Chapter 4: The Cons of Being a Reaper

The next day, just like I expected I got a lecture from one of the Elders and had to do all the chores for an entire week. That was an overkill! I swear those old farts were just waiting for something like this to happen, so they could throw all of the work on me. Do you even know how much mess the younger kids make? You clean up one thing, take your eyes off of them for just one second and the next thing you know the mess is twice as bad as before.

“You should just finish all of this later,” spoke Leidolf in my head. I groaned in annoyance, “can you please keep quiet for at least 5 minutes. You have been a huge ass pain in the head since morning. I already told you that I will come see you when I finish with my chores.” Leidolf snorted in response and I felt his presence vanish from my head.

“God, I’m going to go insane at this rate. If anymore people start residing in my head it might actually happen.

“You know, that's why some Reapers died.” This time it was Ennius. “What do you mean? Did they go insane and kill themselves or something?” I asked, hoping that he would somehow rebuke me.

“I wouldn’t exactly say they killed themselves, but their actions played a part in their deaths. Some of the past Reapers grew power hungry overtime, consuming more and more souls. Eventually at one point, the monsters that they consumed drove them insane, fighting for dominance within the user's body, until the soul and the body couldn’t withstand it anymore, thus destroying them completely” explained Ennius.

“Couldn’t they just forcefully take their powers?” I asked, not understanding why they would keep signing contracts, if it affected them negatively more in the long run. “They were blinded by their power for hunger, not seeing that it was slowly consuming them from the inside out, driving them mad.” Ennius’ voice left me deep in thought. Will I become like my predecessors? Should I just not get any other powers, and only use my wolf powers? I definitely didn’t want to go mad. “Hey kid, stop stressing over this. You still have to uphold your side of the deal, remember?” Leidolf’s voice broke my train of thought.

“How do you know what I was thinking? Don’t tell me you can read my mind or something.” Leidolf just sighed, as if he was tired from all this. “Come on kid, my soul is inside you, and my consciousness is in your mind. Use your head a bit, would you? I’m getting tired of your stupid questions.” That ticked me off a bit.

“Just because you live there doesn’t mean that I can’t have any privacy. In the first place, why are you in my head, you still haven’t explained that to me. Instead, the first thing you did this morning was pick a fight with the old fart.” At this point I was more then ticked off, remembering this morning sent a whole new wave of anger and annoyance through me.

“Hey, don’t be rude to your elders,” a pissed of Ennius spoke up. “Oh be quiet, for God’s sake. I’m tired of both of you. One, is of no help, the other, doesn’t shut up even for a second.”

“Hey!” both of them shouted at me. “Wha-”

“Shut up! I swear, you just do whatever you want without a care in the world. You treat my body as your own. Well, guess what? This isn’t your body, it's mine? Let me repeat that for you. This. Body. Is. Not. Yours!”

For once silence enveloped my mind, it felt odd, kind of lonely. I frowned, there was no way that I actually missed that endless blabber. However, I had to admit, it did make me feel kind of lonely. Maybe I started opening up to them a bit more because I knew they would stay with me for a while, especially Leidolf. Still, that didn’t mean they had to be in my head, annoying me all day and all night.

“Alright, we’re going to set some ground rules. First, you are not allowed to read my mind unless, I gave you permission or there is a valid reason and I just can’t give you permission at the moment. Second, you will give me some privacy and not watch what I’m doing at every point of time during the day. And Third, you have to tell me everything you know about the Reapers. Oh and don’t forget to exclude the reason to why you were fighting this morning.” I stated my rules, awaiting their response.

“Fine, I'll tell you what everything that I can,” finally replied Ennius. “Same here, but don’t think that we will be all friendly now kid. The only reason I agreed was because I don’t want you going insane before I uphold your side of the deal.” Leidolf replied a bit harshly, making me feel a slight sting in my heart, and here I thought we could put aside ur differences and get along.

“Okay, let me finish this and we will discuss all this properly.” A few minutes later I was finally done. Putting away everything that I had used for cleaning I walked to my room, closed the door and sat down on my bad.

“First things first, why were the two of you fighting this morning?” I asked with a slightly demanding voice. Honestly, I was tired from going to sleep late, and wanted to sleep in, but no, instead I was woken up by countless growling and arguing.

“Ah, about that. You see when Leidolf gained access to your consciousness he felt my presence and connected it to the presence that he slightly felt when I possessed you. He managed to connect the dots, finding out that I was the one who actually killed him. Then he just tried to kill me, but since I was already dead I told him it was pointless and that he was just wasting his time. He wouldn't listen to me, and one thing let to the other, resulting in us arguing, thus waking you up” explained Ennius.

