The flawless black sniper rifle rested securely against Klaus’s shoulder.
It didn’t feel like a piece of cold lifeless machinery forged in a factory.
It felt warm, thrumming with contained vitality.
The glowing white circuit carved into the side of the matte obsidian receiver pulsed with a slow rhythm, perfectly mimicking the heartbeat of the dire wolf whose soul was currently trapped inside it.
Klaus narrowed his silver eyes, staring down the scope.
The lens wasn’t made of glass.
It was a direct spiritual interface tied into his divine core. When he looked through it, the howling blizzard and the pitch-black darkness of the Winterlands completely fell away.
The scope translated the physical world into a stark high-contrast landscape of thermal and spiritual signatures.
He could see the residual heat of the carriage tracks behind him, the ambient mana lingering in the air, and the sprawling frozen expanse of the tundra.
He swept the barrel slowly from left to right, searching for a target.
’If I just built a gun that shoots regular bullets, I wasted a lot of energy,’ Klaus thought cynically. ’Let’s see what a weapon with a soul actually does.’
Roughly two hundred yards out, completely buried beneath a massive shifting snowdrift, Klaus spotted a faint, glowing red signature.
It wasn’t a wolf or a snow-crawler. It was massive, easily the size of a city bus, coiled tightly beneath the permafrost.
The density of its spiritual signature marked it as a high-tier subterranean beast... likely a Glacier-Worm waiting to ambush whatever poor bastard walked over it.
Klaus didn’t hesitate.
He adjusted his stance on the iron grating of the moving carriage, bracing his boots against the metal.
He locked the crosshairs directly onto the center of the massive glowing red mass hidden beneath the snow as his finger curled around the cold iron trigger.
He didn’t just pull it though... He pushed a microscopic fraction of his own intent into the weapon, authorizing it to fire.
KRA-THOOM!
The sound was apocalyptic, a deafening crack that echoed across the empty Winterlands.
The recoil was instantaneous and brutal.
A normal man’s shoulder would have been instantly dislocated, the collarbone shattered into powder, however Klaus’s divinely reconstructed frame barely even twitched, absorbing the massive kickback with terrifying ease.
But what happened at the end of the barrel was what truly mattered.
There was no brass casing ejected and no smell of gunpowder.
The trapped soul inside the rifle violently compressed its own spiritual form.
It sheared off a fraction of its own raw essence, condensing it into a hyper-dense blindingly bright white projectile.
The soul acted as both the propellant and the bullet, launching the projectile through the hollowed-out bone barrel at hypersonic speeds.
The white bullet ripped through the freezing air, leaving a perfect vacuum-sealed tunnel of distorted space in its wake as it struck the snowdrift two hundred yards away.
The bullet eradicated it.
KRA-CRUNCH! SQUELCH!
The snowbank violently erupted into a massive geyser of pulverized ice, dirt, and dark green ichor.
The hypersonic soul-bullet punched straight through twenty feet of packed snow and solid permafrost, hitting the Glacier-Worm squarely in its center mass.
The spiritual transfer upon impact was devastating as the massive, bus-sized worm was instantly ripped entirely in half, its thick armored hide flayed open as a shockwave turned its internal organs into a fine steaming mist.
A massive, agonized shriek echoed from beneath the snow before being abruptly cut off.
Klaus lowered the rifle, staring at the massive smoking crater in the distance.
"Holy shit," Klaus muttered softly with an extremely satisfied smirk spreading across his face.
He looked down at the weapon in his hands.
The white circuit was pulsing slightly faster now, the trapped wolf’s soul recovering from the forced ejection of its own energy.
"The configuration works exactly how I hypothesized..." Klaus analyzed. "It doesn’t require physical ammunition. The soul inside the weapon ejects each bullet using a portion of its own spiritual power. That’s why the impact is so catastrophic. It’s essentially firing raw life force at hypersonic speeds."
Valeria hovered right beside his ear, her tiny red eyes wide as she looked at the smoking crater.
