"Is man merely a mistake of God's, or is God a mistake of man's?" - Friedrich Nietzsche.

We were the mistake. Of course, we were. Have you even heard of anime? God, that entire thing has mistake written all over it. Probably why I enjoy it so much.

Greater human soul absorbed at 1% efficiency.

1.5 spectral essence absorbed.

There it was. There was something up with her soul but I had no idea what. She didn't seem all that great. But whatever it was that made her special gave her a 50% stronger soul.

I turned to the two remaking souls I could absorb. The smaller lizards had souls I could absorb, but since I had torn the big ones into pieces, it had gone. Dissolved into the air.

This was a chance to improve my soul manipulation. But as soon as I tried to pull the soul from the small lizard's body, I was reminded of my own physical exhaustion.

Maybe later.

I resolved to just absorb the souls instead. Each was only worth 0.3 essence, bringing my total to... I had lost count. And it didn't say in my status what my total was. I knew just who, or rather what to ask though.

"What is the essence even used for?"

Spectral essence (substance):

The core material of a soul, it exists only partially in this physical realm. It is a gift of life and a source of great power. It can be used to create life, or take it away. Strengthen your soul, or use it to weaken another's. Whoever holds the essence holds the spark of life.

Very... informative. And very important. That told me that I was probably doing something I shouldn't. But it would be great for me if I could master this substance. Like an actual soul reaper.

"Can I get a class called soul reaper?"

Calculating...

Creating...

Soul Reaper (U) class requirements:

Relevant experience: (8.4%)

Souls absorbed: (15/200)

Greater souls absorbed: (1/25)

Powerful souls absorbed: (0/5)

Spectral affinity: (1/5)

A proper requirement system? I like it.

So I needed to absorb more souls to get this class. But I had no idea what the U meant. The D grade and upwards spells and skills were self-explanatory, but I guessed there were higher up, they just had a different rating system.

I asked the system as I walked back down the corridor. Now that I was relieved of my babysitting duty, I could get to the dean's office way faster.

"How are all the skills and stuff ranked?"

Information unavailable

Well, shit.

It was a shame, but I was content to work off assumptions. Especially since it suggested the class was better than A-rank.

I avoided all further fights with the lizards. I was drained and just wanted to take a nap. I also desperately wanted to just put in my headphones and listen to some music, but I really needed to keep my senses open so I knew when enemies approached. Of course, I still collected the souls of everyone I passed. Every now and again, I would encounter a soul with a colour in it. Most had the light blue that I had seen in Kacey's soul, but a few had different colours too. They all counted as greater souls, and all gave me the same amount of essence, so I stopped paying attention eventually.

Once, I came across a classroom that had been filled with corpses. It was at this point I registered the smell. My hayfever had prevented me from smelling anything so far, but this was a step too far. It was a horribly hot meaty smell, and I could already see signs of decay. These bodies had been dead for possibly an hour, but in a hot room in the middle of summer under the influence of a world-altering system had caused things to escalate.

As soon as I got over the smell, I took a look with Spectral Sight. They were all normal souls, but I could see a bigger soul growing in the middle of the piles. It looked like it was feeding on, or rather, absorbing the souls that had been piled up around it. There was some spectral meddling going on here, and I wasn't happy about it. I was the only one who could fuck about with souls.

I absorbed all of the souls that I could immediately reach, then took a deep breath and prepared myself for something I really didn't want to do. I pushed my arm deep into the pile of flesh and blood, absorbing souls along the way, trying to reach the core.

Once I did, I got a new kind of message as I absorbed it.

[Incomplete] Rabid Abomination soul absorbed at 1% efficiency.

4.6 spectral essence absorbed.

So these flesh piles were being used to spawn new monsters. But this didn't look like the work of the small groups of lizards. There was no way they were smart enough. There must be some hive mind controlling them, which means there must be a matriarch of sorts orchestrating all this.

I could tell from the strength of the soul that the abomination it would have become was far more powerful than the lizards. If there were more flesh stacks like this around the college, I needed to dismantle them before they spawned something bad. But before that; loot.

I stood outside the dean's office after wading through a floor literally covered in bodies. I had to rely on spectral sight to tell me where the souls were because I had difficulty identifying any single centre of mass. These corpses were different than the lizard's victims. Corpse Inspection confirmed it.

Human corpse: male

Approximate age: 18

Approximate height: 1.6m

Approximate time since death: 30 minutes

Notable wounds: limbs were torn off and large pieces of the torso were torn or shredded.

Method of death: drained of all blood.

Vamps, huh?

I noticed it then after reading the grisly report that there was almost no blood on the bodies, floor or walls. It was just clammy, almost white flesh. It was a sorry sight to be sure, but at least they weren't decaying in this shadowed part of the college.

I knocked on the door and then listened closely for any movement. Though there was no shifting or movement of any kind, I could hear more quiet sobs.

