Chapter 275: Skeleton
Creating an undead that retains its true spirit—this was a highly imaginative research topic.
There were no lightning monkey in the Salia Jungle, so Ace experimented with another robust monster, the earth gorilla. This monster had relatively high intelligence, possessed the ability to manipulate the earth element, and had certain similarities to humans, making it suitable as a subject for preliminary research.
He captured six gorillas, each possessing the strength of a powerful low-level monster.
Ace slowly extracted the soul of one gorilla. The soul of a powerful low-level Monster could already exist outside the body for a long time.
Ace turned his mental powet into tweezers, attempting to extract the gorilla’s true spirit. The true spirit wandered erratically within its soul, occasionally hiding in an unknown interlayer, making it extremely difficult to extract.
After failing dozens of times, Ace finally extracted the true spirit, but the earth gorilla’s soul shattered directly, leaving no residual soul.
The sky gradually darkened. The six earth gorillas lay there quietly, no longer breathing. Their souls had completely shattered, and Ace had only extracted six true spirits.
This was useless. Without a residual soul—a soul fire matching the true spirit could not be formed, and the path to immortality Ace envisioned would be impossible to realize.
‘Perhaps I should change my approach. I might not need to specifically extract the true spirit of the living being. I can wait for the moment they become residual souls and the true spirit returns to the world.’
Ace caught four more gorillas.
This time, he didn’t actively extract the earth gorillas’ true spirit. Instead, he created a negative energy environment and waited for the gorilla within to die slowly. After its died, Ace watched its soul drift out, circling its body in confusion and mania.
Under the erosion of negative energy, the earth gorilla’s soul gradually mutated into a residual soul. At this instant, its true spirit left the residual soul and was captured by Ace.
Ace tried to cut off a small piece of the residual soul to wrap the true spirit, but found it impossible.
This small piece of residual soul had mutated; it was no longer a soul and couldn’t hold the true spirit.
As Ace watched the residual soul gradually turn into soul fire, he wrapped the true spirit with mental power and forcibly stuffed it into the soul fire. This seemed to trigger some reaction; the soul fire burned fiercely but couldn’t burn the true spirit to ashes.
The true spirit, roasted by the soul fire, seemed to have undergone some mutation. Ace used the remaining piece of residual soul to wrap the true spirit again and found that it could actually hold it.
In his perception field, the true spirit seemed to have formed some mysterious link with the soul fire, but Ace didn’t know the specific nature of this connection. Ace took out a rib from the Undead, sealed the residual-soul-wrapped True Spirit within it, and then inserted it back into the Undead.
After several days of observation, this type of Undead indeed acted with more intelligence than other undead without True Spirits, but it was impossible to judge whether it retained memories from before death.
“If I must use intelligent life for the experiment!” Firmness flashed through Ace’s eyes.
A few days later, news that several Pseudo-Heroes and Heroes of the Punishers organization had been attacked by the “Dark Raven Devil” circulated within the organization.
“This is a provocation and retaliation against us! The ‘Dark Raven Devil’ must have close ties with the ‘Mechanical Sin Fox.’ Let’s pull back our manpower first, investigate the true identity of the ‘devil’, and find a way to kill him!”
In the headquarters of the Punishers organization, a group of black-clothed, iron-masked scythe-wielders sat below, listening to Karim on the high seat.
They didn’t know that Ace wasn’t retaliating intentionally but simply lacked necessary experimental subjects. It was that simple. Of course, if the Punishers hadn’t hunted Ace multiple times, Ace wouldn’t have had the heart to attack their people directly.
Ace cast Dream Mist on a Divine Descendant Pseudo-Hero, invaded his dream, peeked into his general memories, and recorded them for later comparison.
After binding this Divine Descendant with mana crystal chains, Ace exposed him to the negative energy environment. As time passed, the Divine Descendant gradually died, the body rotted, and the soul turned into a residual soul.
Ace detained the fleeing true spirit, cut off fragments of the residual soul, roasted the True Spirit with the soul fire transformed from the residual soul, wrapped the True Spirit with the residual soul fragments, sealed the True Spirit with his rib, and observed the actions of this Undead.
Two bright white flames emerged from the empty eye sockets, staring straight at Ace, and then it rushed up to attack.
Ace easily dodged using the flight spell. The undead jumped forcefully, turned around, and actually fled.
“Exceptionally smart. All actions are intelligent behaviors.”
Ace commented calmly. Flying at high speed, he caught up with the Undead. The fleeing Undead found the ground shaking and the soil becoming muddy. Something seemed to be dragging it in the swamp.
A stone coffin appeared abruptly; the Undead was dragged and thrown into the stone coffin, and then a large stone slab slammed shut over it.
The stone coffin shook incessantly. Sealing Runes gradually crawled over the stone coffin, and the shaking gradually stopped.
The mist of dreams lingered around the stone coffin. Ace’s Mental Power gently touched the mist and entered the Undead’s dream.
In the dream, the Undead still looked like he did when alive. Ace observed his behavior in the dream, quietly invaded it, and transformed into various people in the dream to converse with the Undead.
Finally, he confirmed that the Undead knew he had become an undead and remembered everything from before death, including the terrifying “Dark Raven Devil.”
“Its confirmed. This method can create undead with memories of their past life and a true spirit. Although there are many flaws, perhaps a path to immortality is right before my eyes!”
Ace recorded somewhat joyfully on the magic diary page of his grimore. He imprisoned the remaining experimental subjects and established a Master-Servant Covenant with them.
However, the research soon stagnated. The transformed special undead did not possess the possibility of strength growth.
Although they needed to devour the soul fire of other undead or the residual souls of the dead, this devouring could not increase their strength.
Nor could they improve their strength through the Universal Bloodline Refinement Method. Although they had intelligence and immortality, they had lost almost all prospects.
“This transformation method has serious flaws. Immortality without the ability to improve strength is basically rootless duckweed. Immortality without strength is just an illusion, amounting to nothing.”
‘I must find a method that allows power to continue growing,’ Ace thought as he returned to the castle in the Reflection World and fell into a deep sleep.
“If I preserve their source of power in advance, would it be possible for their strength to continue growing? The source of power for Divine Descendants, Knights, and even Monsters lies in the heart. The source of power for Wizards lies in the Soul Sanctuary. What if I preserve these in advance?”
Muttering to himself, Ace proceeded with an experiment using another Pseudo-Hero.
He dug out this Pseudo-Hero’s heart in advance and sealed it to keep it fresh. After the subject died and transformed into an Undead, Ace treated its True Spirit with soul fire, wrapped it in residual soul fragments, and stuffed it into the heart.
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