I shook his hand. “Pleasure to work with you.”

“Oh, I’m sure it is.” Note to self: Garrett isn’t stupid enough to fall for such blatant lies. Going by his past behavior he was also more than capable of cutting the knot if I got too clever, so I’d need to watch the balance if I wanted to fool him.

If. I was more than willing to cooperate in good faith.

“So!” I said, clapping my hands. “We need a plan.”

“Um, get out?” Garrett said. “What else do we need?”

I opened my mouth, then shut it, then opened it again. “The ultimate objective is… a good starting point, yes. We just need to flesh it out from there, starting with our other goals.”

“Ah, my bad. I hadn’t realized that my aspirations of finally mastering the lute were relevant.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure that’ll go over great with all the ravenous monsters. I’m being serious here. Break down this shit into sub-goals. Even the obvious stuff, it helps keep your mind in order.”

Garrett looked at me like I’d grown a second head. Actually, scratch that, he probably would have taken that in stride. Adventurers saw some weird shit. “You….sound like Serias.”

“Who?”

“The priest who trained me.” Garrett said. “It’s disconcerting.”

“I live to confuse. So, you’ll agree to be smart about this and plan?”

“Sure.” Garrett said quietly.

“Alright.” I sat down cross-legged on the rough floor again. “So, number one priority is not getting our fool asses killed, number two priority is getting out of here. Difficult to say where that is exactly, but unless you have another teleport scroll squirreled away just heading up is going to be a safe bet. As for surviving, the best thing we can do there is put together a workable combat strategy.”

Garrett grunted. It was a friendlier sort of grunt though, I could tell. “That would be where I come in, I presume.”

I nodded. “Yup. But we can’t assume that you’ll be able to tackle everything alone, so we’ll have to share our combat abilities. I’ll go first since you’re such a paranoid bastard, I have seven stats: Spe-”

Garrett snapped back to full alertness. “What!?”

“What do you mean what?”

“How do you have seven stats? Even Serias only has five, and he’s a veteran adventurer!”

Huh. I’d actually managed something impressive. That was interesting. “Wait, is Serias that old priest from the village?”

“That doesn’t matter!” Garrett threw his hands up in the air. “What matters is why you expect me to believe you outdid the highest leveled man I know!”

I rested my hands on my knees, doing my best to display none of the tension I felt. Ally or not, arguing with an irate adventurer wasn’t doing anything good for my heart. “You’re assuming I outdid him. More isn’t always better, too many stats risks spreads your energy too thin.”

Garrett paced back and forth. “But how? I only have four, and it nearly killed me to get that many. I can’t imagine trying to focus on seven at once.”

It had been a hell of a thing, sure, but not that hard. It had been fairly straightforward once I’d actually figured out how, and Garrett would have had far more than one overheard lesson to go on. The confusion wouldn’t have been a factor for him. Unless… “When do you humans get your stats again?”

Garrett stopped to look at me. “Why do you want to know that?”

“You have to conceptualize all the stats you want simultaneously, right?”

Garrett nodded. “That’s what makes it so difficult. You’d have to be able to fully understand and perceive seven completely different things at once. That takes incredible mental discipline. And if you want stats similar enough to overlap it only gets worse.”

“And the stats ceremony, or whatever you call it, is like a coming of age thing?”

Garrett looked down at me sharply. “What does tha- oh shit.”

“Teenagers. Horny little fuckers aren’t known for their mental fortitude, are they?”

Garrett ran his hands through his hair and clutched his head. “Why do we do it this way? We could skyrocket our adventurers in power just by waiting a few years.”

I shrugged. “Not really, you know? I mention the age thing cause it's obvious, but I’m not exactly a old, wise monk over here.” I might actually be younger than when humans came of age, the bastards lived a long fucking time. “I conceptualized my stats by remembering times when I’d relied on those attributes. Its life experience that makes the biggest difference. If you put every human kid into the kind of shit I’ve been through most of them would die.”

“That makes sense I suppose. Can’t have our best and brightest dying before they get a chance to prove themselves.” Annoying git. I almost wished I’d let him believe his society was doing it the stupid way for a little longer. “So what are your stats?”

“Speed, Agility, Dexterity, Constitution, Toughness, Metabolism, and Senses.”

Garrett raised an eyebrow. “Metabolism?”

“Oh, come on. You know how many times I’ve almost starved to death? Metabolism’s important.”

Garrett sat down, finally seeming to relax somewhat. “I’m sure it is. What are their values?”

“Values?” I was beginning to regret not bothering to learn more about all this soul magic bullshit before throwing myself into the deep end.

Garrett put his face in his hands and massaged his temples. “Tell me you can at least see your soul.”

“It looks like a weird constructed thing with seven gates that energy flows out of? Or four for yours I guess.”

Garrett nodded, looking back at me. “Yeah, that’s what a soul would look like under the Soul System. They look pretty different otherwise. You can see that not all the energy outflows are identical?”

“Yup. The one fueling my enhanced senses is bigger than the others.”

“Yeah, that’s why we give them numbers. It helps to get a general understanding of how much you can do. Here, let me show you mine so you have a reference point.”