“I see, I understand the gist of what happened. Now, let's move on the the main topic. Tell me everything I need to know about being a Reaper.”

Ennius sighed before speaking, “this might take a while, so get comfortable.” I scooted up to the wall, leaning against it.

“Now lets see, where shall I start?” Ennius spoke to himself.

“As I have told you before, Reapers are beings who can absorb the soul of the dead, but it has to be within a certain period of time after the being had died. If the time limit passes the soul will leave into the underworld.

The limit for how many souls you can absorb is infinite, but the drawback of absorbing too many souls is high. Some of the Reapers in the past have gone insane from having all of the voices in their head, never silent, until eventually the Reaper’s mind can't handle it. If the mind gets unstable, a Reaper is already dead. Without their intellectual ability, a Reaper’s soul is left unguarded. Allowing the souls inside consume their soul, thus destroying the said person completely.

The other way that Reapers often die is when they try to keep their sanity stable by gaining their abilities through will power only. However, you can't always win, there will always be someone above you, especially if someone’s existence is on the line.

You already know most of the stuff relating to how getting powers, so I'll just give you a quick summary. There are two ways to gain powers, the contract or through will power.

Through the contract you are able to gain more abilities and use them more efficiently. However you must overcome a trial if you wish to receive the abilities.

For the willpower method, if you win, you get one ability, and you can't use it as efficiently as the ones you get through contracts. Also there are no trials for this method. Trials are mostly, challenges set by the being that you will receive your powers from. It's a sort of test, to see if you are worthy enough to use their powers.

Lastly, there is one more thing you need to know about Reapers. When we awaken to our powers we also get a weapon. The weapon isn't anything special, but it is passed down from one Reaper to the next. When the current Reaper dies his soul is absorbed by the weapon and passed on along the weapon to the next Reaper that is chosen. If you're wondering how the next Reaper is chosen, that's something you will have to find out yourself in the future. The Reapers from long ago might of know but not us. Along the way many have been lost to insanity, not being able to pass on a lot of information to the future generations.

If a Reaper goes insane, like in my case, the guy before me went mad and got his soul consumed, erasing him from existence. When something like this happens the weapon just gets passed down to the next Reaper with basic information, explaining how our powers work and what a Reaper is. I don't know how that works, so don't ask me, maybe the first Reaper managed to do this somehow.

That basically summarizes everything you need to know about Reapers.” Ennius finally finished explaining, leaving me to process all the information.

“What's the weapon that we get, how do I use it?” I asked.

“Think about it being in your hand and it should appear,” replied Ennius. I closed my eyes to help me concentrate and thought about the weapon being in my hand, few seconds later I felt a cool sensation in my hand.

I opened my eyes to find a scythe made out of bones and some sort of metal in my hand. Seeing the scythe, memories of the night when I had almost died flashed before my eyes. So, apparently I had used this before, well to be more accurate it was Ennius, but who cares at this point.

I twirled the scythe around, it felt right in my hand, the balance was just right and felt like it was an extension of my hand.

Thinking of the scythe disappearing, it vanished, like it wasn't there.

“Will you teach me how to use it?” I asked Ennius. “That's what I'm here for, but I would suggest getting someone who is a master at the weapon to teach you.”

“I'll probably find one at the academy for the gifted.” The academy that is made for gifted people has all kinds of classes, you name it they have it. If it wasn't for only gifted people it would easily come out as one of the elite schools that probably only rich kids could attend.

“When will we start training?” I asked. Training was what I needed most at this point as soon as I left the city, Leidolf’s mother would probably find me and try to avenge her son. Thinking about it made me feel as if my days were numbered. Why did Leidolf have to be a pup, I wouldn't have to go through all this trouble. Yet again, if he wasn't a pup I'd be long dead.

“Let's start tomorrow after you finish with your work. Today you should start your inner energy training. The sooner you start, the better.” With that Ennius said no more.

Guess it's time I went and sorted things out with Leidolf. Entering my soul realm, I went straight to the island, searching for Leidolf. Soon I found him by the lake, sitting there watching the still water.

“Hey,” I said, slowly walking up to him. He didn't reply. “Look, I know that I was kind of involved in your death, but what would you have done in my situation? Let yourself be killed? I think not.” I tried reasoning out with him.

“Look, I don’t blame you for my death, if its anyone that I blame its the old dude. He played the major role in my death, and the fact that I completely underestimated you. I truly did not expect you to awaken to your powers at that moment or have some guy possess you and kill me” explained Leidolf still not bothering to turn around and look at me.

