Soul essence condensed into fine lines by Mordred’s will, forming a weird but complex rune. There were over a thousand strokes if the rune were imprinted on a surface, the 1-cm surface size and delicateness of the said rune ensure the typical cultivators are not capable of manufacturing it even if one memorized the design. The rune was simply too small, complex, and arcane for even the trained eyes of mages.
Soon, the rune was engraved in Mordred’s soul, next to nine others that possessed slightly less but nevertheless, sophisticated design.
The moment the ten runes became a set, Mordred’s truesoul shuddered, releasing a spike of soulforce undulation that could be detected from a distance.
“I have recovered to the level of a 10-man soul!” Mordred muttered silently.
The cultivation of the soul could be considered as a simple yet sophisticated path of cultivation compared to magic caster or martial artist. There were three aspect of the soul; strength, quality, and pacification. 10-man soul is a bottleneck for soul strength, it was the entry level for an early-stage rank 0 soul cultivator
In order for soul cultivators to achieve rank 1, there are three requirements they have to fulfil. The first one was to condense the truesoul into that of a 100-man soul.
Of course, there will be consequences of a person with great soul quality while having a weak body. The soul will sometimes be detached from the body, it is what is often described as absentminded or having daydreams, the soul could not properly synchronize with the action of the body.
Therefore, soul cultivators possessed myriad methods to overcome this, they had to pacify their soul more often compared to others. With that being the case, Mordred’s truesoul is unique, he possesses methods to alter his soul depending on his need.
“My soul quality is a spectral soul. If using the metric of this world, I am merely an early-stage rank 0 Spectral Soul.”
One of Mordred’s most used methods was his sound-path soul art, [Micro-Soundfield Forge] to refine artifacts. Although he often uses its magical variant as support, its true essence is a soul art that uses soul essence and soulforce. Needless to say, as the progenitor of soul-path and sound-path of Holy Terra, his methods weren’t limited to what he had used.
As for his magical methods, it was restricted by his body.
A soul could not hold a mana pool. No matter how powerful his soul-path methods are, it was something that he wasn’t able to overcome even in his previous life. It was simply impossible because the source of power was different.
With that being the case, it was the reason why Mordred refined the goblin chieftain’s corpse into a skeletal mage. He also didn’t forget to refine the corpse’s mana pool into a mana aperture.
A mana aperture is not the same as a mana pool. The biggest difference lies in the fact that mana aperture is an artificial mana pool that was made for someone without an inborn mana pool: a battery for mana, so to speak.
Except, mana apertures could not regenerate mana automatically. One needs to meditate while channeling the ambient mana in the environment towards the aperture. The mana recovery rate would depend on the mage’s capability to channel the energy. In other words, there is no passive mana regeneration rate, the mage needs to manually recharge mana aperture.
Thus, mana apertures are inherently inferior in all aspects compared to a true mana pool but it allows those that do not awaken mana pool naturally to have one, as long as the correct method was used.
“The goblin chieftain’s mana pool size was too small; I have to switch or upgrade my mana aperture soon.”
With that in mind, Mordred focused on Kasumi who silently hid by enveloping his bones. His soul cultivation has surpassed the lowest bottleneck for recovery. A large array of options is now opened for him. With a jolt of command, Kasumi slithered out of his body to return to her original form, a silver metal ooze tinted with a faint blue hue.
“Although creating split souls is too difficult for me, creating a spectral soul is not that difficult. Rank 0 soul-path soul art, [Spectral Soul Genesis]!”
Mordred’s truesoul was like a lump of black substance in the shape of a skeleton. With the activation of the soul art, 10% of his truesoul or in this case, one out of the ten soul runes, split itself from the parent soul to form a new, smaller spectral soul. The incorporeal lifeform was very small; it looks like a lump of dark shadow that undulates randomly.
By creating a spectral soul with the strength of 1-man soul, one of Mordred’s soul runes in the main soul was lost.
Then, Mordred’s Magus Will within Kasumi’s sea of consciousness activates a method, “Rank 0 soul-path soul art, [Soul Devour]!”
The spectral soul that Mordred just created at the cost of his truesoul foundation was… being eaten!
Kasumi’s Slime Soul were slowly devouring the spectral soul under the lead of Mordred’s Magus Will. The spectral soul was strong enough to fight back against the forced assimilation of the slime soul who barely possessed 0.5-man soul strength. However, the spectral soul did not put up a fight and allow itself to be devoured.
This spectral soul possessed a special quality. The one who devours it would be corrupted by Mordred’s personality. “With a spectral soul made from my truesoul as the ingredient, I’ll refine an artifact that will stay loyal to myself. Rank 0 soul-path killer move, [Artifact Soul Bestowal]!”
The bluish-silver liquid metal shone in faint purple light as it undulated erratically. It contracts, and expands repeatedly without a fixed pattern as if it was in pain. After half an hour, the process stopped.
“With this, Kasumi is no longer an enslaved beast…”
All this while, Mordred was using his soul-path method to enslave the liquid metal slime with the amplification of his wisdom-path method, [Wisdom Amplification: Magus Will] to augment her performance. After he refined the liquid metal slime’s original soul into his own, Kasumi’s status changed.
Before, Kasumi was a tool, like a dagger or a sword. A Swordmaster might be able to use the tool like an extension of their own limb, but a weapon is in the end, a weapon. It depends on the one who held it.
Now, Kasumi can be considered a complete artifact with an artifact soul. Furthermore, the artifact soul is made out of Mordred’s spectral soul as the main ingredient, it was directly connected to Mordred like his own hands and feet. There was no need for Mordred to use up his soul capacity to enslave her as her soul could be considered as his clone.
“An early form of split soul… despite lacking the many features of a real split soul, it is the best I can do with my current resources.” Mordred’s soul burden was lightened, but he lost his truesoul foundation; he needed to re-cultivate the loss of foundation since the loss was permanent.
Since Kasumi is Mordred’s split soul, there was no need to transmit orders through a wisdom-path method, they possessed the same mentality and Kasumi will always prioritize the need of her main soul. She moved by her own will to cultivate her soul and slime nucleus according to the method bestowed by Mordred during the refinement.
“With the awakening of Kasumi, there will be a shortage of soul-path resources since she and I are the same… but wasn’t there a steady supplier of beast souls?” he stopped his cultivation as his concentration fell upon the beast souls within his soul phylactery.
