Take Over

As Achilles started searching every single room, his mind darted back to his plan after he had discovered the existence of both his skill.

...Even now, he still wasn't sure how did he come up with such a crazy idea.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Around a day ago, night time.

At the top of an abandoned building.

'Heart of The Devourer and Will of The Dominator...' Achilles held his chin and thought to himself.

Both abilities were surprisingly useful to his current situation, especially the former.

'Heart of The Devourer' allowed him to directly 'eat' the soul of his victim and absorbed all of the remnants, which increased his growth rate exponentially.

When a Divine killed a Corrupted or vice versa, that being could only gain around fifty percent of the remnants of the other in order to increase their strength.

This was due to the fact that half of the remnants that infected living beings were directly attached to their souls which still resided within the Mindscape.

Hence only fifty percent of the remnants could be absorbed because there was no way to separate the rest from the soul itself.

It also explained the existence of soul artifacts and evil spirits — the former was because of the remaining remnants that living beings weren't able to absorb and the latter was because they still had their remnants fully remaining.

It was also for this reason that when an evil spirit tried to take another body, it could only possess it since there was still another soul inside.

This was what Achilles was worried about, that he could only possess the body temporarily and was unable to deal with the mental corruption entirely, which could only be solved thoroughly when the body was completely his.

But with the 'Heart of The Devourer', his problem had been solved.

With that, a complete plan fully formed in his mind:

'....First, I'll use the 'Will of The Dominator' to control a small Abandoned creature, then I need to find a weak point in the security to sneak the thing in.'

'All that's left is to find a body suitable to mind, devour its soul, and get the hell out of there.'

...The plan sounded quite perfect at first, but there were a few serious loopholes.

One, there was no guarantee that the morgue would have a perfect body for him to take, which meant he might infiltrate the facility for naught.

Second, even if he did manage to get a body, there was no way to make sure he would escape out there safely. After all, a corpse suddenly waking up and trying to get out of the morgue certainly wouldn't be a pleasing sight.

...Of course, this was the final solution, later that day he had also tried to find a body in one of the Abandoned at the slums.

But the bodies he found were either not suited for him or in horrible conditions.

So it left him with no choice but to go forth with the final solution.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Back in the present, inside the unfortunate young man's Mindscape.

Achilles was frantically running around searching for the soul of the body. But the problem was, this house...

'Is simply way too weird! How come a small terraced house can have this many rooms!?'

He had searched for every single room he came into contact with, but he still couldn't find the room where the soul resided.

The Mindscape was starting to disappear more and more and soon would reach where he was at. So it was natural for him to start panicking.

The dirt worms on his right side also began moving and squirming as a response to his emotions, combined with the fact that this was the last day before his time runs out, the mental corruption was beginning again!

But Achilles had no time to try and calm his mind down, but could only start increasing his speed to quickly search for every single room.

...After what seemed like an eternity, he finally found it.

Inside a small bedroom with simple decorations and no window.

On top of a crude bed with a blue blanket and pillow, a white-bluish orb was hovering above the bed.

Despite the destruction that was happening in the Mindscape, the orb remained motionless as if nothing in this world could affect it.

Just as Achilles was about to arrive next to the orb, it suddenly reacted and shook slightly.

Achilles' instinct immediately called out and he jumped to the left side of the room by reflex.

He managed to dodge in time before two gales of wind blade flew to the position he was before and shattered the door of the bedroom.

His face grimaced at the sight of this:

'...It looks like there's a defense mechanism for intruders.'

Achilles guessed that since the host was unconscious, his soul naturally put more resistance to protect against possible intruders.

This wasn't anything surprising since the Mindscape acted as a mental barrier to shield the soul, it was only because the young man's mentality got weakened that he was able to enter this space. And now that the mental barrier rendered useless, the soul had to defend itself.

Achilles snapped out of his thoughts when he sensed three more gales of wind blades heading in his direction.

Without hesitation he started dashing towards the gales and just before he got cut into pieces, he ducked down and rolled his body before getting back onto his foot.

He wasn't able to breathe a sigh of relief because right after that the bluish-white orb released a powerful wind that pushed his body back slightly.

Achilles gritted his teeth and tried his best to not get blown away like a piece of paper. After he was able to gain a foothold, he slowly and steadily walked in the soul's direction.

The orb seemed to have sensed a great danger heading to its position as it responded with an even fiercer blow of wind.

Despite the enormous pressure threatening to push him back, Achilles with all of his strength and willpower still moved toward the soul.

The bluish-white orb's light flickered like it was truly afraid and sent two more gales in its enemy's direction.

This time Achilles didn't try to dodge it but let the two blades hit his body.

"Ughh!" He let out a small grunt as the two wind blades hit his chest.

....It was really damn painful.

But Achilles was not going to give in to the pain but held it back and wobbly walked to the soul.

It tried to do one last thing to stop the intruder from reaching it, but before it was able to do so, Achilles' right hand which was a bunch of dirt worms outstretched itself to touch the orb.

Achilles muttered something in a low, terrifying, and domineering voice that resounded throughout the entire Mindscape that was about to collapse entirely, his left eye turned bright red like the crimson moonlight:

[Devour.]