Chapter 103 - Rank 2 Lord

 

In a deep underground location that can only be accessed by swimming through the soil, Mordred made a tiny cultivation chamber for himself. It was so deep underground that it almost reached the ‘bottom’ of this micro-plane. It was a bit of an inconvenient precaution, but a necessary one.

Mordred is currently devouring souls like a man who hasn’t eaten for months. A continuous stream of souls were being taken out of his Soul Phylactery, his mouth never ceasing it’s munching or slurping upon the souls of the damned. 

With each passing second, his 100-man-ish soul foundation rose rapidly, accumulating momentum like a falling object nearing terminal velocity. His soul radiation is soaring. What little light produced by his machinations was refracted into a rainbow, and of the few lifeforms that reached him, their souls corroded and melted into a primordial spectral soup matter. The heat is off the charts, but Mordred continued on unleashing his soul radiation without a care.

“Advancement from rank 0 to rank 1 is all about building the foundation by engraving soul runes…” Mordred idly muttered to himself.

He had already passed this phase. In fact, he didn’t only go through it, but his rank 1 foundation is perfect as he went through all the possible superlative heights of rank 0 before advancing. Furthermore, he had successfully combined his [Soul] and [Spirit]. As long as both of his soul and spirit foundations are equal, his AT-Field would be twice as strong. 

“Now begins the fun part… to advance from rank 1 to rank 2, there are three requirements. The first one is a matter of quantity, my soul foundation must reach the 1000-man mark…”

Compared to other Sovereign Magi of Holy Terra, Mordred’s cultivation method is special. His primary combat style is through sacrificing his foundation to boost his performance in addition to ‘dying’ multiple times, thus it was common for his cultivation base to fluctuate up and down. Perhaps, it is best to consider his advancement as recovery instead as it is extremely easy for him to ‘advance’ as long as he reaches the point he currently sits at, as he has gotten to this level an innumerable number of times.

200-man, 300-man, 400-man… It merely took him a week for his 100-man-ish soul foundation to reach 1000-man souls, or using the Hunter Association’s classification, going from 1 red star all the way up to 10 red stars. This is the peak-stage of rank 1 for cultivators. The souls being consumed in this specific process was far more than what a soul cultivator would consume normally, but that wouldn’t be a problem. 

When Mordred murdered all the inhabitants of the micro-plane, he harvested roughly 8000 souls of living beings. Cleaning up the Gorod Krovi from vampires who refused to switch their allegiance and storing passing remnant souls allowed him to harvest around 2000 more souls. The actual worth of these souls was incredibly high as what he killed aren’t mortals but cultivators. Mortals are typically worth 1-man soul, but rank 0 cultivators are higher. This logic extends to rank 1 and even rank 2. Even if they do not purposely cultivate their souls, their accumulation allowed their souls to have deeper foundation than mortals.

“If the average rank 0 cultivator’s soul is worth 10 to 15 souls, then rank 1s are about 40 to 50 souls. As for rank 2s, they varied from 100 to 250 souls depending on their cultivation.” For example, mages or enslavement-path cultivators have greater soul foundation than martial artists. In the case of Lord Erebus, his soul is a whooping 800-man soul. When Mordred devoured his soul, he couldn’t even finish digesting it in one sitting. 

Therefore, Mordred’s Soul Phylactery housed around 490k-men worth of souls. Well, there was a distastefully large number of women, but that's besides the point.

This allowed him to ‘splurge’ a bit  of souls on Annalise, giving her what she needed. After all, his relationship with her isn’t that of master-and-slave, but boss-and-subordinate. He has to pay her for her service, and he really needs physical resources so he can’t pay her with them. Instead, he is paying her with inheritances. 

That being said, the amount of souls needed to push Mordred’s 100-man soul into a 1000-man soul is roughly 5000-man worth of souls.

