared at Lukas.

And then it growled.

“Easy there,” Lukas said, backing away faster now. “You’re full,” he soothed. “Go back to sleep.”

The bat ignored his well-meaning advice and, faster than he could react, it spread its wings and pounced on him.

“Not this time,” Lukas grunted, doing his best to keep the now-somehow-energetic bat from trying to bite him again, his arms crossed to shield his face from its vicious claws and fangs. Clenching his fist tightly, he punched its belly as hard as he could, flinging it back towards the wall.

The bat screeched in anger, flapping hard to prevent itself from smashing against the sides of the cavern. Changing its trajectory mid-flight, it shot back at him and rammed into his chest.

Lukas winced as its fangs— or claws? —scraped through his shirt. Grabbing it, he threw it on the ground with as much force as he could muster.

It didn’t even flinch.

Instead, it simply bounced off the floor before zooming back into the air again, as if nothing had even happened.

What kind of freak is this?

A normal bat might have died by now, or barring that, been severely injured.

This one was only getting angrier.

“Hey Screen,” he tried, as he kept fumbling backward while trying to fend off the bat that repeatedly shot towards him. “How do I get rid of this thing?”

Kill prey.

Lukas swore. The mad creature bit into one of his fingers, making happy noises as it began to suck his blood. The pain faded almost instantly, reminding him about the paralytic, but his irritation did not. Lukas grabbed the offender and whacked him against the wall. It let his finger go free and let out an unhappy chitter, but other than that it was once again unaffected.

Just what did bats eat inside this place?

“How do I kill this bat?” he asked the screen, framing the question to be more specific in hopes of getting some useful information.

Try harder.

…

At the very least, the responses indicated an implied degree of sapience, judging by how the screen was intentionally misinterpreting his words. Either that, or it was just an asshole.

A can of worms he did not want open at the moment.

Picking up one of the larger rocks lying around on the floor, Lukas bent his knees and tensed his muscles.

Wait for it...

The bat had been slamming into him as fast as it could, opting to go for any exposed body part. Even when he had hit it, it had merely shaken off its disorientation before attacking again.

This time, it was aimed at his neck.

SMACK!

Cocking his arm, Lukas hit it in the face as hard as he could with his held rock, and the bat let out a tiny squeak before dropping to the ground, like a marionette with its strings severed.

As Lukas let out a sigh of relief, he smacked it again with the rock as hard as he could. He’d almost begun to think it was invulnerable. Holding it down with one hand, he continued to smack it in the face as hard as he could.

It was an uncomfortable feeling— holding a living, squirming thing, and smacking it over and over, but it was too dangerous to leave alive.

Lukas moved the bat under his knee and pressed down, crushing it under his weight. The creature swelled for a brief instant before popping open, almost like a water balloon. The urge to throw up began to sweep through him as a thick, rotten smell filled the cavern, his pants completely soaked through with warm blood.

He quickly rose up and staggered back, and more importantly, away from the corpse and its surrounding pool of blood. As he leaned on the nearby wall, steadying himself from the harrowing experience, the screen suddenly appeared in front of him.

Prey Eliminated

As if on cue, his body began to respond.

Something started to grow beneath his skin, twisting and squirming like centipedes moving inside of him. His body began to feel uncomfortably warm, and a horrible itch began to spread across him.

And as quickly as it came, it was gone.

Lukas couldn’t really describe what had happened properly, but he instinctively knew that something had changed. His body was no different than before, but at the same time… there was something more to it now.

He frowned.

This situation was getting stranger by the second.

Just then, a second window appeared.

Absorption Of Local Data - Confirmed.

Connection To Origin - Established.

Autonomy Of Self - Established.

Initiating Calibration Of Facilities...

Allocating Resources...

More windows opened after that, but it was getting harder to concentrate. Exhaustion soon filled the gap as the energy from the adrenaline rush began to fade.

Soulscape - Initialised.

Host Analysis - Complete.

Soul Capacity - Generated.

Lukas frowned, struggling to keep his eyes open. This could be important information that he might need to survive in the future. Soulscape, Soul Capacity… anything with the word ‘soul’ in it was making him a tad uncomfortable. Not to mention— Host Analysis? Was it referring to himself?

He hadn’t even finished analyzing it before the screen flickered and changed once more.

Enabling Skill Creation...

Enabling Experience Absorption...

Soulscape - Acknowledged.

And then the windows vanished.

All of them.

The everpresent screen that had always hung in-front of him— ever since he woke up —had finally disappeared. Strangely enough, the absence of the screen began to make him feel autophobic.

“Screen? Are you there?” Lukas asked warily.

An empty window flickered in front of him before vanishing.

And yet, despite it no longer being present, Lukas could somehow sense it in the back of his mind, waiting to be called upon. Eager.

Responsive.

“What’s a Soulscape?” Lukas probed.

A quantitative representation of the Soul.

