Dawn came early the next morning. My eyes were heavy as a yawn pried my mouth open against my will. I'd been up most of the night. The first bit had been spent with Mike, deciding which enemies to target first. We eventually made the extremely complicated and elaborate plan of starting with the red dots closest to the village and working our way out from there.

  After Mike left me to go get some sleep, I stayed up laying in my bed looking up at the map floating in front of me. As far as I could tell it showed the live location of everyone. Nothing hidden. Nothing delayed.

  I was able to zoom in and watch the white dots of the villagers moving throughout the village. Zooming out I watched all the red dots with motion here and there, but what caught my eye was one dot in particular. Strait south towards the mountain our territory swallowed a decent portion of its norther face now. As you moved closer to the mountain on the map the red dots grew fewer until there were none past a certain point. None, that is, except for one.

  There was one lone red dot, almost at the southern edge of what the pillar considered our territory. Judging by the map whatever this threat was, it was some ways up the mountain. At least a good 6 kilometers up. Which, by itself, shouldn’t have worried me. Hell maybe some monster just likes to climb rocks, for all I know. But then it started doing something unexpected.

  That little red dot started moving, and not just a little. For a second as it moved northward at an alarming rate, I thought maybe whatever it was had fallen and was tumbling down the mountain. But when it kept moving north faster and faster, even after it past what would have been the bottom of the foothills where I would have expected it to crash had it been falling, It clicked. Whatever it was... It was flying.

  Images of dragons flashed in my mind before I could calm my thoughts down. I mean, honestly, what else would be perched on a mountain and take off flying? Ok... A lot of things. Really anything with wings. But I couldn't help it.

  I watched it move across the map in lazy curves sometimes leaving our territory and falling off the map all together. Just for it to race back in, somewhere else. It wasn't just circling. I realized... It was patrolling. There were even a couple times that it passed north of us. Meaning not only was it in our territory, we were in its.

  When morning came I shared what I had found. Infact I wasn't the only one to notice. Akira had spotted the same dot. She was making jokes that it was probably a stray pigeon that got lost during the integration, but you could tell it was a facade. She was worried and didn't want to show it.

  When we finally had all the guardsmen ready to go, I addressed the group before we set out.

  "Good morning. Mike and I set our first target last night. It's only about a half hour walk from here. That hasn't changed and we're still taking the fight to them. Now more than ever we need to strengthen ourselves. To be ready to face whatever challenges may come our way.

  As some of you may have already heard, there's an unknown monster south of us on the mountain. We can't be completely sure, but judging by the way it's dot moves on the map it's more than likely flying. It's perched a good ways up the mountain, which right now would still be a difficult climb for most of us. On top of that we have no clue what it is. We've only seen the movement of its map marker.

  So, Mike and I have decided to wait on taking out that threat until all the guard is leveled up enough to handle something a bit stronger. Just in case we run into another situation like the stone behemoth, where most of our attacks did little to nothing to the beast.

  With that said, try to keep an eye on the sky when you're left here out of rotation. Now, who's ready to take out this next beast den?!"

  It was a less than perfect speech, but there were still a few excided cries of "yeah!", and "Let's do it!" when I finished. Maybe I needed to put a couple of my spare points into charisma if I was going to be giving more speeches and adressing so many people all the time...

  I chuckled. "Yea right, ha. Charisma's for losers."

  Mike turned my way. "Did you say something?"

  "Uh...no you must be hearing things."

  "Pretty sure I heard you say charisma's for losers. I'll have you know, I've put a free point in that stat every level since we landed, and it's been doing wonders for me."

  "I rest my case." I said as I walked away.

  A little less than an hour later we'd finished clearing out the threat and were already planning the next. This one had been a pack of some kind of Direwolfs with nature magic. They kept trying to snare us with vines before pouncing. Lucky for us these guys were all under level five, and their vines couldn't break through my shields. So, it was a slaughter.

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  I didn't gain a level this time around however Tharn gave us a crash course on how to collect the keys from the bodies. We all gathered them up and laid them in a circle. Tharn stood in the middle and gave us instruction.

  "Now, you have to take a moment to slow down your mind. Relax and let all of your stray thoughts pass over you like a lazy cloud on a sunny day. Focus only on the energies around you. The wind blowing against your skin, the sun warming your face, your heart beating within your chest.

  Then to go deeper you must feel your spirit. Your soul. It is irrevocable tethered to the senses of your body. From birth it forms connections that only grow stronger with time. Connection that, have you never attempted to find will feel invisible to you. Like they don't exist at all. However I assure you they do, or else you would not be alive. For it is these connections that keep an untrained soul residing within the flesh.

  I struggled to grasp what Tharn was saying but dutifully searched my senses. I let my bodies sensations take up all of my attention. I sat there legs crossed on the grass feeling the weight of my body pressing against the earth. I felt the soft fabric from my dirty pilots uniform hug my body and drape across my chest. I felt the cool morning air pass through my nostrils and fill my lungs, before blowing back out of my mouth as I took several slow grounding breaths.

  I heard the sound of birds chirping in the distance. The smell of iron from the beasts blood that layed before me. I paid close attention to exactly where the sensations gathered. Where they met. Where they were interpreted. Not just in the body... But somewhere deeper.

  Then like a whisper, I felt something just beyond my perception. Not a sensation, exactly, but the place sensations went. So faint I thought I imagined it, but as I kept following the feelings that passed over me, something made itself know.

  There was a faint grip for lack of a better word on my senses. Something pulling the sensory data in. I followed the feeling deeper and deeper until all at once a sensation like diving into cold water crashed over me.

  I was no longer sitting on the ground. I was... Hovering. Floating. It felt remarkably similar to the construction interface in the sense I was out of my body, but completely different at the same time. I looked around at my surroundings.

  I was in an endless black expanse. Filling the expanse was a bright neon green orb of light. Streching off into the black void were thousands of tendrils that all glowed the same comforting green. Looking behind me I realized there was a tendril attached to the back of my head. It snaked off into the distance before making its way back down to the orb. Looking at the green sphere, it felt like... Home. Like it... Was me.

  I floated to one of the tendrils reaching out to touch it. When my hand made contact, I was overtaken with the sensations of my left knee. A tiny spot hugged tightly by my pant legs as my body sat on the ground.

  I went to another and felt the smooth touch of my teeth against the tip of my tongue in my mouth. I tasted the saliva keeping my mouth moist and then felt the cool rush of air as my body kept breathing out through the mouth, seamingly without instruction.

  Well at least I'm still breathing that's good. But what the hell is this?

  I went to several other tendrils before I was struck with understanding. I already knew where all these went. I had made them. I had forged all these connections. Years and years ago.

  Somehow, the memory of doing so swept over me. I remembered a long journey, and a joy at finally being placed here. I remembered spending months meticulously building connection after connection, until there came a feeling of great pressure and a white light...

  Oh...oh God. My soul remembers my birth. I'm... just going to... pack that bit of trauma away for later. Or never. Never works too.

  Moving on and definitely not trying forget that the last 30 seconds had ever happened to me, I realized I had no clue what to do. At least not how to do what I came here for. Let's see. Originally I was trying to feel all sensations at once. To take it all in. Then it all faded. No, not faded. I started paying attention to where the sensations went. To try and find the... spirit.

  Way to go me, mission accomplished. Now what? Maybe... Maybe I just needed to find this place to be able to sense my spirit or soul or whatever. If that that thing is me, and I'm tethered to it. Maybe I just subconsciously projected myself outside to get a better understanding. And if that's the case...

  I floated back in until I was right in front of it. Compared to my body here it was the size of a house. Taking one last look around I pushed forward and let it swallow me.

  All at once sensation flooded back in to my awareness. I was sitting in front of the Direwolf feeling slightly overwhelmed at having all my senses back at once. I glanced up see Tharn staring at me his face inches from mine.

  "Holy shit!" I yelled as I fell backwards. "Warn a guy next time! You about gave me a heart attack."

  He stood there with a wide grin on his face. "So, you succeeded on your first try."

  I raised an eyebrow at him. "Going off of my distinct lack of a vein key right now I disagree."

  He boomed a hearty laugh. "Ha ha! I had always planed on collecting the keys from these beasts myself. Having you all place them in a circle was merely for my convenience, and to raise your confidence. No, what you managed to do is find your spirit. And on your first try, no less. That is exceedingly rare, and is the first step in being able to harvest a key.

  Soon you will be able to feel the way your spirit interacts with your body. Then you will be able to take control. To own your spirit and use it as a tool. Only a spirit can interact with the remaining energy left behind by another spirit. You have done the hard part. Now comes practice. Now watch as I collect these keys and see if you can tell how it's done."

  He stepped back into the center of the circle before sitting down and closing his eyes. At first it seamed like nothing was happening. Until after a moment you could see the energies building above each corpse.

  I tried my best to see what tharn was doing, but to my senses there was nothing. I could see the energy's building until they gathered in front of him coalescing into a collection of keys that softly landed on the ground. But, no matter how hard I tried, I saw nothing that would tell me how to do it.

  As soon as he finished he looked at me with a toothy grin "well, Dean?"

  "Sorry, budd. Nothing"

  "That's to be expected. It wasnt until my 16th hunt that I successfully harvested a key."

  He stood up looking around. "It seams we all get one with a couple left over."

  He handed them all out and stuck the couple extra in his inventory. "Now, let us enjoy the spoils of this hunt before taking on the next"