Dwane “The Actually a Rock” Johnson was practicing meditation. 

The stone was convinced it would go insane if it didn’t discover a way for it to stop thinking for a while, if it wasn’t already insane. After all, it was convinced it was a rock that was seeing magic. Sane people are not known for being rocks. Sane people are also not known for seeing magic. Madness was already here for the rock, or it was beginning to get rather close. 

It was vaguely surprising to find itself getting a skill for such an action. 

“Well damn, it’s about time!” The stone thought to itself, despite not expecting to receive the skill. 

The effects on its ability to meditate were immediate. It slowly, it calmed down, relaxed as it let its mind drift away into nothing. The stone, while in this state, was able to cut out all external distractions, able to focus purely on itself.

…

This fixed nothing.

“FOR FUCK’S SAKE!!!” The stone shouted into its mind.

“… Hey what now.”

The stone was shocked to find a new skill.

“I can improve my skill… by imagining myself shouting really loudly.”

This was the most fun activity the stone had managed to discover so far.

“RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA--”

[ ) ( ] [ ) ( ] [ ) ( ]

Mental shouting, surprisingly, took a toll on the stone.

“Ehhhhhhhhhh…”

It seemed that despite being a rock, it was still possible to exhaust itself, though the stone was unsure of why it was exhausted.

As such, it decided to take a break with some good old fashioned “stare at the numbers until you become bored.”

The stone didn’t notice it at first. It took an uncomfortable long time for the rock to realize that something had changed.

“My will has gone up by one.”

Will had indeed gone up by one. The stone didn’t really know what to think about this at first, just mulling it over.

“... WILL HAS GONE UP BY ONE.”

That was, until it realized that this meant it had something else it could do to alleviate its boredom. Instead of skill grinding, it could also grind to improve stats. As one might be able to imagine… 

“Yay… What an amazing accomplishment.”

The stone was ecstatic; however, it was also unsure of how it raised its will. It considered the conundrum for a moment. It could have risen through meditation, through the perception skills, through the projection skill, or just by getting incredibly bored.

“Yeah, it was most likely the soul projection skill, whatever that does.”

Though the rock had no way of knowing whether or not it was true, it was hoping that like a muscle, its will would increase through using it. The reason that the stone felt exhausted was because it used its will too much.

That was what it was using as a temporary hypothesis. 

So for now, it decided it should not do anymore “soul projection” until it was less tired. Instead it was time to do its most done activity.

Staring at itself until it grew bored.

[ ) ( ] [ ) ( ] [ ) ( ]

It was an odd epiphany that the stone finally had after concentrating on itself again. Unfortunately, it had yet to increase its earth or vibration skill, but it had managed to increase its mana perception. It was while observing mana that it finally realized it was being stupid. 

Souls existed. The stone was spending all of its time staring at itself. It already saw mana while searching for its soul, so why not finish the job and find the soul?

It had gotten distracted from the soul searching venture after it noticed mana and then got dragged off track with the vibration perception skill and was convinced the apocalypse had begun.

So, it decided to continue the work. Focused on itself, searching for the source of all that it was. 

"Ah, yes. Soul. Soully soul. Where art thou, soul?"

And after searching for a while, the stone finally got a glimpse of it.

The stone did not notice the notification, too enthralled by his soul.

It was beautiful, in a way. It was… Orange? Yellow? It almost seemed to have color, despite not being seen with eyes. As the stone focused on it, it noticed it could perceive the soul from every direction, every part of itself.

But how? Was the stone the soul? How could the soul be all around itself? That didn’t make sense. None of it made sense. It was like looking through a kaleidoscope at fireworks; mesmerizing, though it lacked definition.

Perhaps, the stone pondered, it was doing things wrong? After all, it was a stonebound soul. It’s impossible to look at yourself without a mirror. Even then, can you see all of yourself?

No, the stone supposed, that would be silly. It was probably a bad metaphor too, but the point was that the stone wasn’t observing its soul, but a distorted reflection of its soul.

So it decided to try and meditate on it further. The stone had no clue it would work. 

It imagined its thoughts as water in a bottle. There was a leak in the bottom, slowly dripping water.

The water would drip out of the bottle.

Drop,

by drop,

by drop,

until the mind had been emptied.

Just kind 

of let its 

mind

be 

nothingness.

And in that nothingness, the stone found its soul.

[ ) ( ] [ ) ( ] [ ) ( ]

“This…” This skill, the stone realized, was very much different from the perception skills. Perception was the ability to notice something that already existed within your senses. It was your ability to recognize a specific phenomena.

Soul sense, on the other hand, allowed the stone to sense the souls around itself. 