The second requirement for rank 2 is about quality: to have either a Positive or Negative Soul Essence Conversion, this would greatly affect the third requirement. 

What it means by positive or negative Soul Essence Conversion is the ability to convert ‘vanilla’ soul essence into ‘yin’ or ‘yang’ soul essence. The conversion rate is limited: one can only have a total of 100%: either 100% yin and 0% yang, vice versa, or 50:50. 

“Yin (negative) soul essence is harmful towards others, it is the path of death… In Holy Terra, I had 100% yin soul essence and 0% yang soul essence rate. The radiation of yin soul essence would be lethal and corrosive. Each of my offensive killer moves are laced with yin soul essence, giving me over-the-top offensive power. If mortals glimpse at my true visage, they would instantly die.”

Because Mordred’s current soul was resurrected from a part of his past truesoul who had pure yin soul essence conversion, it inherited a portion of its traits.

“On the other hand, yang (positive) soul essence is beneficial, it is the path of life. Yang soul essence promotes growth, healing, and harmony. Any healing soul arts that I use would be greatly amplified. Back then, I had no need for healing methods because I simply needed to kill and devour souls to heal myself. If I choose yang soul essence, I could probably take on the identity of Saints with my soul radiation alone, as it would cause even grass to spontaneously flower…” 

“I need to consider which I should choose, because yin and yang soul essence conversion would affect my future path… Having 50:50 is extremely unwise as it would showcase my indecisiveness.”

“Fortunately, my recent Split Soul experiment was successful. With my 1000-man soul foundation, I could probably produce three or so split souls without suffering from repercussions.”

Mordred immediately prepares himself for splitting his soul. He had undergone this procedure multiple times, be it in his previous or current life. 

“Rank 2 soul-path killer move, [Split Soul Genesis]!

Unlike what he did to Annalise, he didn’t ‘graft’ his soul and feed it. Rather, he split his soul into two equal halves of 500-man souls each. This killer move does not destroy his soul rune foundation, as it was more like creating a carbon copy of it into a new soul. The main and split souls are connected with a deepest possible Soul Link that wouldn’t be separated even if they are on different dimensions. Right now, Mordred’s senses are double, like having two bodies. 

Instead of a split soul, it would be more fitting to say that he has two main souls instead. If the other died, the surviving one would inherit the experiences and memory of the other as long as the difference of soul foundation isn’t too high.

Of course, where there are merits, there will also be demerits. If one of the main souls is captured, his enemies might be able to utilize the connection between the two to cause problems for the other one. Thus, it isn’t wise to use it as a ‘disposable’ with a Soul Link of this depth.

“Rather than choosing 100% yin soul essence or 50:50, I might be able to elevate soul-path into a new height…” Mordred and his new secondary soul quickly gorged on the souls in his phylactery, their cultivation base which are 500-man souls steadily rose before stopping at 1000-man soul mark. The two souls are now at the peak of rank 1, but this process consumed another five thousand men’s worth of souls.

After that, his main soul started working on yin soul essence conversion, whereas the secondary soul delved on yang soul essence. 

This phase actually required him to understand the profundity of life and death. Deep research regarding the two aspects will help him build the foundation of yin and yang soul essence, but since he is basically ‘retracing’ his steps, there’s no need to delay as he already has a deep understanding of them. Thus, the two began altering their soul so that they can accommodate yin and yang soul essence.

The primary material for converting ‘vanilla’ soul essence into ‘yin’ soul essence is actually yin essence. Yin essence are naturally produced by both sexes, but females produce it in overwhelming amounts. In contrast, yang essence is also produced by both sexes, but male did so far more than females. He couldn’t gather the necessary ‘yin essence’ right now; the most effective method at present would be having intercouse with a woman. Even if he could find a suitable target who had rich yin essence, he would need to do it hundreds, probably thousands of times to acquire the sufficient amount.

