Finn first felt his astral body and that of the spider creature merged together. The astral body, for every life form, acted as a sort of memory storage, the only difference is that the amount of memories stored varied for all lifeforms.
While the two bodies mixed, Finn's head had different scenes playing in it, and it felt like he experienced these scenes firsthand.
Scenes of 'himself' hatching from an egg. Scenes of how 'he' survived multiple battles, eventually leading to his evolution. Scenes of fighting the previous territory owners, and other monsters that wanted 'his' territory.
Finn was equivalent to the spider monster in those memories, he even felt the same way it did.
[Your Astral Body has been strengthened.]
Next was their mind and consciousness merging. This affected Finn's intelligence and strengthened his mental health, but it was also twisting his views, causing an imbalance.
The core of the spider wasn't too big, just the average. Along with the spider's skills, they merged with Finn's core, increasing his core capacity and his core capacity limit, and also leading him to acquire new skills.
[Secondary skill "Rapid Web Generation" has been acquired.]
[Secondary skill "Web Manipulation" has been acquired.]
[Secondary skill "Web Sense" has been acquired.]
They weren't considered inherent skills by the status since Finn's ego wasn't merged with the spider's.
[Gift skill "Soul Judge" has been acquired.]
Finn, now in his Jellyfish form, sprawled on the ground.
This wasn't as hard as merging with the converged organism, but this particular creature caused more mental imbalance due to its stronger experience and general nature.
The converged organism was also suppressed due to the Echo of God skill.
Also, the more skills that were within the core, the more pressure was being put on the ego that was at the centre of this core.
If not for his Rune Gift supporting his ego and the effects of merging egos with the jellyfish, Finn couldn't imagine how he would have felt. To obtain more skills, he needed to strengthen his ego or Rune Gift.
After gaining a bit of clarity, Finn sighed. 'I guess I'll have to be more careful while using this. I'll pass on absorbing others in the meantime… My head is banging…'
He directly checked the changes within his core, leading him to gain some ideas and knowledge. Something that stood out was the Ego. It was the only thing that was affected to a very minimal extent.
"I need to carry out some experiments and I'll be needing lab rats…" Finn muttered, before he proceeded to check the changes on his status screen.
- - - - -
Name: -
Race: Great Phantom
⤷ Status: Inhabiting Converged Organism
Rune Gift: - Judge of Lost Souls
⤷ Gift Skills: [I See You], [Echo Absorption], [Soul Absorption], [Soul Judge]
Inherent Skills: [Possession], [Perfect Healing], [Shape Shifting]
Secondary Skills: [Echo of God], [True Mana Sense], [Rapid Web Generation], [Web Manipulation], [Web Sense]
[Soul Judge: This gives you authority over the souls you've absorbed. The level of authority you have depends on your proficiency.]
[Rapid Web Generation: You can create webs within your body at a rapid speed.]
[Web Manipulation: You can manipulate webs around you. The more proficient you are with this, the easier you can manipulate your webs and webs created by others.]
[Web Sense: You can extend your senses through your connection with webs that you have created.]
- - - - -
"This is a gain at least… Now that I have the mind of the spider and its battle experience, I should be able to use these skills well." Finn said, reading the details. "For the soul part, I'll just hunt monsters on my way out of here and use them to test my skills. I also need to replenish the echo energy I have."
Now that he had increased his core capacity, he wanted to use that percentage he had added just for storing echo energy. Unfortunately, Finn noticed his core capacity limit wasn't increased, this led to him believing core capacity limits had something to do with the ego.
After returning the gauntlet to the inventory, and keeping the inventory within his body, Finn walked towards the corpse of the spider.
"I won't be needing your body again…" Finn said, ready to pounce into civilization. "Wait, would I be able to sell monster corpses there?" He looked at the corpse, while using his tentacle to stroke his Jellyfish face.
"There's no harm in trying! This is an opportunity to earn money!" Finn liked money.
He stored the corpse in his inventory and began heading south.
- - - - -
Finn was making progress in his journey. He hunted many more creatures and absorbed more echoes on his way. He also found out that lots of territory ruler level monsters were everywhere, they just all had their own natural way of doing things.
If Finn hadn't died in the hands of that spider, he would have died in the hands of another monster before he reached the barrier. But that was before, now he could hold his ground against these creatures.
After feeling like the inventory might be full from the amount of huge monsters he chose to kill, he decided to cut particular parts of the monsters.
While cutting some monsters, and going through their corpse, Finn realized something. When these monsters die and their astral body naturally leaves, they leave behind a physical core, created from the solidification of mana and weak skill imprints.
Using this new found enlightenment, Finn discovered that his ability to speed up the astral gathering could stop a corpse from having a core.
Because he decided to mainly go for corpse cores now, Finn's ability to speed up the process became more refined.
He also realized that souls could be used as Echoes too, albeit ones of high quality. During this journey, Finn decided to gather more echo energy because he believed it wouldn't be this easy to accumulate in the outside world.
He would have tried to absorb cores to increase his capacity, but he wasn't able to be precise in what part of the soul body he wanted to absorb... yet.
The further south he went, the more he encountered both weak and strong monsters that eventually turned to materials he might sell or echo energy.
After travelling across the forest for 15 days, Finn's excitement began to burn more.
The trees were beginning to have more space between them, there was barely any luminescent grass or insect… and best of all, Finn could directly see the moon.
Finn changed his body from a Jellyfish's to the grown White Fenrir's. He wanted to reach the edge of this region before day break.
As he ran at top speed, he covered more distance. He saw more trees that were short, more rocky regions, grass fields and the spaces between the trees became more apparent.
Finn ran for hours straight and only began to slow down now… That was because he caught a scent. A scent of monster blood and blood of a being that wasn't a monster.
…
A/N: Approximation of Finn's core size in digits.
Average core size = 100
Finn's core size before he fused with the Jellyfish = 50
Finn's core size after months of cultivation = 500
Finn's core size after fusing with the spider = 620
Note: Cores don't contain only mana.