Mimic Awakening

Chapter 16: Inside The Soul Space

There is a place that is void of anything. Light is absent and absolutely nothingness dominates this place. There are no walls, floors, and ceilings, making it difficult to calibrate the right orientation, if there actually is.

Everything is dark and black until a mysterious figure appears out of nowhere in a fade in matter.

"..."

A few seconds of manifestation, the figure has fully unveiled its appearance. It takes the shape of a human, a human woman to be specific. Although it has the shape of a human, its entirety is made of something white translucent. The figure is butt naked and seems to hover or levitate in the vacuum of space.

"So this is its soul-scape." The woman speaks. "It is so different from the others. This just feels... So empty."

That woman is Claire Forlath, the Great Sorceress of the Roheazul Kingdom. Just now, she fought an unusually overpowered greater dragon and she is having difficulties facing it.

At the end of the intense battle, she managed to sort of eliminate it but she was also killed in the process. However, this is actually a part of her plan. She is seemingly ’alive’ because of a certain magic.

In this world, most people, whether they are regular people or warriors, regard supreme-tier magic as the most powerful magic humanity can cast. One spell of that level can easily turn the tide of a battlefield. That’s why nations tend to keep their supreme-tier casters hidden from the public since they are one of the most valuable assets in a nation.

While supreme-tier magic spells are generally powerful, destructive, and broken, there is actually a realm higher than them. That level of magic is what Claire called ultimate-tier. She knew the existence of such a tier after the second awakening of her awakened ability, which she named Gramarye, the ability that gives her wisdom to almost all of magic.

With much greater firepower, the spells of the ultimate magic are extremely hard to execute due to the massive mana requirements or the specific scenario to trigger. In addition, some of those spells are just too hard to comprehend even for a magical genius like Claire.

However, there is one particular spell that Claire has been cast a few times. The same spell she used to enter this monster’s soul-scape, the place where an individual’s soul is located. That spell is called Astral Invasion.

Astral Invasion is a spell that allows the caster to project their spiritual body out of their physical body to enter their target’s spiritual plane. From there, they can invade the place and transfer their soul to the target, making it their new body.

But they cannot just take over someone’s soul-scape without contending for it. For that reason, Claire had to cast Abyssal Gaze first as it greatly damages the target’s soul, making it easier to defeat once she enters the soul-scape.

Once the invasion is successful, her soul will take over the target’s body with memories and the caster’s awakened abilities are completely intact. Meanwhile, the original soul will be cast to nothingness forever, which means no more revival nor reincarnation for them.

In addition, since awakened abilities are linked to the soul, their awakened abilities will not be passed to the new soul.

"Alright, let’s find its soul."

Afterwards, she drifts her body forward searching for this monster’s soul. Later on, she sees something twinkling and glistening from afar. Thinking she has found its soul, she hurriedly moves closer.

However, upon taking a close look at it, her eyes widened in shock after finding out the actual appearance of the monster’s soul.

"Wait... Is that... A human..?"

Wondering why there is a human-shaped soul inside a monster’s soul-scape, Claire quickly approaches it to investigate. Once getting close to it, she hovers herself in circles around it just to make herself clear. freewebnoveℓ.com

"This is supposed to be a monster. Why is its soul depicted like that of a human?"

No matter how she looks at it, the monster’s soul truly looks like a human. Based on its skeletal shape, she presumes it is a male human.

The soul is floating still with his head stooping down. Cracks appear throughout his body, showing the damages of the Abyssal Gaze she inflicted earlier. The soul is encased in a translucent oval sphere. It is like a capsule where the soul gets connected to the body that she called a soul vessel.

"Does this mean that this monster used to be a human? It does not matter right now. I have to take its body."

As she is wondering why this monster has a human soul, she goes back to her original plan and proceeds to the process of taking the monster’s body. In order for her to take his body, all she has to do is to destroy the target’s soul by overpowering it with her more superior willpower, the core strength of the soul. freёweɓnovel.com

If she has higher willpower, she can just pass her hands through the capsule as it is considering her the better replacement for the soul and pull the man’s soul out of it. It is basically like usurping a throne. With the target’s soul severely damaged, her chance of overtaking it is high.

