F-Rank Soul Eater-Chapter 167: It Is Defind By Strength [DOS]

My breath caught in my throat. "FUCK" I cursed crudely.

These things... all of them sitting here. Laughing and sharing, and talking.

These bastards were...

Feeding?!

They weren’t feeding on anger or pain as i have come to know of souls.

These particular bunch, were feeding on attachment.

On the weight emotions give to memory.

On the meaning behind names.

I dropped the bottle. It struck the ground without breaking. The souls didn’t move. They only watched me with that same patient warmth, as though waiting for a child to calm down from a harmless fright.

"You’re shaking," one observed kindly.

My wife’s face wavered again.

That was enough.

I snatched up the bottle and slammed it against the stone beside us. This time it cracked, a thin fracture running through the crystal, and something pale and mist-like leaked from it before dissolving into the air.

Their smiles faded.

Not into anger.

Into disappointment.

That was when it settled over me fully — the children playing in the street, the jelly-like toy rolling to my feet, the toll at the gate, the crystal sphere demanding a name. None of it was random.

None of it was benign.

These souls... no, all souls at the cost of survival, were harvesting one another.

And It was a Norm.

My chest tightened so suddenly I struggled to draw breath. I stood abruptly, stepping backward as though distance alone could protect what remained of her in my mind.

They did not chase me.

They simply watched.

That frightened me more than pursuit would have.

I turned and ran.

The village blurred past me — children laughing, adults talking, blue bottles glinting in the light.

The sound of it all pressed against my skull. My heart pounded erratically, and I clung to her image with everything I had.

Her eyes.

Her voice.

The way she used to press her forehead against mine when she thought I was asleep.

Hold it.

Hold her.

My Elena.

Ahead was a hut.

I did not mean to enter the hut, but a part of me wanted to hide from it all.

The laughter from the square still echoed in my skull as I pushed through the hanging flap, desperate for walls, for cover, for something that did not smile at me while stealing pieces of my life.

My lungs were burning from the run, my hands trembling as it dug into the ground. I was drenched in sweat.

In and out i breathed hard to calm down. Fortunately, it worked.

And so I told myself I would stay only a moment.

Besides, inside, was cooler.

Damp.

The air clung to my skin as if it had weight.

At first, I could not see. Only vertical shadows stretching from floor to ceiling. Poles, I thought vaguely. Storage, perhaps. Tools.

Maybe it was because of my bond with my serpent shade, Chronovore, but my eyes quickly adapted to the darkness.

One of the shadows moved.

Not swayed.

Moved.

A twitch.

My eyes adjusted slowly, unwillingly, like they were trying to protect me from what clarity would bring.

They were not poles.

They were people.

Human.

Bound upright against the wood with thick, fibrous cords that had grown into their flesh.

The restraints were not simply tied; they had fused.

Skin had swollen around them, angry and red in some places, gray and deadened in others. Arms were stretched outward and upward, wrists raw, fingers stiff and crooked.

Their heads hung forward.

But their chests rose.

Shallow.

Uneven.

Alive.

My breath caught halfway in.

There were dozens of them.

Men. Women. I thought I saw a child near the far wall, though I prayed I was wrong.

Their skin had the color of something left too long underwater—pale, bloated in places, clinging too tightly to bone in others. Lips cracked. Noses crusted with dried blood.

And their eyes.

God.

Every single one of them had their eyes open.

Not wild.

Not screaming.

Just open.

Tears streamed continuously down their faces in thin, steady lines, dripping from their chins to the dirt floor. No sobbing. No strength for that. Just a silent, endless leaking of grief.

One of them saw me.

A woman, her dark hair plastered against her cheeks with tears. Her gaze snapped to mine with sudden, desperate clarity. There was awareness there. Not dullness. Not emptiness.

She knew I was there.

Her mouth trembled as if she were trying to speak, but only a rasp of air escaped her. Her throat worked, straining against something that had long ago broken.

That was when I noticed the mist.

At first I thought it was heat rising from bodies in a confined space.

But no.

Thin strands—pale, almost luminous—were drifting upward from their chests and mouths. Filaments of something finer than smoke. Each thread coiled lazily toward the ceiling, drawn by an unseen pull, disappearing into the thatch above.

Harvested.

The word formed in my mind without permission.

The smell hit me then.

Rot and Iron.

And something sweet beneath it, cloying and wrong, like fruit left to ferment in the sun. The scent of bodies kept alive past mercy.

I staggered back a step, my heel scraping against packed earth.

The flap behind me tore aside.

"What are you doing in my farm?"

The voice was sharp and irritated. As though I had stepped into a field without permission.

Farm.

The word struck harder than any scream could have.

I looked again at the rows. The spacing. The order. The cords embedded like tools maintained and adjusted over time. These were not prisoners awaiting slaughter.

They were livestock.

Maintained, Stabilized, and Cultivated.

The woman’s eyes were still on me.

Not pleading anymore.

Accusing.

It was my attire. I must have looked like a soul to her.

And beneath the horror, something worse settled into place.

Souls fed on negative emotion.

Pain.

Grief.

Despair.

If humans kept cattle for meat... if we confined animals for milk... if we bred them, monitored them, optimized their yield—

Why would souls not do the same with us?

One of the bound men began to tremble weakly. The cords tightened as he shifted, biting deeper into flesh. A fresh ribbon of mist slipped from his mouth, rising obediently toward the ceiling.

I gagged.

The air felt thick in my lungs, like I was inhaling their suffering with every breath.

"You’ll disturb them," the voice snapped again from behind me. "Do you know how long it takes to stabilize a herd of humans?"

Herd.

Something inside my chest caved in.

These people were not empty shells.

They were conscious.

Or rather kept conscious.

So they could feel.

I turned and fled.

I staggered outside, barely making it a few steps before my body rejected everything. I bent over and vomited into the dirt, my hands digging into the soil as if I needed to anchor myself to something real.

This place did not merely take by chance.

It cultivated suffering.

It bred it.

Completely.

I pressed my palms against my eyes and tried to steady my breathing, terrified now not just of the souls around me, but of how fragile memory had become in this place.

Like something written on wet paper.

One careless touch—

And it would dissolve.

More and More, I was beginning to hate this place.

Not just because of what had happened to me, and the twisted suffering humans, but because the realization was beginning to settle in my mind.

Souls and Eldritch horrors might not be as different from one another as I had assumed.

Just then, Chronovore spoke.

"Ahhh, now you know. But you are still missing the point."

"What point?" I asked in share hatred that I had actually bonded with one such cruel being.

"You consider Souls and Eldritch cruel, yet admit that we treat your kind like you treat cattle.

Tell me this, before the eyes of cattle, are you cruel?"

"That’s is entirely different. Cattles do not possess intelligence or affection or..."

"—But there do." Chronovore interrupted. "Does cattle know to find shade when it rains?"

I paused.

"Yes."

"Then it has intelligence." It hissed, "Does it care for its young?"

"But that is biology. It is all different." I tried to argue.

"No," Chronovore replied. This time around, I could feel its slow rising anger.

"If intelligence is the measure for the definition of what your kind tag as food, then many of you would not see the next day.

Do not pretend not to know it. After all, you had seen it with the Stone soul in the cave, and now here.

—No different is it from your world. Food is not defined by intelligence.

It is defind by strength. "

I wanted to say more, but I couldn’t. Deep down, I knew Chronovore was right.

Whether it was back on earth, or within the Glass, strength determined what becomes food.

Intelligence was just simply a type of strength.

If you don’t feed on others, then... hope their tongues dispise the taste of you.