The fire flickered beside them as Kivas gnawed reluctantly on a half-charred segment of the centipede-like Voidling's leg, trying not to gag as each bite pulsed slightly in her jaw.
The chitin cracked and oozed a white-yellow marrow that burned her tongue with bitterness.
Nearby, the rest of the Voidling still squirmed weakly, its mandibles twitching despite being mostly dismantled.
Samael bit clean through a thicker portion of its thorax, casually chewing as if it were grilled lamb. "Good gradient," she commented. "Minimal bitterness. Lean muscle. Nothing infected."
Kivas side-eyed her. "You seem to be enjoying this."
"With wisdom, you'll learn to enjoy many aspects of life, no matter how bizarre," Samael replied without looking up. "Voidling meat spoils differently depending on what they've been feeding on. Some of them get contaminated if they have been preying on others too much, and some have a clean taste when they are starved. You'll taste it immediately—like mildew and blood clots."
Kivas dry-heaved. "Disgusting, and absolutely enlightening." She dropped the chewed carapace on the ground with an exaggerated sigh. "You said you were gonna explain more about the Well of the Soul, I think a lesson while we feast on this monstrosity can help me digest better."
"Double entendre, you're quite witty for a Fateling."
"Is this your bias speaking or Fatelines is just that less bright in general…"
"Can be both." Samael set her food down and sat back, wings flicking once with satisfaction. "To put this simply, the Well of the Soul is... everything for Fathomi's inhabitants…
"It's not just some vanity ledger. It defines your existence in Fathomi. The world recognizes you through it. It changes how your essence responds to reality—and how reality responds to you."
Kivas raised an eyebrow, chewing slower.
"If you still remember what I told you back then, then the objective reality that age doesn't matter faintly in this world, can all be rooted back to the Well of the Soul." Samael gestured lazily toward her own chest. "The reason bodies don't decay naturally here is because our Well of the Soul anchors us.
"So long as it persists, our forms remain constant. Physical aging is irrelevant. Death comes from something else. It comes from wounds, from attacks that destroy the vessel or corrupt the soul directly."
"Right. Immortality through metaphysical bureaucracy. Cool, terrifying, makes sense." Kivas swallowed the next bite like swallowing glass. "But why are you so insistent that I eat this thing alive? I mean, it's still breathing. Still glaring at me. It's mouthing something. That's gross for me."
"To grow stronger," Samael said, matter-of-fact. "When a conscious entity with a functioning Well of the Soul partakes in another's death, they absorb portions of that being's essence. Attributes, in this case, and the amount depends on how much you contribute to the death."
Kivas paused mid-bite, jaw stiff. "Ahh… I understand your intention now."
Samael tilted her head. "By eating it alive, your soul engages in its demise. You'll earn something from it."
"You know, you can just tell me to stab that thing a few times on the head, or have myself do the killing blow to have the same effect, right?"
"Might as well savor their nutrients, no?" Samael smirked. "Killing two guardians with one poison. Now, open your Attributes section on the Well of the Soul. It's time for you to know what those values mean."
Grumbling, Kivas brought up her Well of the Soul and flicked her hand, trying to open the Attributes section.
To her surprise, the interface responded with a gentle flare. The Well split neatly, like turning the page of a thick book. The main display peeled back, and the stats glowed softly before her.
➤『Attributes』
💪 Strength (STR): 8
🧠 Intelligence Quotient (IQ): 16
🙏 Piety (PIE): 20
🛡️ Vitality (VIT): 7
💨 Speed (SPD): 6
🎯 Dexterity (DEX): 10
🍀 Luck (LUK): 9
➤『END OF THE WELL』
"I can open it in parts now… Huh. That's new."
Samael nodded with approval. "Good that you learned how to do it this early. That's going to be useful once you gain more classes, and your skill libraries start expanding. Navigating it gets annoying when it's all crammed in one window."
Kivas ran her eyes over the numbers again.
"Okay. So what does each one mean, teach?"
"Strength," Samael began, "isn't about your muscles or how loud you can scream. It governs actions of raw physicality. Not in appearance, but in effect. If your Strength is high enough, the world will bend to validate your force—swing harder, throw farther, lift the impossible."
Kivas nodded slowly. "So it's like… reality just works harder for you, the higher your Strength is."
"Intelligence Quotient sounds like a standard intellectuality of an individual and how they grasp and interact. But to be exact, this specific stats of the Well reflects how well you can perceive and comprehend Fathomi itself. The secrets, the patterns, the illusions. The higher it is, the clearer everything becomes.
"It has no relation to your normal intelligence."
"That sounds confusing, why did they name it like that?" Kivas winced.
Samael maintained her deadpan. "Don't ask me, I'm not the one who makes all of these. Moving on…
"Piety is spiritual—representing how well you align with Fathomi's essence, its miracles and divine structures. And more importantly, interacting with it instead of just comprehending them."
"A more active version of IQ, huh."
