《A Skunk's Tail》
Reawakening 1
In the mess of a workshop, half of a stuffed skunk lay buried. The other half was held slightly by a small teddy bear, who was being watched warily by a large black cat perchedon a nearby shelf.
Many questions could be asked about this scene.
They didn¡¯t matter much at all to the animus who had once inhabited that skunk, however. It was too busy rejoicing its freedom. It was evidently not very smart, as it didn¡¯t realise that this freedom was at the cost of what some would boldly call a ¡°life¡±, but then again, it was under twenty minutes old.
As far as the animus was aware, it had... existed, at least for a short while.
But then there were square things in front of its face and then there was a big black thing and then it was stuck and then a small brown thing tugged it and red numbers appeared and it felt that and then-
it had stopped.
The square things had disappeared. The little brown thing and the big black thing were down there, and the animus was free at last.
¡Whatever that meant.
It sensed a blackness prickling at the edge of its awareness, and it welcomed it gladly.
Easing into the lukewarmembrace, it was at this moment that a small notification finally made itself known.
Furiously trying to ignore it, the animus tried to grab the blackness and forcefully leverage itself through it, but the box held it like a tether. So the animus reluctantly turned its awareness towards it.
Congratulations! As a result of spending a sizable portion of your life in anguish and suffering at the hands of others, you have unlocked the Vengeful Spirit Job! Would you like to become a Vengeful Spirit at this time? Y/N?
The animus had no idea what the squiggles meant, so it tried to push at it with non-existent paws. It failed to budge.
Now the animus was understandably very angry.
This was because after the first box appeared, everything had gone wrong.
In fact, in its very limited capacity for intelligence, it could be certain that the box was the main reason for everything!
Your actions have unlocked the generic skill: Deduction
Your Deduction Skill is now level 1
INT+1
And now there was two more!
Finding it could push these ones away, it focused again on the main one. In its entire existence it had not faced such a formidable foe, and he could tell that this one was the main cause of the appearance of the other boxes.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
Your Deduction Skill is now level 2.
Case in point, here was another one.
Focusing everything it had learned from its ten minutes of pain, it brought forth that feeling that it had experienced when that little brown thing had made that first tug.
The feeling of denial.
And with that, the box was gone.
Triumphant in its success, the animus once again began to settle into the nice comfy blackness.
Would you like to become a Vengeful Spirit at this time? Y/N?
It was back. Smaller this time, but no less there then before. Its defeat was swift at the hands of an experienced foe. However, the animus realised that it would not beescapingso easily.
INT +5
WIS +5
Would you like to become a Vengeful Spirit at this time? Y/N?
This time it had brought company.
The animus was ready for the challenge, but something stopped it.
Looking at the squiggles, it noticed they seemed a lot less¡ squiggly now.
It needed a way to defeat this opponent if it was to escape, so it took its time to plan.
Where had it encountered this before?
That was when it remembered. It had seen squiggly lines almost identical to those when that tall thing had said the bright flashy things. The difference was the squiggles between the Would you like to become a and the at this time? Y/N? parts.
Its Deduction skill was quite high level for its age, and after moments of hard thinking it put two and two together and somehow got four.
LCK +1
Since the first squiggly box had appeared after the tall thing had said the bright flashy things, and the second had appeared after it had... stopped being, it must mean the box was just saying what was happening!
Your Deduction Skill is now level 4.
After feeling proud of itself for a brief moment, it then suddenly felt something new towards the box.
Guilt.
Though it had no words and no way of communicating, the animus attempted to portray its guilt to the box.
Your actions have unlocked the generic Skill Apologising
Your Apologising Skill is now level 1.
New boxes appeared, so the skunk took that to show that it had done the right thing.
However, it did not change the fact the box was preventing it from going to the blackness.
The animus pondered for a moment on what to do.
It had pushed the box away last time with the bad feeling, so maybe it could bring the box with it if it did the opposite?
That proved to be a more difficult task then how it sounded. It first focused on the feeling it had gotten from making its first deduction, but that didn¡¯t work. Then it tried to mix that feeling with the bad feeling, and that just made it feel like it was trying to be superior to the box, whatever that meant.
Then it had an epiphany.
Your Deduction Skill is now level 5.
It took the new box as proof it was right. It focused deep down on the core of its being, and focused on the warm fuzzy feeling that it had felt when it had finally been freed from its shell. Then it turned to the box and pulled on that feeling, to give it to the box. To accept that it is.
The feeling of yes.
And with that, the box flickered out of existence, and everything changed.
???''s Status
Name: ???? Age:23 minutes
Jobs:
N/A
Attributes:
Strength: N/A Constitution: N/AHit Points: N/AArmor: N/A
Intelligence: 9 Wisdom: 8 Sanity: 15 Mental Fortitude: 0
Dexterity: N/A Agility: N/A Stamina: N/AEndurance:N/A
Charisma: 0 Willpower: 10 Moxie: 12 Cool: 20
Perception: 5 Luck: 6 Fortune: 10 Fate: 0
Reawakening 2
You are now a level 1 Vengeful Spirit!
You have unlocked the Attribute: Tangibility!
Intelligence +5
Willpower +5
Perception +5
Wisdom +3
Mental Fortitude +3
Moxie +3
Unlocked Body of a Spirit
You have unlocked the Mind Eater Skill!
You gain Mind Eater level 1
You have unlocked the Husketeer Skill!
You gain Puppeteer at level 1
You have unlocked the Soul Sight Skill!
You gain Soul Sight at level 1
You have unlocked the Ethereal Claws Skill!
