Eli woke up to the uncomfortable kind of silence.
It was the kind that made him hyper aware of his own heartbeat, his own breathing, and the slight rustle of his clothes as he moved.
He opened his eyes.
He was still on the morgue's floor, his cheek pressed against cold tile that smelled faintly of disinfectant and something metallic.
The emergency lights were still on, painting everything the color of old blood.
But the thumping had stopped.
Eli pushed himself up slowly as every muscle on his body protested. His head pounded and his chest ached.
'What the hell happened?'
The memory came back in fragments:
Dead bodies moving. Blue light. That voice in his head.
[INITIALIZING...]
"Okay," Eli whispered. His voice cracked. "Okay, so that was real. That actually happened."
He looked down at his hands.
His hands were normal. Not glowing, and no weird blue veins.
But when he really focused, he could see something.
A faint blue tinged distortion around his fingers
"What the fuck happened?" he asked the empty air.
That voice suddenly answered his question.
[TUTORIAL INITIATED]
[WELCOME, INTERIM AUDITOR]
But now with floating blue letters that looked like a video game HUD but like they were glued directly onto his retinas.
Eli stepped backward until his back hit the autopsy table. "Wh-What is this? I don't—"
[EMERGENCY PROTOCOL DOES NOT REQUIRE CONSENT]
[DEATH HAS STOPPED.]
[SOULS ARE BACKING UP INTO CORPSES.]
YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED TO RESTORE BALANCE]
"Selected by WHO?" Eli shouted.
No answer.
Just more text appeared in his vision.
[CURRENT STATUS:]
[RANK: F]
[SOULS PROCESSED: 0]
[HUMANITY INDEX: 100%]
[AVAILABLE SKILLS: SOUL SIGHT (PASSIVE), SOUL CONSUMPTION (ACTIVE)]
Eli stared at the words. He could roughly understand what the text meant. But his brain kept snagging on one phrase.
Humanity Index.
"What the hell is this? And what happens if humanity index goes down?" he muttered, trying to reason what was the connection between the death surge with this strange HUD.
[CONSUME SOULS TO INCREASE POWER.]
[INCREASED POWER DECREASES HUMANITY.]
[LOW HUMANITY RESULTS IN CORRUPTION.]
"Huh?"
[YOU WILL BECOME WHAT YOU FIGHT]
"Fight who?" he asked, bewildered.
No answer again.
But this time, Eli began to comprehend what that was all about. A chill ran down his spine.
So whatever appeared on his vision, on his body, was a trade off. The one that could make you getting stronger by eating souls, but you might lose yourself in the process.
"This is some monkey's paw bullshit," Eli muttered, pressing his palms against his eyes. "Fine. What's my objective by doing that?"
[PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: RESTORE SOUL PROCESSING SYSTEMS]
[SECONDARY OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE]
[TUTORIAL WILL NOW BEGIN]
"Super helpful—Wha—Wait—"
The morgue door unlocked itself, and Eli's head snapped toward it.
"Oh, you gotta be fucking kidding me…"
The door swung open slowly.
One of the corpses stood in the doorway, still wearing a hospital gown. It was a male, maybe mid-thirties.
Eli vaguely remembered him from intake. A victim of motorcycle accident, had severe head trauma, and DOA yesterday morning.
The corpse's eyes glowed the same faint blue with the other corpses. Its movement were jerky as it shuffled its step into the room.
[TUTORIAL TARGET IDENTIFIED]
[OBJECTIVE: PROCESS CORRUPTED SOUL]
[METHOD: CONSUMPTION OR PURIFICATION]
"Purification. I want the purification option," Eli said immediately.
[PURIFICATION UNLOCKS AT RANK D]
"WHY DID YOU GIVE THE OPTION THEN?!"
The corpse was walking closer. Its jaw moved but no voice out, like it was trying to remember how to speak.
Eli was still pinned against the autopsy table. The scalpel he had dropped earlier was somewhere on the floor to his left.