The response appeared before him, before flickering and vanishing like before. Which meant the screen was now at least somewhat controllable, and therefore more useful.

Still, a quantitative representation of the soul… that basically implied souls were real. Was he in some sort of afterlife? Did he die from the earthquake back home?

Lukas shook his head. He didn’t want to make that leap just yet. Such negativity wasn’t necessary just yet.

“Can you show me the soulscape?”

Yes.

Lukas rolled his eyes, making a mental note to himself to phrase everything as clearly as possible when communicating with the screen.

“Show me my soulscape,” he intoned.

The words on the screen vanished, instantly replaced by newer ones as the screen itself resized into a larger frame.

SOULSCAPE

Name

Lukas Aguilar

Race

Human (Earth)

Level

1

Experience

0

Threshold

20

Experience Conversion Ratio

23%

Utilized Soul Capacity

0/100

ESSENCE

Capacity

40

Breakdown Value

10

Regeneration

15/hr

OMPHALOS FRAGMENT

Partial Fusion | Fragmented | Level 1

Scan

Level 1

Analyze

Level 1

Satisfaction.

Joy.

Euphoria.

She could finally feel it.

Meager it may have been, a fraction of what she was used to, but it was there nonetheless. A connection with Ki was now forged and detectable. The bond to her native realm was still flimsy— completely inadequate for one such as herself —but it would do for now.

With time, it would grow stronger and more prominent. Soon, she would be able to truly feel it and connect to it. Absorb from it.

It wouldn’t be true freedom, but it would be a start.

And yet, it hadn’t worked out, at least not completely. She had reached out for the Omphalos shard, but her host had been too weak. Too uninitiated. Too minuscule to absorb and comprehend even the tiniest fragment of a titan.

Her host would require strength, and so he needed experience.

He would require sustenance, and so he needed to hunt.

Her vessel would need to survive, and so he needed to gain skills.

But what better place to gain these necessities than an anomaly? Amidst a plethora of horrors and monsters that fed off his kind and considered them prey? He would either grow into a being worthy to serve her… or she would have to find a different host.

Her lips twisted into a cruel smile.

It was every bit terrifying as it was beautiful.

“Level one?”

Lukas stared at the menu thoughtfully. It almost seemed to reinforce the idea that this was some sort of virtual reality game. Though, that was way too hard to believe— something this realistic was easily decades ahead of anything that existed on Earth.

No, he would rather treat this as real until proven otherwise. Anything else might accidentally get him killed.

The screen had several foreign terms, like Omphalos and Soul Capacity. It not only implied that the soul was real, but also that it was quantifiable— a scary thought in and of itself. And these levels… they seemed to be a scale of sorts that measured his soul.

Lukas brought his hand up to his forehead.

Something for another time.

He was exhausted and hungry and sleepy. Hopefully, there’d be more time to think about this after getting some food in his belly.

He glanced at the moss-covered walls, before glancing at what remained of the bat. They were supposed to be edible in several parts of the world, so there was probably something in that mess that was still edible.

Although…

Lukas looked at the corpse suspiciously.

Could something like that even be considered a bat?

Lukas thought back to the two skills the screen had shown him— Scan and Analyze. Maybe they could be of some use here.

“Scan the bat and tell me your analysis.”

Inert. Unable To Analyze.

“Inert?” Lukas slowly drew out the word. “Do you mean dead?”

No reply.

That was strange. Surely a function named Analyze would be able to perform an analysis of whatever came under its range. Or was he missing something here?

His stomach rumbled again.

Lukas needed food, and he needed it fast. The fallen bat was beginning to look incredibly enticing at this point, but consuming raw meat could kill him. Not to mention, meat pulverized onto the rocky ground of an unknown cavern. The last thing he needed was to contract some viral infection in this god-forsaken place.

On that note, it was entirely possible he had already been infected with something, seeing as the creature bit him twice. But it wasn’t as if he could see a doctor anytime soon, so he’d simply have to hope for the best.

His eyes slowly began to droop. He was still hungry, but even more so tired. His entire body ached and his finger was still numb from where the bat bit into him earlier. If his assumption was right, then it injected a local anesthesia as well as a sedative, which was why he fell unconscious the first time he was attacked.

This bite was much smaller, and the amount of paralytic injected was a lot less. Combined with his earlier adrenaline rush, he was still able to maintain consciousness.

Not for much longer though.

“Scan. Is there anything nearby?” he intoned. As tempted as he was to simply lay on the floor and doze off, he couldn’t afford to sleep if there were still predators around him. Not if he wanted to wake up again.

The screen responded a moment later.

Scan (Level 1)

Prey Found Within Scanned Range: 1124

“What the—” Lukas took a step backward, blindly grasping at the moss-covered wall behind him for support as he frantically looked around. Over a thousand? Where were they? He had been nearly exsanguinated by a single bat. The four-digit figure made his knees feel weak.

And then, as if to accentuate its point, the screen reappeared once more.

Prey, found you.