'What should I do in this situation? Try to calm him? I guess that's the right thing to do. Time to put my charisma stat to good use like I did with Lyle yesterday,' Daz thought as he stood up and approached the boy who was still clutching his knife tightly.

"Stab it," Daz said calmly to the hate-filled boy.

He, in response, slowly turned his head to reveal his tear-stained, but clearly enraged face. "W-What?" he muttered in response to Daz.

"Just stab it," Daz repeated. The spectators were shocked and a little bit frightened, but thankfully for Daz, no one interrupted him yet. "You're angry, right? At the monsters," he followed up with a stern voice towards the nine-year-old boy.

The boy remained silent for a few seconds before tears started to trickle down his already tear-covered face. "They... the Zombies... they... they ate them! My parents... Dad told me to run, so I ran and ran and ran... when I looked behind me... my parents... they..." the boy, after telling Daz this, slumped to his knees, leaving the knife in the dummy.

"They're dead... they're both dead... I-I-" the boy stopped talking and jerked around when he felt a large hand on his shoulder.

Daz was kneeling on the ground to make himself level with the boy. "What's your name, kid?" he asked. 'I get it. Losing those you care for can really fuck you up... I better do this right, or maybe I'll have to kill this kid if he ends up being a liability,' Daz's calculative mind thought.

"J-Jorden," the child answered with a shaky voice.

"Okay, Jorden. What I want you to do, is stab that dummy. Once you've stabbed it, stab it again, and again, and again. Stab it until you're satisfied, then once that's done, no more outbursts. If you really want to express your pain and hatred, do you know what you have to do?" Daz asked with a stone-cold expression, scaring the child slightly.

Jorden shook his head, stating his ignorance of whatever the answer to Daz's question was.

"What you need to do right now, is get stronger. Train here every day and night. improve your skills. Then when you're ready, help me fight off the monster waves. Kill the monsters. It wasn't the Zombies that killed your parents, no, it was the system," Daz stated in an inspiring way. 'Sorry, System. I need to give this kid a focus to vent for now since he could be useful later on and you're the easiest villain I can create here to mould him,' Daz apologised internally.

Jorden's eyes shook and he replied in a quiet voice, "T-The system?"

"Right. Who, or more specifically, what, do you think brought the Zombies here? What told the Zombies to attack and murder your parents? Who should you really target your anger and hatred towards?" Daz said with a vicious smile.

"The system..." Jorden uttered in realisation.

"Exactly." Daz's smile was truly questionable, but the surrounding people that could hear them, while concerned with Daz's method, were happy that he had managed to somehow console the boy.

Daz stood up and started walking away from the training ground, but just before he left, he turned his head and left a few words of wisdom for Jorden. "Kid, there's nothing wrong with revenge. Nothing at all. So long as it's justified and not blinded by your other emotions. Work hard, kid. I look forward to seeing you grow."

After Daz had left, a few of the other Citizens approached Jorden and tried to comfort him, but his mind was elsewhere. Daz's word had left a big impact on him, an impact big enough to affect the rest of the boy's life.

Lyle had watched all of this and he couldn't help but turn his lips upward with glee. 'Ah... Lord Daz... truly, he was right, following you was indeed the best choice of our life.'

Daz was now standing in front of the corpse of the Wasp Queen with a puzzled look on his face. "Hmm... I wonder if this body has any value? I checked everyone's class this morning, but no one has any skills related to alchemy or anything like that... hmm..."

Daz sighed and crouched down next to the body before he mumbled, "May as well absorb its soul. So do I just use my racial ability like how I'd use a skill? Incant its name? Soul Harvesting?"

Immediately afterwards, Daz tumbled back in shock as a grey wisp of energy exited the Wasp Queen's body. It swirled around violently and seemed mad before it suddenly started moving towards Daz by an invisible force of some sort.

"Is it trying to resist?" Daz whispered while he watched the wisp struggle as hard as it could to go in the opposite direction. "Maybe I should incant the ability again? Soul Harvesting." Upon saying it again, the invisible force's power seemed to double, and despite the soul's attempt at escaping, it smoothly flew into Daz's chest, knocking him off of his feet.

His eyes flashed with a bright grey colour before he closed them and held his head in pain.

'How dare you steal my soul, Human! You will pay for this! I will de- NO! NO! YOU ARE NO HUMAN! W-WHAT IS THIS?! THIS VILE POWER?! NO!'

A few moments later, Daz carefully opened his eyes and felt that his vision was very blurry. "What the hell was that voice in my head? Was that the Wasp Queen?" Daz asked himself with uncertainty. As soon as his vision cleared, he could see a grey screen, so he read its details.

The host has successfully harvested the soul of the lesser boss monster, [Rasphilia, the Wasp Queen]. The host has gained 500 [Soul Power] and all currently obtained stats of the host will increase by 2 points.

"W-What? I gained stats outside of buying them? Wasn't that impossible? Or maybe the system only told me that because, at the time, that was the only way to increase my stats?" After asking these questions to himself rhetorically, the system answered him with another screen confirmed what he had mumbled to be the truth.

Daz thought about what had just happened for a minute or two before he decided to inspect his own status to see if the promised changes had actually been applied.

Host's Status Basic Information Name: Daz Species: Reaper Age: 20 Sex: Male Class: Shovel Knight Affinity: Chaotic Neutral Energies Lifeforce: 3000/3000 Death Energy: 400/500 Stats Strength: 122(146) Dexterity: 82(96) Constitution: 152(180) Agility: 62 Charisma: 102 Ingenuity: 502 Defense: 102(3102) Immunity: 7 Soul Power: 502

"Incredible... it used fifty Death Energy to activate since I used it twice, but it really increased every stat by two... even Immunity... that's insane. New goal: find and consume as many boss souls as possible. I wonder why the added amount to my three base stats never increased though?" Daz said to himself.

"Ah, probably 'cause those numbers divided by five to get twenty percent is the same number as before but they each have a decimal place on them now. Guess the system rounds down and not up. Good to know," he calculated.

Daz then got up from the ground and dusted himself off. He looked at the Wasp Queen's body again and said, "I still have no idea what to do with this corpse though."