Still fairly close to where the others were staying, the two of us headed to the opposite end of town. After turning a corner, I decided to let out the Freshmen once more as well. Ru Xi, Haldi, and Ter didn’t seem to be quite as emotional as Clavi, but I still didn’t want them cooped up until I needed them, and honestly speaking they would probably be obsolete before then. Let’s have some good memories before that time, okay guys?

At the same time I called over my grave shadows to sneak through town, while tossing Hans and the others to skitter after me. It’s been quite some time since I got the menagerie out, and I don’t think everyone’s even acquainted. Say hello to your younger spectral siblings.

Settling in on a porch on the west edge of the village, things looked much worse here. Almost no doors remained on their hinges, and a number of houses were burnt to their foundations. The raid must have begun on this side before the members spread out, quite lucky for Lorn and Harlod to be opposite the destruction— no, that’s just literal survivorship bias.

Clavi seemed to be having a grand time with Hans and company, running about the charred buildings getting covered in soot. Of the Hand Spiders, Hans naturally seemed to be taking the lead with his siblings following behind. Just idly watching them scurry about, the first creation of a certain type always seemed to possess more emotion and personality than the rest. A result of being the first, due to an undefined spell, my expectations, or simply the excessive mana poured into them?

After all, the Freshmen exhibited minor characteristics of their namesakes, but nothing as strong as Clavi or Hans. Their connection weak, perhaps making them less capable of reflecting emotion.

Grave Shadow was the obvious exception. Despite her weaker spiritual connection, I needed to slightly restrain her feral nature.

That brief thought aside, it might be my spell served as a shackle, capable of easily restricting a soul; on the other hand skeletons drew upon me for their emotion. This brought up an interesting question of how closely Ghost-tree creations were tied to me. Underworld of Armok occasionally allowed for the usurpation of minions, but they’d never betray you without external factors in play. I needed to keep the danger of discrepancies in the back of my mind.

In the moment, I wanted to experiment some. I summoned a grave shadow without using a soul. My reserves were large, but being ever-frugal led me to use the minimum required Soul Power to serve as a base. Interestingly enough, my connection with this newest member seemed even weaker than that of goblin grave shadows. Yet it also did not appear to make an attempt at personality as the Freshmen, or Hand Spiders did.

Moving on to collect more data before drawing conclusions, I asked Ru Xi and Haldi to each grab a recently deceased goblin for me. Upon their return, I pressed my hand on a body— after casting , since Clavi went and made a mess of their innards.

“”

Oh boy, was the spell shape for that a doozie. If it’s possible for you to imagine a Necker Cube, but instead of a cube it’s a quarthex, but it’s not just a quarthex, but a fractal that maps out to a quarthex, then congratulations. You might meet Kat in your future, or his past. He didn’t tell me you said hi though, so you must not have made a good impression if you did. Non-linear timeflow is a mess…

Point being, came in a shape nigh unintelligible to mortals on the best of days; staring at it for the first time trying to decipher it froze me up for a good 15 minutes, only to be freed by a rising pain in my eyes, ears, the base of my skull, and my elbows, strangely enough. This is only due to the fact I delve too quickly into its mysteries, I still reinforced mana in the appropriate places of the formation.

And so after casting a spell that was literally a pain in the neck, a Soul Strand presented itself to me. About the length of a pen, with the appearance of a thin silvered ribbon tied to fan, fluttering in place. It’s connection to my soul greatly resembled that of its ‘physical’ form, a thin strand only tethered at one end.

While it should only allow touch spells to be cast through itself…

“”

It steadied as it received my magic, before shooting.

Nonsense! It was precisely as I predicted, yet this was nonsense! quite literally was a strand of a soul meant to serve as an extension of your own. At this low level according to lore ‘it could only channel mana to nearby targets’, implying a range of touch. However! In this new world, spells were formed entirely within the soul, so channeling mana at a distance was something entirely irrelevant.

I’ve not seen such poor balance since that game that allowed for negative dexterity values!

So naturally after thinking ‘this is abusive and painfully unfair’ I went and made another dozen purely through Soul Power. Meant as an extension of my own will, there was no difference between them and the one using a goblin as a base, all seemed to assimilate in their totality. Soul strands made their mark as an interesting outlier.

My minions required orders, though such things could be given through a purely mental command; even and required ‘interacting’ with the mana. Soul strands were so attached to me that thoughts alone could command them, as easily as one moved a dozen of their own hands about. That is to say, not perfectly intuitive for a creature with two hands, but easily accomplished. Since they could exist anywhere within my {Soul Field}, all my spells now effectively had one kilometer of range.

That remained limited by the movement of the soul strands, but they weren’t exactly slow. Nor did it feel like there was a cap to the number I controlled, other than being surrounded by strange astral ribbons all the time. Keeping them dancing in unison to train my focus, I moved on to .

…

It felt almost exactly the same as when I made Grave Shadow. Fractals, with a ‘hot’ sensation.

Although the ‘hot’ sensation felt ‘hotter’ to start when casting it was mostly the same. Meaning somewhere between ghost and graveshadow, I forcibly shoved the slider for ghost up to max. So hot in the context of the spells clearly referred to the personality of the soul, maybe how much influence it retained in the final creation. The more stunning implication being, I could mess with a slider successfully.

People of this world could no doubt invent spells themselves, but it seemed even my arbitrary body allowed me freedom. I wasn’t just limited by spells gained from leveling up, and I could actually successfully tweak my own spells to some degree of success. Sure, I only got the feel for a single slider, but this also opened up roads for abuse in the future. Customization is the bane of balance even in the best case scenarios.