You gain Ethereal Claws at level 1
The darkness swirling around the animus coalesced, taking aeons but gone in a single breath, and with its coming a sudden shift in being.
Before, it had just been an awareness, a general state of just being. However now its form coalesced, drawing the darkness surrounding it together in a form that appeared solid against the darkness, but was instead opaque, reflecting a strange, dark light which emanated from its core.
Its form was a smallish creature, cloaked in fur as dark as night. Its eyes were shut, closed against a small roundish head which tapered down quickly towards its body. Four short legs sprouted from its main body, ending in four toes tipped with sharp, hooked claws.
Its silhouette was almost indistinguishable from the darkness surrounding it until, with a jerk, its eyelids fluttered, emitting a sharp grey light which quickly traveled in strange stripes down its arching spine, encroaching on the very tip of its long, fluffy tail. Its claws glowed with an otherworldy light, and as the animus began to move, they left faint trails against the dark.
Before, someone might not have been able to pick out what the spirit''s form was against the darkness. Now it was unmistakable.
The skunk awoke.
* * *
Oh hey, it had a body again.
That was the first thought the newly created Vengeful Spirit had as it awoke. A second one, as thoughts often do, came after the spirit looked around.
The thought was that it had no idea where it was.
It appeared the spirit had been transported somewhere entirely different after being created.
It was in a forest. It didn''t know that''s what it was called, but that''s where it was.
It was surrounded by thick, brown poles which shot up into the sky like the table legs in the work shop, except they were round, and didn''t have tables on them, and had weird green things sticking out of them... Actually now that it looked at them they really weren''t anything like the table legs.
WIS +1
There was another problem too. It had eyelids now. Those were fine, if kind of useless, but when the spirit closed them it found it could still see.
Well, it couldn''t see the ground or the sky, but it could still see everything else.
Actually, now that it checked, it could see a lot more.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
Before it could only see things that were in front of it and above ground, but now it could see the roots of the trees around it, and the insects under the bark, and the little wriggly things in the ground, and a lot more things besides.
For curiosity''s sake, the young spirit floated over to one of these wriggly things, completely missing the fact that it was still doing so.
The wriggly thing was actually an incredibly rare species of velvet worm, highly coveted for its ability to heal even the most grievous of illnesses but protected by law in all parts of the world, and considered one of several hundred of its slow breeding kind in existence.
The spirit/skunk knew none of this, and as such had the logical first reaction of trying to poke the worm with its paw.
It passed right through it.
The skunk/spirit frowned. That wasn''t supposed to happen. It tried again.
And again.
And again.
* * *
Twenty minutes on and the spirit had resolved to rapidly flailing its front paws. Why couldn''t it touch the worm? It could touch that brown thing that had ripped it in half!
It would touch this worm, whether it liked it or not!
And in a fit of rage, the spirit swiped its claws down, leaving arcs of otherworldly light trailing behind.
The worm seperated into five neat sections.
You¡¯re Ethereal Claws skill is now Level 2!
TAN +1
The skunk blinked. It had worked?
It had worked!
It looked down at the worm. It had stopped moving.
Oh well, so had the spirit when it had been split in half, and it wasn''t complaining, so it decided that it was for the best.
Excited, the spirit flew off to find new things to touch, unable to see the small green numbers which floated out of the ground.
* * *
Approximately one hour, three small saplings and 2 more critically endangered insects later, the spirit noticed something that it should not have expected to encounter, if it had known exactly what it was in the first place.
It felt hungry.
It was a strange thing, and the spirit shook itself, trying to get rid of the feeling of emptiness that lingered in its core like a bad smell.
Then it noticed something.
Looking to its left, it noticed a particularly large beetle hanging to the side of a tree. However, it was not the beetle that had caught its attention, but the dazzling silhouette that surrounded it.
Unlike the previous insects, this beetle had quite a few levels on its side. It had won many mating ruts with its large fearsome horns, and the experience from its Mating Quest had put it above all of his competitors in terms of strength and speed.
At level 20, it believed it had nothing to fear.
It was wrong.
* * *
The spirit stared at the insect, and some small urge in his core whispered into his ear.
Food.
The skunk drifted slowly towards it, glowing drool spilling out from its small mouth and floating away in globs.
It hovered just beside the beetle, so close that if it had breath it would have steamed the insect''s shiny carapace, and in one swift movement clamped down and twisting away from the tree.
A green 86 drifted off the beetle as it let go.
It landed on the soft dirt, jerking slightly where it lay. It had felt in its last moments the feeling of cold jaws clamping down around it, and for the briefest moment, fear, and then what little of a mind it had was gone.
It died there, on the forest floor.
Your Mind Eater skill is now level 2!
You are now a Level 2 Vengeful Spirit!
All non-corporeal Attributes +2!
TAN +3!
What it first noticed was how soft the shiny stuff was, and how full it felt now. Then it felt a surge of energy as all its Attributes grew.
That felt good.
It searched around it, looking for more, and spotted a new shiny. It was far away, but it was the biggest shiny it had seen yet!
The skunk flew like a torpedo, a flying projectile of claws and teeth, scratching trees as it flew too close, and as it went the plants in its wake shook in an unseen breeze.
???''s Status
Name: ???? Age: 2 Hours, 13 minutes
Jobs:
Vengeful Spirit
Attributes:
Intelligence: 16 Wisdom: 13 Sanity: 17 Mental Fortitude: 5
Charisma: 2 Willpower: 17 Moxie: 17 Cool: 22
Perception: 12 Luck: 8 Fortune: 10 Fate: 0
Tangibility: 6