David looked at his palm and jolted.

  The charred, cracked fragment of the Soul Eater's soul rested there. It was both in his hand and not, a piece of metaphysical real estate that felt solid and like smoke at the same time. The only reason he could even hold the thing, he suspected, was because his body was essentially his soul now. It was like wearing gloves made of himself.

  He poked it with a finger. It didn't move. "Huh," he said, his voice flat in the quiet temple. "Souvenir."

  When he'd been ejected from the demon's body, he'd been holding the soul fragment out of curiosity. He hadn't really planned it. Now a question occurred to him.

  "Why didn't the chains grab me in there?" he muttered, turning the soul-shard over. He'd seen those radiant, ethereal chains everywhere. Why hadn't he been trapped by the complete Heretic's Shackle while inside the demon's soul-fortress?

  He'd been extra careful not to touch the radiant soul-chains, just in case. He hadn’t need Battle Sense to clue in on that. Avoiding the soul-binding chains had simply been obvious. He’d just treated every chain like a museum with electrified railings. Look, don't touch. Maybe that was it. His body—his soul-body—hadn't made contact with the binding chains. But he'd been inside the demon's soul-realm, which was full of its soul. Shouldn't his own soul have been snared by proximity? Was his soul-body just that strange?

  The Soul-Manipulator skill description replayed in his head. Your body has been saturated... your soul is bound to your body... every cell has excess soul-stuff... The excess wasn't in his body, he wasn’t a soul inside a meat suit. His body was the excess, reshaped. A single, integrated unit. The demon's chains were designed to trap a discrete soul. He wasn't that. He was a solid block of soul-stuff wearing a human shape.

  If he'd touched those chains with his hand in that realm, maybe the bindings would have clicked onto him, mistaking his hand for a captured soul.

  “Battle Sense probably would’ve had a heart attack if I tried, but…" he muttered, holding up his own hand, “if I had touched it, somehow—foolishly. I'd probably be a permanent fixture in a dead demon's psyche. Decor." That would have been… bad.

  Feeling a certain appreciation for his own lack of stupidity, he held the soul fragment tight. Letting it go might make it dissolve into the air, or trigger some other elusive, unpredictable soul-weirdness. “Good instinct.”

  Studying the ephemeral construct, David saw a gray panel appear in his vision.

  [Demon Soul Fragment

  Status: Damaged, Broken,

  Description: …its soul consumed flesh and bone alike, and in its hunger, the sky shook and mountains drowned the lands in blood...]

  He read the text. He looked at the charred piece of soul-stuff in his hand. He looked back at the panel.

  They’re really polishing the resume, he thought. The description was laying it on thick. Acting like the thing was some world-ending calamity. It was a powerful, deadly soul eater, not a force of nature that made mountains bleed. The marketing department was working overtime.

  Now, it was a statue.

  He could have absorbed the fragment, added it to his soul flesh. But David had an idea for it, so he refrained.

  David walked out of the inner chamber, lined by two far columns and markings on the floor. He passed the demon's suspended corpse and gave one of its thick, chained forearms a dismissive pat as he went by, like tapping a finished piece of machinery.

  Outside, a steady chip-chip-crack sound came through the stone. Jamie was still working on the ice. The hole was now slightly larger than his hand. David kept half an ear on it. It was a good sound. It meant progress. It also meant freedom. The demon was dead, but the ice hadn’t gone anywhere.

  He stepped past the temple entrance and looked to the side.

  Mara was propped against the temple wall a few paces out, right where he'd told the hobgoblin to dump her. Her form was a mess. Unconscious, pale as wax, one arm gone at the shoulder, her ribs a wrong shape under her shirt. He didn't need to see it to know. The thrall link broadcasted her status directly into his brain: a faint, faltering pulse, like a lightbulb filament about to snap. She was dying on schedule.

  He crouched beside her, the stone cold under his knees. He got one arm under her legs and the other behind her back. She was lighter than he remembered, all the fight and resentment boiled out of her, leaving behind a broken husk that weighed nothing. He lifted her, adjusting his grip to keep her stable. Her head lolled against his shoulder.

  He carried her back into the temple.

