Chapter 169: Soul Molding

From what Evin could understand, this was just something that he should be able to do after some practice, so he wasn't very worried about it. He was more interested in the next part of the scroll.

[When you've collected a certain amount of souls you can try your hand at Molding. By molding your soul, you can basically give it more functions. The end result is called a Soul Mutation (EN). It's similar to the concept of mutating your body with Vital Energy, but not quite… Okay, let's give you an example. After you've played around with your soul for a while, you will develop the power to freely feel it in combat. At that point, you can try adding some extra features to it: you can make your eyesight and hearing better by modifying your soul's ears and eyes. Obviously, this wouldn't show on your actual body, but it will affect your sensory abilities.]

[Unfortunately, this is extremely difficult to do for untrained Soul mages, so I highly recommend you to not try it yourself… but as a special service, I'm willing to help you with the molding of one of the following things] 

'Hmm? Four's gonna pimp my soul?' Evin thought amusedly and looked at the possible modifications.

Eyes, ears, nose, skin, and nails. According to Four, with the exception of nails, each organ would become much more sensitive compared to before. His eyes could be comparable to half an eagle, his hearing would be upgraded to the level of rabbits, his nose could become so that he could smell something from much further away, while his skin could become more sensitive to air vibrations. The nail was, for the time being, another offensive option against souls, but it would be a long time before he could use it against other beings.

'The lineup is a bit unexciting, but it is what it is'

Four explained that if Evin was able to strengthen his nails enough, he would be able to wound an enemy's soul directly, making it a very difficult attack to block, but Evin judged that there should be some other way for him to attack the enemy's souls. He still hadn't reached the part about the Burning of the Soul, after all.

'The nose, skin and nails seem interesting, but it just can't compared to eyesight and hearing. If I'm not wrong, about 80% of the total senses that come into my brain should be visual ones, while the vast majority of the rest should be hearing,'

Thus, the most enticing choice was obviously the eye.

'I've heard that eagles could see ants on the ground from 10-story buildings, so half of that would be a 5-story building? But the sheer amount of things I will start seeing might become a bit annoying'

Too much information might become even detrimental in the long run.

Hearing on the other hand was a really nice passive buff to have. 

'I'm guessing I'll be more alert of my surroundings, and it should also help me detect ambushes and whatnot when I need to,' he judged.

Evin read further and saw more comments that helped him choose. 

[You can choose to see with your normal eye, or your soul-modified eyes, so don't worry about being constantly overwhelmed by random information. I'll also include a number of Molding methods that I've heard of (which I really don't recommend for the current you to try, by the way). Once you experience this molding process yourself, you should be able to learn how to do it on yourself… kind of… But if you fail somehow and fuck yourself up, well, don't come crying to me.]

Evin glimpsed through the list of mutations and he couldn't help but feel overwhelmed. Even with Four trying to help out Evin by sorting the methods by its difficulty, there were still hundreds of mutations that were possible to achieve with one's soul. From the relatively tame ones, like the basic upgrade to one's senses, there were absurd things like developing a second brain inside your soul, so one could multitask. Obviously, the last one seemed straight-up impossible to achieve for Evin.

There was also a method to have one rip up a part of his soul to act as a very niche form of sentry. For whatever reason, this one really interested Evin, even though he knew it was vastly useless.

Shaking his head, he focused on the other mutations.

After glacning through the list, Evin deemed most of the other mutations useless, as they were similar to how the nails upgrade worked. They were just methods to attack another's soul, or some kind of combat upgrade. And most of them had some very detrimental side effects as well.

For example, there was a mutation for one's feet, where a mage could make them stronger and springier. Aside from the general boost to speed, a mage could compress them slightly to explosively dash at a direction in unbelievable speeds. This mutation was a big upgrade to one's mobility, and if it didn't have any side effects, Evin might've actually considered using them.

But, at the end of the day, the mutation was made in their souls and their actual bodies were not affected. Even though the mage could achieve those speeds, a normal human's feet just weren't made for movement like that. Sooner or later, they would break and fall apart. Four made some research on this one specifically, and realized that only if a mage was prepared from childhood, constantly having their bones and muscles strengthened, they just weren't able to use this ability without their whole body breaking down. 

Moreover, after reading through the abilities that Four added in the scroll, Evin realized that Soul related abilities were much stricter in their use compared to other magic. 

There wasn't much freedom to it, and if one was to deviate from the norm without full knowledge of what they were doing, they were most likely going to have a bad time. This made the branch of magic a bit uninspiring to learn for some, as it was mostly just trying to learn and better something that existed already, instead of mostly discovering things on their own.

'Well, it's not that it's impossible to be creative, but it's highly recommended to not be creative...'

"Or perhaps magic was rigid like this in the old days, when the big organizations didn't hoard magical knowledge behind contributions and whatnot… Wait, I'm pretty sure they would've operated in a pretty similar manner now, but it's just that Four is very generous," Evin finally concluded.

In any case, the part about Molding one's soul had just ended and Evin continued on.

[The final, and probably the most popular use for Soul magic, the Burning of the soul,] the scroll began.