ch.4

Arriving at Kurio's door, I look around, I used to bring my protection money here every month. The whole time I would watch his apartment with envy but looking at it now with the eyes of someone that was used to middle class living in America it wasn't much to look at.

It was an one room apartment, as in it was literally just one room, no living room or kitchen and the bathroom was an outside shared bathroom, the paint in the hallway had become an ugly yellow and was peeling in some places, the less said about the smell the better, not that I had much to say being homeless and all that.

Taking a deep breath, I knocked on the door.

After a moment, not hearing anyone come to the door I started panicking, this is my only chance. I don't have time to search for another desperate addict that wouldn't just beat me up and take the drugs or make up a new plan.

"Bam! Bam!"

I knocked even harder, still nothing.

Looking at the door handle, I gave a prayer to every God and Devil out there and tried opening the door and…it opened.

The room wasn't big, walking in I immediately saw Kurio laying on the floor.

He didn't look good.

He was far too thin for someone his size, it looked like he hadn't eaten anything in weeks. His skin was a sickly yellow with red marks to showcase where he had scratched himself raw, his hair was filthy and looked like it would fall out any moment.

On the whole it did not paint a pretty picture.

At first I thought he was dead but I could see his body twitch occasionally.

The street rat in me started looking around the room for anything valuable to steal.

That ended up being a bust.

Kurio probably sold everything valuable he had in here for drugs even the small tv that he used to have was gone, it's a wonder he still had an apartment but I'm guessing not for long.

I did end up finding a pencil laying on the floor, something I had forgotten I needed.

I walked up to Kurio and slapped him hard in the face with my good hand. He startled awake and looked around, his eyes were open but he was not wholly lucid.

Taking the baggie from my pocket I showed it to him, his eyes zeroed on the bag of cocaine like a bloodhound and started regaining some clarity.

He looked from the bag of cocaine to me and back to the bag, I could almost see the broken clogs in his head trying to spin and figure out what was going on.

Taking pity on him I started talking.

"I will give you this bag of cocaine and all you have to do is sign something for me, " I told him, looking him in the eyes and waving the bag of drugs around to make sure he paid attention.

He nodded along with the bag.

I put the cocaine back in my pocket.

"Deal?" I asked.

He nodded again, I felt a cheshire grin try to surface on my face, but held it in.

I put my hand behind my back and concentrated on making a contract, there was no need for him to see a contract appear out of thin air and freak out or worse believe what i'm about to tell him.

I concentrated on the soul energy that I was still infusing my body with and just imagined the contract I wanted, what it said and where it would appear, nothing more and nothing less, straight up reality warping.

One moment my hand was empty, the next I could feel paper in it.

Taking the contract from behind my back I gave it to Kurio together with the pencil I stole from him.

He looked at it, still not totally in the here and now.

I handed Kurio the contract again, at the same time patting the pocket where I put the cocaine, this time he took it and went to sign.

"Stop!" I told him forcefully, making him stop and look at me, "Read it,"

He stared at the contract and started reading, his lips moving along as he read.

"Out loud," I told him again.

I could see that he was starting to get irritated but the thought of the drugs kept him docile, at least for now.

"I sell my soul to Alexander for one bag of drugs," he read his voice cracking from disuse.

…what?

Did you think I made up a big contract with clauses and sub clauses and all that…nope, I kept it simple with no loopholes, unless the loopholes ended up benefiting me. For safety I even wrote drugs instead of cocaine because even if i'm 90% sure it's cocaine i'm not about to lose a juicy soul by being wrong.

"Ok, sign your name at the bottom," I said, not able to keep the grin out of my voice.

Kurio hesitated for a moment, some prehistoric instinct at the back of his brain was probably telling him not to sell his eternal soul for a bag of drugs, but as with all of Kurio's smart life choices it went ignored, and Kurio signed.

As soon as he was done signing, I wrenched the contract out of Kurio's hand and looked at it, he had tried making some sort of signature but that didn't matter, it didn't matter what you signed or even that it was your real name that you signed with as soon as you understood what you read and you signed the contract, it would change in your birth name.

'Kurio Tatsuki'

Hmm must be half Japanese or something.

