Wondering why there is a human-shaped soul inside a monster's soul-scape, Claire quickly approaches it to investigate. Once getting close to it, she hovers herself in circles around it just to make herself clear.
"This is supposed to be a monster. Why is its soul depicted like that of a human?"
No matter how she looks at it, the monster's soul truly looks like a human. Based on its skeletal shape, she presumes it is a male human.
The soul is floating still with his head stooping down. Cracks appear throughout his body, showing the damages of the Abyssal Gaze she inflicted earlier. The soul is encased in a translucent oval sphere. It is like a capsule where the soul gets connected to the body that she called a soul vessel.
"Does this mean that this monster used to be a human? It does not matter right now. I have to take its body."
As she is wondering why this monster has a human soul, she goes back to her original plan and proceeds to the process of taking the monster's body. In order for her to take his body, all she has to do is to destroy the target's soul by overpowering it with her more superior willpower, the core strength of the soul.
If she has higher willpower, she can just pass her hands through the capsule as it is considering her the better replacement for the soul and pull the man's soul out of it. It is basically like usurping a throne. With the target's soul severely damaged, her chance of overtaking it is high.
"You would be a good experimental subject, but I need this. I will make sure to make good use of your body though."
After that, she reaches out her hand to the soul vessel. However, things do not go as she expects.
Zap!
"Ahh—!"
As soon as her finger touches the translucent capsule, a powerful electric shock blasts her away from the soul vessel. She never experienced this kind of response from the soul vessel before. It can only mean one thing.
"The vessel rejected me? But how?! It has been damaged beyond repair! This is impossible!"
The monster's soul is visibly seriously damaged yet the vessel instantly rejects Claire. She cannot believe that the current state of the monster's soul has more willpower than hers.
"No way... I can't accept this!"
Zap!
Refusing to give up, Claire approaches the vessel again and slams her spiritual body on it, which expectedly results in her being knocked back by the shock farther than the last time. She desperately tries to force her soul into the vessel one more time, but the results do not change.
"Let me in...! AHH!!"
Zap!
As she is off-balanced midair, she sees the fingers of the young man's soul twitching. Before she can regain her balance, the cracks on the damaged soul suddenly lit up. After that, the cracks are gradually filled up with spiritual fragments and the monster's soul completely restores before her eyes.
"His willpower is getting stronger...!?"
Earlier, Claire was taken aback that the monster's soul had greater willpower than hers. But now, she is horrified to discover that the soul suddenly restores to its fullest and now is overpowering hers by several folds.
With the huge differences in their power, Claire concludes that it is impossible to take the vessel for herself. All she can do is stare at the soul vessel that she is supposed to stay comfortably. She falls into distress thinking what would happen to her.
After the cracks have been filled, the head of the monster's soul starts to move up slowly. Claire fears that the soul is about to wake up.
The young man's soul moves his head side by side to scan the darkness before fixing his attention to the white, floating, female-looking figure. Since their current forms have little to no facial features, they do not know if they are staring at one another or not.
"Huh?" The young man is initially confused and then he suddenly recalls all the things that happened earlier. "Peteep elu? Olex! Zaph cecei pe pelemecep lu lepope!"
The young man says those words with anger in it, which Claire gets. However, she does not understand everything he said, as for her, he is speaking in a language she does not recognize. A language barrier.
"What? I don't understand what you are saying!"
Claire panics as she thinks that his anger would eventually lead to her fall, especially since she is the one who killed him and then uninvitedly invades his soul.
She has to fix it herself if she wants to increase her chance of not being erased from existence. Even if she fails and returns to her body, its has been inside the monster and is probably bot in the right conditions for revival.
In order to do that, she has to make a way for them to communicate properly. Fortunately, she finds a magic spell on Gramarye. It is an ultimate-tier arcane magic that allows her to understand other languages.
In addition, it is one of the few spells that can be cast while in the soul-scape.
"God's Tongue."
Upon activating the God's Tongue, she immediately starts listening to the young man for the spell to pick up and recognize the language he is uttering.
"Ey, tehavop nu elu. Epuph hopexe nu te elop? Jexl vaej..."
She continues to listen for a few seconds, slowly absorbing his vocabulary. After some time of painstaking analysis and scrutinizing the depths of the archive, God's Tongue finally finds a match and subsequently installs the foreign language into Claire's mind.
"Tecojop nu t'elop... Where am I? And what did you do to me?"
"So he really is a sentient being." She says as soon as she picks up his words. "I understand you now. I assume that you are this monster's soul, yes?"
Hearing her words clearly, the young man is baffled by the sudden changes and tries to understand what is happening. Since they can understand one another now, he calms himself down and begins questioning this white figure before him.
"What about it? More importantly, how can we magically understand each other now?"
Seeing the monster's soul calm down, Claire begins to answer his questions cautiously. Her answers must satisfy him as she thinks that he would spare her.
The soul-scape only projects the soul. For that reason, they cannot barely hide their surface though. That is why she has to think carefully of her answers in her inner thoughts before blurting them through her spiritual mouth.
"This is one of my magic, the God's Tongue. It helps me understand other languages."
"I see. But... Who are you? Where are we? And what do you mean by soul?"