Grief will never be a patient emotion.
It won't wait quietly until you are ready to heal. It's a storm, consuming without pause, tearing at the walls of your heart.
Where once you felt peace, you now ache with absence. Where once you felt hope, you now see only endings.
Your memories betray you—each one a blade sharpened by love. Every sound echoes with the voices you've lost. Every silence is a tomb. You must carry them, though your arms were never made for eternity.
As his vision dimmed, the demon's claws loosened. The beast staggered, poison finally seeping through its veins. The trap had worked perfectly.
Coughing blood, Neptune pushed himself to his feet. The pale boy gazed down at the demon's motionless body, lifted a large rock with trembling arms, and brought it crashing down. The demon's skull split open with a sickening crack that echoed through the frozen forest like a cruel hymn.
Blood painted the snow, a disturbing scene.
Breathing heavily, Neptune collapsed into the frost. A wicked smile tugged at his lips as he felt the last Soul Fragments flowed into him. At last, he could form his first Soul Vessel.
And he had done it. He had killed a demon.
A mere mortal like him had achieved something nearly impossible. He wanted to laugh—but suddenly a sharp pain tore through his chest.
"W-What the hell?!"
He collapsed to his knees, clawing at the frozen earth beneath the snow.
"Arghhh!"
He had never felt anything like it. His whole body burned, as if he were roasting alive. Forming a Soul Vessel was supposed to make him stronger, not… this.
Neptune gritted his teeth, mouth open in a silent scream.
"I can't breathe! I can't breathe! Make it stop! Make it stop!"
Tears streamed down his face. Was his soul about to perish? He had heard of something like that before, if a soul was too weak, it would either crumble or be destroyed.
Seventeen years old, and he was about to die. Not in battle, not by the demon's claws, but like this.
He thought of his life: growing up among corpses, abandoned by parents he never knew. Raised by soldiers who taught him only how to survive in this frozen hell. Friends, when he had them, were taken by time or death.
And now, on the verge of achieving his goal, he stood at the edge of death.
Neptune fell onto his back, the snow biting into his skin, the sky above gray and merciless. His eyes dulled as blood filled his mouth, spilling across the white ground in a grotesque bloom.
"I-I don't want to die… not like this!"
He prayed to the gods. But none answered.
The silence was heavier than death. No warmth. No voice. No hand reaching down from the heavens. Only the cold weight of snow swallowing him, the dark sky above closing like a grave.
But something inside him refused to fade.
Neptune jolted upright, coughing blood, his body still wracked with agony. Tears welled in his eyes as he wiped his face with shaking hands.
How was he still alive?
"F-Fuck…" he muttered hoarsely.
Rubbing at his eyes, vision hazy from blood loss, Neptune dragged himself to a nearby tree and slumped against the frozen trunk. The familiar sight of the snowbound forest spread before him, and for the first time in his life, he was relieved to see this damned place.
His hand pressed against his chest. Beneath the pain, he felt it—something new, pulsing within.
His Soul Vessel.
"Finally…"
Forgetting his agony for a moment, Neptune tried to access his Soul Arsenal.
In the novels he had read, the heroes simply spoke a word:
Status, Profile.
But nothing happened.
"Of course... ."
Instead, he closed his eyes and focused inward. The darkness slowly faded, replaced by a vision: a round, white sphere pulsing faintly with turquoise light, beating like a heart. His Soul Vessel.
Next to it lay a longsword—double-edged, gleaming silver, polished to perfection. Its crossguard curved outward in claw-like arcs. Two-thirds down the blade, a cut-out gave it a menacing, predatory shape.
Below the Soul Vessel, random glowing letters appeared. Neptune somehow understood them:
Name: Neptune
Soul Vessel: Awakening
Soul Fragments: (0/500)
"So I probably need five hundred more fragments to reach the next vessel…"
He looked beneath his sword and another entry appeared:
Main Soul Weapon: Crownbreaker
Rank: Dormant
Description: The sword grows stronger the more powerful or oppressive the foe—an immortal weapon of resistance.