"You would be a good experimental subject, but I need this. I will make sure to make good use of your body though."

After that, she reaches out her hand to the soul vessel. However, things do not go as she expects.

Zap!

"Ahh—!"

As soon as her finger touches the translucent capsule, a powerful electric shock blasts her away from the soul vessel. She never experienced this kind of response from the soul vessel before. It can only mean one thing.

"The vessel rejected me? But how?! It has been damaged beyond repair! This is impossible!"

The monster’s soul is visibly seriously damaged yet the vessel instantly rejects Claire. She cannot believe that the current state of the monster’s soul has more willpower than hers.

"No way... I can’t accept this!"

Zap!

Refusing to give up, Claire approaches the vessel again and slams her spiritual body on it, which expectedly results in her being knocked back by the shock farther than the last time. She desperately tries to force her soul into the vessel one more time, but the results do not change.

"Let me in...! AHH!!"

Zap!

As she is off-balanced midair, she sees the fingers of the young man’s soul twitching. Before she can regain her balance, the cracks on the damaged soul suddenly lit up. After that, the cracks are gradually filled up with spiritual fragments and the monster’s soul completely restores before her eyes.

"His willpower is getting stronger...!?"

Earlier, Claire was taken aback that the monster’s soul had greater willpower than hers. But now, she is horrified to discover that the soul suddenly restores to its fullest and now is overpowering hers by several folds.

With the huge differences in their power, Claire concludes that it is impossible to take the vessel for herself. All she can do is stare at the soul vessel that she is supposed to stay comfortably. She falls into distress thinking what would happen to her.

After the cracks have been filled, the head of the monster’s soul starts to move up slowly. Claire fears that the soul is about to wake up.

The young man’s soul moves his head side by side to scan the darkness before fixing his attention to the white, floating, female-looking figure. Since their current forms have little to no facial features, they do not know if they are staring at one another or not.

"Huh?" The young man is initially confused and then he suddenly recalls all the things that happened earlier. "Peteep elu? Olex! Zaph cecei pe pelemecep lu lepope!"

The young man says those words with anger in it, which Claire gets. However, she does not understand everything he said, as for her, he is speaking in a language she does not recognize. A language barrier.

"What? I don’t understand what you are saying!"

Claire panics as she thinks that his anger would eventually lead to her fall, especially since she is the one who killed him and then uninvitedly invade his soul.

She has to fix it herself if she wants to increase her chance of not being erased from existence. Even if she fails and returns to her body, it has been inside the monster and is probably not in the right conditions for revival.

In order to do that, she has to make a way for them to communicate properly. Fortunately, she finds a magic spell on Gramarye. It is an ultimate-tier arcane magic that allows her to understand other languages.

In addition, it is one of the few spells that can be cast while in the soul-scape.

"God’s Tongue."

Upon activating the God’s Tongue, she immediately starts listening to the young man for the spell to pick up and recognize the language he is uttering.

"Ey, tehavop nu elu. Epuph hopexe nu te elop? Jexl vaej..."

She continues to listen for a few seconds, slowly absorbing his vocabulary. After some time of painstaking analysis and scrutinizing the depths of the archive, God’s Tongue finally finds a match and subsequently installs the foreign language into Claire’s mind.

"Tecojop nu t’elop... Where am I? And what did you do to me?"

"So he really is a sentient being." She says as soon as she picks up his words. "I understand you now. I assume that you are this monster’s soul, yes?"

Hearing her words clearly, the young man is baffled by the sudden changes and tries to understand what is happening. Since they can understand one another now, he calms himself down and begins questioning this white figure before him.

"What about it? More importantly, how can we magically understand each other now?"

Seeing the monster’s soul calm down, Claire begins to answer his questions cautiously. Her answers must satisfy him as she thinks that he would spare her.

The soul-scape only projects the soul. For that reason, they cannot barely hide their surface though. That is why she has to think carefully of her answers in her inner thoughts before blurting them through her spiritual mouth.

"This is one of my magic, the God’s Tongue. It helps me understand other languages."

"I see. But... Who are you? Where are we? And what do you mean by soul?"