Life Force

Iono stared at the blue screen in awe. It seems the "system", changed to match his current stats.

Several questions popped into his mind, like why is his intelligence unreadable, and what are some of the titles and skills he possesses? Some he could deduce, but most of them were a question mark.

Unfortunately, he had no time to ponder on the meaning of those things, as his father just walked into the room.

"Iono! Get up, we're going to start building the house next door. I need you to go get me some wood.", his father said while looking for him.

"Sure dad, just give me a second!", Iono replied. "Make sure you don't take too long!", Yusef said before leaving. Iono sighed with his eyes still glued to the blue screen. It wasn't the change in his stats that perplexed him anymore, it was the things he was seeing with his Inheritance, or "Quantum eyes", as the system called them. He had no idea what that word meant so he simply called it Inheritance.

He could see a pitch-black chain that was wrapped around his body and connected him to the system. The chain pulsated as if it was alive, it made him feel uncomfortable, as he could see it but not feel it. It didn't impede his movements at all, it's more like it guided them. It made him once again question the origins of this incomprehensible thing.

"This is beyond me. Kyomu, whenever you feel like it, you just let me know...", he said while sighing and shaking his head in utter defeat. At this point he wasn't expecting much from the dagger, he knew it had its agenda and therefore he simply stopped asking it for things. The explanation would naturally arrive when he was ready to hear it.

So he finished up his morning routine and set out for the woods. He was supposed to gather materials for building Rosette and Clarissa's house, and he also wanted to test the limits of the system.

He bid his mother goodbye and left the house with a hatchet on his shoulder. He walked into the woods while inspecting his stats. What he needed at the moment was life force. His only hope was that he could absorb life force as he did in his previous world.

And just when he was contemplating where to get that life force, another Green Wolf appeared in front of him. It was a giant wolf, over two meters tall, and about 4 meters long. It had blood-red eyes that marked him as a predator, and fangs sharp enough to bite through metal. This was no simple monster. It slowly walked towards Iono while drooling, ready to pounce at him. Iono squared off with the beast and gripped his hatchet tightly.

"I have an amazing idea!", he thought.

"I will clear the Green Wolf dungeon today. It's going to do wonders now that I have the system and it's going to be a great chance to start Cell Reverberation. Dad probably won't like working under the scorching red giant, so I'll do it in the afternoon. But first... let's take care of this doll."

With that thought, he stabilized his feet on the ground to get a good grip, and kicked it, blasting himself towards the creature. It replied by opening its maw widely and trying to bite Iono's head off, but his attack was too fast. In less than a second, almost like a ghost, he disappeared from his position, only to reappear on the wolf's right side. Prauna had already coated his body, as the hatchet came crashing down on the wolf.

The beast although surprised managed to react, in the nick of time, and dodge to the side, but it was still too late of a reaction. A huge vertical cut appeared on its right side, and blood came flowing out of it. The creature wimped in defeat. Iono put the hatchet back on his shoulder and observed the creature.

His lips parted slowly and, "Run...", he said softly. The wolf took off like a bullet.

"This way I'll know exactly where the dungeon is. Thanks for saving me time.", he said while watching the wolf depart.

Afterwards, he cleaned the blood of the hatcher and used it to chop down some wood. With his strength and the huge amount of space that the Pouch of Avarice could hold, he gathered enough wood in less than an hour. He returned home and helped his father start the foundation of the house. They were quick and efficient, finishing half of the building before noon.

"Let's go get some lunch", his father said. When they walked into their house, they saw Rosette and Clarissa in the kitchen, making lunch for them, and Anna at the kitchen table, scribbling away on some important-looking documents.

While eating their lunch, Rosette thanked them once again for the things that they did for her and her daughter. It was a bit weird being this close when yesterday they were acquaintances, but since Yusef knew Richard from way back, he treated mother and daughter like family. He might have been a goblin, but he had more humanity than others.

