Chapter 6: Are Grim Reapers for sinners?
'This is just too hard…' Alan lamented as he walked across a dirt pathway through the woods.
He had spent over three hours so far trying to hunt down the ants and was getting quite exhausted from it.
The compass was very useful for pointing the direction of the ant souls, but it doesn't tell Alan how long it will take to arrive. All he could do was walk, hoping it won't be too far from one ant soul to another.
But, it seemed the area he was transported to had a decline in ants or something because a lot of his time was spent walking from one point to another, taking about 30 minutes to an hour walk and if he was lucky, it would take less.
' 3 hours...and I just barely got 1000 ant souls....' Looking over his job quota and seeing his petty ant count, he began wondering if he would finish it after an entire day passed.
Now one thousand ants in three hours might sound pleasing, but if he continued at this pace for 24 hours, he would still fall short on his 10 thousand goal. Alan still had to complete his two other daily tasks as well, so he can't just spend all his efforts finding ants.
He tried to check where he was, but it proved harder than he thought, as he had no phone to check his GPS location and the signs he read. He didn't recognise the location at all. He realized he was nowhere near his neighbourhood. Heck, he might not even be in his own country!
Out of instinct he tried to ask a random passerby but was ignored since they couldn't see him.
Alan halted his steps as he spotted some ants wandering around with no care to the world and activated his soul's eyes 'Activate Soul eyes.'
[Soul Eyes Activated]
Sure enough, many brown auras appeared around him and he repeated his soul transfer process by scooping up the ants while it was activated.
[Congratulations! You have guided…]
The same annoying system prompt rang in his mind for every single individual ant he guided.
This was probably the worst part about guiding a soul for Alan. He found the system notifications to be overbearing and very annoying to where he wanted to bang his head for it to stop.
[Congratulations! You have guided…]
'For fuck's sake, can you shut up!' He screamed in his mind as he finally guided all the ants in his vicinity.
'There has to be some way to turn off that prompt...how are we expected to willingly do our job with its constant congratulations…' He lamented, bringing out his compass dejectedly.
As if the ant god felt sorry for Alan, he walked out of the woods onto a green grassed hill and the compass altered its pointer from West to North to East as if it couldn't decide where to point.
'Weird...it never did that before.'
Alan activated his soul eyes.
[Soul Eyes Activated]
'We get it...you don't have to keep telling me…'
With the blue hue around his eyesight, the sight before Alan wanted to make him break down tears of happiness.
The entire hill was just filled with a variety of different souls!
The hill was covered in different bright colours, including brown made from the ants!
There weren't just one or a hundred ants but they filled the hill, butterflies, caterpillars, snails, slugs, birds and all other kinds of small animals or insects.
Alan quickly walked over to the hill, scared the souls will magically disappear and had a spree of soul transfer. He could have spent his time transferring all the souls from the hill, but he decided against it because some of these insects or animals might be in his next daily tasks.
He didn't want to risk having all these insects and animals to be added in tomorrow's daily task, which would have him actively try to search for them from zero.
Alan focused his attention on the ants, but he frequently saw some mosquitoes around the hill, making him ecstatic.
[Congratulations! You have guided…]
[Congratulations! You have guided 1 mosquito soul!]
[Congratulations! You have…]
The system messages had a field day in his mind as he continued guiding all the souls from Ant to Mosquito.
If Alan could run, you would have seen him skipping along the hill with his arms stretched out with a smiling skull expression as he guided the souls.
After spending about an hour finding as many ants and mosquito souls as he could, Alan opened his job quota.
You must complete all daily tasks:
Guide the souls of 10,000 dead ants (3500/10,000)
Guide the souls of 100,000 baby larvae (0/100,000)
Guide the souls of 10,000 mosquitoes (1000/10000)
Reward: 10 experience points, 50 coins.
Though his progress was looking very impressive, he wasn't done finding all the ants
In fact, there were tons of souls underground on the hill but though Alan can stick his hand inside the ground, his arm length could only go so far.
'What to do…' Alan pondered as he sat on top of the hill while the other souls ran from his position, to not be crushed.
'Activate Soul transfer'
[Soul transfer activated.]
Alan's boney hands glowed a light blue 'This skill allows the souls to pass on to who knows where...but is this the only way for Reapers to guide souls?'
During his four hours on the job, he found the job of being a Grim Reaper to be quite inconvenient and ridiculously difficult. He wasn't able to run, his compass wouldn't give an exact distance from one soul to another. He could only guide a soul through touch, making it very inconvenient to grab souls underground and if he had to find dead bird souls, how the hell was he meant to catch them while they fly. Also, the system was incredibly jarring to Alan with its constant pings and notifications for every action he does as a Reaper.
'This job as a Reaper...is it designed for sinners as a punishment? I just can't understand why someone would willingly do this job with all the odds against you.' Alan pondered to himself but then thought 'No... he didn't seem like the type to cause suffering for his employees...when I blocked him, he got annoyed because I was stalling his job'
The person Alan was referring to was The God of Death as he felt the guy would want to do his jobs efficiently.
'I'm missing information…' Alan concluded in the end. He refused to believe that this job is meant to crush your very soul by its ridiculous workload. He thought that there had to be ways to work efficiently, like in any other jobs. During his time as a doctor, Alan was first slow at understanding patients' needs but eventually came up with his own way of talking to them by asking some specific questions at first and breaking it down while also using his computer to check some parts about their symptoms to quickly deduce a diagnosis.
Of course he didn't rely on google to diagnose or else he wouldn't have needed to work so hard for his degree, instead he just used what he had and improved it to assist him.
With that logic, he believed there are things a Reaper can do to make his job much easier.
'When I touch a soul with soul transfer activated, this blue light surrounds their soul and makes them disappear...the blue light is the key to guiding these souls…' Alan racked his brain as he tried to understand his skills.
After twenty minutes, Alan thought of something as he saw a couple walking hand in hand into the woods with camping supplies. What caught Alan's eye was that the man was carrying a torch(flashlight) and it gave him an idea!
'If this blue light is the key, can I spread the light into a beam?' He questioned as he stood up and pointed his right skeleton palm to the ground.
He activated his soul transfer and tried to control the blue light to spread the ground.
The blue light around his hand vibrated, and then it released a tiny and faint blue beam to the ground, passing through it and hitting an ant soul.
[Congratulations! You have guided 3501 Ant Souls!]
'It worked!'
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
Ultra
Ultra Alan is understanding his job!
Now if only he could stop the systems pings haha
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone