Hollow System Ascension

Remainder

It was standing in the corner of a collapsed chamber as it had nowhere else to be.

That was the only way he could describe it. Standing, though it had no legs. Present, though it had no mass. It occupied a corner of the room at the end of the corridor, a shape roughly human in outline, roughly the height of a person, made entirely of a dim residual light that flickered at the edges the way a candle flickered when air moved near it.

Except there was no air moving.

He stood in the doorway and looked at it. The Hollow Hound's presence was very still, very focused, the borrowed senses locked onto the shape with an intensity that made the back of his neck prickle.

His system window opened on its own again, which he was starting to resent slightly as a habit.

SHELL IMPRINT DETECTED: Residual aura signature of a deceased Awakened. Soul has departed. Aura structure remains. Classification: C-rank. Combat type. Time since death: unknown.

He read it twice.

'A dead person,' he thought. 'That's a dead person's leftovers. Just…standing in a corner.'

He looked at the shape. It didn't look back because it had no eyes. It flickered. He had the deeply uncomfortable feeling that if he waited long enough, it would simply dissolve on its own, the last of whatever had held it here finally letting go, and whatever was in it would be gone with it.

Below the description, new text appeared.

RESIDUAL ABSORPTION — UNLOCK CONDITION MET. SKILL NOW ACTIVE.

'Oh,' he thought. 'Oh, so NOW it unlocks. When there's a dead person in the room. Wonderful timing.'

He looked at the shell imprint. He looked at his hand. He thought about what absorbing meant in practical terms and what it said about him as a person that he was seriously considering it, and then he thought about the fact that the skill description had said receive what has been left, and that the alternative was leaving it here to dissolve into nothing, and neither option was making him feel particularly good.

'It's not a person anymore,' he thought. 'The system said the soul is gone. This is just. Leftover aura. Like an echo.'

He wasn't fully convinced by his own argument, but he crossed the room anyway.

Up close, the shell imprint had a warmth to it, faint, the last of whatever heat a living Awakened generated slowly dissipating. He raised his hand and held it near the shape without touching, and felt the Hollow Hound's senses read it with a clarity his own couldn't match, the residual aura structure mapped in his borrowed perception like a blueprint of something that used to be a person.

'Sorry,' he thought, at the shell imprint, which didn't respond because it was not capable of responding.

He pressed his hand into it.

The absorption was different from the class conference. Less profound, less total, more like drinking than being remade. The shell imprint came apart at the point of contact and moved into him in a current that was warm and faintly electric, the aura structure dissolving as it transferred, the dim light winking out section by section until the corner was just a corner again.

His system window opened immediately.

RESIDUAL ABSORPTION — COMPLETE. C-RANK SHELL IMPRINT ABSORBED.

SOUL IMPRINT CONTAINED: The following skills were held by the deceased at the time of death:

IRON SKIN (C-rank passive, physical damage reduction)

SHATTER STRIKE (C-rank active, concentrated impact) GROUND LOCK (C-rank active, movement suppression)

BATTLE SENSE (C-rank passive, combat awareness)

HOLLOW CLASS RESTRICTION: Skills cannot be selectively acquired from shell imprints. One skill will be assigned at random. Remaining skills will be lost.

ASSIGNING.

He read the skill list. Read it again. Read the restriction.

'At random,' he thought. 'You're joking. You're actually joking.'

He looked at the four skills. Iron Skin, which would make him dramatically harder to injure. Shatter Strike, which would give him an actual offensive capability for the first time in his life. Ground Lock, which was situationally excellent and would have been useful approximately four times in the last two days. Battle Sense, which was a combat awareness passive that overlapped significantly with what the Hollow Hound already gave him.

Any of the first three would change his situation concretely and immediately. Any of the first three would mean he was no longer an F-rank porter with a utility knife in a dungeon.

The window updated.

SKILL ASSIGNED:

CARTOGRAPHER'S EYE (Passive) Automatically maps explored areas. Highlights structural anomalies and points of interest within range. Acquired from residual impression. Source unknown.

He stared at it.

'Cartographer's Eye,' he thought.

He stared at it for a while longer.

'That wasn't even on the list,' he thought. 'It wasn't on the list of skills the person had. It gave me something that wasn't even on the list. How. Why. Who designed this?

A map was already generating in the corner of his system window. The corridor behind him, the chamber he was standing in, the turns he'd taken, all of it rendered in clean lines with notable points marked. It was detailed and accurate, and genuinely impressive and completely useless in a fight.

'Iron Skin,' he thought. 'I could not have been hurt by things. Shatter Strike. I could have hit things and had them care about it. Ground Lock. I could have stopped things from moving. Any of those. Any single one of those, and instead I got a map.'

He looked at the map. It was a very good map.

'I have eight stats combined that don't add up to a single decent combat number and one active skill that draws me a picture of where I've been,' he thought. 'Against an A-rank apparition. In a dungeon I arrived at by accident. Through a door I got sucked into.'

He sat down on the floor of the chamber because he felt it was warranted.

'Six years,' he thought. 'Six years and a trial and a dead person's leftovers and I got a map.'

The Cartographer's Eye updated helpfully, marking his current sitting position with a small dot.

He looked at the dot.

'Fantastic,' he thought.