23 City of Ravens 9 (2/2)

This sudden change gave me a scare, I closed my eyes and looked inside my body to find whatever entered me.

What I found was… crazy! Mad! Impossible! In the empty space of my body floated a lonely figure of a goblin! With my soul essence, I quickly expelled it from my body with little to no resistance and watched it fade in the wind.

This was… too much! Souls of other beings are not something that I can mess with! But… maybe I should not decide to fast.

I looked at other goblins and summoned another feather, stabbing it into one of them, I waited until the feather disappeared, but nothing happened. This could mean that the soul can only be extracted immediately after or shortly after death. There is again a time limit.

Without overthinking, I found a new group of monsters. I repeated the process and slaughtered them. I made three feathers and stabbed them into the corpses, and soon I felt the connection with the feathers change, and three Crocottas's

soul were floating in the space around my soul.

First, I tried to manipulate them, move them like move my soul essence, but no matter I wasn't able to make it budge an inch.

Next, I used my soul essence and moved one of the floating souls and tried putting it through the symbols on my arm, thinking if it can do so much already, maybe it can do something with, but there was no reaction no matter how long, or hard I tried.

While resting under a tree, I considered what can I do with the souls. I know soul essence can influence as I was able to move them around with it. Souls are made of soul essence, to be more precise there is soul essence in the soul, while the soul itself appears to be made from soul essence in a different state.

Knowing that much, I created a string from my soul essence and punctured the soul of a monster. Like a balloon, it exploded sending tremors across my body and soul. What looked like soul essence spread everywhere, most of it escaped my body with only some residue remaining.

After the initial shock, I gathered my thought again and examined what happened. The residue looked almost exactly like the soul essence I have with some small specks of dark in it. What I found interesting was that I could slightly manipulate the residue!

It seemed like something was obstructing me from full control over it, and I guessed that it was the dark specks. Using my own soul essence, I separated the dark speck out and put them in a corner. This time when I tried to manipulate the residue, it went much more smoothly!

I could only guess, but the dark specks should be the elemental essence of the Crocotta that allows them to mimic voices. Knowing that I couldn't do anything with the elemental essence, I pushed some of it out of my body. With no visible sign, it disappeared.

To see what happens I mixed some of my soul essence with the elemental essence and pushed it outside of the body to see if the soul image is affected by the impurities, but the soul image didn't appear at all. In other words, the soul image can only be manifested with pure soul essence.

This had many implications for me if I had elemental essence before I could manifest the soul image I would have to remove the elemental essence from my soul. But in that situation would I be able to control the elemental essence from my soul?

Arcane and Martial artists use elemental essence, then if I had elemental essence wouldn't that mean that I could be both Soul and Arcane artist? But then what is the reason for me not being able to manipulate the elemental essence? There are three possibilities.

It comes from another being that's why. But then why can I manipulate the soul essence? Because of that, this is the most, unlike reason.

I have an empty soul, thus with no connection to any elemental essence, I have no ability to control it. If it was a person with elemental essence in their soul from the beginning, they could manipulate elemental essence.

Lastly, because I'm a soul artist, and have a soul in my body, it somehow prevents me from controlling it.

I was hoping that it is the last option of the three.

I had no way to test these possibilities, so I could only wait and ask master later. But now that I knew it was useless for me to have the elemental essence I expelled all of it from my body. I will need to ask Master for more details later.

While I was thinking about the elemental essence on instinct, I started to move my soul essence back to my soul. Without realizing I moved the soul essence that came from the monster soul and alongside with my own soul essence.

When I finally realized it, I panicked and looked at the soul, inside of my soul I could see storm brewing as the soul essence was mixed and blended.