Chapter 9: Chapter 09 – Soul Cultivation

Once Mordred harvested the dead souls of forty Murlocs, he quickly returned to his cave with some food that he stole, hiding away from prying eyes. 

Although it wasn’t dark yet, the sun had begun to set, and Mordred had plenty of things he needed to do.

The first being fulfilling his body’s needs.

Today’s dinner consists of grilled fish-human meat with some mushroom that he picked up in the resource point. After fulfilling his mortal shell’s needs, he began earnestly cultivating his soul.

Although there are around one hundred and twenty Murlocs in the village, he couldn’t just collect each and every soul. Those who he claimed, however, are put inside his Phylactery.

The interior of Mordred’s Soul Phylactery is a dark purple, gloomy, and mostly barren world, decorated with blackened soil and the occasional rock. This ‘world’ accommodates souls far better than the physical world. In the center of this world, there’s a ruined castle made to accommodate Demon King Asmodeus’s split soul.

Around the ruined castle, there are around forty freshly harvested souls freely walking around without purpose, confusion clear in their eyes. These souls range from mortal-level into mid-stage rank 0 Murloc, including the souls of several beasts that he had encountered in the way, similarly wandering around. In this world, they took the form of their physical body, but they are translucent ghost-like things of various shades of purple. 

Although the Soul Phylactery is an ideal place where souls would not break down and thus able to theoretically exist for all eternity, not even Asmodeus wanted to stay too long in this place since this is Mordred’s property and the “rent” will be too steep for most to pay.

Being ever the benevolent landlord, however, Morded allows them to pay with their contributions.

In any case, when someone dies in Morgen World, there are two possible scenarios: first, their truesoul would naturally break down and become ambient soul nutrients that can’t be seen or felt by most lifeforms. The second is, their souls would be claimed by the god’s divine kingdom depending on their faith. Coincidentally, the Murlocs have a racial god that guards the race from the threat of extinction. With the Murlocs God’s protection, every murloc’s soul will return to the Murloc God’s divine kingdom upon death. 

Of course, there are cases when souls are unable to ‘return’ to their god’s divine kingdom. For example, if a mage uses an area-of-effect spell so mind-shatteringly potent, or a martial artist uses a technique so powerful their victim’s soul also breaks down in the process, so on and so forth.

If the Murloc God were to detect an unnatural rate of soul breakdown in one location, well, if any God, really, they’d send down an investigation force: a divine inquisitor accompanied by paladins to find out the truth about what truly happened. Since Mordred lacked the necessary cultivation base to fool a direct investigation, he couldn’t risk being found out by the gods, the culprit of the Great Archmage’s death. Therefore, Mordred could not collect 100% of the souls of dying lifeforms in his proximity.

According to his previous experiences, 7% harvest rate is the safest, most acceptable rate that wouldn’t be enough for the divine to raise an eyebrow. However, Mordred urgently needed some souls to reach the mid-stage rank 0 realm before the day ended, so he risked taking in almost 30% of the souls resulting from the slaughter. After all, he had a feeling that this would be the last ‘free time’ he had before departing to the Academy.

The risk is a calculated gamble as he will abstain from reaping the souls of Murlocs from this specific location for the foreseeable future in order to evade any potential suspicion.

And with the forty-or-so souls, he began to earnestly recover his cultivation.

In reality, he doesn’t really need a quiet environment to ‘meditate’ like any other cultivator. The soul magus had memories regarding a chaotic battlefield in the Boundless Astral Realm where he got stronger by killing, devouring souls to recover his soul essence and had his foundation increased through slaughter. Nevertheless, a quiet environment had its perks too as he could focus on more things at once.

According to Mordred’s soul-path true inheritance, the soul cultivation system he developed is split into three facets: [Self Soul], [All Being’s Soul], and [Heaven and Earth’s Soul]. Self Soul regards the foundation of one’s soul, All Being’s Soul relates to the souls of all living beings and the interaction thereof, while Heaven and Earth’s Soul is the use of Soul Arts and the secret of heavens and earth.

