[Connecting the Soul]
[...]
[Successful connection with low-ranking spiritual entity]
[Connecting the Astral Body]
[...]
[Successful connection]
Death was not as he imagined. There were no figures in white robes with a divine aura, no angels, and no sensual demon girls welcoming him. Neither was there an absolute void nor anything he could relate to any religious reference. Just… something different.
[Connecting with Consciousness]
[Error]
[...]
[Failed to connect]
[Calculating]
[...]
Being dead was, in simple terms, like a lucid dream that was built around him. Things made minimal sense: water fell if he spilled it, the sky was blue, textures existed. But more complex details failed. Clocks did not tell the time: they moved without purpose. The television changed what it showed if he looked away. Of course, if he focused entirely on them, they regained logic, but only while he maintained his attention.
[Calculation finalized]
[...]
[Starting evaluation]
[...][...][…]
People were also there… if they could be called "people." They were exactly what one would expect from a dream, blurry figures with incomplete patterns. At first it was curious, then it simply stopped being so. He could not blame them: they were most likely constructs of his own mind, created to prevent loneliness from crushing him.
[…]
[Evaluation concluded]
[Critical lack of energy in low-ranking spiritual entity]
[Constant loss of ego]
[Searching Protocol]
[…]
One might think that, being a dream, he would have total control… but it was not that simple either. He could change things like the color of the sky or some physical law, but as soon as his attention wavered, everything returned to what his unconscious believed it "should" be. He had exactly what he wanted in the immediate moment, but the human mind is not designed to maintain such a rigid thread of thought in a world where every idea becomes real.
[Protocol found]
[…]
[Searching abilities]
[…]
[Abilities found]
[Analyst]
[Spiritual Zone]
[…]
So he simply enjoyed what he could. The food tasted almost the same as in life, but with a muted touch. Physical sensations were still there, so he could not cease to exist in such a place, as he "could not" conceive of such a thing as "nonexistence."
[Forcing ability evolution]
[…]
He obviously avoided thinking about certain things like his family; he really did not want to be tortured by feelings of sadness neither in this place nor anywhere else. Since he was dead now, he at least wanted to be at peace with himself. Sure, he felt bad for his parents and his sister, but he knew that at the end of the day they would get over things, only he was not sure he could do that. Sometimes he heard their voices, but he knew it was just him having a bad moment in which he remembered something he should not have, not in a place molded by thoughts.
[Analyst] → [Great Analyst]
[Spiritual Zone] → [Spiritual Plane]
[Insufficient Magicules]
[…]
Then suddenly everything became extremely real, but not in a sense he could define, although it would be like an imitation? As if energy imitated matter in every sense but name. The city vanished, replaced by a fog covered void. Inside the house, everything had weight, texture, resistance. He tried to look away from the television… but it kept showing static. That never happened before.
[Forcing ability acquisition]
[…]
[Abilities Acquired]
[Magicule Manipulation]
[Mana Perception]
[…]
He took a glass of water, thinking of cider; before, that thought was enough to change the content. This time it did not happen. Only when he consciously forced it did the flavor change. And it was perfect, identical to that of his life. False, yes, because deep down he knew that everything was energy and not matter.
The clocks worked exactly as they should. The house did not change its textures or colors every time he lost concentration. Everything responded only to his conscious will, which made him smile a little.
[Conditions met]
[...]
[Forcing racial evolution]
[…]
With one clear thought, the entire world reacted. The house stretched like overheated rubber, shattered like broken glass, melted like water into dark soil and smooth rocks. From them, huge green vines sprouted, filling the ground with their shapes, laden with purple fruits of every type ever imagined. Some vines of a more vibrant color gathered together, forming what looked like a bed made entirely of them. High above, a pearlescent sphere imitated the moon, and colored crystals lit up like stars.
[Insufficient Magicules]
[…]
[Initiating accumulation protocol]
[…]
Adrian felt the texture of the plants as they accommodated to his shape. In such a place there was no one but him, but that did not entirely bother him, as loneliness could be faced in many ways now that he could mold such a place. A couple of moments after verifying that everything was as it should be in the world, he sang a melody as his eyes closed in a sign of relaxation.
"Ba-dee-ya, say do you remember…" he sang slowly as the stars lit up with the rhythm.