Soul Phylactery could be used to store souls; it could be considered as a supreme-grade soul gem that could hold a tremendous amount of souls. Since souls are soul-path resources, Mordred has collected a huge amount of them from the result of the kobold hunter’s hunt. They were specifically instructed to capture instead of kill because he didn’t want their souls to dissipate in nature.
Drawing a Twin-Horned Mountain Goat’s soul from the soul phylactery, he devoured it like a starved beggar eating their first meal after ten days. With an activation of a special soul-path method, he used the flood of energy to draw soul runes. His flawed truesoul foundation bounced back to 10-man souls and became even stronger and stronger until it stopped at the 12-man soul mark.
Soul quality is not always the same. An adult mortal possesses 1-man soul strength as this was the standard metric, but an early-stage rank 0 hunter might have 1.2 or 1.5-man soul strength depending on their cultivation. Mages typically have a higher soul foundation, but they cannot be compared to soul cultivators.
With that being the case, the beast soul he just devoured was coming from a mid-stage rank 0 twin horned mountain goat, it has the strength of a 5-man soul, but there will always be a loss of energy because refining soul runes expends a massive amount of thoughts.
Soul cultivation was about building the soul foundation from various methods. Although devouring souls could be considered as a shortcut, there are severe consequences if one keeps on doing it repeatedly. If a soul cultivator devours the soul of others, memories and personality of the victim will be partially ingested. A flood of memories might not be a problem for some, but the personality will be affected, it is extremely troublesome.
Of course, Mordred wasn’t worried about his personality being contaminated. Firstly, his mentality is too strong to be influenced by this level of mental encroachment and lastly, his [Soul Devour] method has been refined several lifetimes so that it suppresses the mental encroachment effect to the fullest.
Seeing the main soul raise his soul foundation, Kasumi’s attention focused at the soul phylactery. Mordred suddenly stopped his own cultivation as he fetched the soul of a lightning-path lizard and handed it over to Kasumi. “Your physical body is too small to hold a strong soul; After recovery, let’s refine your body with the magnetic storm ore I’ve gathered.” He said, then resumed his cultivation session.
Kasumi wordlessly accepted the soul and began devouring it to cultivate. Since she knew her own body the best, she did not engrave soul runes like her main soul but focused on mind runes to accommodate her main soul’s lack of thought generation organ.
A few days later, Mordred went outside of his chamber. His soul was strengthened to the fullest. With the exception for emergency measures, all the beast souls in his inventory have been expended completely, allowing him to refine 42 soul runes, the amount is slightly over his mind runes. Needless to say, he was currently at 42-man soul, surpassing the requirement of mid-stage rank 0 soul cultivator.
“It’s time.” Mordred beckons at Kasumi who wordlessly cultivates a maniac like himself.
The two began using sound-path and soul-path methods to refine large amounts of lightning and necro-path materials. The bone refinery was filled with lightning-path beast bones, they were melted, grinded, reshaped and refined into various facilities.
“If my refinement-path attainment level was [Transcendent], I wouldn’t even need these things, but that’s just useless banter. Kasumi, go!” Mordred focused on controlling the various runes engraved from high quality materials like the powdered essence of Twin-Horned Mountain Goat’s horns and others.
Kasumi moved according to the arrangement. There were multiple steps in refining Mordred’s physical body. Without the core materials to refine a mana reactor, Mordred decided to take a roundabout way to refine one.
“Lightning elemental particle reserve is at 100%. Charging…” Kasumi said in a cold, electronic voice.
“Good, begin stage 1.” Mordred manipulates the control runes.
Countless electrical sparks released from disfigured tesla coils made out of bone matter. Kasumi opened her slime nucleus to the bombardment of the electrical sparks to absorb lightning elemental particles.
“Overcharging… Lightning elemental particle reserve at 215%...”
As more energy was absorbed by the slime nucleus, a darker blue hue started to manifest on it. Unfortunately, a normal slime nucleus is not designed to hold this amount of lightning elemental particles, it cracked in multiple areas.
“Activate [Core Assimilation]!” Mordred threw refined essences of slime nucleus that he gathered beforehand.
Slimes are one of the most adaptable lifeforms in the world, it was easy to find one. They were very weak individually so the kobolds could farm slimes into thousands. With their cores as the raw materials, Mordred refined a new type of material for the purpose of refining Kasumi’s lightning core.
Mordred supplied nucleus matter while Kasumi assimilated it like sandy desert absorbing water. The oversaturation of lightning elemental particles while being reinforced with core matter allows Kasumi’s nucleus to undergo a special refinement process.
“Still, it’s insufficient in refining a lightning core. Activate… rank 0 refinement-path soul art, [Electric Soulfire Purification]!”
Large amounts of lightning-path resources behind the bone tesla coils were expended. Blue electric soulfire ignited Kasumi’s nucleus. Although it was a fire, it’s true essence was a refinement-path method. The electric soulfire purifies the core matter and allows the nucleus to fuse with lightning elemental particles better.
“Lightning elemental particle reserves at… 2450%. Warning, reaching the core meltdown threshold!” Kasumi’s core almost broke, but the elemental particle stream never stopped.
“Continue. Activate the transformation-path killer move.” Mordred controlled the intensity of the elemental particle stream as he provided a large amount of lightning-path materials towards Kasumi’s metallic slime body.
These refined materials are mostly magnetic storm ore that went through a pre-refinement process. They are no longer ore, but lumps of purified ingots. Originally, Mordred brought four hundred kilograms of ore, but after the pre-refinement process, it merely left with slightly over two hundred kilograms of magnetic storm ingots.
“Affirmative. Activating rank 0 transformation-path killer move, Metallic Instrument Body Transformation 3rd form, [Magnetic Lightning Core Furnace]!” Kasumi bellows as precious materials expand one after another under the voltaic soulfire and the constant stream of lightning elemental particles.
Boom! With a strong electromagnetic pulse exhaling blue elemental particles, Kasumi’s flesh was unraveled on her original location.
“Main soul, we have succeeded in the refinement process.” Kasumi reported in her usual cold and feminine but mechanical voice.
Kasumi’s round ball-like nucleus has changed form. It is now a five layered core that overlaps with each other.
The 1st layer was an icosahedron construct; its surface was engraved with delicate arcane mind runes each made out of thousands of lines. The 2nd inner layer was a smaller dodecahedron, the third diamond-shaped cube, the fourth a tetrahedron and the deepest, a round orb. The color of the first was slightly translucent blue, with each layer darker than the previous. The deepest layer has a dark blue color.
“Perfect. Let’s recuperate and mine some more magnetic storm ore for my physical body.”