But of course, Larissa Agatha is an exception. She was a former succubus overflowing with yin essence. Her existence was a literal walking obscenity. Still, he couldn’t extract her yin essence as they are in different dimensions.

Therefore, he substituted it with the soul essence of female vampires that he killed. 

The yang portion was not too much of a difference. Although he can naturally ‘produce’ it, the efficiency is extremely low and he lacked the accumulations to fulfill his needs by himself. First of all, his mortal shell isn't biological so the rate of production isn’t much to begin with. He also substitutes this portion with the soul essence of male vampires.

Due to this, his soul consumption rate rose significantly as it isn’t very efficient. In the first place, yin and yang essence are not soul-path resources, it is hard to substitute them. It was like killing pigs to eat their liver. Even if he killed a thousand of them, he wouldn’t be ‘full’. Nevertheless, he has souls to spare so in the end, he brute forced his cultivation through resources.

A week later, Mordred and his secondary soul was done, each having 100% conversion rate in either yang or yin soul essence. 

Mordred’s soul radiation kills the earth as they turn into useless black sand. His soul was so dark and evil that it completely obliterated even light itself, leaving only a dark visage of himself. If mortals were to glimpse his black hole-like dark truesoul, their soul would collapse.

On the other hand, his secondary soul’s radiation makes it so the soil around him began visibly moving, microscopic lifeforms becoming increasingly active. Gentle white light radiated from his secondary soul as if in contrast to the dark radiance of the primary.

“The next step is to merge both of our souls back together to refine a yin-yang cycle, the cycle of death and life in our soul. This should be considered as the superlative height of rank 1. My early estimates indicate that if I refine a yin-yang cycle, not only I could switch between yin and yang soul essence as I please, but my soul fondation can become even more robust than before...”

“Rank 2 soul-path killer move, [Two Souls One Human]!” Mordred activated another method as his main soul and his secondary soul merged together.

This step is extremely difficult- not just because it was significantly harder to fuse a soul than split it- but because these two souls strongly opposed each other. Life is the opposite of death, just as positive is the opposite of negative. The yin soul essence wouldn’t be able to mix with yang soul essence easily, like oil and water. No, perhaps the more correct representation would be like water and fire. Each would negate, obliterating the other side without being able to mix. 

The black and white souls are destroying each other in the attempt of combining the two soul essences. Their foundations are being reduced at a rapid pace but Mordred wouldn’t let it fall beyond a certain point. 

In Mordred’s original plan, this step should be a continuous progress of slow union between yin and yang. Months, perhaps years would be needed so that a more robust foundation can be formed. However, the main world is going to be reconnected with this micro-plane soon, he got a vague feeling that he absolutely needed to have a rank 2 cultivation base. 

This ‘feeling’ is one of his Myriad Synesthesia reactions towards the echo of time after he reached the peak of rank 1. Although he couldn’t peer into the future, his senses were able to pick up clues as to whether his future trend would be negative or positive. Without a rank 2 foundation, there’s a high chance of him losing what he had fought for, such as the identity of Lord Erebus or even worse, his ‘life’. 

“I can’t delay… the micro-plane’s coordinate is under the hands of the Mage Tower, so the Tower Master will eventually have to meet ‘Lord Inquisitor Erebus’, especially after my assassination attempt. In the presence of rank 3 Legendary Grand Mage, I have little confidence hiding my identity with just a rank 1 cultivation base…”

With that in mind, he funneled more souls to maintain his 1000-man cultivation base. The consumption rate is extremely high as it’s not only the primary that requires the support of more ‘nutrients’ but also the secondary main soul. 

It took him another week to successfully merge the primary and secondary main soul, once the yin and yang reached a perfect balance. At this point, he has reached the absolute limit of the superlative height of rank 1, but his soul foundation isn’t 2000-man souls, but only 1000-man souls. In exchange, his foundation is far more robust than before. With a thought, he could alternate between positive or negative soul essence. If he uses the two essences in tandem to activate a method, the change of quality allows the result of 1+1 equals 3 or even 4.

