Wolfgang screamed.

A blood-curdling scream that filled Nimh with disgust. He hated doing this. He felt even more revulsion that he was doing it within his spirit well.

He wished he could take solace in the fact that Wolfgang had started this. Wished he could accept that this world was just ruthless to the weak and that he was currently, very weak.

But Nimh was trained better than that. Was trained to overcome adversities and do everything within his ability to win. And sometimes that meant playing dirty.

Besides, who the hell was he? Was he some pathetic victim of a gangster's twisted fantasy? No. No, he was not.

It didn’t take long to tear Wolfgang’s spirit apart. It may have been strong, but even the strongest beast can be taken down with the right weapon. And a bigger stronger spirit wasn’t better than a well-trained one.

This likely wouldn’t work against higher Ranked humans but against this man. It was enough.

Before Wolfgang’s screams ended, Nimh turned his spirit on the other F-Ranks who stood shocked and stilled, terrified to their bones. Nimh could understand. The strongest man they had ever known was a screaming mess on the floor. Nimh would let them join him.

With an effort, he seized the gangsters and one by one shattered their spirit wells. It did not take long. He was not strong enough to overcome an E-Rank, but F-Ranks were just trash.

An unnerving silence took the room as the last gangster fell, the only sound being Nimh’s ragged breaths and trembling limbs.

“Damn it.” He cursed. He hadn’t wanted to cause this much death so early. Too much killing caused far too much attention. Now he needed to get stronger.

Running unsteady hands through his hair, Nimh tried to think. Tried to pry his mind from the dead bodies and the still screaming echo of Wolfgang in his spirit well. It would take some time to quiet that one.

It had been Nimh’s first true kill.

Back home, killing was forbidden. An act of atrocious nature and extreme consequence. Despite that, every man trained to become a spirit invader was in fact, trained to kill. Trained in combat and exposed to pain.

But they were not made to face that taboo.

They never took a life before a successful invasion.

In truth, Nimh had wanted to avoid killing. Even the rats he had killed for sustenance had been a blow to his original plan. Though much of his plans were changing as he went.

For now, he needed a base. Lo and behold, a base had opened itself to him. Nimh would thank Wolfgang for his noble contribution.

There should be food here and maybe even something to help gain some information on this world. And a place to rest.

Stretching out his spirit sense, he could vaguely form the building’s layout in his mind.

It had one entrance which was up the stairs and led to the basement level. At the far end of the room was a staircase and above were three…no, four floors and an open space.

With his spirit sense stretched so thin, he couldn’t detect any people. He’d need to look for himself.

Nimh took a few moments to prepare himself. Working his arms and legs to get the nervous energy out of himself. The fight, if it could even be called that, had left him on edge but after deciding on a direction his training took over.

He had a primary goal of scouting his new home.

So, he began.

After climbing to the first floor, he paused, narrowing his spirit sense. His eyes were worthless here and he could hear nothing but his heart hammering in his chest.

But his spirit sense picked up nine individuals. Weak and in varying states of despair.

Captives.

A part of Nimh wanted to liberate them. They did not feel old most felt like children. Whatever Wolfgang had done to them had left them broken and Nimh felt a surge of anger at the man.

Turning back to the stairs, he continued his ascent.

He would decide what to do with them later. For now, he wanted to vent his frustration. Gangsters would come in handy right now.

Unfortunately, Nimh found none. There were a dozen living chambers, a mess hall and a kitchen, but no hint of any target.

That was... inconvenient.

Instead of satisfying his frustration with some unwilling gangsters, Nimh instead tried some of the food. There was fruit, which surprised Nimh somewhat. Plenty of meat and bread, though few vegetables.

And a vast supply of bags filled with a strange food Nimh had never seen before. He could only shrug, biting into a red fruit with sweet juice and a tasty crunch, as he continued his climb.

The third floor was a wide-open space filled with weapons and what Nimh could only assume was training equipment. Bouncing lightly on his feet, Nimh felt a slight spring in the floor and smirked as he finished the fruit.

This room would come in very handy.

Nimh was far less impressed by the fourth floor. It held a massive bed chamber and several adjourning rooms. To Nimh’s senses, they felt like torture chambers. The smell told him Wolfgang had used them quite often and not for interrogation.

“Wolfgang,” Nimh whispered to the screaming echo. “You are going to enjoy what I do to you…or not.”