[Entering accumulation state]
[…]
[Processing]
Adrian slowly fell into the sleep he induced himself, but as a being entirely made of thoughts he could not really sleep. What he felt was like remaining inactive, as if putting a machine to work with the minimum energy possible not to turn off. For the first time in his life and death, Adrian Vance felt peace.
[…]
[1%]
[…]
[…]
[…]
[…]
[…]
[…]
[…]
[…]
[99%]
[100%]
[Process completed]
[…]
[Initiating evolution protocol]
[…]
[Evaluating Possible evolutions]
[Calculating compatibility]
[Lesser Elemental: Earth-Water] [Specialized spiritual life form] [68.7%]
[Dragonewt] [Semi-spiritual life form] [89.2%]
[Lesser Daemon] [Spiritual life form] [93.4%]
[Lesser Daemon Vine] [Specialized spiritual life form] [99.7%]
[Selecting Lesser Daemon Vine]
[Entering evolution state]
[Acquiring intrinsic abilities]
[Magic Resistance] [Material Creation] [Possess]
[Acquiring Unique abilities]
[Shadow Harvest] [Dark Mage]
He woke up with a softness he had never experienced before in all that he had lived. He felt like he could sleep forever like this. But he had to continue existing like all entities. Maybe escape, although… right now he felt too peaceful to worry much about those kinds of things.
In these moments he felt different, bigger, more him, more like how he saw himself, if he used the size of the artificial moon as a reference to compare. He formed a mirror, wanting to see himself. And he was not yet prepared to look into the abyss.
Three meters tall if he was not mistaken. With a much more defined musculature than he had before going to sleep. The same humanoid silhouette he remembered… but changed.
His whitish purple skin made it clear that he was no longer human.
His hands were so large that a human head would fit in them. From the tips of his fingers, a natural, leaf like fabric covered his forearms like a pair of gloves, ending in leaf tips like feathers. His feet, closer to those of a great ape, supported his upright figure with the same dark green gloves acting as shoes.
From his lower back came membranous wings of a nearly black green color, softly beating with a life of their own. A strong and flexible tail like a tentacle extended from his lower back; the color was a dark, almost black green, while the suckers were a clear fluorescent violet.
His black hair with a slight touch of green fell long over his face, hiding his multiple goat pupils in irises that were a mix of violet and crystalline green. Pointed ears, like those of a high fantasy goblin, were visible. Two jet black horns like small curved tusks with a more than clear edge crowned his head, completing his body.
He wore straight leg trousers made of dark linen, held by a large flattened vine of a dark green color.
That appreciation did not last more than a few seconds, during which he was not bothered by his form, but rather felt more real? How to put it, it was exactly how he expected to look based on his own actions, rather than the physical appearance of a human.
But he did not process the situation of his new form for a moment because it seemed natural to him, and in any case, his head was full of information, new information that was necessary to quickly understand because it was giving him a new context. An understanding of the energy that composed him, of the false world that surrounded him, as well as of himself taking on that new form.
But he did not have time to delve deeper because an androgynous voice filled the void.
He recognized it immediately.
[Process completed]
[Searching Compatible Vessels]
[Vessel Found]
He looked at the nothingness. The voice was omnipresent. The next thing it said did not reassure me one bit due to the fact that I was now a spiritual life form. Transcending flesh and matter might make one more proud, but he was not so deluded as to not recognize that he was greatly helped by [The Voice of the World] or recognized by it to some extent to be so; after all, he was not that arrogant.
[Error]
[Forced Transfer]
[Stopping process]
That is not good at all. If what he knew was correct, he gained his new abilities while being transferred to the world of the slime, but having his transfer forced did not sound like something he wanted to experience.
[Error]
[Initiating Forced Transfer]
The world exploded in colored light. Everything disintegrated as if an file was simply being deleted on a computer. His body became a meaningless whirlwind of colors. He did not feel real danger, but he did feel the sensation of being torn and stretched in all possible directions never conceived.
He screamed as his consciousness faded.
…
When I finally recovered my senses, the first thing I felt was flesh. Human flesh. Pulse, blood, breathing, as well as the weakness it conferred. Beneath that physical facade, very deep down, I was there as energy, giving the orders like a puppeteer.
A little weakened and dizzy, I tried to lift this body only to fall headlong onto scattered liquid on the floor. It was the color of blood, but without that thickness or smell of iron; it was alcohol, one I remembered very well: Wine.
