Cleaver Of Sin

Chapter 936: Soul-related Abilities [Ko-fi Bonus Chapter]

Since he was done checking out Virelass’ evolution, Asher moved to check out his status panel, but before he could, the system chimed again as Virelass’ evolved abilities, which were on display, vanished.

[With the Host’s soul evolution, a few soul-related abilities have awakened]

Asher stared at the panel, stunned for a moment before he eventually smiled. He knew that he had experienced some changes. He could sense emotions, and he could feel that his thoughts were flowing faster. He wanted to know what these changes were about. He was curious about what abilities he had awakened. Were there just these few, or were there even more?

[Increased Soul Strength: The Host’s soul has become stronger, denser, and purer, making it significantly more difficult to damage, seal, possess, or erase]

[Accelerated Thought Process: The Host’s mind processes information many times faster, making the world appear slower during combat, while also increasing reading efficiency and speed, amongst other things]

[Perfect Memory: The Host has been granted perfect memory, but this ability has been nullified since the Host possesses a natural perfect memory from birth]

[Soul Perception: The Host now possesses the ability to perceive the existence of souls around him. Range scales as the Host grows stronger. Current range: one hundred-meter radius]

[Increased Lifespan: With increased soul purity and density, the Host’s lifespan naturally increases in direct proportion]

[Emotion Perception: The Host now possesses the ability to perceive the emotions of all living beings as long as he lays his eyes upon them]

Asher stared at all six soul-related abilities he had awakened in silence as he swiftly went through each and every one of them. None granted any form of soul-attacking ability, technique, or whatever, but he was still extremely grateful. After all, each ability had its own importance, and every single one of them offered benefits that would only become more valuable as he grew stronger.

Although he didn’t really understand how the increased soul strength worked, since people couldn’t release, sense, or hold their souls in any way or form, he still simply accepted the boost with a smile. After all, who would reject the idea of their soul becoming stronger? Even if the effects weren’t immediately visible, there was no doubt that a stronger soul would prove invaluable one day.

The second ability, Accelerated Thought Process, was something Asher was already getting the hang of. It was particularly because of this ability that he had felt as though the world had opened up to him in a unique way earlier. His thoughts were faster to the point that time itself seemed to slow just for him, allowing him to process every little detail with astonishing clarity while his mind effortlessly kept pace with everything around him.

But Asher wasn’t deluded enough to actually think time had slowed. With the ridiculous speed people possessed within Crymora, those who moved faster than both his perception and accelerated thought process could still wipe him off the surface of the planet before he even realized what had happened.

But still, Asher wasn’t complaining. A boost was a boost, regardless of how small or how huge it was.

He moved to the third ability, then smiled with a shake of his head. His memory simply couldn’t get any more perfect at this point, so there was simply nothing left to improve. As a result, the system had simply nullified the ability.

‘Sigh… I’m simply too smart for my own good,’ Asher mused in a not-so-subtle humble brag.

He had always been proud of his memory, possessing more than just a little pride in it. Seeing that even the system agreed that not even his evolved soul could further evolve this particular ability simply made Asher’s pride in this aspect soar through the roof.

After all, it was simply because of this memory that he had been able to live such an easy, comfortable, and rich life back on Earth. Exams? Assignments? They were all child’s play when you could simply read through a single textbook in a couple of hours if it contained calculations, and in less than an hour if it didn’t contain any calculations.

Asher’s thoughts shifted to Soul Perception next. To him, this was easily the most busted ability on the list amongst every ability displayed. Asher knew that, in one shape or form, people could always somehow bypass Omni Perception and even his own natural senses. That was simply natural, as he didn’t possess some sort of absolute sensing ability or anything of the sort.

But with the Soul Perception ability, Asher could now sense every single sneaky idiot who managed to bypass both his Omni Perception and his natural senses.

What made the ability even more excellent was the fact that people couldn’t influence their own souls, so how could they camouflage or hide their soul fluctuations from Asher’s Soul Perception when they couldn’t even sense their own souls in the first place? It was practically an entirely different layer of perception, one that ignored conventional methods of concealment altogether.

Of course, this particular ability was useless against people like the Fifth Sun, Apollo Wargrave, who possessed the ability to manipulate souls at his whim.

But one had to ask, just how many people even possessed the ability to control and manipulate souls in the first place? The answer was undoubtedly very few. So, regardless, Soul Perception was truly a top-tier ability. Although it was currently limited to a one-hundred-meter radius, that was only for now, and it was already more than perfect for a start. As his own strength increased, so too would the range of the ability, making its future potential frightening to imagine.

‘I will have to check if this Soul Perception ability works on Emovirae, Monsters, and Beasts,’ Asher thought to himself as he didn’t dare limit the ability to just Humans. If souls truly existed within every living creature, then this ability might prove far more versatile than even the system’s description suggested.

Asher smirked and shifted to the next ability on the list.

‘Increased Lifespan, huh?’ Asher thought to himself as his thoughts shifted toward the fifth ability. ‘At this point, I might just outlive these Sinvairas or something,’ he mused to himself.

Although Asher didn’t know exactly how much his lifespan had increased, he simply took it at face value. He knew that the system would probably reflect the effects of Increased Lifespan in numerical values, but to Asher, that was nothing but a headache since he had no idea what those numbers actually constituted. Unlike the Perception stat, where a single stat increase meant a one-meter radius increase in Omni Perception, lifespan wasn’t nearly as straightforward.

Besides, his own natural perception didn’t even follow that same rule.

‘The system should just tell me if I gained, like, two hundred more years or something,’ Asher thought to himself as he shook his head.

Asher shook his head and decided to forget about it. After all, nobody truly knew when they were going to die. Besides, even if the system stated that he had two thousand years’ worth of lifespan, it didn’t mean he was actually going to live for two thousand years anyway. He could simply get killed long before then.

And even if he somehow remained alive until the very end of his natural lifespan, he might simply go crazy from constantly staring at the remaining years, months, or days displayed before him. Watching that number endlessly decrease would probably drive anyone insane eventually, and he might very well end up spending those final moments doing something utterly ridiculous simply because he knew the end was approaching.

Asher shook his head once more as his mind shifted to the final ability on the system display: Emotion Perception.

While people might be able to control their emotions to a certain extent, they couldn’t truly fake them. One might be able to mask their emotions through facial expressions and the like, but at the end of the day, they couldn’t genuinely falsify what they truly felt deep within.

Asher felt like this ability would have worked perfectly in tandem with Soul Perception, both of them complementing each other seamlessly. But alas, it came with the restriction that Asher actually had to lay his eyes upon a living being in order to perceive their emotions.

Otherwise, even if someone somehow managed to hide their soul fluctuations and bypass Soul Perception, they wouldn’t necessarily be detected through Emotion Perception unless Asher could actually see them.

But alas, one couldn’t gain everything in life, even if they were the main character of a story.

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Bonus Chapter sponsored by TBH