One’s soul foundation is the facet of [Self Soul].

In this case, [Self Soul] is further split into three aspects: Soul Strength, Soul Quality, and Soul Pacification.

Soul Strength is the quantitative metric in measuring one’s soul cultivation progress. The average human has 1-man soul foundation, as they are the smallest metric used in the measurement. 10-man souls mean Mordred has the foundation of ten men, while 100-man souls mean the foundation of a hundred men, so on and so forth. This affects the ‘resources’ that a soul cultivator like him can use: soulforce and soul essence.

Soulforce is the internal energy of the soul, compared to spirit cultivator, it would be their spiritual force. Soul cultivators can use soulforce to exert their strength upon the world, for example, activating psychokinesis-equivalent of the soul, spectral-kinesis, and for rank 1 soul cultivator, their AT-Field. As for Soul Essence, it would be the external energy of the soul, like mana to mages. When used in tandem, or rather, both are required for a soul cultivator to activate soul arts.

While soulforce would slowly regenerate overtime, soul essence’s recovery rate can be hastened by absorbing the ambient soul nutrient ever present in the world. In the case of Mordred, he possesses a unique talent  in consuming souls with unprecedented efficiency, allowing him to rapidly replenish his soul essence. His unparalleled methods set him apart from all other soul cultivators to date.

In contrast to [Soul Strength], [Soul Quality] is a unique qualitative metric. Humans have human souls, elves have elven souls, and dragons have dragon souls. 

Some soul mutations allow one to have an edge compared to others, for example, Astaroth the Archdemon possessed a demonic soul. When someone receives a blessing from her, their mind, body, and soul are altered to better accommodate her power. If a human were to become her bloodline warlock, their soul would slowly mutate to have demonic properties, thus allowing them to use demonic methods with higher efficiency, for example, less spell resources or higher spell damage, et cetera.

Currently, Mordred’s Soul Quality is a Spectral Soul, which refers to a creature of the same name who is specialized in possessing other, typically lower-intellect lifeforms. Generally, Spectral Souls struggle to possess high-intellect lifeforms’ bodies like humans. However, due to his mortal vessel being a quasi-dead man who has been gradually exposed to the radiation of Mordred's Soul Phylactery over time, Mordred was able to seamlessly inhabit Satoru's body with ease during his death.

As for [Soul Pacification], it relates to the soul’s recovery and affinity.

Just like the physical body, the soul could experience fatigue or stress. If one engages in nonstop combat, their body would be tired and their mind exhausted. This phenomenon also happens to the soul. One of the detrimental side-effects of one’s soul being overdrafted would be the detachment of the soul from the physical body: being ‘absentminded’, experiencing daydreams woven from your mind misinterpreting information, or an inability to focus. Naturally, every life form has their own self defense mechanisms, so the effect may vary, but having an overdrafted soul is never a good thing. Hence, it is of the utmost importance to regularly soothe and calm one's soul, as an un-pacified soul can lead to negative consequences.

One of the methods to do so is sleeping. 

Despite the importance of pacifying the soul, cultivators are often pressed for time and cannot afford to spend hours sleeping. To this end, various alternative methods such as meditation techniques have been developed to efficiently soothe the soul without taking up too much time. 

For Mordred, his soul pacification method is, go figure, murder.

The cultivation of [Self Soul] is a delicate balance of three interconnected aspects - each supporting and limiting the other. Without proper attention to all three, progress in one's soul cultivation would be hindered. Mordred is determined to maintain a harmonious flow in his cultivation journey thus he paid a lot of attention to balance these three elements.

In the aspect of Soul Strength, Mordred's is a smooth sail because of his ability to devour souls.

In reality, the practice of devouring souls is not without its repercussions, as it is a luxury that many can only dream of. The corruption of one's personality and ego, akin to a chalice tainted with the ink of souls, is a common consequence of such practices. Imagine the delicate balance of the self, like a fragile ecosystem, being disrupted by an influx of foreign souls, leading to the erosion of one's sense of self and personal identity, a price too steep for most to pay. Nevertheless, Mordred has found a way to navigate this treacherous waters with ease.