The echo seemed to whimper but Nimh had no mercy left for it.

Nimh vowed to make better use of those rooms than Wolfgang did and found his way to a door. Passing through, Nimh felt the cool breeze of the outdoors and breathed deeply. Then coughed blood as his injuries made themselves known.

He had suppressed them until now, but the wave of pain made him retreat and fall backwards.

“Ok. Now might be the time to work on this body.”

Awkwardly crawling to a wall, Nimh propped himself up and made himself comfortable. Or as comfortable as he could be with fractured ribs and some internal injuries.

Taking slow, controlled breaths, Nimh let his body relax. His spirit sense delved into his body, exploring his skin, tracing it with a touch as light as a breeze.

Deeper, blood vessels, muscles, and ligaments.

Deeper, his organs and circulatory system.

Deeper, his bones and the nerves.

It did not take long before his spirit sense completely infused Nimh’s body and he could categorically identify every inch of his being.

Then he went deeper. And found what he was looking for.

A pulse of energy, so minute that he thought he’d missed it. Then it happened again. The third time, Nimh caught hold of it firmly, but not with his spirit. The spirit arts had no place from here on.

From here, it was only the physical arts.

The pulse was a weak thread of vital energy. Every creature that drew breath generated vital energy. And to a practitioner that knew the physical arts, it was one of the three foundations.

It was not a conscious effort nor one of the spirit. But something deeper and more primal. A part of the human physiology that could go undetected and unused for generations and millennia.

The art that was gifted to every human and beast in existence.

And Nimh had a somewhat unfair advantage here. It was his second time developing it. Though his people were nowhere near as advanced as the people of this world in terms of power, Nimh suspected that his people were more intimate with it.

His reasoning was simple.

No one, not even the poorest child in the thousands of world controlled by his people went without an education in the physical arts. Every child could form a primal root and every child formed the respective Well long before their tenth birthday.

Here, in this world, with so many without even the basic physical art foundation, Nimh could only be disappointed. The class system here truly was atrocious.

But that was not important now. What was important, was the vital energy.

Weak as it was, Nimh could follow it to its source. And before long he did. Just like his people, it was at the base of the body. Despite knowing it would be there, Nimh would never find it without first finding those small threads of vitality.

It was a process. And Nimh had trained others in beginning their physical arts.

He had not, however, trained anyone with such an abysmal physical well. And Marcus barely had a physical well at all during his short life.

It was so fragile that Nimh was afraid to even begin. It was only his expertise that gave him the confidence to even try.

Slowly, so slowly that minutes dragged into hours, Nimh began reaching out to the vital energy within his body.

Vital energy was formed throughout the body, stored in the muscles, bones and flesh. In its inactive form, it allowed the body to recover over time, rejuvenation. In its active form though, it was possible to do miraculous things.

The problem was it took time to train the body to utilise vitality. And to truly use it a physical well was required, and a primal root was essential. One could, however, manipulate vital energy without either.

Which is what Nimh did. A warm sensation thrummed through him as he worked, focusing, and refining the vital energy. Slowly, it surged through his body, and he could feel his injuries itch as his body began to heal with excruciating slowness.

Ignoring the sensation of his body trying to knit itself back together, Nimh directed the vital energy, channelling it in ways that were foreign to his new body but oh so right to him.

Blood welled up in his throat as he worked.

This method was not perfect and as the vital energy was drawn out of his organs and muscles, Nimh incurred some internal damage to himself. Small sacrifices.

Instead of trying to save his organs from more self-inflicted damage, Nimh began the difficult task of reforging a physical well.

By this point, the vital energy within Nimh’s control was…meagre by any standard. But it was enough for his purpose.

With confidence, Nimh directed the vital energy straight towards the fragile physical well. The sensation was like being punched between the legs and Nimh spat out blood as the pain struck.

Despite the pain though, Nimh did not relent as he poured more vital energy into the well, using it to prevent the well from shattering. This part took seconds as the physical well threatened to shatter, severing any hope of Nimh using this body for conquest.

But Nimh was focused and refused to relent. By the moment, he held the well together and used the vital energy to forge the well anew.

The physical well was not a physical component of the body. It was more like a central location where the body's natural energies could flow. The stronger the well, the more those energies could flow.

And the more those energies flowed, the easier it was to forge a primal root.