"Your Fate Weaver skill might also scale with how high your Piety is," Samael added. "It should explain why you're able to fight Maul'tahk on almost equal ground with the amount of your shortcomings."
"That's quite harsh of a comment…"
"Vitality governs the power of your will to live." Samael took other limbs of the centipede and began feasting on it. "It fuels regeneration, stamina, and the ability to resist entropy of all kinds, physical, spiritual, emotional. Well it's not about toughness—more like soul-borne defiance."
Kivas rubbed her ribs. "Could use more of that."
"Speed is broad. It impacts your ability to process, to move, to act. A high Speed doesn't just mean you run fast—it lets you outpace others in thought, in casting, even in dodging metaphysical phenomena."
Kivas narrowed her eyes. "Ooh, what's the difference with Dexterity?"
"Dexterity," Samael continued, "is grace. Precision. The accuracy of motion, whether you're dancing, picking the end of a cotton strand, or weaving between realities. It's the soul's ability to thread the mind through action."
Kivas assumed that it might also have some relation to the trap disarming in this world.
"And Luck?"
"Luck is… luck. It bends the chance around you. A high enough Luck stat lets you survive situations you shouldn't. Or find things you shouldn't. Though, no matter how immensely high it is, it doesn't drastically affect your life in many ways or the other."
"Sounds like a scam."
"It kinda is," Samael chuckled.
Kivas tapped the glowing digits with her finger, watching the screen flicker and pulse.
She tilted her head. "So what's the minimum requirement to take these stats from someone else? Just being involved in their death?"
"Yes," Samael said. "Usually. But… there are exceptions."
Kivas looked up. "How about Maul'tahk's attributes? I should have contributed enough action to partake in his death, no? Considering the huge gash on his face before you stomp him to death."
Samael snickered. "He doesn't count. I have a unique skill that allows me to prevent the attributes from being distributed to any third parties. Though, I no longer have that skill now…'
"That's dirty." Kivas squinted her eyes in disbelief.
"It's effective," Samael countered. "I've always fought alone. I didn't want parasites stealing my evolution."
Kivas frowned, then muttered, "Still nasty."
But with how Samael utter it, Kivas felt some semblance of empathy. To always fight by oneself, was her life filled with loneliness at the peak of her existence?
"Hey, this sounds like a weird question. But, how did you get your name?" Kivas asked, remembering what Samael said back then about how Kivas already got her name.
"I gave it to myself," Samael said. "Like most natural inhabitants of Fathomi. When you gain enough selfhood to anchor identity, you claim a name."
"Why 'Samael', though?"
"I found it once in a broken scripture—a being of divine flame, truth and wrath. It sounded regal. Powerful… It is an angelic being of a forgone past."
Kivas snorted. "Ironic, considering there's barely anything about you that is angelic."
"True angelic essence has nothing to do with hollow kindness," Samael replied casually. "An angel does not comfort. It enforces others."
Kivas leaned back and hummed. "You can somewhat comfort me, you know?"
"If there's any reason to." Samael gazed at Kivas intensely, as if she was peering into Kivas' soul. "I might have been deemed as a soulmate for you, but it doesn't mean that I should comply with it."
"Hey, it's the same situation for me too, you know?" Kivas shrugged. "I didn't expect to have an almighty ancient dragon that hunted my kind extinction to be my own soulmate, nor did I expect that she became such a beauty that I started swinging the other way."
"What do you mean by the latter?"
"Don't mind that, I doubt that the concept of gender matters much here~"
"Gender in this world is just a genetic role that barely matters now, so you're right on that." Samael pointed out. "Reproduction can be done regardless of gender and numerous methods, depending on the knowledge and the race...
"Since there's no such thing as growing old here, a mortal creating an entirely new living being works a little differently than most worlds. Especially the one where you came from, assuming that my understanding of your origin world is not faulty."
"Oh wow, that's quite the world building."
"Speaking of the whole thing, how about you?" Samael said with a half-lidded gaze. "What's the origin of your name?"
"My parents wanted a boy," Kivas said. "When I came out as a girl, they didn't want to waste time. Slapped on the name they already picked. Then waalaa! Kivas, with Chariot as the family name."
Samael paused. "So Kivas are supposed to be masculine in terms of name, then."
"Where I came from, yeah."
Samael gave her a look. "Well, you don't look like you're exuding any kind of masculinity."
"That's what I said!"
Despite their circumstances, they possess the willingness to learn about each other.
Maybe there's a reason why they were assigned to be each other's soulmates. Albeit, rough and gritty at the start, it might be able to bloom into something more warm and radiant than anything in their entire life.
They finished their meal in uneasy peace. Samael tore the last segment from the Voidling's abdomen, then finally stabbed it through the brain stem. The twitching stopped.
Kivas blinked at her status screen.
No change.
She turned slowly. "...My attributes haven't moved."
Samael didn't react. "Of course they didn't."
"Uhm, excuse me?"
"To claim the attributes of those whose dead you partake, you must defeat their ever lingering revenant in the form of a Nightmare."