As he had personally stated earlier: he is extremely resistant- possibly immune- to personality corruption.

Now then, the act of devouring souls to strengthen oneself is not straightforward. The process of elevating one's soul foundation is far more intricate and convoluted, requiring a profound comprehension of the soul and its mysterious inner workings. The soul is composed of enigmatic, spectral substances, similar to stars in a constellation, being hot balls of the soul connected to each other through enigmatic force to create a formation comparable to linked neurons or a compound atom, and these spectral bonds are called Soul Runes.

To advance from a rank 0 into a rank 1, a soul cultivator will need to refine 100 soul runes, each rune represents the soul strength of an average man. From 10 to 30, it is considered as early stage, 31 to 60 is mid-stage, 61 to 90 is late-stage, and 91 to 99 is peak-stage of rank 0. Hence, a 100-man soul foundation is the absolute requirement for a rank 1 ascension.

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Again, however, it must be said that the structure of one’s soul is a complicated matter. Just like every being has a different genetic structure, they also possess varying soul structures. The refinement of soul runes is infinitely more difficult than even rocket science; there are no computers to chart a flight path, no tables of numbers representing each option before you. Extreme precision is required and no mistake can be tolerated, otherwise, complications will occur in the far future.

That being said, since Mordred had passed through the phase of ‘figuring out’ the systematic formation of his soul runes, this time, he’s only retracing his steps. There’s no need for ‘meditation’ to refine those soul runes since he has already passed through these processes in his previous life, it has become an inherited memory stronger than any others. The effort he needs to exert to produce more results is significantly less.

The only bottleneck in his soul cultivation is resources: souls.

Just like physical training, soul rune refinement requires accumulation of energy and material. Since soulforce and soul essence regenerates overtime, theoretically, one could cultivate their souls through accumulations alone, but considering the inefficiency, Mordred would rather kill and plunder souls than wait a thousand years to increase an infinitesimal amount.

Naturally, the souls of stronger Murlocs are better. The Murloc chief’s soul had a quantity higher than the average human, but a murloc soul and human soul have different qualities: like comparing pig iron to tamahagane steel. 

While Mordred consumed the Murloc chief’s soul which was worth around 3-man souls, his soul's 10-man foundation did not increase by a flat amount to 13-man soul. There’s a matter of efficiency and purity of souls. In the first place, Mordred’s ‘10-man soul’ foundation is not the same compared to the souls of Murloc.

The purity of his soul allowed him to maintain his ego, but it reduced the efficiency of soul cultivation exponentially as he kept on increasing his soul foundation. The differences between his and the Murloc’s egos are also much wider than even humans, so the efficiency is also affected by that.

It was an inevitable trade-off. Despite this, Mordred deemed it an acceptable cost for the immense power it granted him.

Slowly but surely, the 40-man worth of beast and Murloc souls are slowly used to engrave soul runes, elevating Mordred’s 10-man foundation to reach a 30-man soul. 

…

Morning of the next day.

“Bullshit efficiency.” was Astaroth’s first word of the day after seeing Mordred’s cultivation rise from basically mortal-level into mid-stage of rank 0 in one night. “Are all former-rank 6 cheats like this?”

Knowing the realm of rank 6 as she is the split soul of one herself, Asmodeus chuckled. “If I recall correctly, His Majesty’s high-end combat system utilizes his cultivation base as perishable, expendable resources. I think it’s normal for him to quickly recover his cultivation base. Otherwise, his combat system would be unsustainable.”

Despite having no recollection of how Mordred was able to lock her up in Lemegeton, Astaroth instinctively shuddered at the thought. She hid her frustration by switching the topic. “Your Majesty, that fire-path warmage, Sakuya, would notice your body being altered by my [Hematotherapy]. Please be advised.”

“Hmm.” Mordred nodded. Even without a thermometer, he knew his ‘normal’ body temperature is over 40 degree celsius now. Since the fire-path cultivator is rather sensitive to heat, Sakuya would feel even closer to him than ever before. 

