[*DING!*]

“What the hell… Is this for real?”

Joe stared at the slime covered screen that shivered itself into existence right before his eyes.

[Title ‘Harem King (Corrupted)’ removed]

[You receive a new exclusive title ‘Harem Emperor’]

[Harem Emperor]

* Exclusive title, no other being can receive this title while you have it.

* Because cookies are the best! (No cinnamon!) Every week you need to sacrifice to #ERROR!# one five chocolate chip cookies for each slave in your possession.

* Each slave in your possession grants you +100HP, +100MP, +5%P. Def, +5%M. Def, +10VIT, +10CON

* Each warrior-based slave in your possession grants you additional +2STR, +1DEX

* Each mage-based slave in your possession grants you additional +2INT, +1MEN

* Each sage-based slave in your possession grants you additional +50INT, +20MEN, +10VIT

* Each slave in your possession must be approved by #ERROR!#. There is no other limit to the number of slaves you can possess.

* Based on your affinity towards your slaves, additional effects are possible.

[You receive tile skill Emperor’s Authority (Active)]

* You can steal requisite slaves from others based on the slave affinity towards its current master.

* If the skill fails, both the slave and its master will become hostile towards you.

[You receive tile skill Emperor’s Grace (Passive)]

* Your slaves receive additional benefits based on their affinity towards you.

“IT SEEMS SOME IDIOTS NEVER LEARN.”

Death shrugged her arms as something plinked and ploinked inside her black ledger. She tried but nothing seemed to stick for long inside that slime filled tentacle.

“I MUST GO NOW. MY SERVICES ARE REQUIRED ELSEWHERE.”

She pat Joe’s shoulder then pointed at his empty shell drooling on the ground beside him.

“ONE MORE THING, YOU BEST STORE THAT BODY AWAY IF YOU ARE NOT USING IT. SOMETHING MAY COME AND EAT IT.”

“Huh? What? I can do that?”

“YOU ARE A NECROMANCER, A HARBINGER AND A PROPHET OF DARKNESS TO NAME A FEW. YOU CAN DO THINGS OTHER MORTALS CAN’T OR SHOULDN’T DO. EXPLAINING IT IS GIVING ME A HEADACHE SO GO FIGURE IT OUT YOURSELF. UNLESS YOU WANT A REMATCH? IF YOU WIN, I WILL ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS.”

“Erm, how generous but, erm, I think I’ll just go read the manual and try things out since you say it is safe.”

Death gave him a curious look.

“I DID NOT SAY THAT STAYING WITHIN THE SPIRIT REALM IS SAFE. NOT FOR A MORTAL THAT IS. ALTHOUGH IN YOUR CASE, YOU HAVE THE POTATO, AND YOUR SOUL IS OOZING TENTACLE GUNK, SO I DO NOT THINK THERE IS ANY SPIRIT LEFT, INSANE ENOUGH TO MESS WITH YOU. OTHER GODS MAY TRY SOMETHING IF YOU CATCH THEIR EYE BUT MOST OF THE TIME, THEY TEND TO FOLLOW THE RULES THEY SET FOR THEMSELVES. ANYWAY, IF YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND ABOUT THAT REMATCH, YOU KNOW HOW TO FIND ME.”

And away she went, leaving Joe with more questions he wasn’t sure he wanted answers to.

Yet, as it happens in such cases, curiosity took the best of him.

“Harvest.”

He spoke, vanishing his drooling corpse alongside his HP bar. Not that it emptied. It just vanished, leaving his MP bar alone.

[*DING!*]

[Since you have unequipped your mortal shell, you are now recognized as roaming spirit. You can no longer interact with the world of the living. Consumes 10MP/min. Warning! Spirits, blessed weapons and certain magic can still damage your soul. Beings with high perception or perception supplementing skills can still detect your presence. HP/MP will not regenerate while your soul is detached from a physical body. Access to item box disabled.]

A spirit, huh? Joe pinched his transparent hand. Aside from becoming see through, he couldn’t feel any difference. Due to his weird skills, he already saw stuff that other people couldn’t so, becoming a spirit only sharpened the things he saw.

On second thought, removing the shackles of flesh from his mind did make a difference. His thoughts became clear and faster. His focus stronger. He could sit and watch the world around him play out in slow motion if he focused of zoom by if he let his mind wander away from here and now.

It also drained his MP twice as fast if he wasn’t careful but at the same time, he could bring the cost down to one mana point an hour if he relaxed and meditate. Without a body to anchor him in reality, time just zoomed by. Just having fun with those new sensations cost him three days and more than eighty percent of his mana.

“Best not find out what happens when I run out. Now, how do I get back to being a meat sausage?”

He opened his skills window and browsed through available skills.

“Hot swap allows you to move the soul into the flesh you own. Sounds about right.”

[*DING!*]

[This body was occupied.]

[Savile (Soul) moved into soul storage. Seven out of ten slots remaining.]

“What in the frigging fuck happened?!”

Joe meowled. His ears plastered over his head and what left of his fur stood up. No, not his fur. He never had fur. This was…

“Patchwork?”

Savile’s voice came out of his mouth. Oy what the heck?! That’s impossible! However, his status screen confirmed his discovery.

[Name: Joe]

[Gender: Female]

[Race: Demi + Human + Nightmare]

An obligatory squeeze-squeeze, grope-grope and pat-pat confirmed him that indeed, this wasn’t his body and that she still wasn’t wearing any underwear.

“Interesting…”

He called up his skills once more, but this time read the full description.

“Hot swap allows you to move a soul into the flesh you own. Press once to move the selected soul into the next body on the list. Press and hold to select a body to which the soul will be moved. If no soul is selected, the caster’s soul will be moved instead. “

His jaw dropped, exposing Savile’s pointy fangs.

“Can’t be.”

Joe pushed and this time held the skill button. Unlike the last time, now he saw an additional screen with a selection of all the bodies available to him. Most were marked as expired and greyed out but six were enabled with two being lit up by green border while the remaining four were marked as occupied. There was also an icon of a flickering whisp of light which probably could turn him back into a roaming spirit.

He poked the icon of his old body and puff, He was back in his manly flesh. All dangly bits included.

“This is way too broken even form me.”

He toggled the skill again and again his soft human body swapped for hardened flesh of his furball.

Flipping back and forth like a kid playing with his newest toy, Joe stared at his stats. The skill did not appear to consume his health or mana, nor did it affect him in any other way aside from making him slightly queasy from the sudden change of input coming from his new senses.

Neither did it grant him any additional skills. Regardless of the body he occupied, the system still considered him a Necromancer / Harbinger / Prophet of Darkness. Well, his combat stats, MP and HP did change in accordance with the body he choose but that was that. All other, nonracial skills appeared to be soul bound.

This opened a world of whole new possibilities.

To make sure, he pushed the image of the unused elven body and at once found himself in impenetrable darkness.

[New status alignment applied! Blind.]

[New status alignment applied! Mute.]

Ah, he forgot about that. He hadn’t bother to fix that empty shell since Darkness released the soul of this elf. Thankfully, even though blind, he could still see his floating screens and If he could, he would whistle.

Over eight thousand mana. With the stats of this elf, his skills more than tripled his mana. His other stats dropped considerable from what he had but that much mana? That may come in handy. Perhaps if he tweaks this elven twig a bit, he might be able to push his HP past ten thousand? That would insanely help with any crafting he wanted to do. Without access to the old owner’s skills, he might just reroll this archer into a crafting build.

That’s something to consider but not today.

Joe returned himself back to his old self.

Today he had a cake to bake.