“Since, you don’t resent me and don’t really blame me for your death, can’t we be friends or something?”

What I got in response was something completely different, and a bit insulting. “Friends? Please, why would I sink any lower to be your friend. To me you are just a puny human child, that has no power to protect himself whatsoever. If anything, you are just barely tolerable. To be friends with someone as great as me you need the power to back you up. Get stronger, and then, we will talk about us being friends” answered Leidolf in proud and domineering tone. Like I was so some sort of lowly creature that was made just to worship him, never to reach the same heights as him.

I grinned coldly in return, “oh, we will see about that, give me a few years and I will have long surpassed you.” A sense of rivalry boosted my confidence. One day I will definitely surpass him and make him take back his words.

“I’ll be looking forward to it,” Leidolf finally looked at me to reveal a wolfish grin. “Let’s see just how far you can go, before you plummet down from the sky.”

After a few minutes, I left the soul realm after asking him to train me in my new powers that I received from him. “To be able to use your abilities you must first understand how you are able to use them,” explained Leidolf in my head.

“Everyone has a certain amount of energy within themselves, some have more, some have less. Most people don’t possess any at all, or so little that they can’t do anything with it. It’s like its not even there. That's why there are so few of the gifted.

An average gifted person has enough energy to be able to last a couple minutes before running out. One with a higher amount will last longer, and use abilities that consume high amounts of energy more often.

However, everyone can increase the maximum amount of energy they can store. The amount you can store slowly increases as you grow up and the more you deplete your energy, but those methods barely have any affect.

To increase your maximum energy capacity you need to refine it constantly, to make it more pure. This will increase how much energy you can store and affect your consumption efficiency. The purer the energy you possess, the less you need to use for an ability, but that's not the end, it's more of the basics.

When you refine your energy and make it more pure, it becomes stronger. This is where the next part comes in. Along with the starting energy chamber, there are five other, one for each part of your body. Your first one is in your chest area, the second in your head, the following two are in your arms, and the last two are in your legs, making a total of six.

After you refine the energy fully within your chamber, you can try to force open the other chambers, thus increasing your capacity. However, with each chamber the force required to unlock the chamber will be stronger. Most people can’t get past the third chamber within their lives, no matter how hard they try. They use potions and medical herbs to try to increase the purity of their energy, but purity is not everything. Some just don’t understand that and are stuck at a bottleneck for the rest of their lives, unable to move on.

Along with refining your energy you need to understand how the energy works. It’s true you can manage to open some chambers without much understanding and through brute force alone, however, the lack of understanding will eventually catch up to you and hinder your process.

There are some other things that you will need to know later on in the future, but if I tell you them know it will affect your knowledge of the energy, and can stop your future progression. With time I will tell you these things, but for now just focus on purifying your energy.

Now, try focusing on your powers and look for the chamber,” finally Leidolf finished explaining and started telling me how to begin my training.

I focused on my chest, trying to find the area within me that could hold the energy. I listened to my heartbeat feeling, getting drawn into its steady and powerful beats. Then, the pitch darkness within my mind changed, showing a room with five tunnels leading into different directions. Those must be where the other chambers are.

In the middle of the room was a chamber filled with dirty, yellow liquid. It was closer to brown at this point. This must be my energy, but why is it so dirty? Is it because it’s unrefined, and not pure? Will it become more clean after I purify it?

I sat down near the chamber and thought about a small bubble of energy floating up to me. In a few short seconds a small energy bubble flew up to me and floated before me. Concentrating on the small amount of energy before me I started to purify it. Separating the mulky contents from the rest.

The process was really slow, time consuming and required a lot of concentration. After what felt like hours I finally managed to purify the small amount of energy. I looked at my complete work. What used to be a dirty yellow ball of energy was now a beautiful golden color, and seemed to be slightly illuminating a soft glow.

I sighed, realizing just how tough the road ahead of me was. I threw the ball of energy back in with rest, grabbing some more and restarting the process. After purify a bit more energy I was mentally exhausted. Exiting out the chamber I returned back to the real world.

Having my sense starting to completely return I felt a sticky substance all over my body. Looking down I found some strange black liquid all over me. What is this? Could these be the impurities that I seperated from my energy? So, the body releases it in a similar process as sweat. Sighting I got up, grabbed a towel and headed of towards the baths. This whole new training has brought me a whole new set of things to do. Thinking about all this, I realized something. That I wasn’t going to have a break from this routine any time soon.