A grin tugged at Neptune's tired lips.
"That's ama—"
But before he could finish, a low growl rumbled through the forest.
A Corrupted Creature
It had probably picked up Neptune's smell of fresh blood. He forced himself to his feet and clutched his head.
"Hell, that hurts…"
He was still dizzy, but it was manageable. He had to make it back to the small village before the corrupted creature found him. He was in no shape to fight one—at least, not right now.
Usually, Neptune set up traps to kill corrupted creatures. It had taken him half a decade to prepare the trap that killed the demon, and even then, it had barely worked.
Facing one of these things without preparation was a death sentence.
Without wasting time, Neptune began running north, toward the village. Each step through the icy forest was agony.
His body screamed in pain, but he had no other option.
All of a sudden, Neptune froze. The growl. It was louder now.
"It's too fast…"
He stopped in his tracks and looked around, just in time to see a black creature lunging at him from the right. In that brief moment, he saw it was wolf-like, only much larger and far more terrifying. Huge, razor-sharp claws. Eyes glowing red with bloodlust. Its fur was black, streaked with blood. And instead of one tail, it had two.
Neptune instinctively dashed backward. Instead of slicing him in half, the corrupted creature slammed into the trunk of a tree.
He had always been a coward, but that instinct had sharpened his reflexes and kept him alive. Luckily, this beast was one of the lower classes—a so-called Corrupted Creature.
The monster was stunned for only a moment, but Neptune seized the chance. He summoned his newfound weapon, Crownbreaker, and dashed forward.
"So… heavy…"
The longsword was far heavier than any blade he had ever lifted, slowing his movements. Still, he raised it high above the beast's body, aiming for a devastating strike.
"Go back to hell, bastard!"
But at the last instant, the creature lashed out with its twin tails, whipping Neptune in the stomach and sending him flying several meters.
He rolled through the freezing snow, coughing up blood. Forcing himself back to his feet, he realized he had dropped his sword in the impact. It lay several meters away.
The creature wasted no time. It lunged at him again with incredible speed.
Neptune quickly snatched a small bottle from his belt, filled with a strange green liquid—the leftover poison he had used to kill the demon.
As the beast leapt at him, its maw gaping wide, long fangs glistening, Neptune hurled the substance into its throat and sidestepped.
Even so, its claw raked across his right shoulder, tearing it open. Neptune cried out in pain but pushed himself forward, racing toward his sword.
The poison wouldn't take long. He just had to survive until then.
He snatched up Crownbreaker as the corrupted creature turned on him, its eyes burning with fury and pain. It let out a guttural roar and lunged again. The beast's massive claws came down in a deadly arc, but Neptune deflected them aside and countered immediately. His blade missed as the creature stumbled backward—its movements growing sluggish. The poison was working.
Seizing the moment, Neptune dashed forward, raised his sword high, and brought it down. The creature leapt too—but far too slowly. With a sickening sound, the blade cleaved its head from its body, sending blood spraying across the snow.
Breathing heavily, Neptune sank to his knees in the snow. The familiar rush of Soul Fragments coursed through him as he closed his eyes, focusing on his Soul Vessel.
A small smile touched his lips as he felt it pulsing faintly.
Name: Neptune
Soul Vessel: Awakening
Soul Fragments: (6/500)
"Only six fragments…?"
He sighed. He would have received more if the creature had been of a higher rank.
"You fool, be grateful that you even survived!"
Corrupted creatures were the weakest of them all. The higher ranks were far more terrifying—and would have killed him without hesitation.
There were six ranks in total, determined by the number of Soul Vessels. A Corrupted Creature carried one, like him. A Demon carried two. An Abomination three. An Archdemon four. A Soul Tyrant five. And a so-called Void Lord, six.
Anything above five Soul Vessels was probably just myth.
Still, his disappointment quickly turned to excitement when he noticed a round charm engraved with a wolf's head etched onto the side of his Soul Vessel.
"A charm!"