He held took a deep breath and held both hands before him. “Seeing other people’s souls is a bit tricky. I’m doing my best to make it easier, so it shouldn’t be too bad. Just activate your soul perception and turn it outwards.”

I took a deep breath of my own and held it. My awareness sunk down to deep within my consciousness and my physical sight swam in and out of focus. Eventually I released in entirely, allowing my soul to snap into view. It was as I remembered, mostly.

I’d be more alarmed at my very soul changing without my notice, but I had expected it. Killing was supposed to make you stronger, after all. The scaffolding of divine energy around my soul stretched upwards, already forming more subdivisions. My actual soul, however, hadn’t grown to fill the space, it was only up to the fifth level, and hadn’t even saturated that yet. It crept across the empty space like a mold across stale bread, and was just as thin. Nothing like my first four subdivisions, they were full to the brim with soul-stuff, and felt far more…...three-dimensional, for lack of a better word. Like a sponge saturated with water, where the sponge was my very soul and the water was the supernatural energy it generated.

Fascinating. I was sure there was an insight into this strange magic in there somewhere, but that wasn’t what I had come to find, and blinding myself this long was making me antsy. I cast my gaze outwards while maintaining my metaphysical sight. It got harder and harder to maintain the proper state of mind as I got further from any reference point, but eventually I saw a light on the horizon.

I homed in on it, glad to find something in this void. My sight trembled as the object became more clear, my soul sight and mortal vision overlapping and interfering with one another. My head pounded, but I gritted my teeth and persevered. I wasn’t going to end my rise over a goddam migraine.

Even if it did hurt like a bitc- like a bastard. Sorry Mom.

My two sights snapped together, and the image became clear. Garrett’s mortal body sat still in a meditative pose, both hands outstretched. Between them I beheld the projection of his soul. It was glorious, in a way I couldn’t fully understand. The very stuff of life, held between his hands.

Bah. I shook my head, stopping just short of disrupting the vision. It was only a model. A model designed by my subconscious to allow comprehension of the incomprehensible, but still a model. No need to lose my shit over it.

I turned back to the task at hand and focused on the outgoing energy streams. There were only four of them, true to Garrett’s word, but even the smallest was larger than my most powerful. Was this the difference between splitting things seven ways and focusing on four, or just the gap of experience?

The divine scaffolding extended a lot further than mine, and he had five divisions almost completely full, with another five beyond that showing signs of growth.

“Good.” The spoken word sent vibrations through my soul sight, nearly collapsing the whole thing. I screwed my eyes shut rather than worry about three senses at once. It was only barely in time to protect me from the rest of Garrett’s sentence. “I’m going to constrict my Power stat down to a one.”

A soul gate immediately began to close. I hadn’t known you could do that. The energy streaming out of it shrunk and shrunk, stopping only when it was a shadow of its former self. What had once overshadowed my best stat was now less than even my weakest, if only by a smidgen.

There would be no better time to kill him. Ugh, shut up. I’d had him at my mercy before, and I hadn’t killed him then either. Besides, I needed him. Sometimes I needed to remind my inner bastard that betrayal could screw over yourself just as badly as your enemy.

“You see the weakest stat I have now? That’s what we call a one. It's a rough metric, but it works for simple comparisons. Compare it to your stats, and figure out what they are.”

I did as the man said. It didn’t really change what I knew, but I suppose it made it a lot easier to converse with others. If adventurers had to go into soul sight every time they wanted to compare metaphorical dick sizes they’d never get anything done.

Speed: 4

Agility: 3

Dexterity: 2

Constitution: 4

Toughness: 1

Metabolism: 5

Senses: 6

While I was at it I went ahead and checked Garrett’s too. The whole point was to enable comparisons after all.

???: 10

???(Kinda reminded me of my own Toughness in terms of feel, so some kind of protection stat.): 12

Power: 1 (While lowered for demonstration purposes, obviously. I think it’d been about a ten before.)

???(This one connected to his body, so something physical.): 15

I opened my eyes and released my soul sight as soon as I saw his Power return to its previous value (it was a nine) and told him my stats.

Garrett frowned. “You continue to impress. Stats that high really shouldn’t be possible at your level.”

“You have…” I did a quick count on my fingers. “Like twice the total value, and that’s not accounting for the efficiency increase with multiple stats. I’m far from impressive, if anything I’m lagging behind.”

Garrett pursed his lips. “I’m four times your invested level, and I invested most of that into stats. Mine should be three times yours, easy.”

I blinked. “Okay, level is a quantified value? Not like a colloquial term for skill? Ohhhh, is it the number of…” I searched for the word. “Compartments in your soul?” Cause I had like ten of those.

Garrett held his hand out and wobbled it in a so-so motion. “Basically. People usually only count the ones that are full and in use though. Empty levels are essentially meaningless, and a purposeless level is little better.”

Right. Going by what I’d seen the divine energy was only good for supporting your soul energy, so the empty subdivisions were just provision for future growth. Though that left the question… “Why do the divine energy and your soul grow at different rates, and the hell does ‘invested’ mean?” It’d be damn convenient to be five levels stronger right now, and the constant reminders that I didn’t really understand the power I’d stolen were beginning to get annoying.