I mentioned early on that my primary worry with magical experimentation was exploding myself. The Ghost/Grave Shadow continuum showed I could develop spells in a sorcerous manner, and soul strands meant they could be tested at a distance. Overdrafting mana also felt unlikely given the quantities dealt with. Given how directly soul strands seemed to interface, tinkering with spells related to the soul seemed ill advised.

Coming to a pause in my experiments, I felt a tug on my shirt. Hans seemed to be trying to skitter up onto my lap.

“*Ah, you’re right. While I can practice on the road, I don’t get to spend much time with you guys.*” Hans wasn’t the one to imply such a thing, but his interruption brought it to my mind. “*What precisely are you capable of?*” Picking him up, I patted him on the back, infusing a small amount of mana.

“*Let’s have everyone gather together.*” Vocalizing was entirely unnecessary, but I did so anyway and my minnies grouped up. Clavi stood with the freshmen, five hand spiders lined up behind Hans, 51 grave shadows floated behind Grave Shadow, and the goblin remnant stood alone. While the spell shape had resembled that of Grave Shadow, he did appear to be, well, like a ghost. Thus he was separated.

“*Skeletons, and ghost, you’re team captains. Hand spiders, you get to pick who you’re assigned to, but only one per team. Grave Shadow, you and the newest will sit this out. The goal...ugh, the goal is going to be to get this rock through your gate, as designated by...the soul strands.” As I came up with the idea on the spot, every present undead began strongly resonating their spiritual connections. It slightly hurt in an intangible way, but it didn’t feel like they were trying to hijack my brain to process the commands.

Comparing the differences between them was most enlightening. While Clavi’s connection with me was the closest, it also seemed to be reacting almost the least, followed by Hans, the freshmen, and then the rest of the hand spiders. Almost, because the goblin remnant possessed no reaction I could discern along our connection aside from the command.

So the mental pull was the result of how little ‘personality’ they had already. If their ‘emotions’ were caused by my expectations and nothing else, they would all have drawn upon me. Instead, they seemed capable of ‘storing’ my expectations of them. Soul strands perfectly fused with me, but others were copying.

Would they one day form their own soul, transforming into more ghost-like creatures, or did that final leap require something qualitatively different than merely imitating their master?

As it stood, I lobbed a rock out of Inventory to the middle of the field, watching as they divvied themselves into teams. Clavi paired with Nails, and Hans with the goblin remnant. Those first two were both aggressive, but I was surprised to see Hans go to the goblin remnant.

My apologies to the freshman, CT, Manny, and Birdy, but I’ve forgotten how exactly you paired yourselves that time— I think Haldi and Birdy paired up. I hope you understand that I’d not fully anticipated the noise such an event would create.

Because while they weren’t using my own mind as a proxy to decide their actions, neither skeleton nor hand spider nor remnant nor grave shadow could speak. Since all but my featureless grave shadows recognized the importance of not communicating through interpretive dance, I became a relay station for the first round.

Perhaps due to excessively doting on him, Clavi was quick to understand the process. In contrast, each freshman almost seemed robotic in their orders. Their lack of development could be tangibly felt, operating more on the order ‘get the rock through your gate’ rather than thinking about the problem. Clavi operated on another level, taking point with Nails on his head, sending two grave shadows to disrupt each enemy team.

With goblin intelligence, it seemed the remnant had no idea of strategy and charging forward with all units. Not particularly confident, the remnant moved slower than it might otherwise.

This was still an improvement over the others, as Clavi’s grave shadows were making use of their limited ability to interact to push around the freshmen. The fact that such a strategy even worked meant there was some form of thinking in their heads that could be interrupted by external factors. There are trade offs when moving away from purely reflexive actions. As such, even as they began mobilizing their units, Clavi had already grabbed the rock and passed through his own gate.

Still having some trouble thinking with interruptions of orders flowing through my mind, overall this didn’t seem to be helpful in the quest to help each one develop personality and autonomy. Instead, I decided to narrow my focus.

“*Grave shadows, look humanoid. Hand spiders, you’re leading games of Simon Says now.*”

After a few rounds of this, I could see how the creativity of orders by the Hand Spiders developed, and with the implicit order of not relaying commands through me meant even those following along would need to interpret vague direction, since they couldn’t just mimic a hand spider’s movement.

I had them play about in such a manner through the night, trading out the blank grave shadow for the remnant goblin. Using [Comprehending Death], while too vacant to speak, I got the name of Iyrkraal. Right, goblins below certain levels have no personal name, only that of their chief. So I could freely come up with one. Grub felt like a good fit.

Lounging about, I loosened Grave Shadows restraints, and she began threatening poor Grub. She acted much more vicious than around the other undead, possibly capable of sensing he still had a goblin soul? Not keeping them apart, I did occasionally split them whenever she actually harmed Grub. Feeding him mana reconstituted his incorporeality, driving her up the wall. Acting more aggressive, she took less physical action as the night went on; as feeding Grub seemed to please his spirit more than the wounds hurt. Grub didn’t fight back in the end. Goblins are a cowardly creature, and instead kept close to his chief who would feed him negative energy as necessary.

Please keep your distance. Though you aren’t rotten, your goblin face is hardly appealing.

Killing a poran that strayed a little too close, and singing some songs to Clavi(who didn’t particularly need his personality developed), dawn eventually came. As those back at the house started to stir, I recalled my minnies. Giving them each a look before popping them into Inventory, there seemed to be minor changes to their soul. Not in an identifiable way, but at least they weren’t the same. My soul strands hid beneath my clothes, save for one who went with the grave shadows and Grub to near the edge of my control radius.

I’d go back around dinnertime. Hopefully my human companions got along well with our clients until then.