"My King... the destructive output is staggering," the chibi Crimson Sharpshooter breathed in awe. "But if it uses its own soul as ammunition, won’t the weapon eventually consume itself and die?"
"If it was isolated, yes," Klaus nodded, running his thumb over the glowing circuit. "But it’s tethered to me... As long as I’m holding it, my divine core passively feeds it enough Soul Mana to instantly regenerate whatever it shoots. It’s an infinite high-caliber railgun."
He had seen enough.
The experiment was a terrifying success. He had actively transmuted biological flesh into a mechanical, spiritual weapon.
The versatility of his class was staggering.
’Which makes me wonder... why didn’t Ryoki do this or how exactly did the First Soul King die?’
Klaus casually dropped the massive sniper rifle.
It didn’t hit the iron grating.
Before it could touch the floor, Klaus opened a rift to his internal inventory. The massive black gun dissolved into a stream of white light, instantly storing itself safely inside the System Inventory.
’I’ll start spinning some more gacha items once I get back to Galen, I really don’t have the power to sort shit right now.
He rolled his broad shoulders, cracking his neck.
The mental strain of the transmutation had been heavy, but his core had already flushed the fatigue from his system.
"Alright," Klaus said, turning to look at the tiny ghost hovering near his shoulder. "Show’s over. Time to get back inside, Valeria."
Valeria didn’t instantly dissolve.
The tiny Crimson Sharpshooter hovered in the air with her dark red hair blowing in the freezing wind. She looked at him, her tiny hands fidgeting nervously with the strap of her miniature rifle.
"My King," Valeria started, her voice dropping into a hesitant shy whisper. "May I... request permission to stay outside with you for a while longer?"
Klaus raised a silver eyebrow. "Why? It’s freezing out here, and you don’t even have a physical body to feel the cold. What’s the point of floating around in a blizzard when you could be warm inside my soul?"
Valeria floated closer, closing the distance until she was hovering directly in front of his face.
She leaned forward, her tiny, ethereal form pressing against his cheek. She placed a soft, ghostly kiss directly against his skin. It didn’t feel like lips... it felt like a concentrated tingling spark of warm electricity.
"Because I require your Soul Mana to stay active in the physical world without decaying," Valeria explained softly, her red eyes looking deeply into his silver ones. "And I can only siphon that mana from you by making direct physical contact."
Klaus stared at her.
She wasn’t just a loyal soldier... she was actively, shamelessly finding excuses to cuddle with him. She wanted to stay outside just so she had a legitimate reason to cling to him like a parasite.
"Fine," Klaus grumbled, though there was no real heat in his voice. "You can stay out but if you start complaining about the wind, you’re going right back in the box."
"Thank you, my King!" Valeria beamed, her face lighting up with a radiant smile. She immediately dropped down, landing softly in his thick, silver hair.
She completely bypassed his shoulder, nestling herself comfortably into the luminescent strands on top of his head like a tiny bird making a nest.
"Just make yourself at home, why don’t you," Klaus muttered, rolling his eyes as he turned away from the rear of the carriage.
He didn’t go back into the main cabin.
Instead, he climbed up the side of the moving carriage with his muscled arms hauling his massive frame effortlessly onto the roof.
He walked across the sturdy oak planks, the freezing wind whipping against his face, until he reached the very front.
He dropped down onto the driver’s bench, stepping past the enclosed control room, and climbed directly down onto the heavy iron yoke connecting the carriage to the giant mountain bear.
The beast was hauling ass with its massive claws tearing through the deep snowpack but as Klaus crouched on the iron frame, looking down at the monster, he could see the severe toll the journey was taking.
The bear was pushing itself beyond its natural limits. Its massive chest was heaving with rapid, ragged breaths, plumes of white steam erupting from its jaws.
Its muscles were trembling under the thick white fur.
It was dragging a carriage meant for two bears all by itself, driven entirely by the terrifying intent Klaus had pumped into the control system.
