What happens if I put a soul in a body that doesn't fit?
Believe it or not, it's a stupid idea.
I learned that the hard way after shoving a goblin's soul into a wolf's corpse. It worked, and by worked, I mean the poor bastard spent its brief undeath flailing like a fish on land, crawling away from me in sheer terror because it had no idea how to move on four legs.
Of course, any stupid idea becomes genius if you sprinkle in a bit of fleshcrafting. That's my new motto, my new standard to live by. Write that down somewhere, future me.
So, I modified the wolf's skeleton, shifting its structure to resemble a goblin's. Adjusted the joints, shortened the spine, and tweaked the musculature. The results? Far less pitiful flailing and way more undead wolf head atop a hunched, vaguely humanoid body covered in patchy fur.
And the little guy was so happy! Well, maybe not happy, but a lot less freaked out. The moment I released it from my mental grip, it rose shakily onto its new legs. Wobbled a bit. Then steadied. Its head swiveled back and forth as it examined its altered form, tail giving an experimental wag.
He even tried to claw my eyes out once! If that's not a sign of a healthy, well-adjusted undead, I don't know what is.
Unfortunately, he was also quite the unruly bastard. He figured out quickly that pain wasn't a thing anymore, which made him recklessly aggressive, and since he lacked lungs, he was just as silent as the wolves. Not a moan, not a growl—just pure, creeping malice when its fear faded away.
Anyway, I tossed the gob-wolf into a pack of undead wolves, and they tore it apart instantly. For some reason, they seemed even more aggressive toward it than usual. Curious. Maybe some kind of instinctual rejection? A sense that something about it was even more wrong than they were?
I'll have to test that later.
The intelligence question is a big one, though. How smart is an undead goblin? More importantly, does the soul transfer mess with its thinking? Hell, I don't even know how smart a normal goblin is!
Either way, I have a better candidate in mind for that particular experiment, but first, I need more material.
Gods above, has it already been three days since I got isekai'd? Time flies when you're committing morally questionable acts of science.
What else happened in the past day, hmm... My head hurts, so my thoughts are a little jumbled, but OH! That's good! It's perfect even! Check this out, you pitiful, pathetic voices telling me to sleep!
[Name: 🌄⚫☠️🦫🧋]
Difficulty: Hard
Floor: 1
Time left until forced return: 4y 362d 2h 13m 56s
Lvl 7
Strength: 10
Dexterity: 13
Constitution: 27
Mana: 6
[Primary Class: Unavailable]
[Sub-class: Unavailable]
Skills:
Soul Well - lvl 5
Fleshcrafting - lvl 8
Flesh Perception - lvl 5
Mana Perception - lvl 1
[Skill Points: 0]
[Stat Points: 0]
Ignore my beautiful, beautiful constitution for now and gaze upon my 6 mana!
It grew! And I didn't even put a single point into it!
Based on the constant exhaustion gnawing at my bones, I can only assume that my method of overexerting myself into near-mana-starvation is working. Training regimen, that's all! Sure, I feel like a wrung-out rag every single moment, but progress is progress!
My Mana Perception is still sitting at level 1, though, and no matter what I do, I can't control the buzzing energy (which I suppose is indeed mana) like I do with flesh.
That part's a bummer. I've been trying meditation techniques, focusing exercises, even attempts to visualize the mana as a tangible thing I could grasp. Nothing yet. I'll figure it out, eventually.
Because I have time!
Time for experiments! Time for crafting! Time for everything!
I clap my hand and whip together, giggling at the sudden rush of excitement. My energy levels spike and crash these days, like my body can't quite handle the constant expenditure of power. One moment I'm elated, feverishly working on three projects at once; the next, I'm collapsed on the forest floor in cardiac arrest.
Worth it, though. So worth it.
Speaking of experiments, I also tried stuffing souls into brain-dead bodies.
Results?
Puppets. Still puppets, just a bit more flexible due to the complete integrity of the body. The soul didn't interact with the nervous system at all. Neural pathways? Useless. Even if I manually kept its heart pumping. The thing acted just as undead as the others.
So then I tried varying degrees of brain damage on wolf corpses before soul insertion. Some were intact but oxygen-starved, others had suffered trauma, and a few were basically mush inside.
Mixed results, but ultimately, it didn't work as I expected.
It seems that "death" isn't an instant process. It's progressive. And I can measure it through soul mist—the wisps that seep from a body as it "dies". The more mist that leaves, the more "dead" the body is. At some threshold, the system seems to label it as an empty vessel, ready to accept a soul. This is mostly congruent with the amount of damage to the creature's brain.
Which means there's no jamming souls into the living. Or even the mostly dead. If there's even a wisp of soul mist still clinging to a corpse, it's like trying to shove a square peg into a round hole.
And believe me, I really, really fucking tried.
Same with stacking souls in one body. No matter how much I tried, it was like slamming into a wall. The system—or nature itself—just wouldn't allow it.
But I said it before, and I'll say it again—there is nothing that fleshcrafting can't fix.
Can't break the rules? Make your own.
Can't put two souls in the same body? Merge the bodies.
If a soul needs a proper brain to function perfectly, then I'll build a brain. If a single body can't hold multiple souls, then I'll stitch together a monstrosity that can.
Man-made horrors beyond comprehension? Sign me the hell up.
I just need the raw materials.
I didn't even begin to push the limits on what a "vessel" can be, focusing more on the possibility of complete and proper revival, but I'll expand upon that in my following thesis.
Unfortunately, wolves are getting scarce. Despite moving locations a few times, I'm finding fewer and fewer. Either I've already culled too many, my fellow humans culled too many, or the living ones have wised up and started avoiding the cursed, flesh-warping nightmare in their woods.
Which means...
It's Goblin Time
I stop beneath a gnarled tree, stretching my massive, sinewy limbs with a wet crack. My flesh-mech is nearly three meters tall now, layered with dense muscle and reinforced bones from all the wolves I've harvested.
Time to find new test subjects.
I cup my many-jointed "hand" around where my mouth should be underneath my full-head bone helmet.
"Here, goblin-goblin-goblin~"
The forest is silent. For now.
But I know they're out there.
And soon, they'll be mine.