The sound of fresh wind whipping through the air struck Soul's ears as they appeared outside of a seemingly natural forest. Oki jumped off Soul's shoulders, trying to see deeper into the woodlands. However, the trees were too dense to do anything. "Well, is this the right place?" Soul asked Oki, who kept trying to see past the thick trees. "I'm sure. This is the Forest of Spirits, home to some of the most naturally dangerous and peaceful monsters on this planet." Oki assured him, as Soul wondered how the hell the most violent and peaceful monsters lived in the same area without one of them going extinct.
"Well, should we get on our way? After all, I kind of want to see what monsters, intelligent or not, live here. They might help me show restraint in my abilities. Aaron let me have access to every single one of his abilities. I need to not overuse them. I don't want to get to the point of me killing everything." Soul explained, walking forward into the trees. He weaved around the trees, making sure that he didn't touch any of them. He didn't want to leave any traces that he was there. Oki quickly followed behind him, not wanting to lose track of his only method of escaping this place without having to walk for what could be weeks.
As they travelled through the forest, the sound of the wind slowly died out, being replaced with somewhat unnerving ambient noises, like the trampling of grass underfoot, twigs snapping as they walked along. However, Soul quickly lifted up his hand in a fist, instinctively causing Oki to stop moving. Soul looked around, his ears picking up even the slightest of sounds. Soul looked around, waiting for whatever was making the noises to stop.
The pounding of feet shot through his ears, causing him to turn around, only to see a wolven-like creature running towards him. 'It must have circled around us as we were walking. The sneaky animal. Maybe it's intelligent in some form or another.' Soul thought to himself, walking towards the beast with a gleam in his eyes. Suddenly, however, a voice yelled out to Soul's right. "Stop! Don't go near that thing! It's a Barghest!" The voice yelled out, but not before the Barghest reached Soul and Oki. It jumped towards the pair, its jaws opened wide, trying to take a bite out of Soul. Soul lifted up his Corrupted hand, grabbing the Barghest by its skull, cracking it slightly as he slammed it into the ground. The Barghest let out a scream of anguish as Soul looked down at it, a somewhat disgusted look on his face. "I can see what they mean. I shouldn't be doing stuff like this." Soul said to himself, looking at the blood that coated his fingers. He flicked as much of the blood off his hand as he could before bending down to stare the Barghest directly in its eyes as blood leaked out from its skull.
"I'm sorry, poor animal. Here. You have three choices. Corruption, absorption, or death. I'm sorry that I can't do anything more for you. Pick my Corrupted hand for the first, my normal hand for the second, and nothing for death." Soul said to the Barghest, unsure if it would understand. He extended both hands, but the Barghest chose neither. It looked at Soul, a defeated look in its eyes. It had made its choice. "Sorry. I'll make it painless." Soul responded, his eyes closing for a second.
{Devise a skill to kill defeated opponents?}
{Requirements: Painless, Instant}
{Creating....}
{Error: Skill with use already exists. Telekinetic Psychobreak}
"Huh...never thought I'd be using this skill to put things out of their misery."
{Barghest killed.}
"I hope your Soul lives on, Barghest. I hope it obtains peace." Soul said to himself, almost as if it was a prayer. Oki just looked at this situation with awe. He had never expected Soul to do something like this. Crystet had seemed extremely angry at Soul for something he did in the past, but who could hate a guy who apologised to monsters?
"You there." The voice from earlier spoke to Soul. "Why did you give him the option to be Corrupted? He was surely going to kill again. Hell, why did you even give him a painless death? All monsters like him deserve to die painfully." The voice stated as Soul looked up towards the voice. It was a woman, but more precisely, a woman with the fur of a leopard. It was a Beastwoman, as most people referred to them. She was wearing an adventuring outfit that consisted of black boots, a dark pair of trousers and a black t-shirt. She wore a black jacket on top of the shirt. The only thing alerting Soul to what she was was her face and hands. Her hands had some fur on them, and her face was human but with some yellow and black strands of hair resembling leopard patterns escaping her hood.
"My reason is that we're all monsters. Me, you, this child, humans. We all are monstrous in some way. It's just that some of us are more monstrous than others, and that includes me." Soul explained, lifting up his black hand as his pink iris stared the woman directly in her eyes. It was almost as if he was staring through her. "Then why don't you absorb him? He's dead now, so why don't you do it?" The woman asked, staring at him in return.
"Then I'd be disrespecting his wishes. He chose a painless death, not absorption. I'm not going to go disrespect the wishes of the dead. Not after the last time I disrespected someone after their death." Soul responded, his eyes flaring up. He wanted to be a somewhat decent person, and if he was going to respect the wishes of the dead, he would start now.
Almost immediately after he said that, Soul pushed the woman out of the way, using his arm to block the attack of an incoming Barghest. It tried to bite down on his arm, but it realised it couldn't pierce his flesh. "I know that you're intelligent in some form, although I'm not sure how smart you really are, so this will show me. Your friend over there died because of his rash decision, but I let him have a peaceful death of his own wishing. Please, learn from his mistake. I don't want to spread more blood than I need to." Soul informed the Barghest, showing it the slightly bloodied corpse of the other Barghest.
With a fearful whimper, the Barghest let go and ran away. It understood what Soul had said to it, and it wasn't going to try and fight him without backup or at least an improvement in its strength. "There. It understood me." Soul said to himself as he turned to the Beastwoman. "You can talk with these things. See? It doesn't have to be all violence."