"Anyway, just quiet down for me."
Noah tried to mentally convey the thought of 'quiet' to the rooster.
However, the bird continued to crow incessantly and from the sound of it, its cries had actually taken on a frantic edge.
He did not understand the language of animals, so he could not comprehend what the rooster was shouting.
Having no other choice, he decided to appraise it.
[Rooster] > * Type: Poultry (Male Chicken)
Phylum: Chordata
Age: 19 weeks old
Details: ...Fecal output... mating habits...
Noah frowned and let out a heavy sigh.
What in the world was going on? The information from this Appraisal was way too detailed.
A single glance had flooded his brain with over 130 pieces of biological information, and ninety-nine percent of it was completely useless junk.
He had absolutely no interest in learning the intimate mating details of roosters and hens, but now, he understood them all too well!
Even if ordinary poultry was incredibly weak, this was way too much information for mere eye contact.
He hadn't even touched the bird...
'Wait. Touched?'
True, he hadn't reached out and made physical contact with the rooster's body.
But this massive volume of information was far beyond what even physical contact could achieve.
In other words, he had made a much deeper level of contact with this animal.
He had touched something that transcended the physical body.
Could it be... because of his earlier experiment with his upgraded Spell-Weaver skill, he had actually made direct contact with the rooster's soul?
The deeper the contact, the more powerful the Truth Seeker appraisal effect.
If he was directly reading its soul, then the absurdly exaggerated amount of information made perfect sense.
In any case, what he really wanted to know was whether the rooster's state had changed because of his mental command.
[Current State]: Agitated, Extremely Panicked, Crazed, Mentally Unstable, Soul Deficiency.
'This rooster... had gone completely mad?'
Noah looked at the bird, which was currently displaying clear signs of absolute insanity inside the coop.
He never expected a soul to be so incredibly fragile.
He had merely wanted to convey a simple "be quiet" message, and the mental pressure had caused the rooster to become mentally unstable, even tearing a hole in its soul.
Because of Spell-Weaver's evolution, he could now see souls with his bare eyes.
To him, the rooster's soul was almost identical in size and shape to its physical body, just lacking a few fine details—like looking at a 3D video game model with low-resolution textures.
'What if... i modified the shape of the soul just a little bit?'
'Just a tiny modification shouldn't have a heaven-defying effect, right?'
He decided to start by trying to manipulate just one of its claws.
'Just a slight mental nudge...'
"Guh—"
Suddenly, the rooster froze completely still.
It was incredibly sudden, as if someone had just pressed a pause button on reality.
'Hm?'
Realizing something was terribly wrong, Noah instantly jumped backward, simultaneously trying to summon a wind barrier to protect himself.
"..."
SPLAT!
He didn't even have time to gather the wind.
In a single breath, the rooster's body bizarrely swelled up like a balloon and violently exploded.
Hot blood splattered all over Noah's clothes before he could even react.
The rooster had been turned into a mangled, explosive mess of shredded flesh and blood—the kind that could never possibly be pieced back together.
Noah stood frozen in shock for a moment.
After finally coming to his senses, he used his Spell-Weaver skill to manipulate the water element in the air.
He washed the blood off his body, sealed the dirty liquid into a floating water sphere, and casually tossed it away.
"Damn it."
He had only made a trivial adjustment to a tiny part of the rooster's soul—to be precise, roughly one one-hundred-and-twentieth of its total volume.
But that tiny shift had caused the rooster's soul to undergo a horrific, qualitative change.
Its once-stable form had suddenly begun to twitch bizarrely, thrashing around like a frantic octopus.
Because the soul was suddenly unstable, the rooster's physical body suffered a massive rejection reaction and exploded into a puddle of gore.
If a modified soul did not perfectly fit inside its flesh, the body would lose function.
For example, if the soul's arm was removed, the physical arm would die.
If the soul was twisted too far out of shape, the physical body would simply self-destruct.
But he never would have expected the reaction to be this violent.
Such a tiny deviation between the soul and the body had caused the bird to instantly detonate.
...
Even though the rooster had been reduced to a puddle of blood, Noah still carefully observed the spot where it had exploded.
The reason was simple: the rooster's soul was still there.
It had not dissipated along with the physical body.
Noah was curious.
The rooster was undoubtedly dead, so where would a dead soul go?
According to the religious beliefs of Orario, dead souls were supposed to return to tenkai.
Because mortal souls could not withstand the cleansing light of the gods, they would be washed clean, returning to a pure state of absolute innocence.
Noah essentially understood this process as being "reset to factory settings."
After a long time, the cleansed souls in heaven would eventually descend back to the lower world to be born again—the standard cycle of reincarnation.
How did souls return to the heavens? Noah was thrilled to finally witness this legendary process with his own two eyes.
An excited, curious smile stretched across his face.
But slowly, that smile turned to numbness.
Then confusion.
Then absolute horror!
In his magical vision, the rooster's soul was still violently writhing in its deformed state.