Ugh. More crying people.

But at least they sounded masculine this time. Perhaps the Dean had survived. I might be able to get some keys from him. Or experience.

I pushed open the door and in the gloomy room, I could see someone curled up in a ball in the darkest corner of the room. It was far too dark in here, so I opened the tall blinds at the opposite end of his office.

As soon as I did, the sun streamed in the room, covering the crying figure. His sobs of sorrow turned quickly into screams of pain as his exposed flesh smoked, and started to ignite.

I quickly shut the blinds again and threw the contents of his mug over the Dean. Luckily, he was drinking water instead of coffee, so the fires were put out and he merely resumed crying.

So the Dean is the vampire. He was the one who killed all those students. Probably unwillingly too. Poor guy.

"Hey, Dean?"

He looked up at me with cruel eyes, which immediately softened and then he cried into his arms again.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

"DEAN!"

He jumped at my shout, breaking out of the teary circle.

"S... stay away... I don't want to hurt you."

I changed my personality, portraying the soft and sympathetic side he needed.

"You won't hurt me. You filled your bloodlust?"

He looked horrified as I confirmed to him that he had done those horrible things. But he nodded and took a few deep breaths, tears still streaming down his face.

"I... I didn't want t-t-to."

"I know. It's ok. It's not your fault."

I spoke in a soft voice while slowly edging my way closer to him.

"P-p-please... kill me."

I stopped, shocked at what he was asking of me. I was prepared to talk him back onto his feet, maybe use him to secure the safety of any more survivors. But he knew he was already past that. He had committed the worst sin in his own mind and killed dozens of the students he swore to educate.

"How... did this even happen?"

It didn't make sense that he was a vampire. Unless...

"When I fell from the sky, I thought I was dreaming, but then I was back here, and there was a bat on my desk. It... It bit me, and then I hurt... then they were all..."

He devolved into loud groans of anguish, and I knew what I had to do. Inside his soul was a black streak. He had done something bad enough to scar his very soul, so that was where I started.

With as much strength as I could muster, I tore the darkness from his soul.

His eyes glowed red for a second as his body was racked with pain, then he was back, staring into the distance with a small smile on his face. As far as I could tell, I had torn away his sins and his guilt, hopefully even his memories of the event. Either way, I just wanted to make his last seconds better.

I've never been one to label people as good or bad, or even give labels at all, but this man was inherently good. He didn't deserve what had happened to him.

His soul was unravelling, dissipating into the air. He had taken no damage from this, but as soon as his soul was gone, all I was left with was an empty husk.

It still breathed but was likely living off no more than instinct. I got an idea about how I could use this body and searched the office quickly. I found the keys I had been looking for, and also a tablet the teachers used to organise themselves. They were expensive, and I had wanted to get my hands on one for months.

It was only fingerprint locked, so I used the barely living body of the Dean to unlock it, then change the password to one I would use.

I also found a few bottles of water and cans of some strong energy drink in a drawer. The bottles were useful for now, but I stored the cans in my bag.

I emptied one of the bottles into my surprisingly thirsty mouth, and the other two on the floor. I then sliced open the vampire's throat with my knife, collecting as much of the blood in the bottles as possible.

You never know when vampire blood will come in useful, and I now had a litre and a half of it. Though I wanted to find a freezer or something to put them in so it wouldn't clot.

Would vampire blood even clot?

I haven't the faintest idea.

That reminded me that there was probably a vampire bat in here. Spectral Sight revealed that there was a bat under the dean's desk, but it had died. Probably when it bit him.

I took a close look at its fangs and carefully broke them out of its mouth. If it had some sort of venom or something in its saliva that turned people into vampires, I wanted it.

As I was about to leave the office though, I walked straight through the dark parts of the dean's soul I had torn out. Unlike the rest of it, this had stayed.

I didn't want to waste any more energy messing around with Spectral Force, but I didn't want to leave it here. I touched it, preparing myself for some sort of emotional reaction, but none came. There was no reaction at all.

My fingers passed right through it without any reaction. If only I knew exactly what it was.

"Is there a skill that lets me identify souls?"

Would you like to open the skill store?

"What? Yes."

How the hell did something like that even exist?

Skills available:

Soul skills (+)

Aura skills (+)

Mana skills (+)

I scoured through each of the lists of blacked out sections. There were dozens of skills in each section, but I couldn't see any of them. I was likely just missing the requirements. The ones I could buy were only from the soul and mana menus.

Soul skills: (56.7 essence available)

• Identify Soul (B)

Cost: 100 spectral essence.

• Soul Read (A)

Cost: 250 spectral essence.

• Soul Fortification (A)

Cost: 500 spectral essence.