  As he walked, he thought about the System's reward structure. A single level. That was it. You could fight one enemy or a hundred in a single battle, and the victory only ever gave you one level. It explained how the Soul Eater, a thing that had consumed hundreds of souls, was only Level 50. The restriction was a deliberate bottleneck. It was another layer of the impossible difficulty, a way to cap your gains no matter how big your win was.

  David rejected the entire concept. It was a stupid arrangement. He was determined to get something more out of it. There had to be a way to claim extra spoils. Maybe by looting weapons and armor from the defeated? But this creature, the Level 50 Soul Eater, had zero gear. A dead body and a lot of chains were the only trophies. The payoff was a raw deal.

  He reached the center of the temple chamber, stepping carefully over one of the corpse's massive, chained hooves, Mara a slight weight in his arms. He stopped, then placed her on the temple floor. He had a dying thrall, a dead demon, and a single, unsatisfying level to show for it.

  David looked at the demon corpse. Its scaled flesh looked incredibly durable, even in death. The scales and horns, maybe even a patch of that hide, would make solid armor or a mean weapon. Even if it looked like trash, it could save his life or end someone else's. But he'd be hard-pressed to cut into it easily. Carving into it with nothing but his spear and a lot of elbow grease would take forever. “And I don’t have all day,” he muttered. What if its jailers came back? Or the tribunal stuff from its soul description decided to check on their prisoner?

  So instead, he knelt and looked at Mara. Defiant, resistant, sharp, tainted by some dead god's influence. She saw the world the same way he did—a series of threats. From the link, he could tell. Her whole thing was a refusal to ever submit, a drive to make the world submit to her by any means necessary. The thrall link gave him the low, fading signal of her life, like a battery running out. He put his hand on her forehead, his skin against her cold skin, and looked.

  Her soul came into view.

  It looked like a giant puzzle box built by a paranoid engineer, that grew into a segmented, interlocking labyrinth. Silver-grey plates formed the walls, locking together like brutalist puzzle pieces. There was no visible seam or handle. The only features were the clean, severe lines where one defensive plane met another, seamless and impenetrable.

  The plates shifted as he watched, sections sliding over each other in a slow, deliberate rotation.

  Behind the translucent walls, the blurred shapes of internal chambers turned like gears in a sealed machine. The whole structure had the feel of a vault designed to keep everything out and whatever was inside, in.

  The labyrinth was built by a psyche that trusted nothing, expected attack from any angle, and had wired itself to reconfigure faster than a threat could be understood. The architecture of a mind that saw the world as a series of threats and itself as the only reliable fortress. It was the soul of someone who prepared for a siege by becoming a maze with no center.

  [Human Soul

  Status: Defiant

  Description: …a mortal sought to burn a world to cinder, under a creator's will, kindling mountainous ruin...]

  Once again, his aspect was really laying it on thick. That one was… a little ominous. The titles were getting generous.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  But Mara was a real threat. Full of potential. Full of danger. Cunning. Abyss-touched. The chained-up demon, by comparison, was a big, dumb problem. Mara was a smart, personal one.

  David withdrew from peering at her soul. With his free hand, he grabbed the Heretic's Shackle fragment and hung it loose and ready on his wrist. He switched the hand holding the soul fragment. He placed a hand back on her forehead. With it, he filled Mara's channels with demonic energy, more than she could possibly handle. Her breath quickened. Blood dripped from her mouth, nose, ears, and eyes. He sent heat energy to her lungs then, burning them from within. It all happened in a single instant.

  [You have defeated a Human, level 14]

  [Lvl 12 → Lvl 13]

  David looked down at the dead woman in his arms. Without hostility or ceremony, he placed her at the foot of the dead demon. Then he looked at the corpse on the stone floor and the soul trapped within it. This was the first human person he had ever killed. He should have felt empty, or hollow, or something like regret. He didn't. Instead, he felt… light. Like a burden he hadn't even realized he was carrying had been removed. It felt different from his calm mind skill. A part of him found the feeling disturbing.

  Was something wrong with him? Had the constant battle and butchery of horrors changed him? David considered the question. He turned it over in his mind, examining it. Then he discarded it. Its answer, whatever it was, wouldn't help him in this place.

  She was a necromancer with a personal army of corpses. The abyss-touch gave her a lever against his thrall skill. She used that lever to promise a fight to the death. She had even surpassed him in level, likely earning levels from through undead she’d raised. A cheat. Mara was by far the biggest threat. That’s why she was no longer breathing.