Not that a scalpel would do shit against a walking corpse.
'How will I consume its soul?'
He focused on the walking thing shuffling toward him, and he saw it.
The body was just a shell. But inside, he could see the tangled blue veins in the chest cavity.
The veins formed a humanoid shape. It was translucent but flickering.
It looked fractured. Pieces of its surface were peeling away like burnt paper, disintegrating into black smoke.
'I guess that's the soul…'
[CORRUPTED SOUL DETECTED]
[CORRUPTION LEVEL: 34%]
[IF CORRUPTION REACHES 100%, ENTITY WILL BECOME HOSTILE REVENANT]
"It's not hostile NOW?" Eli asked incredulously.
The corpse lunged in uncoordinated and sluggish movement, but it was sudden enough that Eli barely had time to dodge.
He threw himself sideways, making his hip slammed into the steel sink. He winced.
The corpse's hands grabbed at the empty air where he had been standing.
"You said it's not hostile!" Eli gasped.
The system didn't reply.
"Okay…okay. Fuck this, how do I eat its soul?!"
[EXTEND YOUR WILL. GRASP THE SOUL. PULL.]
"That is the LEAST helpful instruction I've ever—"
The corpse turned toward him again, its movement faster this time.
Eli did the only thing he could think of. He reached out.
Not with his hand, but with something that felt like flexing a muscle he didn't know he had. A mental push that originated somewhere behind his sternum.
And he felt it connect to the soul inside the corpse.
He could feel the soul. It was slippery, like a fish but way much colder.
The corpse froze in its lunged position, its mouth opened in a screaming motion.
[SOUL GRASP SUCCESSFUL]
[CONSUME? Y/N]
"If I do this… what happens to him?" Eli's hands held the sink tightly, but he could feel his hands were shaking.
[THE SOUL WILL BE ABSORBED. THE BODY WILL CEASE FUNCTION. THE INDIVIDUAL'S CONSCIOUSNESS WILL BE PROCESSED INTO ENERGY.]
"That's a fancy way of saying 'you'll kill him…" Eli muttered, his gaze fixed on the corpse.
[HE IS ALREADY DEAD.]
"But… is he aware? Can he think? Does he know what's happening?"
The system was silent again.
The soul was flickering in his mental grip, and he could feel its confusion, panic, and hunger. Not its thoughts to be exact, but the emotions.
It didn't want to be in that body, yet it was trapped.
"Shit," Eli breathed. "Shit shit shit."
He tried to pull the soul. It came free, making the body collapse on the floor in a boneless heap.
The sould rushed into his chest, and every nerve of his body lit up at once.
Eli screamed. The information flooded his brain in an instant.
Michael Torres. 34. Marketing analyst. Died instantly on impact. Left behind a wife and a daughter.
Eli fell to his knees, gasping hard.
The soul dissolved inside him, and he could feel it disintegrating into something deep within his core.
[SOUL CONSUMED]
[+50 EXP]
[SOUL PROCESSED: 1]
[HUMANITY INDEX: 98%]
He lost two percent of his humanity for that processing, and felt the difference in his emotion.
Eli stared at his hands. They were somehow steady now.
Shouldn't they be shaking?
He had just killed a man.
Shouldn't he be throwing up? Crying? Or something?
[TUTORIAL COMPLETE]
[YOU NOW UNDERSTAND THE BASICS OF SOUL CONSUMPTION]
[ADDITIONAL CORRUPTED SOUL DETECTED IN FACILITY: 47]
[WOULD YOU LIKE TO CONTINUE?]
Eli looked at the corpse on the floor, an empty shell without a soul on it anymore.
"Do I have a choice?" he asked quietly.
[NO.]
He laughed bitterly.
"Yeah. That's what I thought you would say."
He stood up slowly, and felt his legs were stronger than they should. The ache in his muscles was already fading.
It was the side effect of the consumption, healing him faster than a normal human would.