Garrett shrugged. “It’d be more accurate to say that they don’t grow in the same way at all. Neither grows much naturally.” He eyed my green skin. “At least not for humans. Most of the exceptions are crazy powerful though, so standard human advice probably applies to you. For us, the soul begins to stagnate sometime in late adolescence. After that point it can no longer support further growth.”

“And that is why we have the Soul System. With the divine energy to support it your soul will just keep growing at its natural rate forever, or at least until it fills up what space you have. Of course, your soul is you, so it's hardly inanimate. The harder you work, at anything, the faster you grow. Complacency is the death of progress. That’s part of the reason that adventurers are so much more powerful than the general populace.”

“The other being divine energy.” Garrett said. “It isn’t a part of you, and you can’t really make it grow. You have to get it from somewhere else, and the easiest way is to kill monsters.”

“And take theirs.” I finished.

Garrett shook his head. “Most monsters don’t work have any. Their souls are just naturally more powerful, no divine energy required. You’d have to ask a mage or scholar if you wanted to know exactly what, but something about their souls gives them a larger natural limit. That’s why most monster species have the same rough power level as any other of their kind: they aren’t leveling up, their just reaching whatever the natural limits for their species are. To get stronger they have to more than train, they have to alter themselves on a fundamental level and evolve into a new type of monster.”

“Ja, ja,” I waved my hand in a little circle. “I know how hobs work. Get to the point.”

Garrett glared at me. “I’m revealing humanity’s most precious secrets.The least you can do is show some damn respect.”

I snorted. “If you know it, it can’t be that secret.”

Garrett’s glare could cut steel. In other news, I really needed to stop using hyperbole when it could quite literally be true. I sighed. “Look, its not really an insult, okay? Two people can keep a secret if one of them’s dead, an entire species can keep a secret fucking never, because that’s not how fucking secrets work.”

Garrett grunted, but seemed somewhat mollified. “Other planes of existence contain far more divine energy. When a soul passes on the momentary thinning of the veil allows some of that through, and the Soul System absorbs it. The soul energy, that you do steal. The soul has multiple parts, and some are left behind on death. You can take in that power to help kickstart your natural soul growth, and that’s the other half of why killing is such a quick path to power. It makes normal growth speeds look snail-like in comparison.”

I broke down guffawing. I knew I wasn’t dealing with the stablest of people here, but c’mon. This was just too funny.

Garrett stared at me. I guess all his glared were used up. “So, have you finally broke down and gone mad?”

“Hehehhe. Not yet. I just, you know.” I waved a hand. “Stuff.” Damn judgemental asshole hated monsters, and literally fed on the souls of his enemies. Fucking priceless. “So how do I make with the soul-eating?”

Garrett grunted. “Not soul-eating. That’s different. We don’t touch the soul, just the energy it leaves behind.” Sure, tell yourself that. “You,” Garrett crammed that word with as much derision as humanly possible, “Might not have noticed it, but what we call soul-stuff includes more than just the soul proper. The structural part is more important, a thousand times so. To detain it upon death is necromancy of the highest order. The energy that permeates it isn’t nearly the same.”

“Mm-hmm.” I’d need to think on that, for the implications on how the power functioned if nothing else. “How do I make with the energy-consuming or whatever?”

Garrett shrugged. “If it was complicated, do you really think Serias would have gone with his convoluted ‘let him level up some then kill him so you can level’ scheme? Like calls to like and the energy will come on its own.”

“Convenient.”

“As few things are.”

“I’ll enjoy it while I can. Anything else?”

“You need to invest any levels you haven’t already. You shouldn’t have any trouble figuring it out, it's not too different from gaining your stats in the first place.”

I closed my eyes and focused my gaze inwards again, or at least I seemed to. I really just sat there like an idiot as I pretended to meditate. Lowering my guard as much as I had in the last few minutes was really doing a number on me. In the end, there was no perfect solution, but I figured offering up some periods where I appeared vulnerable but wasn’t was better than nothing. It was hardly foolproof, but no defense was absolute.

After a solid minute without any backstabbing I began my meditation for real. A closer look made it fully evident what Garret had meant by investing levels. The energy flows leading to my stats hadn’t grown with my overall soul energy, making me no more powerful than before.

Of course, that wasn’t too hard to remedy. It really was just like creating my stats again, and far less painful to boot. The only question was what to do with it. I had what amounted to thirty points worth of soul energy to distribute as I pleased.

Well, with that many it would be a shame to leave any out. I decided to boost all of them at least a bit, with the most immediately relevant getting significantly more attention. Unlike some people, I didn’t think with my muscles, so that didn’t mean throwing everything behind my physical stats. As so reality had hammered home again and again, I was a goblin.

But I was the one who decided what that meant. Survival, not victory, was my goal. I was not the ravaging monster that Garrett was so eager to cast me as, I was just some fucker too stubborn to know when he ought to give up and die, and too squirmy for anyone to force him too.

I directed more than half my new power towards Metabolism and Senses, the rest getting little more than dregs.