Kasumi’s body weight is slightly over two hundred kilograms; her volume is large enough to fill Mordred’s empty skeletal body with liquid metal. She completes his body and acts like a muscle to support her main soul. They took some time to recuperate and then went out of the bone refinery.
...
The moment Mordred exited the chamber, Grem, who had waited for a while, jolted awake. “My lord!” he could feel that something is different from his liege, but he can’t determine what it is. Since he was too excited, he made the mistake of getting too close to Mordred.
Within close distance, Mordred’s soul presence was too strong, his truesoul foundation rose so fast that he didn’t have time to fine-tune the soul undulation. Therefore, Grem received a soul-suppression effect due to being too close. Grem felt like his soul was repelled as if he was hit by a battering ram. His soul nearly detached from his body, he suffered from a light soul wound instantly.
It was like someone whose strength suddenly increased significantly and destroyed some furniture because they could not control their strength. Some time is required for them to adjust to their new condition. Mordred’s soul-suppressing aura was too powerful due to his habit.
“Be careful!” Mordred noticed his blunder and retracted his aura. Kasumi has no problem with it because she could be considered as himself. He produced a formless lump of purple light and tapped Grem’s body with it.
Grem’s pale expression recovered slightly, but he couldn’t forget the feeling of being hit by a battering ram. Grem understood that Mordred had just healed him, though he didn’t understand how and what had attacked him. Somehow, he could feel his liege’s movement carry some weight with every action he took. “Thank you my lord!”
“Alright, that was my fault.” Mordred’s skeletal head gazed at the group of kobold hunters behind Grem, “Is everything ready?”
The hunting teams donned various bone artifacts roared in eagerness, “Yes, my lord!”
“The existing hunter equipments are not designed for aquatic combat, but my previous adjustment should be enough.” he paused. “Then, let the hunt proceed as planned.”
Mordred brought Grem and the kobolds to delve downwards, deeper inside Thunderpeak mountain. After a few kilometers of trekking, they felt a change in the air.
“There’s a slight increase in the ambient elemental particle level of water and lightning, we are approaching our goal soon.” Mordred muttered. The kobold hunters were confused about the path due to the hundreds of branches they passed, but he led them towards the correct path.
By listening to the echo of footsteps in this enclosed space, his investigative range increased to over a hundred meters three dimensionally. He was always aware of the path he needed to take to reach his objective.
After traveling the for a long time, they started hearing a stream of running water. “Underground water stream found. Squad 1, you are up!” Grem’s trained elites took the role of the vanguard, the team of 10 kobold hunters took their bone buckler and bone spears as they carefully stepped on the water.
To reach the underground lake’s shore, they need to travel through a roundabout way of small crevices that could only allow 2 kobold walk side-by-side instead of the original path. The crevice they took was flooded by water up to their neck. It was dangerous as they are vulnerable to ambushes, especially since there’s electric current flowing in it.
As they got closer to the main underground river, the dark crevice was littered by multicolored mushrooms. There are various glowing mushrooms that feed on the moisture and thrive due to the rich ambient water and lightning elemental particles. Mostly blueish green, these mushrooms are great supplements for cultivation and can be used for refinement.
As they passed through the narrow crevice and reached one of the main rivers originating from the underground lake, they could see layers of dark blue rocks in the wall like a shell that had protected a secret treasure. This ‘shell’ of mineral layer was broken in various parts, allowing electrified water to leak. These dark blue rocks are an unknown material that Mordred has never seen before.
In the previous visit, he only brought back magnetic storm ore that protected these mineral layers, but he performed a preliminary inspection and determined that one of its properties was to repel lightning elemental particles. With this mineral layer acting like a cocoon, the Blue Lotus Heavenly Mana Spring was effectively concealed from the external world.
That is why nobody took it yet.
Unfortunately, it was ineffective against water elemental particles. Due to the overflow of water elemental particles in the mineral pocket, the protective layer made out of the mineral pocket was broken in various places, thus the reason why the kobold miners managed to accidentally find it.
With that said, the mineral pocket is filled with treasures of lightning and water-path resources. Of course, the most precious treasure in the underground pocket was located in the center, but it was filled with multiple peak-stage rank 2 beasts. Investigating it without at least rank 2 cultivation level is suicide.
“This location is alright. Let’s mine the magnetic storm ore and some of these dark blue rocks. Deploy defensive formation, proceed with danger evaluation lightning-path 0D-100.” Mordred ordered. It means rank 0 with D-level danger evaluation and enemy numbers are expected to reach 100.
“Affirmative. Prepare defensive formation! Consume the lightning-resistance potion.” Grem moved according to Mordred's command even if he couldn't see any danger.
The hunters were swift in their actions, the kobolds of both squads approached relatively thick mineral veins on an elevated shore while equipping the bone spear on their backs. Each hunter had 1.5-meter long smooth bones as if they were bleached. These bone spears look like the bone of a fish with the exception of the part where it was designed to allow kobold hands to exert more grip strength.
Squad one was lining up in front of squad two. They kneeled and took the position of throwing javelins while squad two were followed in their standing posture.
The kobolds did not decrease their vigilance as they rotated to take a small pocket of waterskin. Within, there was a dose of lightning-resistance potion refined from lightning-path beast blood and organs by Mordred. After drinking it, their bodies are saturated with substances that reduce lightning-path damage by a certain amount for a period of time.
Refinement has a wide context. It could be forging, alchemy, runecrafting, scroll scribing or other production-related activities. As a former Brave that thread the path of refinement, it wasn’t difficult for Mordred to refine some potions, but with the relatively narrow resource options, he wasn’t able to concoct too many alchemical products.
“The enemies are cave shrimps that evolved under geological isolation. After hundreds of years of being nurtured by Blue Lotus Heavenly Spring within this mineral pocket, they’ve evolved into lightning-path water beasts.” Mordred explained, “As a swarm-type beast, there are probably hundreds of thousands of them in the main lake, most possessed early or mid-stage rank 0 strength but in this river, their number won’t exceed several hundreds. Proceed with caution.”
Grem nodded. “Deploy Automatic Bone Ballista Mk.1!”
Behind the lines of kobold hunters, there was a team of kobold logistics that was trained as engineers who brought various weapon parts. They were specifically trained to use heavy weapons that require setting up time. The siege engines they assembled were almost entirely made out of biological matter with the exceptions of some crucial parts.
The body of the ballistae was made out of a large piece of spinal bone, its four arching arms were made from large beasts’ ribs, the strings were refined from strong beasts’ hair and tendons… It was a grotesque siege engine but nevertheless, a functional one. The team of five kobold engineers finished assembling and loaded two crudely made wooden barrels filled to the brim with 0.5-meter long bone spikes to each loading mechanism.