Kurio was looking at me, or actually at my pocket, I took the bag of cocaine out and threw it at him.

The moment he caught It, I saw a white ball the size of a tennis ball leave Kurio's body and enter mine, as it did I got a picture of my mindscape in my mind's eye, this time with two souls floating next to each other.

At once I knew which soul was mine and which was Kuro's.

At the same time the contract in my hand burned up into nothing, having completed its purpose.

I let out a little laugh, I did it!

Looking back at Kurio I saw that he had already started sniffing up the cocaine as if his life depended on it.

Let's leave before he gets all roided up on coke and tries something.

I left Kurio's apartment and ran all the way till I found a dark abandoned alleyway.

Sitting down, leaning against the wall, I concentrated on accessing Kurio's soul and letting its energy run through my body.

Having been letting my own soul energy circulate through my body this whole time, it was practically like changing from moving one finger to the other, easy.

Accessing soul energy not belonging to my own soul was a lot different than using my own soul energy, when using my own I instinctively knew I could use it for one thing and one thing only, making contracts, but when using someone else's I could feel raw power flow through me ready to do anything I wanted with it, to change reality however I wanted to.

It was intoxicating.

I almost immediately became drunk with the power flowing inside me, but then my stomach growled and just like that I remembered that I wasn't all-powerful but just an 8 year old with a half dead body, that hadn't eaten for days.

It was time to finally heal myself, I reached for the soul energy and imagined my body healing, my bones resetting, wounds closing and even teeth growing.

My right arm snapped back in place with a pain that was even worse than when it broke, should remember to imagine not feeling anything while healing next time.

I'm left breathing hard from the exertion and pain but I can't remember a time when my body felt better.

Feeling around my mouth with my tongue, I felt the two teeth that I had lost, back like it never happened.

Feeling for the soul energy left in Kurio's soul, which will be named soul number one from now on, I felt that I had used up 45% of the soul energy just by healing myself.

That was a lot, but I knew from the information the red orb left me, that most of that energy was lost while healing myself and as I get better and more familiar with using soul energy I will begin to use less and less power for the same job, until I can do it without wasting any soul energy, but for the moment I was just a rookie.

As I said already souls were valuable because they generated soul energy, every 24 hours at the time of birth of the sapient being the soul belonged to it will generate and refill itself with soul energy.

They were self chargeable batteries of power.

With that done it's time to go back to completing my first objective before everything went to shit, getting something to eat.

I could conjure food to eat but it would be better to just steal money and buy it, that way I had money over to do other things like sleep on a real bed for the first time in 3 years without wasting power.

I could also conjure money but it would be just really good counterfeit, unless I change reality to make it that the money was always real, even if I did have enough power to do that, which I don't, it would be a colossal waste of power.

Stealing huh…I know just the place.

I arrived at the same marketplace and Casino where it took hours of begging before I got a lousy 20 yuan…this time I'm going for more…a lot more, to be honest I was kind of hoping to run into Satchi and Quan and get some payback by fulfilling my promise to them but unfortunately they were nowhere to be found.

The marketplace was filled with people, the nightlife of Macau was coming alive with people enjoying the three vices Macau was most famous for greed, lust and gluttony by going to the casino, love hotels and fancy restaurants.

I found a little corner where I could blend into the darkness and sat down, waiting patiently for my mark to arrive.

I watched people party around me, spending money like no tomorrow, all the while not knowing or caring about the streets rats that were preying on them.

A few minutes later my mark walked past me none the wiser, he had two working girls on his arms, one for each arm, he was wearing a suit that was especially tailored for him, gold watch on his left wrist that cost more than what some people make in a year and walked around with a face that told everyone what he was…a rich sleazebag.

Reaching for my energy I imagined his wallet and all the money he had on him turn intangible and fly to me.

I hesitated about making the wallet invisible, but in the end I decided not to, it was already dark and if you weren't paying really good attention to the rich sleazebag you wouldn't notice anything out of the ordinary.

Even I who was looking for it didn't see the wallet and money clip until they were literally right on me, I let them float in my lap and didn't make any sudden moves that would give me away.