Mana skills: (0 crystals available)

• Mana infusion ©

Cost: 1 mana crystal

• Magic Search (B)

Cost: 25 mana crystals

Well, I had no mana crystals, but plenty of spectral essence. Even then, I didn't have enough for any of the skills. The soul read looked like one I could really use. Something that would let me take a closer look at a living person's soul.

But getting any of these skills was pretty far away. I would need to absorb loads more souls to get close. But levelling up my spectral affinity would get that done twice as fast. Besides, I needed to do that any way to get what I could only assume was an incredibly cool class.

I needed to rest though. There was only so much soul fuckery I could accomplish in a day, and I was certain I had hit the limit. The clock on my phone said it was almost 6 in the evening.

No wonder I'm so tired... And hungry.

Food was always a vice of mine. I had such a fast metabolism that despite always having food on me, I never gained any weight. That had carried over apparently, and I was absolutely ravenous. There weren't any snacks in my bag as it was supposed to be the end of college. And I hadn't found any food at all in the dean's office.

Oh well. Looks like I'm going to have to do some vandalism.

There were some outrageously priced vending machines scattered around the halls that I could get to. When I found one, I would have to be quick. There was no quiet way to break open the glass window, so I would have to run before any lizards were drawn to the sound... or walk away while Social Chameleon made me invisible to them.

Still. It might attract other survivors who were power hungry, and looking for a fight. I had no doubt that if there were survivors, they would jump at the opportunity to become better than they were. Especially any nerds that knew what was even going on.

That reminded me, having any one of my social group around would make this way easier, due to their knowledge of grinding and tactics. Granted, many of them were in the exam hall with me, and I hadn't seen any of them leave. But there were some in various revision meetings who might have gotten lucky. If I stumbled across any of them, I would be sure to add them to my party.

"Can I even create a party?"

I asked idly as I slowly trudged down a rapidly darkening hall, pausing to absorb every soul I passed.

Party Creation:

What would you like to name your party?

I had to seriously think for a moment. Most parties I had played in, in the past, had been called stupid spur of the moment names. But the situation I was in gave me an idea.

"The Hidden Reapers."

Would you like to call your party: The Hidden Reapers?

"Yes."

What will you tribute to enhance your party?

Um. Oh shit.

I stopped dead In my tracks. What on earth would I tribute? I wanted it to be something powerful, but I didn't know what counted as powerful currently. I doubled back into the dean's office and stood to face the dark part of his soul again.

"I tribute that fractured soul."

I motioned to hold it in my hand, making it look more physical than it actually was.

Tribute accepted.

The dark ball condensed in the air until it looked like a single black droplet, then flew at me, striking me in the forehead.

A bolt of black pain tore through me, and I felt my whole body freeze in place as the dark energy was scattered throughout me.

But as abruptly as the lain had started, it was over again, and I got a message.

The party: "The Hidden Reapers" has been created.

You have been designated as party leader.

Skill gained: Party Leader (B)

Spiritual skill gained: Reason

"Ugh... cool."

I still felt the after effects of the pain and was exhausted again. There was no way I was going to find the nearest vending machine to try and get a crappy meal now. I would just sleep it off. The office would have to do. But I wasn't keen on sleeping in the same room as the dead Dean and the similarly dead vampire bat.

With a monumental effort, I hedged the dead weight out of the room, lying him down in the mess he had made. On a return trip, I picked up the bat. I noticed it felt distinctly hollow, and after shaking it, I heard something clinking against what must have been its bones. I cut open its torso with the knife, and two silver coins rolled out.

I examined them in the fading light as I drop-kicked the dead bat out of the door.

Basic fitness has levelled up. Basic Fitness is now level 2.

+1 unallocated stat point.

That was good, but it could wait until later. The coins were a bigger concern. Their mere presence told me that the monsters dropped actual loot, and not just some materials from the monster's body. I would have to keep an eye out for any weapon drops. They were usually the good ones.

But back to the coins. They were definitely silver and had a basic crown stamped on one side, and the letter S on the other. Maybe it stood for silver, or shift. Who knows.

I was in for an uncomfortable night and was debating going back out to take some unfortunate corpses blazer when I found that there was a nice collection of coats on the back of the Deans office door. I threw the entire collection on the uncomfortable scratchy sofa that lined one of his walls and climbed on. Once I got over the old-man smell, it wasn't that bad. I drifted off to sleep while reading about what I got from my party.

Party: (The Hidden Reapers)

Leader: Samuel Herbert

Current members: 1

Max. Members: 6

Bonus:

• +20% efficiency when using soul based skills and spells.

• +1% spectral affinity.

• -50% effect from anger or enragement.

• Spiritual skill allocated: Dark Past.

I breathed deeply, fighting off sleep as I marvelled at how easily I had gotten my second spectral affinity point.

I almost worried about what that Dark Past skill meant, but my final thought as I drifted into sleep was whether I had locked the office door or not.