Realizing how they had misjudged a predator for prey, the creatures with their little intelligence scurried about, trying their best to not remain in one place, all the while running away from Jacob.
'Hey kid, don't let them go. Kill them and harvest their souls.'
"Ughh... Lucifer?"
'Yes, now hurry before they escape, and don't destroy their bodies completely.'
Jacob immediately took heed of the voice in his head and picked up more stones, hurling them towards the scurrying creatures. Only this time, he managed to reduce his strength a little while targeting their limbs just in case.
It turned out the creatures' attempts at evading were useless as they became targets for Jacob to test the accuracy of his aim, which surprisingly was quite good.
"Hehehe, this is kind of fun. But why are they so slow? Don't they know they're about to die? Are they messing with me?"
'It's not that they're slow; you're the one that's fast. Your agility and perception are high enough for them to appear slow to you.'
Soon after, some tree-man humanoid creatures were squirming on the ground, making low-pitched crackling wails with stumps where their limbs should have been. Some outright died from the suffering.
"Okay, now what should I do?"
'First of all, place your hand on their heads.'
"You joking, right? You want me to touch that?"
'What's there to be disgusted about? It's just a little disfigured flesh. I'm not asking you to cuddle it.'
"Yeah... just a little flesh." Jacob mumbled while bringing his hands to meet the head of a deceased creature before feeling shivers run all over his body while getting goosebumps.
"Now what? Hurry up. This doesn't feel like flesh at all. It's hard in some places, it feels scaly... it's getting softer, there's... liquid... coming out. WHY IS THERE LIQUID COMING OUT?"
'You don't have to shout; just relax. I'll take it from here. Try to remember this feeling.'
Immediately Jacob felt a familiar sensation, eerily similar to what he felt when he died the first time. However, when he was thinking it was over and maybe he shouldn't have placed his trust in the actual devil, he found out he was still alive, in his body even.
He felt he could control his body and at the same time he couldn't, like there was some kind of filter his intentions had to go through before they were actually carried out. It was a surreal feeling that left him with a little bit of euphoria, that was until his mouth moved on its own, producing the sound of two voices superimposing on each other while still resonating deeply with his psyche.
"Listen kid, you were chosen as my envoy in this sick game that has been drawn out. You are the chess piece that carries the name Lucifer Morningstar, the once light bringer and the supreme ruler of hell. You are the one who represents he that oversees the souls of the dead. Your strength, my strength is fueled by the souls, and so we embody the existence of those we devour. Never forget that."
As soon as he finished speaking, Jacob felt a strange force run up his arm. It was almost like he had an SSS+ tier affinity for this strange force. The attraction was so strong he almost felt comfortable with it, that was until it reached his head, coalescing itself where his glabella sat.
"Aah....ughhh.....Ah.ah.ah....AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-"
"Endure it, kid."
Countless memories flashed before Jacob's eyes. He experienced all the emotions the soul did. Initially, it was manageable, a small scrape on the knee, a bump on the head, even the countless times the soul stubbed his toe. All these were still within manageable range although painful; he would only grimace and wince a little.
However, when the apocalypse descended and the soul who was once a man was bitten by a creature like the one he had become, the pain and torture he experienced while the strange energy kept wrecking his body, molding it into the monstrosity he became, every day was painful and torturous until he eventually couldn't handle it and his mind along with his body died.
Unfortunately, the body dying was one thing, and the soul was another, so even though he had become a mindless beast, his soul continued to suffer and suffer and suffer, enduring a pain it couldn't become numb to for days, weeks, years until this moment.
Bleughhh.
Jacob fell to his knees, throwing up for the second time in 24 hours. His body fell to the ground and began convulsing rapidly; he looked like he would flatline any moment from now. That was until a roar shook him awake.
"STILL YOURSELF, KID!"
Jacob was now sitting on the hard ground, staring absently at the corpse he had just absorbed before him.
'Don't think too much into it, kid. There was no way you could have helped him nor any of them for that matter.'
"Help him? When did I ever insinuate that? I almost died, old man, and it's all this bastard's fault—no, as a matter of fact, it's your fault too. Why didn't you tell me you were going to put me through torture?"
'...wait, what? Don't you feel sorry for him?'
"Sorry for who? The arse that almost killed me? I don't even feel all that stronger, just a little replenished, tsk, pathetic to the very end."
Jacob kept going on and on while spitting repeatedly at the creature's corpse in front of him.
'Hahaha,' Lucifer began chuckling to himself.
"What are you laughing at? You're also at fault here, I thought you said we couldn't talk yet as I wasn't strong enough so how the hell did you get in my head."
'Haha... I seem to be getting old. I should have known to be an envoy for the princes of hell; such a person would also not be right in the head, hahaha.'