Within the stone’s awareness, suddenly, a multitude of little lights shone. 

The stone focused on the little glimmering lights. They weren’t really lights, but that was the easiest way to describe what was happening. They were like floating flames, drifting about.

They were beautiful.

“... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA--”

They were also terrifying. 

This was not like stargazing on a cloudless, moonless night. This was like being surrounded by a swarm of fireflies, but the fireflies were actually on fire.

As soon as the stone began to scream, most of the souls scattered, fleeing away from the soul. Soon, it realized just how small of an area it could actually sense souls within as many of those souls were fleeing from its range.

Those that hadn’t scattered seemed to be absconding as well, just slowly.

The stone’s scream petered out. 

“Okay. Okay. This is fine. I’m fine. Everything is okay. I’m--”

A soul meandered from outside of the stone’s range towards it. 

“No, no, you stay away! STAY AWAY!”

The soul retreated. 

“YES, FUCK OFF! GOOD!”

Eventually, the only souls left behind were the ones that moved painfully slowly or the souls that hadn’t moved at all. 

The closest sense to what the stone had now would be sight, though that would be somewhat inaccurate. Unlike sight, the stone had a 360 degree view of everything around itself, under the condition that it was a soul it was sensing. Despite that, it wasn’t disorienting, rather, it was quite easy, as though the stone had merely forgotten to open its eyes for a while. 

And so, for a little while, the stone created a new routine for itself.

Over time, the stone had eventually grown accustomed to watching the little souls dance about. It would spend time focusing on itself and trying to improve his skills before scaring away all the small souls.

It was the best entertainment it had been able to get so far. 

So, as it continued on as normal...

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH--”

“Be quiet.” The stone heard as it felt a hand grip it and sensed a massive soul enter his view.

[ ) ( ] [ ) ( ] [ ) ( ]

Emmeth was dead. Of that, he was reasonably certain. The difference between life and death felt obvious to him. His normal pains were gone, but the warmth of life had left with it. 

His body was bloody. There were multiple stab wounds through his chest and one through the neck. He could feel them, and the broken ribs. The blood had pooled below his body and formed a dark puddle that had hardened by the time he became aware of himself. 

And yet, his sword was clean. Not a drop of blood, except what dripped from his hand onto the hilt.

So much for protecting the farm. He wasn’t even able to cut any of them, let alone kill them. 

But where were the rest?

He looked up from his sword, laid upon the dirt path. He saw the blackened ruins of his home, the barn, and the ashen fields surrounding them. 

Nothing left.

He walked slowly towards his house of 19 years and began to pick through the wreckage. It didn’t take long to find the charred remains of Hedalt. Emmeth could barely recognize the burnt husk that was his son. He wouldn’t have, if not for the bracelet Hedalt always wore. His mother had crafted it for him when he was four, and had redone the string multiple times so that it would fit Hedalt as he grew.

It wouldn’t have fit around the body’s wrist anymore. 

No one else was left behind. 

Emmeth crouched down and grabbed what remained of the bracelet. The string had burned away, leaving the ruined charm on the ground beside the body. Though it had burned, the metal holding the bones together had not burned. He hooked it onto his belt.

Once that was done, Emmeth stood and looked up at the cloudy skies. Then he looked out upon the white and gray fields.

“The fires have yet to entirely stop smoking.” remarked Emmeth. “Not much time has appeared to have passed yet. So, I might be able to catch up.”

Emmeth stepped out of the wreckage and picked up his sword. Then, upon fixing it to his waist, the corpse travelled down the path, leaving his son behind.

[ ) ( ] [ ) ( ] [ ) ( ]

As Emmeth walked down the road, he decided to check his status slate. 

Emmeth stared at the changes. His reduced mental stats were unfortunate, as were some of the changes to his physical stats. The only things that had improved were his strength and agility. 40 strength was quite high for a farmer, but Cassandra would always brag about her husband, Reg, who had a strength of 43.

Emmeth had never known whether or not she had been telling the truth, but it probably didn’t matter anymore anyways. 

As he continued down the road, he felt something begin to tickle at the edge of his mind. Something… annoying.

He focused on the feeling, trying to figure out what it was.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA--”

And Emmeth heard screaming. 

He looked for the source of the noise, but was unable to see anything out of the ordinary. And so, he tried to focus on where the noise was coming from, until he was finally able to see something slightly amiss.

It was a fist sized rock, sitting just off the edge of the road. It was gray and smooth, unordinary at a first glance. However, the rock had a soul in it.

“Be quiet.” Emmeth said, as he reached down and grabbed the irritating stone.