Stuck as a Dungeon Mob

Under the light of the flickering torches, Ed called up a skeleton. This skeleton held a regular rusty sword and seemed ordinary by all means.

'You will be my first subject then' Ed thought inwardly with anticipation. The word subject was literal in both meanings of the word, at least if it succeeded it was.

Ed hadn't tried to activate a sub-skill before, he didn't need to after all. The only thing he was afraid of was that he wouldn't be able to use activation based subskills whenever the dungeon was watching.

With a tinge of nervousness, Ed connected himself to what he felt was the system and placed his hand on the skeleton's head.

'Insertion' He said inside his mind as he observed for any anomalies.

His boney palm only shook slightly and apart from that, it all seemed fine. The skeleton was standing just fin-

The skeleton dropped its sword with a clang. It then trembled visibly before falling to its knees. The skeleton's head then jolted suddenly.

A crack followed this which Ed clearly heard. He saw the skeleton's body start to break apart. Its skull saw a visible fissure and its arms and legs had cracks serpentining all over.

The skeleton shot him what Ed felt was a scared and pitiful glance with its hollow eye sockets. But there was no helping it… The trembling stopped, Its skull split open and its body fell lifeless to the ground.

'...' Ed's mind blanked after observing this scene. He had considered the chance of failure but the way it happened was much worse than he had hoped for. 

It was good skeletons have no means to scream and their senses were also dulled. If that hadn't been the case Ed would have to continue his experiments with a guilty conscience.

'I wonder what happened' Ed thought while looking down at the poor skeleton.

He then activated his sixth sense skill hoping to find out just that. In retrospect, it might have been a good idea to have it activated from the start.

As soon as the skill was activated, light blue wisps appeared in his vision. They floated about slowly sinking to the ground, their size slowly diminishing. They likely exited through the open skull.

The different color was simply the threat they represented but other than that these were definitely the consciousness. 

Since he knew that much, Ed proceeded to quickly analyze what might have gone wrong after noticing the way they diminished. This was likely what the system meant by death fragmenting memories.

[Wisp of consciousness]

A fraction of a being's thought.

Ed assessed the first wisp directly in front of him. Unlike the one he had fused, this one was that of a regular skeleton. If he remembered correctly when he had deducted it last it was listed as nothing but a remnant.

[Gharol's wisp of consciousness]

A fragmenting wisp. Its memories are fading.

He didn't bother to think about it though as he needed to quickly deal with the situation on hand.

He swiped his hand past and grabbed both wisps. He was about to send them into the storage space before deciding to try something else. He linked to the system just like earlier and used insertion. The only difference was that there was nothing to insert!

Ed had only done this to open up the path into the spirit room. The two wisps soon faded into his boney palms as if they were being absorbed by something. Through his sixth sense, Ed could see this was done by swirling blue clouds.

He nodded satisfactorily after seeing this. It would be bad for him if he had to enter and move the wisps from the storeroom to the spirit room every time.

Now was the time for conjectures and note-taking.

There were two possibilities for why this resulted in failure. One, he should have removed the skeleton's wisp first. Two consciousnesses might not be able to occupy one body.

Ed wasn't confident in this being the reason though. He felt that this would likely lead to the two consciousnesses clashing and since the skeleton's consciousness was nothing but a remnant, it would lose and fade away completely.

The second possibility was that the orc's consciousness was more powerful than the body he had provided. 

If he remembered correctly, vessels had to fit the requirements of their hosts in novels and other media. This applied to many things including electronics from his previous life. Too much electricity would result in the machine breaking.

'Does this mean that consciousnesses can be measured as forms of energies?' Ed proposed to himself internally. This wasn't the first time he had mentioned this it was simply that this situation could be said to advocate this point.

'I guess that explains why the dungeon didn't like me taking the skeletons' wisps last time' Ed mumbled. This made him wonder why it didn't act when it came to his soul calling skill. It meant it lost its harvest when it came to the orcs.

'Hm?' He was suddenly struck by a thought.

'The orcs are obviously being farmed but… how does the dungeon impart life into things?' This was a rhetorical question. Obviously the answer was consciousness! It was what he collected from them after all.

The assessment earlier called the skeleton's wisp a fraction of a being's thought. What being? The dungeon!

The dungeon may or may not split its soul or consciousness and impart it into mobs. The skeletons are dead and have no room for growth but the orcs are different. They need to take care of their own necessities and need a certain amount of intellect.

The dungeon provides a wisp, enough to give the orcs life, and then the orcs develop it in its behalf. When it dies, it goes right back to the dungeon. This means that the dungeon would end up earning energy as the orcs' intelligence slowly grew from a baby to an adult.

'That's… incredibly plausible…' Ed didn't think this information would do him much good. It would help him with his experiments as he could now treat consciousnesses as energy and the bodies as a machine that needed power.

'Am I living energy then?' Ed couldn't help but ask.

He didn't know how energy could carry knowledge as then it would just be data. He wasn't sure if it could be both. Regardless, if he was energy, he should be quite a potent one.

'How come my body doesn't break like that then?' Ed felt puzzled by this. Did the dungeon have a way to prevent this from happening or was it because he was living energy?

'That's probably it' Ed thought somewhat enlightened. The insertion skill inserted life into a host. Ed was different however, he was most likely only possessing these bodies!

That could also explain why he didn't suffer from fragmented memories with every death. He hadn't actually died, it was only the body that did. As a ghost-like creature, he could afford to be without a body. Other consciousnesses couldn't and start to fade away.

'Can I leave my body then?' Ed asked himself before quickly shaking the thought away. He didn't have any attacks in that form so it wasn't a matter worth considering anyways. 

He had also gotten sidetracked. Although the matter was important, it wasn't something he needed to urgently address.

With this in mind, Ed kindly kicked aside the lifeless skeleton and commanded for a new one to come over. Since these things had low intellect it didn't even think about what happened to its comrade before coming over.

[Sword Skeleton]

A sword-wielding skeleton. Susceptible to blunt force and orders from Edw#&!

A somewhat familiar assessment appeared in front of Ed's field of vision. It was a bit unfortunate that this one would have to have its consciousness extracted and possibly die.

Ed tried to probe the skeleton with his sixth sense but no color appeared. He simply placed his hand over the skeleton's skull and extracted the consciousness causing the skeleton to promptly disassemble.

'Since an orc's life doesn't work, let's try a skeleton's' Ed thought to himself as he crouched down to insert life into it once more.

Ed connected to the system and focused on the consciousness he wanted. He couldn't see into the system space but if he thought hard enough about it the system was bound to understand. Otherwise, what was the point of being linked?

Even with the sixth sense, Ed couldn't see the swirling cloud. This was probably because it was currently inside of the skeleton's skull spitting out what he wanted it to.

His arm shook a bit probably signaling success and Ed stood up. He looked down at the lifeless pile of bones. There wasn't any sign of life. Seconds passed and he was starting to feel disappointed.

But then, the skeleton's arm twitched! The joints began to reconnect. The skeleton assembled itself before Ed's sight and stood up. Ed was happy that it did but he needed to find out if it was any smarter.

'Get that sword from him and hand it to me' Ed transmitted to the skeleton who looked at him somewhat blankly before looking towards the direction he pointed.

The skeleton then flinched and hurried over to one of its comrades. It grabbed hold of the sword but the other skeleton didn't seem to want to let go. They both tussled for the sword before Ed gave the other one the command to give it.

It did so and test subject number two happily brought back the blade and handed it over to Ed.

Ed grabbed the sword and brandished it a couple of times. Only after this did he feel assured. If he could smile it would definitely be a devious smile. Those adventurers were going to have a bad time!

'This is only the beginning, but you shall be, Kenny Jr.!' Ed commanded with his transmission.

Kenny jr's wits were still not up to par but it could at least perform more complicated tasks. Ed didn't have to follow it through things step by step or only ask for simple things.

Kenny Jr. seemed to have become slightly more lively after receiving a name.

'I can always throw it into the forge again if it isn't smart enough' He had yet to test what was the energy limit for the skeletons.

Kenny Jr. stopped rejoicing seemingly sensing the danger.

'Eh, did I transmit that?'