Ultimate Gacha System: Reborn As A Mob in My Favorite Game

Chapter 134: Testing Soul Configuration [I]

The air on the ground floor of the Endless Tower smelled like cold dust and burnt charcoal.

Klaus sat on the edge of the dragged-in caravan mattress with his elbows resting heavily on his knees.

He ran a hand through the long, heavy silver strands of hair cascading over his broad shoulders, still mentally trying to adjust to the weight of his own skull.

Every time he moved his neck, the silver locks shifted against his back like a mantle made of cold silk.

’Should I cut all of this hair off?’

It was ridiculous.

A few hours ago, he had been coughing up dark blood onto the floorboards, his joints feeling like rusted iron hinges ready to snap under the weight of his own body.

Now, sitting here in the quiet aftermath of the Second King’s execution, his muscles felt wound tight with an ocean of energy that didn’t know what to do with itself.

He didn’t feel any lingering aches from where Ryoki’s rapier had pierced his shoulder.

Klaus just felt awake.

...Too awake.

Across the room, the meager pile of orange embers from the makeshift campfire popped, sending a tiny shower of sparks floating up into the dark.

Beyond the circle of light, near the far wall where the old water barrels from the ruined Snow Caravan had spilled and pooled into a shallow stone depression, there was the soft sound of splashing water.

Mirela stepped out from the shadows.

She had taken advantage of the temporary peace and the warmth radiating from the ignited runes on the pillars to scrub away weeks of accumulated Winterlands grime, dried monster blood, and sweat.

She didn’t have her clothes on.

She stepped directly into the faint orange glow of the campfire completely naked, wringing out her wet silver hair with both hands with her head tilted slightly toward the floor.

Klaus didn’t politely clear his throat.

He didn’t suddenly find the crack in the obsidian floor beneath his boots endlessly fascinating, and he certainly didn’t avert his eyes like some chaste blushing knight in a cheap romance novel.

He just looked at her.

His eyes were running at maximum capacity thanks to the massive divine overhaul his body had just undergone, and he had zero intention of pretending he didn’t appreciate the view.

The pale light of the embers traced the clean athletic curves of her demi-human physique perfectly.

She wasn’t built like a fragile noblewoman who spent her days lounging on silk cushions.

Her legs were toned and strong from walking miles through deep snow and raiding the Galen Dungeon, her hips were wide and the soft curve of her waist led up to a full firm chest that rose and fell steadily with her breathing.

Water droplets caught the firelight as they ran down her collarbone, tracing a path across her stomach before disappearing past the slight dip of her hips.

She looked up, shaking her head slightly to clear the damp strands from her face, and froze completely still.

Her striking blue eyes locked directly onto Klaus.

For a long second, neither of them moved. Mirela stood there in the open firelight, completely exposed, staring at the man sitting on the mattress.

Klaus’s luminescent eyes that were currently tracking every single inch of her bare skin with unapologetic masculine appreciation.

A high-pitched, strangled squeak erupted from the back of Mirela’s throat.

"M-Master!" she gasped.

Her skin violently flushed, a deep burning crimson wave of color exploding across her pale chest and rushing all the way up her neck to the very tips of her pointed goat ears.

Her tail went completely rigid, sticking straight out behind her like a broomstick.

She practically tripped over her own bare feet as she scrambled backward toward the alcove with her hands flying up in a frantic completely uncoordinated attempt to cover herself.

She crossed her arms tightly over her chest with her knees pressing together as she frantically snatched up the damp discarded fabric of her tunic from a nearby crate, holding it against her front like a makeshift shield.

"You... you’re awake!" she stammered, her voice pitching higher as she pressed her spine flat against the cold obsidian wall.

Her eyes darted wildly around the room as if expecting the shadows to hide her. "You shouldn’t just stare like that! Say something when you sit up!"

Klaus let out a dry chuckle that rumbled comfortably in his chest.

He leaned back against the wall behind the mattress, stretching his long legs out toward the fire.

"I could have sworn the whole point of having eyes was to look at things worth looking at," Klaus said. "Besides, after everything we just dragged ourselves through up there, I think we’re a little past the point of modesty, Mirela. Don’t rush on my account. Take your time."

"I am taking my time!" she shot back from the shadows, though the sound of frantic rustling and heavy breathing told an entirely different story. "Just... turn your head toward the fire! Or talk to Anya!"

Klaus smiled, shifting his gaze back toward the glowing orange embers. Sitting on the far side of the fire, completely unbothered by the exchange, Anya was methodically arranging a few strips of hard salted monster jerky on a flat piece of clean stone near the heat.

The six-year-old Shinigami didn’t even look up from her task with her small face set in its usual expression of serious concentration.

A few minutes later, Mirela emerged back into the circle of light.

She had pulled her dark tunic back on and laced up her heavy trousers, though her hair was still damp and her cheeks still carried a lingering dusting of pink.

She avoided looking directly at Klaus’s silver eyes as she walked over to the fire, dropping heavily onto a wooden supply crate opposite the mattress and grabbing her moon-crystal staff to rest it against her knee.

"Dinner..." Anya announced quietly, sliding the warmed stone plate of jerky toward the center of the embers alongside three dented metal cups filled with melted snow water.

It was a miserable meal by any standard metric.

The meat was tough, heavily salted to prevent rot during their travel across the freezing wastes, and tasted vaguely like old leather boiled in iron.

