Assessment [2]

Her eyes soft with reminiscence, her voice showing the awe she still had for the man "Oh my dear, you should have seen him, now that was a real man" I had always been curious about the previous Oversee, he must have been quite a figure that old Ms. Juith still showed so much devotion to him, I had once asked her what happened to him, Ms. Juith eyes had filled with such sadness, that I had quickly dropped the subject and never bought it up — no one on Purgatory talked about the previous Oversee.

I really liked Ms. Juith, she might be an old soul, who had given up on becoming an immortal, and resigned herself to staying in Purgatory, but she was one of the few souls in Purgatory that actually sympathized with me, she had tried to help me in the past, but she was just a lowly bureaucrat with limited power, and no matter how many times she bought up my case with her supervisors, it never went anywhere, but I honestly appreciated that at least she tried.

After filling in my paperwork, Ms. Juith brought out the Soul Reader, it was a small globed shaped crystal, that accessed your past life, its function was to analyze your accomplishments and failures, measure your cultivation success and by reading this information it would be able to determine your current soul level.

Ms. Juith had once given me a brief explanation on why the reading was so important, and how it worked. Becoming an immortal was a long hard road, it took thousands of years, and many lifespans to achieve immortality. Living for eternity was not something everyone could do, your soul needed to extremely powerful to handle the stress of living for such a long time.

So each soul had to live numerous lives, reach lifespan refined their soul, made it tougher and more durable, as each life was filled with countless hardships, nearly ninety-eight percent of souls couldn't handle the hardships that they had to endure going through so much pain and grief over and over again, some like Ms. Juith gave up the path to immortality and stayed in their designated Soul World become employees of that world — most were too exhausted and returned to the source.

It was those who returned to the source that allowed new souls to be "birthed" by the soul tree, as the number of souls allowed to exist was controlled.

The Soul Reader would then read what cultivation you had achieved during your mortal life, to cultivate the spiritual inner energy you required to convert your mortal body to an immortal body took an enormous amount of dedication and discipline. While you didn't keep your cultivation when you died, as the cultivation that you achieved was tied to your mortal body, where your mortal cultivation benefited your soul, was that with each advancement in your cultivation rank, your soul power increased, and this soul power increased the speed of your cultivation next life, which was really an added bonus, as in each new life you had to start from the beginning. The added bonus of soul power was that as your soul became more powerful, your access to "enlightenment" increased, enlightenment wasn't anything special, it was just the ability for you to access some knowledge gained in your previous lifespans, most times it helped you gain a better understanding of magic and cultivation techniques.

It was this combination of life experience, what was referred to as the refinement of your soul plus your achievement in cultivation that the Soul Reader analyzed. The Soul Reader would then display your soul's current class, the stage of your soul development determined your access to resources, and more importantly to which Soul World you would be assigned too, and the Soul World that you were assigned to, played a vital role in you becoming an immortal.

To achieve immortality, you had to convert your mortal body to an immortal body, and you only had one lifespan you do it, so it was important that the world you reincarnated on, had an abundance of energy for you to absorb, there were only a couple of these high ranked "Class A" worlds available.

As each Soul World was responsible for only a few worlds, you had to transfer to a Soul World that was responsible for higher grade worlds. Purgatory was the lowest ranked Soul World — the mortal worlds it controlled were "Class F" worlds.

Cerulea Soul World had access to "Class E" worlds, which was the reason for my bitterness, as Anbel would now be able to cultivate at nearly twice the speed than she had while on Purgatory mortal worlds.

Placing my hand on the Soul Reader, I waited for it to read my previous life, as usual, I could feel a faint pressure on my soul as it read through life, since I had only lived for twelve years, it didn't take long. The Soul Reader glowed a faint blue indicating that my soul refinement was a pass (just like always), and then it read my cultivation, and it turned black — and as always it meant I failed, of course, I always failed, the reason being is that I always died before I could start cultivating. On "Class F" worlds the mortals there only started cultivating at the age of thirteen, and I had never made it to that age in my past ninety-nine lives.

"I am so sorry, my dear," Ms. Juith said her voice laced with sympathy.

"It's okay Ms.Juith" I replied with false cheerfulness.

What else could I do, screaming and shouting or throwing a tantrum wasn't going to solve anything. I had been there and done that before, I had cried enough tears to fill a lake, and it had gotten me nowhere. All I could do was grit my teeth and endure, but I was tired, so damn tired of having to continuously endure this life.

If the damn Oversee actually did his job and protected his people as he was supposed to, instead of getting fat off the souls in Purgatory, I wouldn't be in this position.

If the big guys upstairs had controlled their people the way they were supposed to, I wouldn't be in this situation.

I could go on and on about how the system had failed me, how the souls in power had failed to do their duty, how the gods and goddesses who were suppose to protect those weaker than them had failed to do live up to their responsibility, but after fifteen hundred years the one lesson that had really been drilled into me, life was unfair, there was no justice, the weak were smashed and ground under the boots of the strong — if you want justice you have to get it yourself, if you want to be treated with respect then you needed to be strong to demand.

Only the strong survive, the weak are just prey for the strong.