Assembling the ballistae took over five minutes, it was unrealistic in a high-speed battle but they haven’t engaged the enemy yet.
“My lord, we are ready.” Grem said as he manned the siege engine.
Mordred’s empty eye socket glows in dark purple soul light, “Then, let our miners and logistic team mine out the materials. This won’t completely kill off our noises, but we can use this opportunity to hunt some shrimp instead.
Rank 0 sound-path soul art, [Quadruple Widen: Deafening Horizon]
Rank 0 sound-path soul art, [Lesser Group Silence]!”
As Mordred uses two soul arts in tandem, a soundfield spreads from Mordred’s body towards the surrounding area. The effect of Quadruple Widen allows the soul art Lesser Group Silence to spread in a wider area. Roughly forty meters centered around him, a soundfield that suppresses sound was erected.
“Go now, some of the shrimp will be attracted to the energy undulation, but it’ll be far better than allowing them all to converge in our position.”
After Mordred said his piece, the hunters felt a wave of movement in the waters. They were, as Mordred had said, attracted to the energy undulation. Beasts possessed stronger instinct than humans, despite not recognizing soul energy undulation, it was coming from an intruder that wasn’t too strong.
The groups of shrimps thought that they could handle the invaders, they surged towards the kobold perimeter but this part of the river was, despite being wide enough that even a ship could pass through, not a place where overwhelming numbers could give absolute advantage. The kobold hunters and the army of shrimps were not too different in body-spec wise, but the hunters were not only armed to the teeth and protected by various armor, they were also supported by Mordred.
A large amount of bioluminescent shrimp was seen. After a long period of being nurtured by the environment, large amounts of cells similar to electric eels found on Holy Terra formed naturally behind their semi-translucent carapace. These dog-sized shrimps were dangerous in their own right; their electrified pincers could fry a kobold within a dozen seconds.
With a continuous whistling sound, Grem accurately fired his bone spikes towards shrimps that produce strong energy undulation. They were the one that possessed the greatest threat to his elite hunters, it's best that he handled them with the siege engine.
Every shrimp shot by Grem was pushed back, the power behind the automatic ballista allows every bone spike to penetrate at least two shrimps if they were packed too close.
The hunters fought using their bodies, utilizing their armor to take the brunt of the damage while using superior range of their spears to attack before the shrimp’s pincers could attack them. Shrimp blood dyed the river red as they released a pungent stench of blood and gore.
“Don’t drop your guard, that was merely the greediest and weakest group of cave shrimp. The stronger ones will come.
Rank 0 sound-path soul art, [Quadruple Extend: Song Encore], [Chime of Springtime Waterfall]!”
Mordred activated a supportive sound-path method that allows the kobolds to recover energy by allowing their body to absorb the rich ambient water elemental particles. It was a sound-path method that produces the profundity of water-path. Thanks to Quadruple Extend, the effect of the soul art lengthened significantly, allowing them to continuously recover energy during combat.
“Second wave incoming, there are hundreds of them this time!” Grem’s expression turned serious.
“Well then, time to get to work.” Mordred allows part of Kasumi’s body mass to slither out of his body and morph into a weapon.
“Transformation-path killer move, [Corion-Coil Rail Rifle].”
The bluish-silver liquid metal morphed into a half-meter long rifle with sleek body and futuristic design, the barrel looks like an elongated twisted cube. Thanks to magnetic storm ores refined into her body, Kasumi’s affinity with lightning-path methods increased significantly.
However, Mordred was incapable of using the natural laws of the world to activate lightning-path methods without using ingredients like how he incessantly used sound-path methods. Therefore, he used the lightning elemental particles in the environment to activate a sound-path method.
“Rank 0 sound-path soul art, [Quadruple Pierce: Rend Harmonics], [Thunderblast Sonicround]!”
The twisted cubic rifle fires off compressed sound-projectiles that explode with a wave of thunder. Thunderblast is a sound-grenade variant of Sonicround, it has a great killing power in an enclosed space. Furthermore, it was amplified by Quadruple Pierce, allowing the sound explosion to bypass all types of defensive measure the shrimps could offer.
Translating it to reality, the Thunderblast Sonicround amplified with Rend Harmonics is an area-of-effect instant-kill sound bomb. Each time it exploded, the sound explosion shook the shrimps' internal organs, liquefying brains and killing them while leaving the body mostly intact.
For the stronger shrimps whose internals are more durable, one sonic explosion is not enough to kill them instantly, but it discombobulates them in a large area. It stopped the unrelenting charge of the shrimps and allowed the kobold hunters to slowly chipped their numbers.
Boom! After the 27th sound explosion, the second wave of shrimps were defeated. Large numbers of shrimp corpses were piling up like a small hill, most of them have their body intact, but the ones that were killed by the hunters have at least one or two lethal stab wounds in their bodies.
“My lord?” Grem looked at Mordred for the next instruction. The second wave was more numerous than expected. The automatic ballista’s string snapped during combat, it became dead weight now. He wasn’t sure if the hunters could hold out for the next wave, the disturbance they caused was so big in the area that he was sure there would be thousands of them coming.
Mordred inspected the amount of ores they harvested, “It’s less than two hundred kilograms, but that’ll suffice. We can go back again later after recuperating. Those with empty hands shall bring the shrimps' corpse, go pick the intact ones.”
“Understood, my lord.” Grem signaled the retreat, his subordinates quickly picked up pace. “My lord, please go on ahead, squad 1 and 2 will cover our rear.”
“No.” Denied him. “I’ll take that role, just go.”
Grem wanted to deny, but sensing the presence converging on their location, he didn’t say anything but followed what he was commanded. In this sensitive time, the importance of following orders is a priority.
After the kobold hunters leave his presence, he collects the souls of the dead. The moment he finished harvesting souls, the third wave dawned upon him. “Now, now. No need to be so greedy.” He heard the sound of munching as the shrimps cannibalized upon their dead comrades. The third wave was filled with a large amount of stronger shrimps, his Kobolds would be shredded in seconds while his energy would be expended if he decided to stand his ground.
“I’ll ensure they won’t be able to pursue my encumbered minions. Rank 0 necro-path soul art, [Corpse Soul Explosion]!”
The soul art creates several marble sized black orbs that went towards the corpses on the battlefield. Then, the bodies hit by the orbs explode in a virulent soul and corpse matter, pushing back the rushing beasts.