The water was lukewarm and tasted like the metal of the flask it had been boiled in.

Klaus picked up a strip of jerky and tore a piece off with his teeth.

His new body chewed through the dense muscle fibers easily, but his taste buds still recognized it for the garbage it was.

He chewed in silence for a minute, washing the dry salt down with a swig of metallic water.

"So," Klaus said, setting his cup down on the obsidian floor next to his boot. "What’s the situation outside? While I was busy taking a nap and getting slapped around by our resident scholar here, did either of you take a look at the perimeter?"

Mirela swallowed her bite of food, wiping her mouth with the back of her wrist before pointing the tip of her staff toward the far end of the cavernous ground floor.

"I walked out to the threshold right before I washed up," Mirela reported. "The barrier is coming down, Master. That massive purple dome of spatial magic that sealed the entire tower off from the Winterlands? It’s actively failing... The energy lines are fraying like cheap rope, and great chunks of it are just dissolving into mist every few minutes."

She gestured toward the colossal double doors at the base of the tower.

They had been sealed tight when they first broke inside, requiring raw force to budge.

Now, they hung wide open, revealing a thick dark expanse of howling wind and drifting snow outside.

"The suppression field that kept the wildlife from approaching the entrance is dead too," Mirela continued, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. "With the Second King’s aura completely gone from what I can assume, the outside air is rushing straight in. The whole place smells like snow now."

"What about our transport?" Klaus asked. "Any of the caravan salvageable?"

Mirela shook her head slowly with her eyes darkening as she thought back to the wreckage left behind by the beast ambush that had driven them into the tower in the first place.

"The carriages are kindling," she said flatly. "Most of the wooden frames got smashed to splinters when the pack descended on the camp. The other Bear died and half of the whole carriage is gone but..." She paused, offering a faint, grim half-smile. "...the big guy made it."

Klaus raised an eyebrow. "The bear?"

"The giant mountain bear," Mirela confirmed, nodding. "One of the two heavy beasts of burden Lord Varhem’s quartermaster used to haul the iron supply wagons. I checked on it while I was securing the entrance. It managed to snap its traces during the initial chaos and dug itself into a snowdrift between two of the outer stone monoliths to hide from the fighting."

"Is it injured?"

"A few deep scratches along its flank where a crawler tried to latch onto it, but nothing lethal," Mirela replied. "It was actively chewing on the frozen carcass of something when I found it. The moment I stepped outside, though, it dropped flat on its belly and wouldn’t even look at the tower. It can feel the shift in the mana down here. It’s terrified of whatever is sitting inside this room right now."

"Meaning it’s terrified of me... I’m guessing." Klaus murmured, looking down at his open palm.

"It is a basic beast of instinct," Anya chimed in calmly from her side of the fire, taking a small neat bite of her jerky. "Its survival parameters recognize the overwhelming density of a divine core. It will not resist any command you issue to it, Father. Subjugation is automatic when the gap in classification is this vast."

’I need to teach her how to speak normally.’

Klaus stared at his hand.

He closed his fingers into a loose fist, watching the barely visible shimmer of pure white Soul Mana trace the lines of his knuckles.

They had a way out.

One surviving monster bear was more than enough to drag whatever makeshift sled or salvaged wagon frame they could cobble together from the wreckage outside.

They could pack the remaining rations, clear the decaying barrier, and push south toward the civilized settlements before the heavy winter storms set in for the month.

Logically, that was the smart play.

Eat dinner, get a few hours of real sleep on the obsidian floor, hitch up the bear at dawn, and leave the Endless Tower behind forever.

But Klaus didn’t move to lie down.

His mind kept looping back to the glowing blue system tab that had shattered right before he passed out.

He remembered the ominous dark silver text pulsing at the very bottom of the registry.

[Soul Configuration: Grants the authority to forcefully alter, edit, and reconstruct the very architecture of harvested souls, granting them physical density and independent manifestation within the waking world.]

He had paid a massive near-fatal price in conscious reserves just to permanently etch that skill into his Soul Vessel.

He had literally walked to the edge of the Library of the Gods and almost erased his own identity just to finalize the transaction.

He wasn’t going to wait until they were ambushed on a freezing road halfway across the continent to find out how it actually worked.

If there was a catch, if the mana consumption was too volatile, or if the skill required precise physical tuning that left him wide open, he needed to know right here, right now, while they were safe inside here.

Klaus stood up from the mattress.

His boots made a heavy distinct thud against the black stone. Mirela looked up at him, pausing with her metal cup halfway to her mouth.

"Master?" she asked. "Where are you going? The wind is picking up outside."

"I’m not going outside yet," Klaus said, rolling his broad shoulders until his collarbone popped softly. "I need to test something."

Anya set her jerky down immediately.

Her purple eyes sharpened, tracking the subtle rapid rise of magical pressure building inside his chest cavity.

"Father," Anya warned strictly. "Your conscious anchor has only recently stabilized following the forced ejection from the ether... Attempting to channel high-tier divine authority without a proper stabilization cycle risks causing severe mana burn across your newly reconstructed pathways."

"I’ve got an entire ocean of hoarded energy sitting idle in my core, Anya," Klaus said, looking down at her. "If I let it just stew in there without testing the pressure valves, I’m going to jump out of my own skin. Back up from the center of the room... Both of you..."