  Just before she died, David wrapped the Heretic's Shackle fragment around her torso. He looped it over her navel and tied it hastily. The metal links of the shackle lit up with a soft energy. The binding was taking hold. He could see a faint shimmer in her navel where her soul was anchored. He understood he was looking at it from a distance, like seeing a light through thick fog. He knew that if he looked closer, he'd see ethereal, radiant bright shackles binding and subduing her soul, keeping it chained inside the corpse.

  He summoned his status.

  [Name: David Carter

  Level 13

  Demonic Realm: Floor 1/???

  Difficulty: Impossible

  Time left until forced ejection: 4y 363d 8h 7m 23s.

  Primary Class: Locked

  Sub-class: Locked

  Aspects: Oracle of the ?Unknown?

  Strength: 10

  Dexterity: 7

  Constitution: 30

  Mana: 34

  Demonic Energy: 468

  Skills: Battle Sense Lvl 4, Calm Mind Lvl 1, Energy Affinity Lvl 5, Demonic Energy Lvl 4, Demonic Energy Mastery Lvl 6, Portal Magic Lvl 1, Infernal Thrall Lvl 1, Touch of the ?Unknown? Lvl 0, DeathBorn Lvl 1, Soul-Manipulator Lvl 2,

  Free points: 10]

  David stared. A massive number floated on the intangible stat screen in front of him. He'd felt the change already, watched his energy swell from draining the demon. He felt strong as hell and could track his power better now. But that number was something else. His demonic energy stat showed his total pool. It used to be 78, with a magic field that stretched twenty inches around him. Now his field was locked at ten feet, refusing to grow any further no matter how much he stole, and the number had skyrocketed. He didn't feel physically different—no tail, no horns, nothing fancy. Then again, he'd only been running on the new, upgraded fuel tank for minutes.

  The Soul Manipulator skill meant his soul-infused body was now in a state of permanent peak biological efficiency. Absorbing leftover soul-stuff into his flesh gave his life force and vitality a permanent high-performance setting. Absorbing parts of the demon's soul had boosted his Constitution by two and his Strength by one. Likely because the skill level was still low. That was a welcome little addition, but compared to the raw scale of the demonic energy boost, it felt minor. What were three stat points next to hundreds?

  David let out a low whistle under his breath. He looked at the still, chained corpse. "You were a hell of a battery," he said, his tone flat but appreciative.

  He had ten free points to spend, from the two deaths. He hesitated for a solid second, his finger hovering over the mental button to dump everything into demonic energy. He’d gleaned at least one aspect of corruption. On paper, it was a new kind of risk. A more solid one. Pumping more of that corrosive, hungry power into himself was like volunteering to store nitroglycerin in your pants.

  But nitroglycerin contained fuel.

  And he knew the rules. He'd learned them by breaking them. The trick was containment and dominance. As long as he didn't let that energy touch a dangerous System Skill like Calm Mind, he'd be fine. Corrupting a passive mind skill like that with demonic energy was a terrible idea—a one-way ticket to becoming a genocidal maniac who’d probably start arguments with street signs. The skill would twist, and he'd twist with it.

  Outside of that one skill? So far, the energy was a piece of cake.

  He siphoned it, stored it, let it buzz in his veins like a trapped hornet, and never let it think it was in charge.

  He could control the demonic energy. He had been controlling it. Since he’d arrived in this hellhole, he’d been taking a raw, violent current of power, wrestling it into his channels, and never stopped subduing its flow. It was a constant, grinding contest of will where he dictated the terms, forced the power to move where he wanted, and to only settle where he told it to settle.

  It was a straightforward payoff: power in exchange for walking a very specific line. He'd basically set up camp on it. He ran the show. He would always run the show. If corruption wanted a piece of him, it could go to—well, not hell, he was already standing in it—but someplace objectively worse, like a Department of Motor Vehicles.

  So with that rock-solid, tight strategy, he dumped every single new stat point into demonic energy. He felt stronger. Heated, in a way that had nothing to do with temperature. More ready. It was a good trade.

  Another notification barged into his vision, right under the tasteful blue text of his level-up. This one had a different vibe. The text box was a heavier grey, and the border looked like carved stone. It felt nothing like a congratulation, but a property deed from a very sketchy universe.

  [You have killed the Dungeon's Potential.]