However, because he also brute forced this step with soul resources, he had consumed 40% of the souls stored in his phylactery. To advance his soul foundation beyond the 1000-man mark, it’ll take him 16 to 20 times more resources than normal instead of the original 4 to 5 times. This was the demerit of having an extremely robust foundation. Without murdering the inhabitants of this plane, it wouldn’t be possible to accelerate his cultivation.

“The expenditure is too high, but I can always go find a minor plane and massacre the inhabitants to harvest cultivation resources.” Mordred muttered to himself. To him, deciding a genocide is a common occurence. He wasn’t infamous as the most murderous Magus of Holy Terra for nothing. “The last requirement is quite simple but complicated at the same time… I need to construct a Soul Domain.” 

A cultivator’s ‘domain’ is their power being projected into the material world. For rank 2 elemental mages, they would construct an ‘elemental domain’ where their elemental path methods would be greatly amplified while suppressing other ‘elements’. Of course, this ‘domain’ isn’t limited to elemental paths. An example of this is Lord Erebus who had slowly turned this micro-plane into his blood-enslavement domain that suppresses lifeforms.

Weaker mind would slowly got enslaved if they were to be affected by Erebus’ domain, his vampiric plague can spread far more easily with higher infectivity than in the main world and his vampires slave’s combat prowress would be elevated greatly. 

Mordred doesn’t have to deal with Erebus’ domain because he is basically immune to the effects. If it were any other, then facing a rank 2 with a rank 1 cultivation base would be no different than suicide.

That being said, Mordred’s Domain would be highly influenced by his soul foundation. If he has a 100% yin soul essence conversion rate, his Domain would be extremely specialized in killing whereas a 100% yang soul essence conversion rate would mean his Domain is focused on support or healing. However, now that he has a yin-yang soul essence cycle that allows him to convert positive or negative soul essence at will, he has far more options than before.

“A Domain’s purpose is to amplify ‘Rank 2 Lords’ methods and suppress their enemies. My truesoul has a deep attainment in various paths, so I can choose multiple phenomena that could manifest in my domain. However, incorporating them into my domain would need various special resources that I don’t have right now...”

“In the main world, domain-awakening materials are categorized as strategic resources because they are the core resources to nurture rank 2 Lords. Thus, their price is reasonably higher, yet not exorbitantly higher than typical rank 2 resources due to their highly specialized nature, having little practical usage outside of their purpose.”

“Since I was primarily a soul-sound cultivator with transcendent and quasi-transcendent attainment in both paths, I can make use of my ‘Resource Exemption’ traits to eliminate the need for special resources if I wanted to walk this path again. However, in my current life, I have five other paths which are affected by that trait… which are information, wisdom, lightning, sword, and refinement.”

The construction of one’s domain is not only by deepening one’s knowledge on one or two specific paths through extensive research, but also making it into an active killer move and then engraving them into their person, similar to the permanent defensive method which are the requirement to advance into rank 1. Both of these methods can be activated by a thought as if they are innate abilities, no longer requiring activation sequences. 

Mordred pondered, “However, combining them all into a singular Domain would take too much time and effort. I’ll also need a supercomputer, preferably a quantum one to assist in deduction. After all, there are seven paths to work on. My exemplary attainment in rule-path might help in reducing the conflict of paths, but it only reduces the difficulty from simply impossible into beyond difficult. Therefore… I can take another approach.”

“Instead of constructing a singular ultra-powerful domain in one sitting, I can construct multiple different soul domains specialized in one or two paths or for a specific purpose. Using them at the foundation while constantly referencing rule-path, I might be able to deduce the method to combine them all into one ultimate domain in the future… In the first place, the requirement of a rank 2 is a single domain-type killer move being engraved on their person, not seven.”

Mordred is not one that likes to dally. He quickly began constructing the first soul domain, which contains the profundity of soul-path.