Soul essence condensed into fine lines by Mordred’s will, forming a weird but complex rune. There were over a thousand strokes if the rune were imprinted on a surface, the 1-cm surface size and delicateness of the said rune ensure the typical cultivators are not capable of manufacturing it even if one memorized the design. The rune was simply too small, complex, and arcane for even the trained eyes of mages.
Soon, the rune was engraved in Mordred’s soul, next to nine others that possessed slightly less but nevertheless, sophisticated design.
The moment the ten runes became a set, Mordred’s truesoul shuddered, releasing a spike of soulforce undulation that could be detected from a distance.
“I have recovered to the level of a 10-man soul!” Mordred muttered silently.
The cultivation of the soul could be considered as a simple yet sophisticated path of cultivation compared to magic caster or martial artist. There were three aspect of the soul; strength, quality, and pacification. 10-man soul is a bottleneck for soul strength, it was the entry level for an early-stage rank 0 soul cultivator
In order for soul cultivators to achieve rank 1, there are three requirements they have to fulfil. The first one was to condense the truesoul into that of a 100-man soul.
Of course, there will be consequences of a person with great soul quality while having a weak body. The soul will sometimes be detached from the body, it is what is often described as absentminded or having daydreams, the soul could not properly synchronize with the action of the body.
Therefore, soul cultivators possessed myriad methods to overcome this, they had to pacify their soul more often compared to others. With that being the case, Mordred’s truesoul is unique, he possesses methods to alter his soul depending on his need.
“My soul quality is a spectral soul. If using the metric of this world, I am merely an early-stage rank 0 Spectral Soul.”
One of Mordred’s most used methods was his sound-path soul art, [Micro-Soundfield Forge] to refine artifacts. Although he often uses its magical variant as support, its true essence is a soul art that uses soul essence and soulforce. Needless to say, as the progenitor of soul-path and sound-path of Holy Terra, his methods weren’t limited to what he had used.
As for his magical methods, it was restricted by his body.
A soul could not hold a mana pool. No matter how powerful his soul-path methods are, it was something that he wasn’t able to overcome even in his previous life. It was simply impossible because the source of power was different.
With that being the case, it was the reason why Mordred refined the goblin chieftain’s corpse into a skeletal mage. He also didn’t forget to refine the corpse’s mana pool into a mana aperture.
A mana aperture is not the same as a mana pool. The biggest difference lies in the fact that mana aperture is an artificial mana pool that was made for someone without an inborn mana pool: a battery for mana, so to speak.
Except, mana apertures could not regenerate mana automatically. One needs to meditate while channeling the ambient mana in the environment towards the aperture. The mana recovery rate would depend on the mage’s capability to channel the energy. In other words, there is no passive mana regeneration rate, the mage needs to manually recharge mana aperture.
Thus, mana apertures are inherently inferior in all aspects compared to a true mana pool but it allows those that do not awaken mana pool naturally to have one, as long as the correct method was used.
“The goblin chieftain’s mana pool size was too small; I have to switch or upgrade my mana aperture soon.”
With that in mind, Mordred focused on Kasumi who silently hid by enveloping his bones. His soul cultivation has surpassed the lowest bottleneck for recovery. A large array of options is now opened for him. With a jolt of command, Kasumi slithered out of his body to return to her original form, a silver metal ooze tinted with a faint blue hue.
“Although creating split souls is too difficult for me, creating a spectral soul is not that difficult. Rank 0 soul-path soul art, [Spectral Soul Genesis]!”
Mordred’s truesoul was like a lump of black substance in the shape of a skeleton. With the activation of the soul art, 10% of his truesoul or in this case, one out of the ten soul runes, split itself from the parent soul to form a new, smaller spectral soul. The incorporeal lifeform was very small; it looks like a lump of dark shadow that undulates randomly.
By creating a spectral soul with the strength of 1-man soul, one of Mordred’s soul runes in the main soul was lost.
Then, Mordred’s Magus Will within Kasumi’s sea of consciousness activates a method, “Rank 0 soul-path soul art, [Soul Devour]!”
The spectral soul that Mordred just created at the cost of his truesoul foundation was… being eaten!
Kasumi’s Slime Soul were slowly devouring the spectral soul under the lead of Mordred’s Magus Will. The spectral soul was strong enough to fight back against the forced assimilation of the slime soul who barely possessed 0.5-man soul strength. However, the spectral soul did not put up a fight and allow itself to be devoured.
This spectral soul possessed a special quality. The one who devours it would be corrupted by Mordred’s personality. “With a spectral soul made from my truesoul as the ingredient, I’ll refine an artifact that will stay loyal to myself. Rank 0 soul-path killer move, [Artifact Soul Bestowal]!”
The bluish-silver liquid metal shone in faint purple light as it undulated erratically. It contracts, and expands repeatedly without a fixed pattern as if it was in pain. After half an hour, the process stopped.
“With this, Kasumi is no longer an enslaved beast…”
All this while, Mordred was using his soul-path method to enslave the liquid metal slime with the amplification of his wisdom-path method, [Wisdom Amplification: Magus Will] to augment her performance. After he refined the liquid metal slime’s original soul into his own, Kasumi’s status changed.
Before, Kasumi was a tool, like a dagger or a sword. A Swordmaster might be able to use the tool like an extension of their own limb, but a weapon is in the end, a weapon. It depends on the one who held it.
Now, Kasumi can be considered a complete artifact with an artifact soul. Furthermore, the artifact soul is made out of Mordred’s spectral soul as the main ingredient, it was directly connected to Mordred like his own hands and feet. There was no need for Mordred to use up his soul capacity to enslave her as her soul could be considered as his clone.
“An early form of split soul… despite lacking the many features of a real split soul, it is the best I can do with my current resources.” Mordred’s soul burden was lightened, but he lost his truesoul foundation; he needed to re-cultivate the loss of foundation since the loss was permanent.
Since Kasumi is Mordred’s split soul, there was no need to transmit orders through a wisdom-path method, they possessed the same mentality and Kasumi will always prioritize the need of her main soul. She moved by her own will to cultivate her soul and slime nucleus according to the method bestowed by Mordred during the refinement.
“With the awakening of Kasumi, there will be a shortage of soul-path resources since she and I are the same… but wasn’t there a steady supplier of beast souls?” he stopped his cultivation as his concentration fell upon the beast souls within his soul phylactery.
