Reborn in hell with a skill creation system

Chapter 4: I Can Create Skills?

[Welcome Host, to the Soul Architect System.]

The glowing red holographic panel floated before him, and at first, he thought it was some sort of illusion.

Or maybe demon insanity.

"..Right," he muttered in that garbled demon tongue of his, "I’ll deal with you in a second."

After all, he had more pressing concerns.

The smell hit him first, or rather, he finally acknowledged it. Dark blood soaked the earth in every direction, pooling between the broken shells, seeping into the cracks of the ground.

The field where he was born now looked like some sort of battlefield, as if a war had just happened here.

Which he guessed was basically what happened.

SCREECH!

His thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a sound that came from above him which forced him to look up, causing his eyes to immediately go wide.

Against the perpetually red backdrop of Hell’s sky, something that seemed to be a large bird was circling above him.

Its wingspan was wide enough to blot out a portion of the horizon, its body a mass of dark feathers that seemed to absorb the dim light rather than reflect it.

A long, hooked beak hung from a skull-like head, and its eyes, four of them, arranged in pairs of two, were already fixed downward.

Fixed on the buffet he was currently standing in the middle of.

’Oh.’

He didn’t waste time deliberating. The creature hadn’t dived yet, which meant it was still scoping the area, which meant he had maybe a minute before it decided the coast was clear enough.

And if he didn’t move now, he was going to become part of its menu, so he moved.

Low and fast, he picked his way through the corpse field, using the larger broken shells as cover.

His new body, alien as it still felt, moved with an instinctive efficiency that he hadn’t asked for, but certainly appreciated.

He was crouching without thinking and stepping around debris without even looking down.

Demon muscle memory, he supposed. At least something in this body knew what it was doing.

He was soon far enough from the corpse field and the terrain started transforming, slowly sloping upwards until he reached a wall of stone.

Without hesitation, he started climbing it, his claws gripping through the cracks on the rocky wall.

It took a while, but eventually he found what he was looking for.

A crack in the rock face. Narrow at the entrance, just wide enough for his small frame, but it opened up inside into a low, rough-ceilinged space, big enough for him to stand and move without touching the walls.

The cave was dark, except for the faint pulse of those red mineral veins running along the stone.

’What a day.’

The glowing panel was still there, following him patiently like it had all the time in the eternity it apparently had. The red text continued rotating in its slow, self-important way.

[SYSTEM ACTIVATED]

[Welcome Host, to the Soul Architect System.]

He looked at it for a long moment.

"Alright," he said to the empty cave, his voice coming out as that low garble, "let’s see what you’ve got."

Nothing happened.

He waited.

Still nothing.

"Do I have to say a magic word?" he muttered, "because I will absolutely say a magic word."

Then he tried the only other thing that made sense, he thought at it.

The same way he had instinctively perceived his own orb-form in the void, he directed his attention at the panel with intention rather than just looking at it.

The system responded immediately.

[SOUL ARCHITECT SYSTEM — HOST INTERFACE]

[Host: Unnamed]

[Tier: Lesser Demon — Stage 1]

[Souls: 1 ]

[Skills Created: 0]

[Skills Active: 0]

He looked at the interface before him, then at the souls counter before muttering, "one soul?"

[Soul yield scales with tier of defeated entity. Current soul balance reflects one Stage 2 Lesser Demon.]

Which meant it would’ve been pointless if he had fought against the smaller demons since their souls basically amounted to nothing.

"That’s depressing."

[Noted. Do you wish to access the Skill Creation interface?]

He frowned before asking, "you can hear me?"

[The system processes Host intent. Verbal communication is one method.]

"I see."

"Yes," he said, "open Skill Creation."

The panels rearranged themselves again. A new interface materialized, dominated by a large empty space and a blinking prompt.

[SKILL CREATION INTERFACE]

[Describe the desired skill. The system will calculate soul cost, viability, and current affordability.]

[If cost exceeds available souls, a scaled version will be offered.]

In simpler terms, he needed souls to create skills and the amount of souls needed will be based on how complex the skill was.

If the number of souls he had was lesser than the amount required to create a skill, then the system lower the complexity of said skill.

He read the interface over once more, then leaned back against the cave wall, fingers drumming against the stone as he thought.

The system would scale down anything he couldn’t afford. Which meant the limiting factor wasn’t imagination, it was souls. And right now, he had exactly one.

’Which means I have one chance at this.’

He suddenly paused as he realized something.

The system didn’t say it would give him one skill per soul. It said if the cost exceeded what he had, it would offer a scaled version. Which implied the skill still got created, just... smaller.

So he wasn’t limited to one skill, he was limited to one soul’s worth of skill.

That distinction mattered a lot.

"Can I create multiple skills with one soul?" he asked.

[Confirmed. Souls are a resource pool, not a per-skill currency. Multiple skills may be created provided total cost does not exceed available souls. Scaled versions reduce individual cost.]

"So if I design two skills that both get watered down enough, I could create both right now."

[Correct.]

"Well then," he said with a large grin appearing on his face, "let’s get to creating then, shall we?"