To circumvent the unwanted attention he’ll get from Sakuya, he utilizes his newfound strength.

Just as Sakuya’s body passively emits scalding heat, Mordred’s truesoul also emits some type of radiation. To offset the heat of his body, his truesoul produces bone chilling radiation. In reality, this bone chilling aura is his killing intent but as the most murderous magus of all time, his killing intent isn’t just an intent, it was strong enough to somehow affect reality. 

Although his intent to kill is not strong enough to instantly kill humans, small insects like grasshoppers or flies are susceptible to this instant-death aura. As for microscopic life which caused biological matter to rot? Since he is currently not in the proximity of high-rank biological contaminants, there’s no need for him to worry. At the very least, the rotting process will be delayed by several years, perhaps even decades.

Sensing what he just did, Astaroth went to complain. “Your Majesty, you just killed your Mortal Shell again! Please be careful not to damage them so much!” 

“Quasi-Suspended Animation, not dead.” Mordred shook his head, annoyed. “This body is already dead anyway, I’ll restart higher biological functions either when I enter a combat or have the justification for Satoru to have those strengths.”

“B- but… Satoru will rot…” Astaroth pleaded, not wanting her investment to fail.

“As the saying goes, this body is probably cleaner than Saint Anais’ ‘phallically-shaped self-care  implements’.” He smirked at that.. maybe those tabloids he always dismissed are worth something after all. “With all the bacteria exposed to my soul radiation dead, this corpse will last for quite some time.” He scolded. “Besides, you wanted a body which has been passively refined by my passive soul radiation, no?”

Asmodeus wanted to rebuke, but he was correct. Even if she got the body of Satoru in the end, it is still a corpse which has been passively refined by Mordred’s soul radiation. Mordred’s rank 6 truesoul was the most destructive substance in the Boundless Astral Realm, being the closest thing to embodying death itself; his mortal shells are an extremely rare material that can’t be bought, since Mordred thoroughly cleans his messes and has much better means of making money, the chief of which being, of course, murder. A rank 0 mortal shell exposed to his soul radiation should allow her to begin research into understanding why Mordred’s truesoul is so destructive.

“Fine, I’ll refrain from bothering you in the future.”

“Now then.” Mordred blocks the sunlight that shone on his chamber with his fingers. “Asmodeus, how’s my karmic luck for today?”

There was a long period of silence, but Mordred did not press for an answer. Eventually though, she replied. “Unchanging.” She wanted to omit the rest of her findings as revealing too many things about the uncertain future could affect it, but decided not to since it wouldn’t invoke bad karmic retaliation. “Your Majesty is going to meet two additional rank 1 cultivators today. I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing.”

“Two rank 1s… Most probably more of Twin Helix’s remaining members. I recalled they are a team of eleven hunters but we only met seven.” Mordred praised her. “Your [Sudden Inspiration] is the best. With you around, there’s no need for an investigation method.”

Asmodeus chuckled, but did not reply. 

As one of the most powerful demons in the Purgatory world is being buttered up like an oversized puppy, it took all of Astaroth’s willpower not to complain about how utterly absurd it is. ‘Only you could treat Her Majesty like a pet…’ She swallowed those words in her heart, not desiring conflict over trivial matters. 

“Astaroth, I need your help in the meantime.” Mordred suddenly spoke to her as he started climbing the walls to return to Mira village.

“Ask away, Your Majesty.”

“[Astaroth Blood Weapon] is an excellent combat system, but its temporal nature is too limited.”

Even if she’s just a split soul, the rank-5 epic is still sharp. With that cue alone, she immediately understood what he wanted. “My requirement is the blood of fire-path lifeforms. If you are able to provide me with some and then refine a core to hide away my demonic nature, I can serve as a self-aware weapon… what did you call it, a Soul Armament?”

“A Soul Armament core and the blood of fire-path lifeforms, got it. Ping me if you or I find some things that could expand your function in the future.” Mordred muttered as reached the top of the walls. Feeling the pangs of hunger from his quasi-dead mortal shell, he began to jog towards Mira village.