Soul Phylactery could be used to store souls; it could be considered as a supreme-grade soul gem that could hold a tremendous amount of souls. Since souls are soul-path resources, Mordred has collected a huge amount of them from the result of the kobold hunter’s hunt. They were specifically instructed to capture instead of kill because he didn’t want their souls to dissipate in nature.
Drawing a Twin-Horned Mountain Goat’s soul from the soul phylactery, he devoured it like a starved beggar eating their first meal after ten days. With an activation of a special soul-path method, he used the flood of energy to draw soul runes. His flawed truesoul foundation bounced back to 10-man souls and became even stronger and stronger until it stopped at the 12-man soul mark.
Soul quality is not always the same. An adult mortal possesses 1-man soul strength as this was the standard metric, but an early-stage rank 0 hunter might have 1.2 or 1.5-man soul strength depending on their cultivation. Mages typically have a higher soul foundation, but they cannot be compared to soul cultivators.
With that being the case, the beast soul he just devoured was coming from a mid-stage rank 0 twin horned mountain goat, it has the strength of a 5-man soul, but there will always be a loss of energy because refining soul runes expends a massive amount of thoughts.
Soul cultivation was about building the soul foundation from various methods. Although devouring souls could be considered as a shortcut, there are severe consequences if one keeps on doing it repeatedly. If a soul cultivator devours the soul of others, memories and personality of the victim will be partially ingested. A flood of memories might not be a problem for some, but the personality will be affected, it is extremely troublesome.
Of course, Mordred wasn’t worried about his personality being contaminated. Firstly, his mentality is too strong to be influenced by this level of mental encroachment and lastly, his [Soul Devour] method has been refined several lifetimes so that it suppresses the mental encroachment effect to the fullest.
Seeing the main soul raise his soul foundation, Kasumi’s attention focused at the soul phylactery. Mordred suddenly stopped his own cultivation as he fetched the soul of a lightning-path lizard and handed it over to Kasumi. “Your physical body is too small to hold a strong soul; After recovery, let’s refine your body with the magnetic storm ore I’ve gathered.” He said, then resumed his cultivation session.
Kasumi wordlessly accepted the soul and began devouring it to cultivate. Since she knew her own body the best, she did not engrave soul runes like her main soul but focused on mind runes to accommodate her main soul’s lack of thought generation organ.
A few days later, Mordred went outside of his chamber. His soul was strengthened to the fullest. With the exception for emergency measures, all the beast souls in his inventory have been expended completely, allowing him to refine 42 soul runes, the amount is slightly over his mind runes. Needless to say, he was currently at 42-man soul, surpassing the requirement of mid-stage rank 0 soul cultivator.
“It’s time.” Mordred beckons at Kasumi who wordlessly cultivates a maniac like himself.
The two began using sound-path and soul-path methods to refine large amounts of lightning and necro-path materials. The bone refinery was filled with lightning-path beast bones, they were melted, grinded, reshaped and refined into various facilities.
“If my refinement-path attainment level was [Transcendent], I wouldn’t even need these things, but that’s just useless banter. Kasumi, go!” Mordred focused on controlling the various runes engraved from high quality materials like the powdered essence of Twin-Horned Mountain Goat’s horns and others.
Kasumi moved according to the arrangement. There were multiple steps in refining Mordred’s physical body. Without the core materials to refine a mana reactor, Mordred decided to take a roundabout way to refine one.
“Lightning elemental particle reserve is at 100%. Charging…” Kasumi said in a cold, electronic voice.
“Good, begin stage 1.” Mordred manipulates the control runes.
Countless electrical sparks released from disfigured tesla coils made out of bone matter. Kasumi opened her slime nucleus to the bombardment of the electrical sparks to absorb lightning elemental particles.
“Overcharging… Lightning elemental particle reserve at 215%...”
As more energy was absorbed by the slime nucleus, a darker blue hue started to manifest on it. Unfortunately, a normal slime nucleus is not designed to hold this amount of lightning elemental particles, it cracked in multiple areas.
“Activate [Core Assimilation]!” Mordred threw refined essences of slime nucleus that he gathered beforehand.
Slimes are one of the most adaptable lifeforms in the world, it was easy to find one. They were very weak individually so the kobolds could farm slimes into thousands. With their cores as the raw materials, Mordred refined a new type of material for the purpose of refining Kasumi’s lightning core.
Mordred supplied nucleus matter while Kasumi assimilated it like sandy desert absorbing water. The oversaturation of lightning elemental particles while being reinforced with core matter allows Kasumi’s nucleus to undergo a special refinement process.
“Still, it’s insufficient in refining a lightning core. Activate… rank 0 refinement-path soul art, [Electric Soulfire Purification]!”
Large amounts of lightning-path resources behind the bone tesla coils were expended. Blue electric soulfire ignited Kasumi’s nucleus. Although it was a fire, it’s true essence was a refinement-path method. The electric soulfire purifies the core matter and allows the nucleus to fuse with lightning elemental particles better.
“Lightning elemental particle reserves at… 2450%. Warning, reaching the core meltdown threshold!” Kasumi’s core almost broke, but the elemental particle stream never stopped.
“Continue. Activate the transformation-path killer move.” Mordred controlled the intensity of the elemental particle stream as he provided a large amount of lightning-path materials towards Kasumi’s metallic slime body.
These refined materials are mostly magnetic storm ore that went through a pre-refinement process. They are no longer ore, but lumps of purified ingots. Originally, Mordred brought four hundred kilograms of ore, but after the pre-refinement process, it merely left with slightly over two hundred kilograms of magnetic storm ingots.
“Affirmative. Activating rank 0 transformation-path killer move, Metallic Instrument Body Transformation 3rd form, [Magnetic Lightning Core Furnace]!” Kasumi bellows as precious materials expand one after another under the voltaic soulfire and the constant stream of lightning elemental particles.
Boom! With a strong electromagnetic pulse exhaling blue elemental particles, Kasumi’s flesh was unraveled on her original location.
“Main soul, we have succeeded in the refinement process.” Kasumi reported in her usual cold and feminine but mechanical voice.
Kasumi’s round ball-like nucleus has changed form. It is now a five layered core that overlaps with each other.
The 1st layer was an icosahedron construct; its surface was engraved with delicate arcane mind runes each made out of thousands of lines. The 2nd inner layer was a smaller dodecahedron, the third diamond-shaped cube, the fourth a tetrahedron and the deepest, a round orb. The color of the first was slightly translucent blue, with each layer darker than the previous. The deepest layer has a dark blue color.
“Perfect. Let’s recuperate and mine some more magnetic storm ore for my physical body.”
