C4 Soul Eater!
My only advantage is the knowledge I have in my closet, the fact that I can burn my soul as much as I want thus gaining around a 10x strength boost, and his lack of attention which hopefully lasts a long while.
---
I've been here for what feels like months. In this time I have grown to the size of a pebble.
At first, I thought that with the ability to burn my soul I would be able to "consume" the smaller chunks of Zadkiel's soul fairly easily.
I was wrong. Very VERY wrong.
I had forgotten that my soul, although eternal, still has the same level of quality and strength as a normal human from a completely mundane world.
So while burning my soul does gain me around 10x the strength, it doesn't change the fact that 10x almost nothing is still almost nothing.
That combined with the fact the Zadkiel's soul is not only bigger and stronger but also of a far higher quality than mine, means that it takes a tremendous amount of time and many MANY "deaths" to consume even a tiny piece.
Yes, that is another thing that I learned about burning one's soul. Once you start you can't stop, at most you can slow it down but you can't put out the fire once it starts.
That means to break off a "swallowable" piece I had to die dozens of times.
But that was not the worst part, strangely enough, the self-burning of a soul doesn't hurt that much. The worst part was the consuming of the pieces of soul.
I was working on the rubie parts which I found out were mainly collections of memories. Memories of torture, insane babble, or just plain shit.
And when I consumed them I had to live through them as if it were me.
Zadkiel could just sit there letting me do as I please and I may still end up going crazy.
The only saving grace is that I can pause in-between and since the chunks are very small the memories don't last long, but considering he has been here for at least a few thousand years, I still have a lot to go through.
---
When I first started though, the first thing that I did was to make sure that I would not waste any of the energy when I consumed his soul since I knew it would take much more energy to grow mine due to the whole eternal thing.
And the second thing was to focus on improving the quality of my soul instead of the size or strength it could wield.
The reason for this is that I was pretty much trying to cut a rock with paper. It's doable… if you have an eternity to spend doing it.
The other reason for increasing the quality is that it will be much easier now when my soul is still small rather than later when it is larger. In the end, it will save a lot of time and headache.
To bring my sand-sized soul to the same quality as Zadkiels, I had to consume three large pebble-sized chunks.
THREE!
Yes, I had finally become a sand-sized light golden crystal after consuming a total of what was probably over a thousand times my "soul mass".
ROB was not lying when he said it would be harder for me to increase the strength of my soul, and improving the quality is even harder.
I can only imagine what it would have taken to upgrade my soul if I tried to do so after consuming his entire soul. Maybe not even the souls of all the humans on earth would have sufficed.
Now with this complete, I could finally make some headway in actually becoming stronger.
While consuming pieces to increase in strength was still inefficient, it wasn't as bad as before.
My size and strength would increase by a tenth of what I ate. So if I wanted to double in strength I had to eat 10x my current size.
That means, under normal circumstances, when I have completely taken over I will only be a tenth as strong as the original Zadkiel.
This would normally be concerning, because how in the hell can I escape Mephisto if I don't even have the strength Zadkiel used to have?
However, I am not worried since if I burn my soul I will be just as strong as before, and I also have a couple of ideas on how to increase that even more.
One of those ideas came to me while I was living through some of his memories.
---
Most of the memories are just traumatizing fucked up garbage but every now and then I get some from when he was bonded to a rider.
The main weapon and tool of a rider isn't the motorcycle or chains, it is actually the fire. More accurately known as Hellfire or Soulfire.
It is a mystical fire with a whole host of abilities. They range from everything a normal fire can do to building objects that ignore normal physics, enhancing physical strength, or even healing the user from nearly any injury.
They also seem to possess a very limited intelligence shown by their ability to "search and destroy" sin just like a computer program that eliminates viruses.
Through these memories, I actually started learning how to control and wield Hellfire, and I also started to come up with an idea that could boost my strength tremendously.
Hellfire/Soulfire's best fuel source is souls. So what would happen if I were to funnel the energy I get from burning my soul into making hellfire?
If I were to somehow make a converter or engine that could directly use my soul as fuel for the sole purpose of making and controlling Hellfire, how high would my battle power be?
I can't say for sure but I do know that the quality of the energy normally produced from burning a soul is one of the highest in existence, that's why demons like to eat them so much.
'Does that make me a demon? Mmm, well I think Marvel's demons are usually soulless and I have one… so no.'
Pure soul energy is also multipurpose so when it is used for battle much of it is wasted. If the wastage can be prevented by converting it all into Hellfire, maybe I could reach 20x instead of 10x stronger.
But I do know that I am not going to find out now, as I am pretty sure igniting Hellfire right next to his soul would bring Zadkiel's attention to me, and I want to prevent that for as long as possible.
I also need to find a way to burn only parts of my soul instead of the whole thing or else I will "die" every time I do it, and I don't even know how long it takes for me to pop back up. It could be instantaneous or it could be years, I have no way of knowing without some sort of timekeeper.
I know I could just separate my soul into pieces but that would pretty much make clones of me and I never liked the idea of clones.
The only clones I didn't mind were shadow clones since they weren't actual clones of yourself. I mean, who wouldn't want to offload work to someone else, especially when you would get any useful experience from it when it's done?
---
It's been… years now… I think. It's hard to tell when your all alone and have nothing to reference.
I made it to roughly the size of a 5-story building. It's still tiny compared to the centerpiece but it's also a hell of a lot stronger than I was when I first showed up here.
I did manage to find a way to burn my soul without needing to burn all of it.
While it may sound simple, it is anything but, and without going through at least half of my closet and understanding half of that it would not have been possible.
I basically split my soul into two main parts. One part, the core, held all my memories, my ego, my literal "self".
The second was made up of countless sand-sized pieces that only held my will and were used as fuel.
The reason I split them into such small pieces was so that I could use smaller increments of power, otherwise, I would just be nuking everything… which kinda sounds like fun, haha.
*Cough* Anyway, this did come at a price. That being, I can no longer "store" energy like souls are usually able.
Like ROB said before. Souls are like bowls, where the strength they can wield is equivalent to its capacity, and burning it is like burning what the bowl itself is made of.
What I have done is akin to breaking the bowl into a bunch of smaller pieces, hence it can no longer hold energy in a conventional sense.
My soul now can be compared to a miniature planet where the "core" is the core, obviously, and the "sand" is the mantle.
As for the crust? I'm not telling yet! But that is certainly the most fun part.
But aside from all that I am honestly surprised that I have not been found out yet. I have a feeling that I am being helped.
By what?
The sapphire pieces. I think whatever part of Zadkiel that's still sane is helping to mask my presence, probably to put himself out of his misery.
But I can tell that it won't last much longer because the chunks' orbit has been steadily increasing as the insane part of him restores his power.
And once that happens I doubt anything can hide from him, especially if it's in his soulscape, so I have just been focussing on increasing my strength as fast as possible.
Though I can tell that by doing so my mind is becoming a little less stable, I can only do my best to at least keep myself from falling off the edge.
//Note//
This one was the fastest to write so far.
Could anyone tell that his mind was a bit looser at the end?
And as always remember, the Novel Flaming Sect is the best sect!