I tried to get up again, but gave up. The vertigo felt too intense to ignore. I remained seated cross legged, taking deep breaths while observing the place for information: a dark basement, heavy with the smell of dampness and fermented fruit. Shelves full of preserves. Tools hanging next to good quality fishing rods. A collection of roller skates that could only belong to a young girl was there. In the background, an antique washing machine and a silent boiler. And around me, empty bottles and others uncorked, spilling wine all over the floor.
I looked at my reflection in the puddle. That face… human again. The same one I used in another life. The same… but not entirely. My eyes, even reflected in the deep red of the wine, hinted at impossible violet and green tones of its true form.
I stood still for a moment, letting the fragments of memory come in waves. Everything was scattered, confused, but enough to orient myself. I saw this body, myself, hours before. I felt the sadness like a memory, I saw the tears, how he was digging his own grave by drinking so much just to forget a heavy pain, and I understood why.
This Adrian's parents and sister had recently died in a plane crash. It would not have affected me so much… if they had not been identical to mine. Not just physically: they behaved like them. That cut through any emotional defense I might have had, which made me remain silent for a long time.
He sighed a little, calming down because he really needed to know the situation he was in, so he made some sense of the disconnected sea of memories in his head.
He was in the basement of his parents' house on the outskirts of a small town in Washington. His name was Adrian Vance, just like in his other life. Furthermore, from what he could tell, he had a "relatively" similar life story; only things like location and time were different from what he remembered.
The date should be late November 2004, a few days more or less, but that was it.
As his drunkenness wore off much faster than a human's should, he reviewed the little bit of his life: he had died, he does not remember how, but he transformed into a demon by [The Voice of the World]. This last part is a bit terrifying because it means that regardless of the world he is in, the supernatural must exist to some extent, but there is also the forced transfer as the cherry on top.
Curiously, having stopped being human did not affect me. The implications of the world I had fallen into were more unsettling than my new nature. Even so, my emotions were total chaos: from calm at continuing to exist, sadness at not seeing my family again, and a soft, foreign pain, belonging to the Adrian of this world, a pain that with every passing second was becoming more "my" pain.
There was also confusion. Why me? I was not interesting, nor important enough to be reincarnated. I am aware of my limitations. So I could only accept this as an absurd chain of coincidences that had given me another chance to be alive.
"Well… I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that I can't waste a second life," I murmured, standing up carefully so as not to slip on the wine.
When he was fully upright, he walked slowly towards the stairs. Each step felt a little more connected to the physical body he was using, but not only that, everything he saw brought him small flashes of memories of this body: like the time he fell down these stairs as a child chasing his pet from that time. Or how the preserves he saw earlier were a hobby of his no, his mother's in this world, a different hobby than the one he remembered her having, while the tools along with the fishing rods belonged to his father. And the roller skates belonged to his younger sister.
The more he observed, the stranger everything became. It was like looking at myself in a distorted mirror: familiar, but not identical. Even so, my demonic identity was the dominant one. The rest… were just additions, like a coloring that dissolves in a large source of water can't do much more than change the color slightly.
When he finally left the basement, what he found was a kitchen that would be quite beautiful if not for all the mess with more wine bottles scattered around. Everything was a disaster, but it brought him new memories, like the time his younger sister made him pancakes for his eighteenth birthday, or how his mother prepared the fish his father caught on his fishing days.
A couple of photos stained with red liquid were on the family table next to a bunch of wilted white flowers: my parents, my teenage sister, exactly as I remembered them, as if an imperfect copy of my previous life had been assembled here.
I kept staring at that photo for too long. I did not notice when a tear fell. I did not care if it was mine or the other Adrian's. I owed it to them, even if they were just a mere reflection of what I knew.
There were wrinkled papers besides the photos. They were very stained and almost illegible, but I could tell they were things about my parents' insurance. Letters from distant relatives offering condolences, mixed with receipts for my excessive alcohol consumption in recent weeks.
I put the wilted flowers from the vase aside. That simple act relieved me more than I expected. I sighed, forcing myself to leave the sentimentality for later.
First, let's understand the situation.
The obvious thing was that I was a demon based on the magic of the Slime anime world. Second thing; the knowledge in his mind was instinctive, telling him how to mold the energy [Magicules] to do whatever he wanted with the so called [Aspectual Magic], which was summarized a lot in using energy, giving it intention, and understanding the goal of the intention; clearly it was more complex than that, but he would leave that for later. Third thing, he very possibly has more abilities, even a unique ability, given that he "crossed" between worlds, unless of course his ability is just being a demon, but he would not lose much by trying, you know.