Kasumi’s body weight is slightly over two hundred kilograms; her volume is large enough to fill Mordred’s empty skeletal body with liquid metal. She completes his body and acts like a muscle to support her main soul. They took some time to recuperate and then went out of the bone refinery.
...
The moment Mordred exited the chamber, Grem, who had waited for a while, jolted awake. “My lord!” he could feel that something is different from his liege, but he can’t determine what it is. Since he was too excited, he made the mistake of getting too close to Mordred.
Within close distance, Mordred’s soul presence was too strong, his truesoul foundation rose so fast that he didn’t have time to fine-tune the soul undulation. Therefore, Grem received a soul-suppression effect due to being too close. Grem felt like his soul was repelled as if he was hit by a battering ram. His soul nearly detached from his body, he suffered from a light soul wound instantly.
It was like someone whose strength suddenly increased significantly and destroyed some furniture because they could not control their strength. Some time is required for them to adjust to their new condition. Mordred’s soul-suppressing aura was too powerful due to his habit.
“Be careful!” Mordred noticed his blunder and retracted his aura. Kasumi has no problem with it because she could be considered as himself. He produced a formless lump of purple light and tapped Grem’s body with it.
Grem’s pale expression recovered slightly, but he couldn’t forget the feeling of being hit by a battering ram. Grem understood that Mordred had just healed him, though he didn’t understand how and what had attacked him. Somehow, he could feel his liege’s movement carry some weight with every action he took. “Thank you my lord!”
“Alright, that was my fault.” Mordred’s skeletal head gazed at the group of kobold hunters behind Grem, “Is everything ready?”
The hunting teams donned various bone artifacts roared in eagerness, “Yes, my lord!”
“The existing hunter equipments are not designed for aquatic combat, but my previous adjustment should be enough.” he paused. “Then, let the hunt proceed as planned.”
Mordred brought Grem and the kobolds to delve downwards, deeper inside Thunderpeak mountain. After a few kilometers of trekking, they felt a change in the air.
“There’s a slight increase in the ambient elemental particle level of water and lightning, we are approaching our goal soon.” Mordred muttered. The kobold hunters were confused about the path due to the hundreds of branches they passed, but he led them towards the correct path.
By listening to the echo of footsteps in this enclosed space, his investigative range increased to over a hundred meters three dimensionally. He was always aware of the path he needed to take to reach his objective.
After traveling the for a long time, they started hearing a stream of running water. “Underground water stream found. Squad 1, you are up!” Grem’s trained elites took the role of the vanguard, the team of 10 kobold hunters took their bone buckler and bone spears as they carefully stepped on the water.
To reach the underground lake’s shore, they need to travel through a roundabout way of small crevices that could only allow 2 kobold walk side-by-side instead of the original path. The crevice they took was flooded by water up to their neck. It was dangerous as they are vulnerable to ambushes, especially since there’s electric current flowing in it.
As they got closer to the main underground river, the dark crevice was littered by multicolored mushrooms. There are various glowing mushrooms that feed on the moisture and thrive due to the rich ambient water and lightning elemental particles. Mostly blueish green, these mushrooms are great supplements for cultivation and can be used for refinement.
As they passed through the narrow crevice and reached one of the main rivers originating from the underground lake, they could see layers of dark blue rocks in the wall like a shell that had protected a secret treasure. This ‘shell’ of mineral layer was broken in various parts, allowing electrified water to leak. These dark blue rocks are an unknown material that Mordred has never seen before.
In the previous visit, he only brought back magnetic storm ore that protected these mineral layers, but he performed a preliminary inspection and determined that one of its properties was to repel lightning elemental particles. With this mineral layer acting like a cocoon, the Blue Lotus Heavenly Mana Spring was effectively concealed from the external world.
That is why nobody took it yet.
Unfortunately, it was ineffective against water elemental particles. Due to the overflow of water elemental particles in the mineral pocket, the protective layer made out of the mineral pocket was broken in various places, thus the reason why the kobold miners managed to accidentally find it.
With that said, the mineral pocket is filled with treasures of lightning and water-path resources. Of course, the most precious treasure in the underground pocket was located in the center, but it was filled with multiple peak-stage rank 2 beasts. Investigating it without at least rank 2 cultivation level is suicide.
“This location is alright. Let’s mine the magnetic storm ore and some of these dark blue rocks. Deploy defensive formation, proceed with danger evaluation lightning-path 0D-100.” Mordred ordered. It means rank 0 with D-level danger evaluation and enemy numbers are expected to reach 100.
“Affirmative. Prepare defensive formation! Consume the lightning-resistance potion.” Grem moved according to Mordred's command even if he couldn't see any danger.
The hunters were swift in their actions, the kobolds of both squads approached relatively thick mineral veins on an elevated shore while equipping the bone spear on their backs. Each hunter had 1.5-meter long smooth bones as if they were bleached. These bone spears look like the bone of a fish with the exception of the part where it was designed to allow kobold hands to exert more grip strength.
Squad one was lining up in front of squad two. They kneeled and took the position of throwing javelins while squad two were followed in their standing posture.
The kobolds did not decrease their vigilance as they rotated to take a small pocket of waterskin. Within, there was a dose of lightning-resistance potion refined from lightning-path beast blood and organs by Mordred. After drinking it, their bodies are saturated with substances that reduce lightning-path damage by a certain amount for a period of time.
Refinement has a wide context. It could be forging, alchemy, runecrafting, scroll scribing or other production-related activities. As a former Brave that thread the path of refinement, it wasn’t difficult for Mordred to refine some potions, but with the relatively narrow resource options, he wasn’t able to concoct too many alchemical products.
“The enemies are cave shrimps that evolved under geological isolation. After hundreds of years of being nurtured by Blue Lotus Heavenly Spring within this mineral pocket, they’ve evolved into lightning-path water beasts.” Mordred explained, “As a swarm-type beast, there are probably hundreds of thousands of them in the main lake, most possessed early or mid-stage rank 0 strength but in this river, their number won’t exceed several hundreds. Proceed with caution.”
Grem nodded. “Deploy Automatic Bone Ballista Mk.1!”
Behind the lines of kobold hunters, there was a team of kobold logistics that was trained as engineers who brought various weapon parts. They were specifically trained to use heavy weapons that require setting up time. The siege engines they assembled were almost entirely made out of biological matter with the exceptions of some crucial parts.
The body of the ballistae was made out of a large piece of spinal bone, its four arching arms were made from large beasts’ ribs, the strings were refined from strong beasts’ hair and tendons… It was a grotesque siege engine but nevertheless, a functional one. The team of five kobold engineers finished assembling and loaded two crudely made wooden barrels filled to the brim with 0.5-meter long bone spikes to each loading mechanism.
