Chapter 11: Sova Morekova
Even after being rejected by me Ray Benton's soul did not leave, it continued to stick to me. I chose to ignore it since I could not even touch or talk to it.
Then I turned my focus to the other wandering soul, it stood by the fountain. Unlike Ray Benton's soul, this one had less black shade covering it. I could not only tell that the wandering soul belonged to a human but also that it was a female.
Feeling my gaze the wandering soul turned to look at me, and when our gazes met, it vanished from the fountain and appeared next to me. Soon I received a system prompt:
[System notification:
> A wandering soul Sova Morekova has taken an interest in your domain and is asking for your permission to join your domain as your subject.
> Will you take the wandering soul Sova Morekova as your subject? (Y/N)
Note:
i) This wandering soul has recalled its name.]
I was surprised to learn that wandering souls could recall their past memories. Earlier reading the astral hack info on Ray Benton, I thought wandering souls needed skills and class to recall their past memories but it appears they can recall their memories by themselves too. Learning that the new wandering soul was already beginning to remember its memories, I was a little interested in Sova Morekova.
Locking the purple alignment markers on her I used the astral hack skill. Once the purple digital distortions and glitches stopped, a system prompt popped up, informing me:
[System Notification:
> Hack Succesful! You have used Astral Hack to hack into the wandering soul Sova Morekova.
> You have triggered the maximum crit rate on the unit.
> You can now access the unit's entire information.
> If you manage to recruit the hacked wandering soul you will gain full loyalty.
<Soul Name: Sova Morekova
Soul Race: Human (♀)
Soul Class: None (Ceramist Lv5)
Soul Level: None
Soul Title: None
Soul Domain: None
Soul Stats: None (Dosen't have an affinity for mana)
Soul Skills: None (Pottery Lv6, Clay Preparation Lv7, Baking Lv5, Cooking Lv2)
Soul insider:
i) Soul has recalled its past name Sova Morekova and entered the Astral Arena at the age of 31.
ii) Soul was a skilled ceramist in past life back on earth. As a skilled ceramist, it has four notable skills.
iii) The soul has shown the virtues, prudence and integrity, in its past life. It has always been loyal to its creed and family> ]
Going through Sova's information, I felt that Sova met all the requirements to make a good first subject. She had four skills, two more than me. Though she did not have an aptitude for mana I heard Russian chicks were beautiful. Besides, I believed feeding her crushed water mana stone powder would give her aptitude for water attribute mana.
If I can get my hands on some holy water then even better. I wouldn't mind feeding it to Sova with crushed water mana stone power. Since I knew I would gain Sova's full loyalty after recruiting her, I did not mind investing in her. But I felt earth mana stone would be more in line with Sova's class 'Ceramist' and skills unless Astral Arena had some kind of hybrid mana attribute like clay.
However, recruiting Sova now would not do me any good as of now as she had only recalled her name and didn't remember anything else about her past life. I wanted to push deciding until I received a skill or class related to her but seeing her not follow me around like Ray Benton's soul, I panicked. What if I enter the dungeon, and she gets tired of waiting for my answer and leaves my domain?
As an earthling, I knew that finding capable souls with useful life skills would be hard, especially with modernization more than half of the population did not know how to cook without gas, do laundry, and were afraid of small spiders let alone kill monsters. Making Sova who was a skilled ceramist with four skills a very attractive soul to recruited as my first subject. However, I did not want to waste my resource card feeding her when she was of no use to me at present.
Others might think I am being short-sighted but I was not. I say so because who knew when her memory would come back or when I would get my hands on a skill or class related to her past life? Even if I only use one resource card on Sova per day to feed her dried meat, considering that I was not sure when she would recall all her memories, I would be taking a huge risk. Especially considering that the 0-grade Horned Joey dungeon can only be raided five times a month and for each raid, there will only be fifty Horned Joey monsters.
Thanks to my astral hack skill, I will be able to acquire 250 reward cards a month of which 200 will be random resource cards other 50 will be random item cards. After keeping aside 30 resource cards for Sova, I will have 170 resource cards left. Considering that I will be eating three times a day to maintain my strength that's three resource cards per day which adds up to 90 resource cards per month.
Leaving me with 80 resource cards but what if I was in the mood for fermented blood a.k.a cheap beer after a tiresome day of killing monsters? Even if I only drink one per day that's 30 resource cards, leaving me with 50 resource cards. This would limit me from adding another subject to my domain. Unless I somehow find another source to gain reward cards during this period.
At first, the Astral Arena came off as survival of the strongest with its death match and all but now that I was an Astral Lord, I not only had to be strong but also properly manage my resources. Otherwise, I will end up dying of starvation before having to worry about being killed by monsters. Therefore, I need to be very mindful about how I use my reward cards.
In Sova Morekova's case, it all came down to the question if I was willing to risk it. The answer to it was quite obvious. Someone with her skill set would be a huge help to my domain. After all, ceramist was one of the oldest known professions that was still in demand in the modern day. Astral Ark would always need someone with her skillset, especially now, at the beginning.
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