Chương 49: Soul Collector

Lloyd stood frozen, stunned by what he had just seen, unable to move, as if his own body refused to accept the reality of what was happening. The room around him was steeped in deep nighttime darkness — the rain outside had stopped long ago, leaving behind only a damp, ringing silence, occasionally broken by the distant hum of a passing car or the brief rustle of wind in the wet leaves.

Somewhere outside, drops that had gathered on the eaves kept falling with a quiet, sporadic tap, ticking off the seconds like some small, uneven clock. The desk lamp continued to burn dimly in the corner, casting long, stretched-out shadows from the furniture across the walls — the wardrobe looked especially massive and gloomy now, and the stack of books on the shelf threw a jagged, toothed shadow onto the ceiling, resembling little mountains.

The phone, still lying face-up on the floor, cast a cold, bluish light over a small patch of floor right in front of the bed, and that light now felt oddly foreign, too harsh against the warm, homey glow of the lamp.

The air in the room was cool and slightly damp, saturated with the smell of rain and wet earth still seeping in through the cracked-open window, while somewhere deep in the house, beyond several walls, the old refrigerator in the kitchen hummed faintly — a familiar, lulling sound that at any other moment Lloyd wouldn't even have noticed, but which now seemed unnaturally loud against the surrounding stillness.

Somewhere on the ceiling, near the light fixture, a small, sleepy spider sat frozen, motionless and nearly invisible, as if it too were waiting alongside the rest of the room. He slowly lowered himself back onto the bed, leaned down, and picked up the phone that had slipped from his hands, feeling his heart still pounding somewhere in his throat, pulsing dully in his temples. His fingers trembled slightly as he raised the screen back up to his eyes.

The screen glowed dimly in the dark, and Lloyd read the information over and over, as if hoping that with each new reading the text would somehow change on its own, turn into something less frightening. There are seven ranks in total that determine the rarity of a True Name, and each of them corresponds to its own glow color. Common — gray. Rare — green. Super Rare — blue. Epic — purple. Mythical — red. Legendary — yellow. Divine — white.

The rarity of a rank determines the versatility of your skills, not their raw destructive power. For example, doubled strength would be a Common rank. Control over matter, at minimum, an Epic one. Naturally, this also depends on the Player's class. In all of human history, no one had ever managed to obtain the Divine rank.

"Don't tell me this means..." Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Lloyd's gaze drifted involuntarily to the line showing his True Name, still burning with that same unsettling red glow he'd noticed from the very start. Now that color had a meaning, and the realization sent goosebumps crawling across his skin, an unpleasant, clammy chill spreading down his spine, one that had nothing to do with the cool air drifting in through the window.

That meant Lloyd had obtained the second-highest rank available to humanity. He sat frozen, staring at a single spot on the screen, where the reddish letters kept flickering with the same steady, unblinking light, as if mocking him with the sheer fact of their existence. Somewhere in the darkness outside, a few more scattered drops rustled down onto the pavement after breaking loose from a branch, and for a moment that sound seemed deafeningly loud to Lloyd.

"I have a feeling I'm going to have problems once people find out an ordinary human got a Mythical rank." Lloyd sat motionless for a few more minutes, processing the information he'd just received, while somewhere in the kitchen the old clock ticked quietly, and beyond the wall the old house occasionally creaked, settling in for the night, the way houses do after standing for decades.

That creak, usually completely unnoticeable, now felt almost sinister, as if the house itself were whispering something at the very edge of hearing.

"Well, there's no going back now, not with a rank like this." He shifted his gaze to the system window still hovering in the air before him, and his eyes lit up faintly with reflected reddish light, giving his face a strange, almost unhealthy expression in the dim room.

"Alright, now for the interesting part." He pulled up the stats window again, and the familiar purple glow spread briefly across the room, pulling the corner of the wardrobe and the edge of the rumpled blanket out of the darkness, a wave of soft lilac light rippling across the wall for a second before fading away.

"I hope at least this part is simpler." Lloyd focused on one of his skills, and a new purple window immediately unfolded before him, its edges pulsing gently, as if breathing in time with his own racing heartbeat, while a faint, barely audible hum, like a distant chime, filled the room for a moment before fading away. Skill: [Soul Collector] Level: I Description: Death is not an end — it merely releases the soul. You are able to hear its call and keep it from dissolving into nothingness.

Every soul collected strengthens you and those who walk beside you. Souls Collected: [0/25] Lloyd stared silently at the last line for a few seconds, while somewhere far outside a dog barked once more, briefly, then fell silent again in the night stillness, as if startled by its own echo.

"Souls? And how exactly am I supposed to collect those?" He shifted his gaze to the soul counter, glowing dimly in the corner of the window, and couldn't help grimacing, feeling something twist unpleasantly inside him at the mere thought of what might be hiding behind those numbers. The room around him seemed to grow even darker, the shadows in the corners thickening, as if the very atmosphere had condensed in response to his grim thoughts.

"Who would've guessed..." He scanned the text once more, reading every word carefully, as if trying to find some hidden meaning between the lines, then, shaking his head, pulled up the information on his second skill.

The room around him plunged into near-total darkness for a moment — the lamp on the desk flickered faintly, as if the power in the house had dipped for a second, and something clicked quietly somewhere in the wall — before flaring back up with its steady yellow light, as if nothing had happened at all.

A flicker of purple light passed briefly through Lloyd's eyes, reflected from the new window unfolding right in front of him in the air, while the shadows on the walls froze once more in their silent, unmoving wait, as if the entire room were holding its breath alongside him, waiting to see what he would discover next.

"Now this is getting interesting..."