Assembling the ballistae took over five minutes, it was unrealistic in a high-speed battle but they haven’t engaged the enemy yet.
“My lord, we are ready.” Grem said as he manned the siege engine.
Mordred’s empty eye socket glows in dark purple soul light, “Then, let our miners and logistic team mine out the materials. This won’t completely kill off our noises, but we can use this opportunity to hunt some shrimp instead.
Rank 0 sound-path soul art, [Quadruple Widen: Deafening Horizon]
Rank 0 sound-path soul art, [Lesser Group Silence]!”
As Mordred uses two soul arts in tandem, a soundfield spreads from Mordred’s body towards the surrounding area. The effect of Quadruple Widen allows the soul art Lesser Group Silence to spread in a wider area. Roughly forty meters centered around him, a soundfield that suppresses sound was erected.
“Go now, some of the shrimp will be attracted to the energy undulation, but it’ll be far better than allowing them all to converge in our position.”
After Mordred said his piece, the hunters felt a wave of movement in the waters. They were, as Mordred had said, attracted to the energy undulation. Beasts possessed stronger instinct than humans, despite not recognizing soul energy undulation, it was coming from an intruder that wasn’t too strong.
The groups of shrimps thought that they could handle the invaders, they surged towards the kobold perimeter but this part of the river was, despite being wide enough that even a ship could pass through, not a place where overwhelming numbers could give absolute advantage. The kobold hunters and the army of shrimps were not too different in body-spec wise, but the hunters were not only armed to the teeth and protected by various armor, they were also supported by Mordred.
A large amount of bioluminescent shrimp was seen. After a long period of being nurtured by the environment, large amounts of cells similar to electric eels found on Holy Terra formed naturally behind their semi-translucent carapace. These dog-sized shrimps were dangerous in their own right; their electrified pincers could fry a kobold within a dozen seconds.
With a continuous whistling sound, Grem accurately fired his bone spikes towards shrimps that produce strong energy undulation. They were the one that possessed the greatest threat to his elite hunters, it's best that he handled them with the siege engine.
Every shrimp shot by Grem was pushed back, the power behind the automatic ballista allows every bone spike to penetrate at least two shrimps if they were packed too close.
The hunters fought using their bodies, utilizing their armor to take the brunt of the damage while using superior range of their spears to attack before the shrimp’s pincers could attack them. Shrimp blood dyed the river red as they released a pungent stench of blood and gore.
“Don’t drop your guard, that was merely the greediest and weakest group of cave shrimp. The stronger ones will come.
Rank 0 sound-path soul art, [Quadruple Extend: Song Encore], [Chime of Springtime Waterfall]!”
Mordred activated a supportive sound-path method that allows the kobolds to recover energy by allowing their body to absorb the rich ambient water elemental particles. It was a sound-path method that produces the profundity of water-path. Thanks to Quadruple Extend, the effect of the soul art lengthened significantly, allowing them to continuously recover energy during combat.
“Second wave incoming, there are hundreds of them this time!” Grem’s expression turned serious.
“Well then, time to get to work.” Mordred allows part of Kasumi’s body mass to slither out of his body and morph into a weapon.
“Transformation-path killer move, [Corion-Coil Rail Rifle].”
The bluish-silver liquid metal morphed into a half-meter long rifle with sleek body and futuristic design, the barrel looks like an elongated twisted cube. Thanks to magnetic storm ores refined into her body, Kasumi’s affinity with lightning-path methods increased significantly.
However, Mordred was incapable of using the natural laws of the world to activate lightning-path methods without using ingredients like how he incessantly used sound-path methods. Therefore, he used the lightning elemental particles in the environment to activate a sound-path method.
“Rank 0 sound-path soul art, [Quadruple Pierce: Rend Harmonics], [Thunderblast Sonicround]!”
The twisted cubic rifle fires off compressed sound-projectiles that explode with a wave of thunder. Thunderblast is a sound-grenade variant of Sonicround, it has a great killing power in an enclosed space. Furthermore, it was amplified by Quadruple Pierce, allowing the sound explosion to bypass all types of defensive measure the shrimps could offer.
Translating it to reality, the Thunderblast Sonicround amplified with Rend Harmonics is an area-of-effect instant-kill sound bomb. Each time it exploded, the sound explosion shook the shrimps' internal organs, liquefying brains and killing them while leaving the body mostly intact.
For the stronger shrimps whose internals are more durable, one sonic explosion is not enough to kill them instantly, but it discombobulates them in a large area. It stopped the unrelenting charge of the shrimps and allowed the kobold hunters to slowly chipped their numbers.
Boom! After the 27th sound explosion, the second wave of shrimps were defeated. Large numbers of shrimp corpses were piling up like a small hill, most of them have their body intact, but the ones that were killed by the hunters have at least one or two lethal stab wounds in their bodies.
“My lord?” Grem looked at Mordred for the next instruction. The second wave was more numerous than expected. The automatic ballista’s string snapped during combat, it became dead weight now. He wasn’t sure if the hunters could hold out for the next wave, the disturbance they caused was so big in the area that he was sure there would be thousands of them coming.
Mordred inspected the amount of ores they harvested, “It’s less than two hundred kilograms, but that’ll suffice. We can go back again later after recuperating. Those with empty hands shall bring the shrimps' corpse, go pick the intact ones.”
“Understood, my lord.” Grem signaled the retreat, his subordinates quickly picked up pace. “My lord, please go on ahead, squad 1 and 2 will cover our rear.”
“No.” Denied him. “I’ll take that role, just go.”
Grem wanted to deny, but sensing the presence converging on their location, he didn’t say anything but followed what he was commanded. In this sensitive time, the importance of following orders is a priority.
After the kobold hunters leave his presence, he collects the souls of the dead. The moment he finished harvesting souls, the third wave dawned upon him. “Now, now. No need to be so greedy.” He heard the sound of munching as the shrimps cannibalized upon their dead comrades. The third wave was filled with a large amount of stronger shrimps, his Kobolds would be shredded in seconds while his energy would be expended if he decided to stand his ground.
“I’ll ensure they won’t be able to pursue my encumbered minions. Rank 0 necro-path soul art, [Corpse Soul Explosion]!”
The soul art creates several marble sized black orbs that went towards the corpses on the battlefield. Then, the bodies hit by the orbs explode in a virulent soul and corpse matter, pushing back the rushing beasts.