“As my soul essence can now be used in a yin-yang cycle, I can design my domain rather freely, not only specializing in killing.” Souls are once again being funneled from Mordred’s phylactery and being used in sacrificial methods to gain soul energy.

Mordred might have ‘resource exemption’ traits for soul-path, but that doesn’t mean he has infinite energy. 

The concept of domains in the first place is to suppress others and amplify one’s strength. Mordred didn’t need to play around with the design, he simply made it true to its original intent by slightly modifying his past self’s ‘original’ domain.

“Rank 2 soul-path killer move, [Undying Slaughterfest Rapture]! This domain-type killer move would instantly kill rank 0s, harm rank 1s and suppress other rank 2s. Spectral beings would greatly receive amplifications on all metrics while granted some level of protection against saturation attack. Ghost and ‘naked’ souls would be able to exist longer without receiving passive damage from sunlight or ‘holy’ saturation damage. My killing intent rendered every being within the affected area bloodthirsty, capable of turning pacifists¹Mahatma Ghandi into berserkers². When active, I will become a true soul-path ‘Lord’.”

When Mordred unleashes his Undying Slaughterfest Rapture, the area affected turns darker a few tones. Domain-type killer move is essentially one’s radiation being utilized in a practical way, if any lifeforms survived the intense soul radiation, the background ambience instills killing intent towards them, muddling their thoughts so that they would kill anyone they see, be it foe, ally or themselves. Naturally, Mordred could choose who he instilled the killing intent into.

With him being successful in constructing his domain and engraving it into his truesoul and thus turning the killer move into an innate ability, it means he had officially stepped onto the realm of Rank 2 Lords. His seven soul traits are automatically augmented to match his soul foundation, needless to say his AT-Field that became even far more powerful than before.

He quickly recalls his domain, there’s no point in activating it for an extended period of time. 

“Advancing a cultivation base in a short amount of time truly takes too much resources…”  Mordred made a quick inventory assessment of his Soul Phylactery. Constructing his domain used up another 40% of the souls stored there, he’s left with less than 100k-man worth of souls.

He originally planned to use the souls to terraform the environment of the micro-plane into a soul-path one, but the moment he became an official Rank 2 Lord, his Myriad Synesthesia picked up more clues about the trend of his future. Due to the rapid advancement of his cultivation base, he had accumulated too much karma in a short amount of time. 

The way of heaven is to take away surpluses and bestow at the deficits. Isn’t the action of consuming thousands of souls of lifeforms not a method to accumulate the karma of thousands of lifeforms into himself? 

In exchange for this, the heavens have suppressed his luck to to balance it out, it is now in a state of all-time-low. The karmic retaliation of the main world would make his progress far more difficult than before. Unless he had sufficient power or a way to mitigate karmic retaliation, he would be suppressed by the high amount of negative luck.

“I need combat strength to offset the negative karmic luck, but refining a rank 2 Mortal Shell from scratch is out of the question…” Just as he has reached that conclusion, Mordred could hear the sound of metal breaking.

“Tsk, my domain is so strong that my mortal shell can’t even endure it.” Mordred shook his head as he suppressed his radiation to the fullest to the point of almost crippling his own foundation. Even then, since the mortal shell hosts his truesoul, sooner or later, the body will break down.

If his soul is water, then his mortal shell is the glass that contains it. After advancing into rank 2, the water is suddenly changed into molten rocks, the ‘glass’ couldn’t endure the heat. He needed to change the ‘glass’ into something that could hold his overwhelmingly powerful truesoul.

“The yin-yang cycle made it so that my soul foundation is extremely robust. It couldn’t be helped, I need to use Erebus corpse as soon as possible…” Mordred immediately swam towards the surface, while his mind was designing an increasingly complex life alteration surgery for Erebus’ corpse. 

“I had his cake, I suppose it’s about time I eat it too.”