It was energetic, fueled by pure adrenaline and fear, but Klaus wasn’t stupid.
He knew basic biology.
"You aren’t going to last another ten miles without your heart exploding," Klaus said critically.
If they had to stop and let the beast rest for eight hours, they were losing valuable time.
They needed to reach the portal before the Winterlands abominations rallied into another massive horde... he wanted to be back in civilization soon.
Klaus didn’t intend to stop, rather he intended to cheat.
With his newly acquired, deeply terrifying knowledge of Soul Configuration, Klaus knew exactly how to bypass the bear’s physical limitations.
He stepped directly off the iron yoke, dropping his heavy boots right onto the massive galloping bear’s broad back.
The beast let out a panicked grunt, trying to buck him off, but Klaus planted his feet firmly into the thick fur with his divine gravity anchoring him perfectly in place like a statue.
He crouched down, placing both of his calloused hands flat against the bear’s muscular shoulders.
"Hold still," Klaus commanded, his voice laced with the suffocating authority of the Soul King.
The bear instantly froze in terror, continuing to run but ceasing all resistance.
Klaus closed his eyes.
He didn’t want a repeat of the wolf incident.
He knew exactly what he was doing this time. He pushed his glowing white Soul Mana directly through the bear’s thick hide, sinking deep into the creature’s spiritual core.
His first move was very necessary as he wrapped the bear’s primitive consciousness in a dense layer of mana, completely isolating its mind from its physical body.
With a precise strike of spiritual pressure, Klaus entirely shut down the bear’s pain receptors.
The nervous system was completely severed from the brain’s ability to register agony.
"Alright," Klaus murmured, the wind whipping his silver hair wildly. "Let’s give you an upgrade."
VWOOM!
Klaus flooded the beast with a massive surge of raw Soul Mana and like usual, the transformation wasn’t instantaneous... it was a brutal real-time evolution.
CRUNCH! SQUELCH! SHCK!
Beneath Klaus’s hands, the bear’s anatomy violently rebelled against the laws of nature.
The beast’s overall size expanded rapidly, its skeletal structure lengthening and thickening.
The muscles across its shoulders and thighs doubled, then tripled in density, bulging grotesquely beneath the fur but Klaus didn’t stop at just making it bigger.
He needed it to be a juggernaut!
He manipulated the spiritual blueprint of the skeletal system, forcing the excess calcium in the bear’s blood to rapidly multiply and erupt outward.
SHHHHK!
Thick and incredibly dense plates of white bone violently tore through the bear’s skin and fur.
The bone plating locked together over the beast’s spine, shoulders, and skull, forming a natural impenetrable suit of heavy armor.
He restructured the cardiovascular system, massively expanding the lung capacity and the heart to pump highly oxygenated blood at triple the normal rate.
Because Klaus had completely shut down the pain receptors beforehand, the bear didn’t even flinch as its body was violently torn apart and rebuilt from the inside out.
The glowing white light faded.
Klaus pulled his hands back, standing up on the back of the newly forged monstrosity.
The creature beneath him was no longer just a mountain bear. It was a terrifying armored siege engine.
Its eyes glowed with a residual white light with its lungs pulling in massive amounts of air without a single hint of strain.
"RAHHHHH!!"
The beast roared and surged forward.
The speed boost was staggering.
The massive, bone-plated monster tore across the snowpack like a runaway freight train, completely ignoring the drag of the deep snow.
The heavy oak carriage jerked violently behind it, the iron wheels spinning into a blur as their travel speed easily doubled.
"Much better," Klaus smirked, thoroughly satisfied with his work.
He leaped off the armored bear’s back, landing smoothly on the iron yoke, and climbed back over the control room.
He made his way across the roof of the carriage, dropping down onto the rear runner, and finally opened the heavy wooden door to the main cabin.
He stepped inside, shutting the freezing wind out, and let out a long, contented breath.
’I’m done with my experiments...’