  He blinked. Potential? He figured its main potential was giving people heart attacks and serving as a monstrous all-you-can-eat buffet. Was he supposed to feel bad about robbing the dungeon? He didn't.

  [The Potential has transferred to you.]

  [You have received: Dungeon Fragment.]

  A new weight dropped into his palm. It wasn't a gentle materialization. It thunked into place, solid and surprisingly heavy for its size. He looked down.

  A crystal shard rested on his hand. It was circular, about as wide as his thumb from knuckle to tip, but twice as thick. It wasn't just glowing. That would be too simple. To David’s abyss-enhanced eyes, it was having a full-blown, silent rave. Inside its clear, jagged depths, light churned in stupid, violent colors. Deep, bruise-like purple swirled into violent, arterial red. Cool, electric blue razored through pulses of sickly green. It looked like a tiny, hyper-compressed nebula, or a piece of a disco ball from a club where angels and demons went to fight. The energy it contained wasn't warm or cold. It wasn't even dense. It looked like a contained nexus. It felt like holding a tiny chunk of a different reality where the rules were made of stained glass and bad decisions.

  His first, very reasonable instinct was to immediately drain it. He reached for it with his Energy Affinity skill, the same mental hook he'd used to siphon demonic juice for the last forest hour. He braced for the usual flood of power.

  Nothing. Not a trickle. Not a single spark. The energy inside the shard didn't even wobble. It just kept doing its ridiculous, multi-chromatic light show, completely indifferent to his attempt at theft. It was the most opulent, untouchable thing he'd ever held.

  He held it up, turning it slowly. Potential. The words sat in his mind, heavy with foreign context. He stared at the shard, then at the notification. He tried the affinity again, pushing a little harder. Still nothing. The crystal might as well have been a very fancy, very heavy piece of plastic.

  Okay, he thought. Two possibilities. One: his Energy Affinity skill level was too low. It was an undeveloped, Level 5 skill. The skill seemed to level only through expanding its capabilities through mastery of application, or new types of energy. It leveled when he siphoned Mara's skills and undead. It didn't level when he siphoned the demon, because he wasn't expanding the skill, merely utilizing it. Trying to drain this thing was probably like trying to drink an ocean through one of those tiny coffee stirrer straws—futile and kinda sad. Option two was more annoying: maybe the "Dungeon Fragment" wasn’t meant to be drained at all.

  So what the hell was he supposed to do with it?

  He turned it over. The energy inside pulsed, dense and alien. It felt like holding a piece of a liquid galaxy that had gotten lost and settled in his hand. According to the abyssal priest he’d stepped on, this thing represented potential the dungeon used to change the rules of reality itself. He was basically palming a brick of concentrated cosmic clay, the raw material for rewriting hell’s local zoning laws.

  David looked at the shard in his hand and now understood why they were hunted. Hell, if the fragment did everything the priest claimed, he was almost tempted to start hunting humans himself.

  Did Mara have one of these? he thought. She had caused human deaths, if indirectly. The shards would have probably gone to the monster that directly killed the humans she'd drained. But maybe that was why she was sacrificing everyone for her own survival. Maybe that was why she always hovered around corpses, and the Death Knight skill was just a misdirect.

  He searched her body. His fingers found a hard, angular shape hidden in the folds of the clothing wrapped around her waist. He pulled out another dungeon fragment.

  "Huh," he said, holding the second shard up to the dim light. It pulsed with the same slow, multi-colored storm. "Crafty."

  This shard in his hand felt like a piece of the dungeon's engine, its system, ripped loose.

  A star of pure "what if" hummed against his skin, useless and incomprehensible.

  This was the prize for killing a human. For ending one of the dungeon’s investment opportunities. He now owned a rock forged from pure, universe-altering intent. It was the most powerful, useless thing he’d ever seen. He couldn’t eat it, he couldn’t spend it, and trying to use it felt like trying to plug a star into a toaster. The dungeon probably wanted it back.

  "Too bad," David said, his voice quiet. He looked at the dead demon. He wasn't done. Two levels weren't enough. It wasn't a reward. He didn't care about the difficulty or the rules. He was going to break them, and he was going to leave this temple with something more.

  He dropped the shards into his pocket. His gear situation was becoming a problem. The number of deadly items he owned was steadily growing.