That magic trick had cost me a good 15% of soul energy leaving me with 40% left, most of the energy going to making the items intangible, even if it was only for a few seconds on two small items.

After the mark was long gone, I stood up and started walking into a quiet alley this time making sure I wasn't being followed.

I took the wallet and started throwing out everything but the money after that I put all the money the mark had on him except for 5000 yuan in the wallet.

Looking at myself, dressed in rags, I sighed no one is going to let me into their restaurant and now that I had money I certainly am not about to eat meat from a shady stall.

Who knows what animal that meat was made from.

I imagined an illusion of a man in his 20s with average Asian features in a salary man suit surrounding my form and following all my movements, I also made the illusion solid, lastly I tied the illusion to soul number one so that it could leech of power to keep itself going.

The illusion ended up costing an impressive 25%, most of that was to make it solid.

Luckily the last 15% I had over was more than enough to keep the illusion going for days.

Spells like these didn't need me to be good at using soul energy to not waste power, the spell was directly tied to the power source so there was no wastage of power.

Walking back out of the alley, I searched for a restaurant that had takeaway but they were all fancy restaurants with little food portions except for the fast food places, I ended up just ordering as much pizza, fries and chicken as I wanted and taking it to a love hotel.

The man at the counter looked at me weirdly when I walked in with all that food and no woman but ended up shrugging when I paid to stay the night, mumbling about weirdos and their fetishes under his breath.

Ignoring him, I took the elevator up to my room, some of the couples gave me weird looks but I just ignored them too.

Going in the room, I looked around, I had chosen one of the more expensive rooms that came with a tv and more importantly a shower, Alexander could not even remember the last time he had taken a shower, which for someone like me who liked to be clean was the most disgusting thing I had ever heard.

Releasing the illusion now that I was alone, I took my clothes off before throwing them in the trash, I will conjure some new ones later, for now it's time for a shower!

I spent a good hour just scrubbing myself clean until I was as red as a lobster.

And if anyone claims that I spend another 5 minutes crying about how small my dick had become they are clearly lying…sob.

This was the life, lying in a queen size bed in a fluffy bathrobe with as much junk food as I could eat, the only thing missing was some good television.

Picking up the remote, I started channel surfing, searching for anything interesting, I found a late night news channel and left it there.

"…in other news it has been a month since the heroes who saved the world from the alien invasion came together to form the Justice League….."

Wait what…did she just say?

The chicken wing I was eating fell out my mouth and on the carpeted floor.

I watched as Superman, Batman, Wonderwoman, Flash, Green lantern, Aquaman and Martian Manhunter walked on stage together and pledged to protect the world.

"…there is some controversy about the League having only American heroes and talks about countries starting Leagues of their own…"

DC, I'm in the fucking DC Universe. As far as Universes go it's a terrible one to be Reincarnated in…it's full of Beings that could erase me in a blink of an eye, Beings that could destroy planets as easy as breathing!

And here I thought I was overpowered with my powers as a Warlock.

Shit my powers, I make people literally sell their souls to me in a world full of heroes, there is no way to spin that kind of power in a good light. Every fucking goody two shoes Hero is going to be after my ass if that ever gets out..and it will it's only a matter of time.

Because I'm certainly aren't about to stop bargaining for more souls and keep myself weak in an universe as dangerous as the fucking DC Universe.

This means I need to plan and figure out in which DC Universe I was in so that I don't die or end in some inescapable prison without knowing how or why!

Using the last of my soul energy, I imagined myself being surrounded by a skintight golden shield that would protect me from physical, magic, and psychic attacks before tying the spell to soul number one.

This time I tried something different instead of taking all my power and imagining the effect and waiting to see how much it cost.

I took 10% from the last 15% and imagined the effects being only as strong as the given power, which with only whatever I hadn't lost from the 10% wasn't all that much, maybe only enough to stop one really weak attack from each category.

It isn't much but it will do for now, I can use it as an early warning system for if I'm attacked.

Tomorrow after I get more souls I will be able to make it stronger.

But before all that, I think I deserve some undisturbed sleep on a bed that isn't made out of hard ground and blankets.