Lucifer searched through his core, he passed the active enchantments that keep spells in a permanently active state, one to sense his area of influence another to manipulate life energy and a dozen others. Then he passed through the mana storage layer and into the innermost section of the core. After studying his new body he discovered that this section was used to house his soul and was his first experience seeing a soul directly.

Compared to the first time he saw his soul it was much darker now, at first he thought that maybe he was a little too evil and the thought of having a concrete way of defining evil interested him, however, he had checked his soul not long ago and it wasn’t like this, the change was too sudden it had to be something to do with the Earthmail

Upon closer inspection he found that his soul wasn’t actually becoming black, but instead was infused with tiny streams of a dark substance. Whatever it was Lucifer didn’t want it there, but forcibly removing it would probably send him insane from the either the pain or some minor slip up.

Instead he observed the tiny strings for hours and used every power he could think of to manipulate them. Finally, after hours of experimentation he figured out that the strands move towards uninfected areas of his soul, it was hard to notice with there being so little bright areas of his soul which constantly changed locations.

Several hours later he had a gem that housed a dozen beast souls thinly connected to his core, he weaved the gems material through his core carefully, trying to make as little damage as possible. Lucifer purposely avoided anything important like his dungeon sense and eventually had the needlepoint stick into the section that housed his soul.

Lucifer screamed out unintentionally when it priced his soul, he almost moved the crystal connection into something important. After sighing he refocused and watched the strands. After a few minutes, a strand of the black substance entered the bridge between the two soul containers. It moved backward and it moved backward and forward in the tube, but eventually retracted back into his soul.

Apparently, the sensory ability of the black substance is too short to find the other souls. Growing irritated Lucifer tore a piece of soul from one of the beast souls and pushed it down the connection towards his core.

Once the piece of soul was close to half-way the black substance reacted instantly, like a magnet to iron the tube rapidly filled with the black substance turning the chunk of beast soul to turn black, then a few strands went through the tube outside his core and sensed new souls, they tore themselves free of the rest of the black substance and infected the beast soul gem.

Lucifer laughed and tore off another chunk to bridge the gap and soon his soul only had a few faint wisps of the black substance.

Lucifer spent the next few days removing all the darkness from his soul and put the pile of soul stones he used to cleanse himself into a corner for later study. Now he had a war to fight.

Inside the tunnel.

The endless darkness was occasionally broken up by the rare light stone bedded in the roof. Most of the soldiers couldn’t see more than a few feet, but all they had to do was walk forward so they didn’t have any problems.

The tunnel walls were covered in a green moss that was smeared and destroyed from countless soldiers brushing up against it as they marched by, however, the air was still fresh in the tunnel owing to the occasional vent that gently howled as it sucked fresh air into the tunnel.

Several men complained “when is the next rest area”

“its just a few days march, be glad there is rest areas” an older soldier scolded.

This group was at the very back of the army marching through the tunnel and they were the most relaxed, suddenly a man groaned, “my stomach. I’m gonna go take a shit”, Several soldiers just rolled their eyes and one remarked, “perhaps you shouldn’t drink so much”

The man held his stomach as he snapped back, “your just jealous that you didn’t think to bring any of your own”

his stomach gurgled loudly as he squatted down and removed his pants.

Meanwhile, ahead of him, the soldiers heard various noises over the sound of marching, “is he okay”

“judging by the sound he will be the first person to shit himself to death before battle”

The man sat there for several minutes and cursed his luck. He would have to march at double-time to catch up or he would probably miss most of his break.

After he finished and he used the plants and moss on the walls to clean up he pulled up his pants and began after his group, bang. Something hit him on the back of the head and he slumped to the ground unconscious.

Several minutes later the man stood up and cursed the bodies previous owner, “fuck who doesn’t even know how to wipe their own ass properly”

Lucifer created a room with a bath in the cave wall and jumped in, then spent the next few hours modifying his new body. Then when he finished he started casting the teleportation spell to get to the front of the army.