9 Chapter Nine: First Look
As I prepare to leave, I notice weak vibrations above me. I make a few detours, and do my best to hide any traces that would lead to my main body as I follow these vibrations . The extra digging is mind numbing, but better safe than sorry.
I keep making detours til I arrive near the surface. I can still feel the general direction of my main body. It's concealing Itself while I explore with this body. I still feel a strong connection with it. That's a relief.
I near the surface, and begin to use my soul to look towards the surface. Worse case I lose this body, and some soul, but at least I would become aware of any predators might be able to detect soul. I use my "eyes" to look around while underground. It seems there is no reaction.
I wait while testing the water. There still seems to be no reaction, but I do gain a lot of information in the meanwhile. The surface above me is a cavern like environment with some kind of gas in the air that's filled with death energy.
It does not have a color, but with my eyes it looks like the air is filled with that gray glow. It also does not reek of killing intent like the body of the corpse worms, but I wonder what is strong enough to create sure an aura. This is death energy. How could I not know it after looking through so many corpse worm souls. Death energy comes from somthing dying.
The air is toxic in nature, but I don't think the toxic fumes will kill this body. It's already dead. I find there is a mix of living, and nonliving organisms as I move underneath the surface. My range is limited, and mostly I just test to see if they notice my soul observing them at first for the most part. There has been no reaction. The ecosystem seems to be mostly creatures of a toxic, or undead nature. The rare few that are living look resistant to poison, but I can not be sure based on looks alone. I examine their bodies, and they seem to natural resistance to the poison they breath. Their lungs lungs seems not to be bothered by the slightest.
It's as if It does not harm them at all, but it's death energy. I thought it would at least harm their vitality in some way. I will look into that later. A living body that can tolerate death energy seems interesting. The whole ecosystem of this place seem interesting. The corpse worms act as bottom feeders. They eat the dead, and keep cavern "clean". The living are mostly creatures such as snakes, rats, plants, and insects. They have their own small circle of life going on.
These creatures don't have a core for the most part. They act like "Normal animal do from what I can see. They all seem to have strong poison resistance, so I am unsure if corpse poison will do much to them. They also seem to have keener senses like smell, touch, and hearing, and other sensory methods then the dead. The dead seem to be living corpses of the creatures I saw before. They are slower, but have stronger bodies. There are also a few undead with cores. It seems as though they lack any of the aggressive nature of zombies I know.
They are mostly are just moving around looks like slowly absorbing that gas from the air into their bodies. I move closer to a snake I found. It's fully white expect the dark holes of where it's eyes should be. I notice it hiding in a shallow burrow underground. Maybe these creatures keep traits of when they were alive. I move closer to it being careful not to disturb the snake corpse. It's closer to me now, so examining it will be easier on my soul.
The undead snake is damaged, and looks like it lost a battle against something with claws. I find it also has a core like my corpse worm, but smaller. There is nothing in it's core but a soul fragment, but it different than a corpse worm fragment. A corpse worm is born