So with a bit of Magicules and a clear intention: Context, information, abilities. He used magic for the first time, a spell he remembered hearing but did not know where from. Maybe it was just his instinct as a demon explaining how to accomplish his task.
"I just hope I don't look like a damned idiot from a system light novel... here we go [Appraisal]" The flash on my finger as I touched my temple confirmed that it had worked. My closed eye was flooded with information. Not too much, perhaps because this was the first time in his life he had used something like magic. If he had not felt his heart beating a thousand times per second just for trying, he would have felt like a fool for not trying it.
To say I was surprised by the information would be an understatement, because everything had gone well, too well, and the abilities. My God, if the voice of the world were not the equivalent of a very advanced magical program, I would have prayed to it.
[Adrian Vance: Lesser Daemon Vine] [A minor demon of a specialized subspecies for the great harvest of evils and the great demonic banquet. High evolutionary potential.]
[Intrinsic Abilities] [Own abilities that define the physical, mental, and spiritual state.]
[Great Analyst] [Ability to quickly decompose, analyze, and understand concepts and phenomena.]
[Spiritual Plane] [Ability to create an immaterial plane created from condensed Magicules.]
[Racial Intrinsic Abilities] [Abilities based on the nature of the race.]
[Magic Resistance] [Grants intrinsic resistance to magical attacks and effects.]
[Material Creation] [Allows the creation of solid forms that act as matter from condensed Magicules.]
[Possess] [Ability to take and control material bodies or entities provided the conditions are met.]
[Extra Abilities] [Basic abilities above the common range acquired through certain conditions]
[Magicule Manipulation] [Capacity for the use of Magicules at will.]
[Mana Perception] [Ability to perceive the world through ambient Magicules.]
[Unique Abilities] [Irreplaceable abilities with multiple uses or great power.]
[Shadow Harvest] [Dominion over the powers to organize the harvest and the banquet of the end of times]
[Dark Mage] [Enhances the potency and efficiency of magic that involves the corrupt knowledge of it.]
I could have laughed at the situation I was in if it were not for everything it implied. I thought about it as my gaze fell on that photo, which I had to put face down so that it would not disrupt my emotions more than it already had.
Looking at my new capabilities, I seemed like a character build specialized in dark magic or status effects, as well as vine related magic if the Harvest thing meant anything. In addition to having abilities related to analysis and the creation of pocket dimensions, if [Spiritual Plane] was what I thought that world before I came here was.
I thought about it while sitting in one of the dining room chairs. To be completely honest, testing the powers should be the first thing, which I already did with [Magicule Manipulation] by casting a spell. [Possess] was what kept me tied to this body, so that as well. [Great Analyst] is a passive ability that I noticed was very useful if I could guess how long the house had not been cleaned by the amount of dust on the table. What else can I test for the moment?
"Hmm, I think the perception ability should be enough," I said to myself as I instinctively flipped some kind of switch now that I knew I had the ability.
The next thing I noticed was almost nothing. Small currents of energy floated low, but it was so little and so scattered that it really did not do much good. But I understood something: it was due to the lack of energy in the environment, so I foolishly tried something: dispersing my energy, which worked because now I could notice the things that were there, like the violet aura I was passively generating. I do not know if anyone would be able to notice it, but even so, I decided to retract it but leave some Magicules in the environment to use the ability, which was done with some manipulation because at first I retracted both things.
"That was a success," I said to myself as I tried the next thing, which would be [Material Creation]. The truth is that it was quite simple just for the fact that as a demon I knew how to use it quite instinctively, I thought as a group of my Magicules condensed into a penny coin. The thing felt entirely real. I even made the mistake of tasting it to check its realism. Terrible idea. But effective. In the end, I knew that the object was nothing more than condensed energy that, to be completely honest, would not be differentiated from a real object unless you knew how to distinguish Magicules from matter.
I undid the coin by making the group of Magicules that composed it crumble, and I absorbed it as I did with the aura.
Next on my imaginary list would be the unique abilities and [Spiritual Plane]. The truth is that I could try that right away, but I do not know how long I will be immersed in it, so the best thing would be to take a shower and tidy up the house because it hurts a little to see it like this.
I sighed as I climbed the stairs to the second floor.
It was time to start over.