Chapter 104: Fusion

Now David could clearly perceive the changes in the soul. He had long wondered what it truly meant to move his spirit into the Shadow Servant’s body.
Now he could see the shift in the soul directly and search for the key to that migration.

After he moved one-quarter of his spirit into the Shadow Servant, he sensed that the soul bastion of his original body had shrunk to about a quarter of its former size, while within the Shadow Servant’s body there appeared a soul bastion of one-quarter scale, complete with the soul inside it.
He recalled how, in battle, the hypnotic brainbug had launched a fierce mental assault that battered his true soul, while the Shadow Servant’s one had remained untouched.
Only then did he truly understand: his transfer of spirit had been the transfer of only part of the soul.

“What if I moved all of my soul into the Shadow Servant’s body?” he wondered, curiosity stirring again.
He had done that before, though he did not then understand the relationship between himself and the Shadow Servant, and he knew from then on that such an experiment carried no visible danger.

When David moved all of his spirit into the Shadow Servant, he sensed a complete soul bastion appearing inside it, while in his original body he could detect only a tiny citadel. The link between them seemed impossible to sever fully.
In truth, this condition would baffle any expert in souls. A soul is meant to be indivisible; once divided, it should suffer catastrophic damage.
Such damage is usually fatal for any life form, any race.

And yet the very existence of a Shadow Servant was itself a contingency—an accident that should never have occurred, brought about by David’s passage across worlds.
David did not know whether, if his human body died, his soul could continue to exist using only the one preserved in the Shadow Servant. However curious he might be, he could not and would not test it.

“How many knowledge spheres did I get this time?” He set soul matters aside and turned to the spheres stored in the Shadow Servant.
Seeing so many knowledge spheres flickering in the servant like a starry sky, he felt a sudden joy. Most were orange, and a few were yellow; he was almost impatient to learn what kind of knowledge those yellow ones held.

At once, the Shadow Servant altered their display and arranged them neatly.
As David read each sphere, his excitement settled. Most of them were of little use to him.
There were ten Great-Axe Mastery knowledge spheres, eight War-Hammer Mastery spheres, five Shield Mastery spheres, and six Spear Mastery spheres.
All of these were orange, with a few even red.

By David’s standards, these should have been the strongest abilities in a soul, yet even the finest abilities of a true Knight were only red at the novice level—nearly reaching the orange of proficiency, but not quite. It made no real sense.
He counted three red spheres. For him those three had practically no use.
The rest, at the proficiency level, could only raise his handling of a few weapons.

There were only twenty-nine spheres here, yet he had absorbed souls from no fewer than thirty-five people.
Then he saw the remaining six: Spaceship Piloting (10% proficiency), Unarmed Combat (23% proficiency), Mathematics (5% proficiency), Literature (2% proficiency), General Knowledge (4% proficiency), and Theft (51% proficiency).

At first, the presence of yellow spheres had made him wildly excited. But when he saw that those yellow ones represented proficiency-level knowledge, he understood what made a “civilian Knight.”
In truth, these knights that could easily be controlled by the hypnotic brainbugs were not powerful in the least. Some of them were not even living by the title of Knight at all; they had other occupations.
Spaceship piloting, unarmed combat, even mathematics, literature, and general studies—David could all understand. As a civilian Knight, some people may have hobbies stronger than their fighting ability. That was possible.

But he could not ignore the Theft sphere: theft at 51% proficiency.
In David’s reckoning, any ability at proficiency made one an elite in that field.
Theft at that level could almost be called a master thief’s craft.

Apart from this one, David saw for the first time knowledge spheres left by an insect race:
Speed Talent (usable), Speed Talent (usable), Constitution Talent (unusable), Constitution Talent (unusable), and Mental Hibernation (99% proficiency).
This was also the first time he had seen knowledge spheres without a proficiency mark. Except for Mental Hibernation, the other four were white.

By his judgment, the two Speed Talent spheres had come from the rending flyers, while the two Constitution Talent spheres were from the armored rock bugs.
The final Mental Hibernation sphere was, without doubt, extracted from the hypnotic brainbug’s soul.

Faced with this cluster of spheres, he did not know which to choose first.
He focused first on a Speed Talent (usable) sphere, for the white color made it unusual. He wanted to know what white meant. Could it increase his speed talent?

Speed had always been his weakness. Given the chance, he would naturally test it first.
In truth, even true Knights were slower than insects when speed was compared directly; against speed-minded insects, a Knight had to rely on near-perfect teamwork to stand a chance.

With a mere thought, the Shadow Servant sent one white Speed Talent (usable) sphere into his body.
This time David clearly perceived the sphere as soon as it entered: it transformed into strange energy and spread through his whole frame.
With his present control over his body—especially his vastly sharpened senses—he felt himself grow lighter.

The sensation was odd. He knew it was not an increase in strength, for his strength remained at 3.24, unchanged.
Yet soon he saw his agility on the attribute panel rise from 2.0 to 2.1. In other words, inserting that Speed Talent (usable) sphere directly raised his agility by 0.1.

He thought of the bodies of the rending flyers strewn across the ground and wished—too late—that he had absorbed their souls, for then his speed might have leapt much higher.
He tested himself again with care. Aside from the +0.1 boost in agility, nothing else had changed.

David reflected that the rending flyers excelled in speed, and the armored rock bugs excelled in defense. Since defense comes from physical constitution, this probably explained why he had gained Speed Talent (usable) and Constitution Talent (unusable).
And the hypnotic brainbug had also given him Mental Hibernation (99% proficiency), suggesting it possessed an exceptional ability, stronger than even its basic bodily attributes.

He ordered the Shadow Servant to send in the second Speed Talent (usable) sphere. The same sensation returned at once, and soon his agility reached 2.2.
Such direct gain only made him crave the Constitution Talent (unusable) sphere all the more.

But he did not understand why it was labeled unusable. He tried to have the Shadow Servant transfer the Constitution Talent (unusable) sphere into him. Nothing happened. The sphere did not fuse with his body as the other spheres had; it remained unchanged.
David hastily told the Shadow Servant to retrieve it again. Though he could not use it now, who could say on what day he might one day become eligible.

He knew how vital constitution was to him. To increase it required tremendous resources, and only sustained, serious training.