[Soul Harvested and Cleansed]
"It did…" Dante scratched the back of his head with a confused expression. He was certain he wasn't schizophrenic to be hearing voices. "What was that?" He threw a glance back at Alexander, and the armored man chuckled, resting his fists on his hips. "It means you are a blessed one, just like me. Just focus for a second and think about seeing what your Blessing is all about. It's like trying to will a game's status screen out. Try and see what you can do."
Dante did just that, and Alexander went on to explain everything that Dante should be seeing. Of course, he couldn't see Dante's stats, as they weren't projected into reality but directly into the Blessed's mind.
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Name: Dante {First, you should see your name and family name. People found it really useful in more than one way.}
Title: Watcher of Souls {Then you should see a Title card. This one is empty for the majority of people. Only a handful managed to get a Title. I doubt you got one, but don't worry about it. You can still get one if you rank up and grow stronger.}
Rank: Mundane {Speaking of Ranks, this card should show your current rank. It should be Mundane, as everyone starts there. You can raise your rank to grow stronger and gain more innate abilities.}
Class: Beast {As I said before, all humans are considered Beasts. So your class should say Beast, and if it says anything else, you're probably an abomination, hahaha.}
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Devil Hearts: [1/8]
Soul Harvest: [2/666] {Right below your class, you should see a separation line, and then your Soul Foundation. It differs from one person to another, but you should see a number that you must fill to the max. This increases both your physical power and mana capacity, so maxing it up is a must for any serious Blessed. For me, I need to amass a thousand good deeds to max it out, and helping you here gave me a few points.}
Innate Abilities: [Soul Sense] {Below that, you should see a card that says Innate Abilities; this is the fun part about being a Blessed. Here you can find all of the abilities that God gave you. I hope you got something powerful. Ah, at the start, you should only have one. But you'll get a new ability each time you rank up, and the ones you had will get stronger.}
Soul Sense description: [As the cleaner of souls, you need to be able to see souls. God had given you the ability to see souls] {Focusing on your ability would make a new window pop out with the ability's description. Read that well to understand how your powers work… but some people find their descriptions less helpful than others.}
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Curse: [Cleaner of Souls] {Then below all of that, you'll find the Blessing tab, where the name Blessed comes from. Here you will find the name of your Blessing, which should give a vague idea about what powers it might give you.}
Curse Rank: Eldritch {Here you will find the rank of your Blessing, and of course, the higher the better. But getting anything over the Blessed rank is amazing.}
Curse description: [God had made life, and now, it is your responsibility to clean after him. Pick up your mop, and get to work, janitor. He even made you an immortal so you may never retire, isn't he such a good employer?] {This is the description of your Blessing, which should explain what it is and sometimes why you got it. But several people report the description straight out mocking them, like mine.}
Curse Price: [You are a master of souls, and thus, none can rule over your soul, not even death. You are an immortal being, destined to suffer in agony, and watch all those around you perish to the daunting will of time.] {This is the part you must pay close attention to: The Blessing Vow. To maintain your power and grow stronger, you must keep up with whatever this section tells you to do. Mine requires me to stay a virgin for life, since I'm a Holy Knight… So if I lose my virginity, I'll lose my Blessing with it.}
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Magic items: NONE {This is where your magical items show up. The sword I lent you is a magical weapon, but it won't show up since I own it. I can give it to you, but the binding ritual would take more time than we have here. There are two types of magical items: those made by us humans and the ones made by God and found in Dungeons. The items found in dungeons are called artifacts and usually have a description with valuable lore about this entire abomination mess, which the government would pay a lot for.}
Summons: NONE {Summons are creatures you can summon. You either get them from dungeons, or, as most people do, from their pets. Yes, if you have a pet, you can turn them into a summon. They'll stay alive as long as you live, and can even be transferred to other people after your death so they can live even longer. They won't need food or water, be immune to diseases, and even gain some powers based on your own strength.}
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Alexander tapped Dante on the shoulder as he pointed down at the Scarred Beast. "This thing is a Scarred Beast, and inside it, there should be a Monster Core; it's a magical crystal full of mana. They are used to make magical items, and as power sources for the new generation of generators called the Mana Pulse Reactors. He pointed at the wolf's chest and then stabbed it with his sword, easily prying the glowing gem that was stuck beside its heart. Here you go, the Blessed's paycheck. Money isn't everything, but it's 95% of everything."
As he leaned forward and picked the core, he smiled. "This is a rank two core. Even if it came from a Scarred abomination, since we have a use for them, this is called a Touched Core by many. Of course, creatures of higher Class would have more than one core inside them, so keep that in mind." He threw the core to Dante.
Dante looked at it and gasped. "Wait! So, the Monster from earlier should have had two Mundane Cores? Why didn't we harvest those?" He gave Alexander a sharp glare as if he owed him money, but Alexander laughed. "Don't worry about them; they are barely worth anything. A Mundane Core can barely keep a lamp lit for an hour, but this Scarred Core holds almost ten times as much power, and could easily power a mana truck for an hour."
Even so, Dante would've loved to have those two cores so he could sell them later and get some cash. He still couldn't remember how money worked, but he could tell it was important, if what Alexander said about it being 95% of everything is to be believed.
"Money is money! We shouldn't waste it!" Dante growled, but he could still understand they didn't have much time in the current situation. They can't stop and collect every core they come across. "Where are we running to anyway? This entire place is messed up."
Dante could see the winding road, the burned carriages, and the flames raging everywhere. "To the front, where our Battalion Leader is. It should be just behind the next turn on the road. Once we regroup with him, he would take the lead, and we should be able to form an organized squad to eliminate all of the nearby Abominations and then make it safely home."
As they rushed past the burning carriages, Dante focused on his own innate ability, [Soul Sense]. Those orbs he had been seeing all of this time were souls. Which was cool, but made him a bit sad that it wasn't a fighting ability at all. He would've loved to have something that would empower his magic or allow him to reinforce his body, but sadly, he didn't get that.
He can easily spot people and abominations alike, even if they were hiding behind cover, but he seemed to have a short range of about ten meters, beyond which the souls would fade away and become invisible.
That ability also allowed him to tell Classes and Ranks by counting the number of souls a creature has and the intensity of the light of their souls. So while not directly helpful in combat, it would help him choose which opponents to fight and which ones to run away from.
But there was one thing that he noticed, and it was far better than his soul sense. As he harvested the soul of that Scarred Beast, it increased the size of his mana pool. It seems that he now has three droplets of mana instead of just one, assuming that he had one from the start, and the two points he got from the Scarred Beast were what increased it to three.
The more abominations he kills, the more mana he would get up to the maximum of his soul harvest… Alexander was right; maxing that up should give him the biggest strength boost for now.
And now, he had been avoiding it for a while, but as they had nothing to do but run, he couldn't help but look back at his stats in horror. ^The hell you mean I'm immortal?^