It did not disappear, nor was there any sign of a divine light descending to carry it to the heavens.
Instead, the deformed ghostly soul slowly crawled down into the puddle of crushed meat and blood.
The mangled soul pierced its tentacle-like limbs into the pool of blood and began to eagerly drink.
As the blood on the ground was absorbed by the twisted mass of spiritual energy, the soul's color gradually darkened.
It shifted from a ghostly blue, to blood red, to pitch black, and finally into a sickly corrupted rainbow of colors.
The whole horrifying process took less than half a minute.
Once the transformation stopped, Noah reappraised the bizarre object sitting in the dirt.
[Micro Spiritual Pollution] > * A monster born from a corrupted, unstable soul.
Can absorb negative energy and blood to grow.
Warning: Mere eye contact with this entity will result in a mental attack.
"..."
'This... does not feel good.'
Noah stared at the information.
The simple text description alone made his skin crawl.
Even though he was the culprit who had accidentally created this thing, he had no idea that casually tweaking a soul would birth a literal monster.
In any case, he needed to eliminate this thing right now.
Condensing a fireball in the palm of his hand, Noah decisively launched it at the "Micro Spiritual Pollution."
He deliberately suppressed the spell's explosive power.
The fireball pierced straight through the monster and embedded itself deep into the dirt like a glowing javelin, burning the creature without setting the backyard on fire.
Five meters.
After his last stat update, his Magic parameter had reached the absolute maximum for E-Rank, meaning the range of his Spell-Weaver skill had increased from three meters to five.
Within this five-meter radius, his control over the elements was absolute.
If he wished it, his fire would not burn the grass and his water would not make things wet.
Pierced by the condensed fireball, the monster let out a piercing, pained shriek.
Hearing that sharp cry, Noah felt a sudden stabbing pain inside his brain.
But it only lasted for a fraction of a second before disappearing completely.
A mental attack? He had been a little careless.
Fortunately, this newly born monster was extremely weak.
Even though Noah had no special mental resistance skills, his high Level 2 durability was more than enough to shrug off an attack of this level.
But if this monster had actually been allowed to absorb more blood and grow... it would have been terrifying.
Especially up here on the surface. S
ound-based mental attacks were incredibly difficult to defend against, impossible to dodge, and covered a massive area.
If this monster had grown to the strength of a Level 2 beast and shrieked in the middle of Orario, thousands of innocent people would have died instantly.
He had to be incredibly cautious when manipulating souls from now on.
It would be best to find a dedicated, safe place to conduct any future experiments.
If a soul was disturbed, the body would explode into a bloody mist.
It was an incredibly brutal method of killing... so brutal that even a local slaughterhouse probably wouldn't hire him.
He just didn't know if this ability could be easily used on human enemies. If it could, it would be way too overpowered.
With just a gentle mental nudge to an opponent's soul, they would explode into a bloody mist. It was basically an instant-kill cheat code.
Noah quickly grabbed a shovel and buried the bloody mess in the dirt.
Just as he finished cleaning up, the little fox girl walked out the back door of the workshop, sleepily rubbing her eyes.
"Yawn... Good morning, Noah-sama." The girl yawned, looking endearingly cute and dazed.
"Good morning, Haruhime."
"Noah-sama, please wait just a moment. I will make breakfast right away! I bought a very magnificent healthy rooster yesterday at the market, and I was planning to make a medicinal chicken stew for you. I hope it helps you recover your strength!" Haruhime clenched her little fists in a cheering motion.
"..."
"Huh? Where is the rooster?" the girl asked, looking at the empty blood-free chicken coop in confusion.
"..."
"Noah-sama, did you see the rooster that was in the coop just now?"
"Uh—it... it went to play basketball."
"Eh?" Haruhime froze.
She tilted her head, mulling over Noah's words again and again, but her adorable brain simply could not grasp the meaning of that sentence.
Seeing her utter confusion, Noah just smiled, reached out and patted her on the head.
"It is okay, it is fine if you do not understand. The art of playing basketball is still way too advanced for this fantasy world. Besides, I have already fully recovered! Look."
Noah gently pointed his finger at the little fox girl's fluffy animal ears.
He commanded the elements, sending a gentle warm breeze blowing past her ears, making her whole body tingle comfortably.
"Mmmph."
After a moment of cute, embarrassed whining, the little fox girl suddenly lunged forward and hugged him tightly.
"That is wonderful... really, that is so wonderful."
"Yeah, so you do not need to worry about me anymore," Noah smiled. "Also, I don't really feel like eating chicken this morning. Could we have a pie instead?"
"Yes! I understand!"
Haruhime happily rolled up her sleeves, giving him a determined look that clearly said, 'Leave it to me!'
She then turn around and marched spiritedly back into the kitchen.
Noah looked back at the empty spot where the chicken coop sat.
He silently clasped his hands together in prayer.
'My bad, chicken dude. After all the soul-shredding I just put you through, you probably won't get a next life to reincarnate into, either.'
'I am truly sorry.'