After a quick lunch, the father took a quick nap while the son run to the forest, saying he had a training routine to stick to. After reaching the forest, he found the tracks of the beast he let go. By following the blood that dripped out of its wound, he arrived at the entrance of a cavern. It was rather big, but also perfectly round. You could easily tell that this wasn't made by nature.

The tracks continued inside the cave, from which Iono could pick up the thick smell of blood. He used his eyes to scan the terrain, and found an enormous number of wolves inside that cavern. Most of them were barely at the foundation stage, but one of them was clearly different.

For a dungeon to form, a monster of the core refining stages was needed. A strong leader to lead all these monsters in the dungeon. With his eyes, he could see a wolf in the Energy gathering stage, about tier 3, maybe tier 4, the scene was quite blurry because of the huge amounts of dirt blocking his sight.

"Come to papa!", he thought, as he waltzed inside like he owned the place. The walls of this dungeon were rather interesting. They shone with a brown light, and things that pulsated like veins spread all over the place. After a few seconds he found an injured wolf, using his Inheritance, and simple deduction, he realized it was the one he had injured. It was laying down, licking its wounds.

Iono walked slowly towards it, and in a split second appeared behind it. He pulled out his scythe and decapitated it swiftly. The wolf didn't even realize what was happening until its head hit the floor.

Suddenly, all the blood from the Green Wolf's body, condensed into a sphere. Iono's eyes lit up with joy as he saw the spectacle in front of him. "Thank god, it's the same!", he thought.

Iono placed his hand inside the blood, which started convulsing. It looked like it was boiling, and then freezing. By the end, the veins on Iono's hand became visible and blood red.

An overwhelming feeling of exhilaration gave Iono goosebumps, as his eyes turned from dark blue to crimson. A green string could be seen separating from the blood sphere and entering Iono's body through his veins. After the string separated from the sphere, the blood fell on the floor. Iono sat in a lotus position and said "Status, Goreva".

The blue screen appeared once again in front of him, and a sweet voice whispered to him,

"User has defeated a Green Wolf! 1 life force acquired!

Congratulations on acquiring your first string of life force!

The user has fulfilled the requirements to unlock some new features!

Skill: Life force absorption, Acquired!

49 life force required for level 1!"

Iono was sitting down with his eyes closed listening to the sweet voice. It reminded him of something, but there were more pressing matters to attend to. He used his newly acquired skill to guide the life force to his core.

In there, using the skill of the system, the string of life force was tempered and broken down. It became something similar to gas and it spread throughout Iono's body.

He opened his eyes and made his hand into a fist. "I can't feel the effects yet, it seems that most of the strings in the wolf's body were damaged.", he thought.

Life force was a complicated thing. But, even people in this world that had no system knew what it was. It was said that when life was created, the Ancestral Gods first built the soul and then the body, but because the two needed to be connected for life to exist, they used ethereal strings to hold the body and the soul together. Those strings are what was later called life force.

The system had the power to collect this so-called life force and use it to strengthen its user. This is what Iono and everyone who possessed a system knew. If you gather enough of these tiny strings and refine them, your body and soul will increase to further heights. The problem is that to gather these strings, you have to forcefully take them out of someone's body, and that means severing the connection of his body and soul.

The quickest and most efficient way to gather life force is to kill people.

But there is one more way, which is way too gruesome, even for Iono.

As long as there is at least one string connecting the body and soul, one would not die. And the strings have the ability to repair themselves after a certain amount of time. Which means...

That if you take all the life force strings of someone's body, and leave only one... You can repeatedly gather strings, and keep people as cattle. The process of ripping someone's soul and body apart is the most gruesome pain there is. It was something Iono refrained from doing, and also something rather frowned upon, among the ones who had a system.

Everybody had a different amount of strings connecting their body and soul, depending on their strength. After all, the stronger their soul and body become, the more force is needed to hold them together. There were some stories, about some crazy regressors, people who managed to reincarnate with their memories intact, that kept all their victims in dungeons, pulling their life strings one by one until there was only one left...