The result was immediate. As soon as his eyes opened, a rolling wave of spiritual energy rushed from the center all the way to the border and in moments, that border moved back far until 40 kms of new land formed.

That said, where the wave passed previously there was a small change. Slowly the blue color dropped a shade into a world of violet.

Those who had researched crops instantly felt something was up and ran to their crops to check but there were actually no changes in the crops despite the change in color.

The new land was filled with a lush forest almost immediately after it took form.

Although Mark was completely filled with energy to the point that he felt like he was going to burst, his body felt extremely sore. His skin felt normal but everything on the inside felt like it was out of place but he knew it wasn’t. He even felt the countless meridians that had formed in his body and the currently empty dantian that was a very clear feeling but it all felt too soft and that was because it was formed naturally and not through training while his skin and part of his bones did.

When he moved, he could feel the strangeness and soon the stiff corpses and other walking corpses in the domain arrived to see him.

“Are you okay?!” Billy said.

Right behind him, Elder Conway came out and touched his shoulder and Mark felt a small wave of spiritual power run through his body.

“His body is formed, a full walking corpse. So the wave we felt…”

“That was the domain growing.” Mark said, “What happened, I remember finishing the orb… then i felt like it tried to forcefully blend with the domain but failed and then it entered my body instead.” he said and opened his hand to reveal the orb which had returned to the normal size but Mark could clearly feel there was still enough excess to make the anchor.

“Your soul aged…” elder Conway said as he constantly scanned. “You are now a 64 year old ghost, roughly. These are the waves I can pick up.” He said.

“Can you tell the age?” Mark asked.

“There is a technique for it which analyzes the core wavelengths of your soul instead of your ectoplasm since those are trainable. Your core has the same feeling of a 64 year old ghost which also explains why you developed into a walking corpse naturally. They are 10 year old spirits if everything was in their favor but it doesn’t seem you reached stiff corpse rank naturally.” Elder Conway said.

“My body feels extremely weird and I feel tiny little problems in the domain probably from whatever the orb must have done to me. Thankfully it is just a small energy knot that I can fix without any of those coins.” He said. “My skin feels normal but everything else feels… soft.” he explained.

“That must be the result of a trained mortal shell with a naturally formed body, it seems you still need some time to train your entire body with the Poltergeist training instead of going into walking corpse training.” Billy said.

Mark nodded, agreeing but he knew he couldn’t leave these ‘faults’ and he needed to make the anchor.

They made sure to check him and the orb but they didn’t feel anything new like it was dead so he just stored it because it didn’t seem lethal. They naturally couldn’t feel the fragment for his book of life and death which was good.

Eventually he got them to leave when he said he was fine besides the soft body. Although he might have aged, it might be a good thing since his soul would develop more rapidly as his training caught up to his soul’s age. He asked for the elders to house the new soldiers for a few days, since they had arrived, but he needed to recover from this so they agreed and went to divide them up in the eight settlements around the center.

Like that he just relaxed until he finally confirmed everyone was gone before getting up and walking out and calling the orb.

With his newfound knowledge of control, he effortlessly raised the domain in very tiny bubbles within 100 meters of himself and from his core, he called one of many coins and began to casually throw them into these bubbles where they melted and began to form his own formation.

He worked fast in the altar’s surroundings and quickly made a formation circle hidden inside the foundation before walking out in a straight line to the original foundation border and did this 12 times making pillars.

Finally he began to circle around the original 5km diameter making 10 circles, counting the first one.

He was conscious of all movement in his domain now, far from what it was before, he set a particular setting that anywhere anyone was actually looking, the bubbles would not form so he was aware of when he was close to people when making the new formation until he was done.

When the last piece entered, he felt a sudden bit of relief before he looked up and used his movement technique and vanished before appearing very high in the air, near the ceiling of the domain.

Here he repeated everything but with freedom from eyes because it was just that high up and made the formation on the top as well.

“There, the two central circles are done. Now I need to pull the central pillars to the original base 20 km from here.” he muttered and while flying, he extended the 12 pillars of the formation all the way to the edge of what was the original base size of his domain.

It took a while but he was unobstructed in the air when he did that and when it was done, the formation shined momentarily and he felt it naturally extend all the way to the horizon and circle around the barrier of the domain.

All that was left was the 12 pillars on the ground to build the base system.

He did them but had to be more careful because several of them passed through the newly built towns around the center so he had to use another domain control which hid him in plain sight even from the stiff corpses. It was like hiding in the folds of the domain’s own space. He couldn’t move through space but it was sort of like pulling the folds around him.

It took more effort when passing through settlements but he eventually succeeded and finally the twelve pillars extended and connected to the ones at the barrier of the domain and quietly formed a special formation that would safely absorb and break dark force in his domain making it impossible for any dark spirit to survive and use their power here.

It also slowly and quietly absorbs sin from spirits that were not his soldiers improving the conditions of the souls but would it be impossible for loose sin, negative energy or dark force to infect the domain now.

When it formed, he instantly started to feel the absorption of loose Sin around many ghosts which was pulled towards the center where it got processed and broken to split the spiritual energy in it while the rest was drained out from under the domain.

Any sin that had gathered until now from Mark or his soldiers or anything that had been in the land began to get expelled.

“Right, let’s not waste time, I need an energy source and a proper anchor.” He said and didn’t waste time despite the weird feeling of his body and left the domain.

It was weird because the elevator was part but also wasn’t part of the domain.

He didn’t waste time with formalities as he took to the air and used the seal to get out of the mansion and shot to Elizabethtown.

The flight was as quick as the car ride but invisible, no one saw him approach the pitch black hole. He plunged right in despite the outward danger of such concentrations. His body glowed with a light golden light which kept the dark force from invading while he flew down to the bottom.

He could already see many vengeful spirits but the golden light made them recoil into the darkness as he landed.

The bottom was the huge chamber that the Reborn dead had once lived in with the fragments of spirituality. It was now completely empty but the 180 vents were still there and were the cause of the constant leak. The houses with the vents had to get seals to seal the vents but they weren’t that much help as the seals got corroded very fast.

Mark just looked at some rubble and smiled as he pulled large piles of rubble and breathing in, he released an intense spiritual flame to surround the rubble and it slowly melted.

It slowly gathered into a ball of molten rock before Mark actually took his ax out and cut his skin and converted some of the fluids in his body into ectoplasm and began to transform them into spiritual runes that flew into the mass and slowly it started to gather.

It gathered and changed until finally a sitting figure dropped down and hardened rapidly. It looked like a praying monk and Mark moved it into a position and made more and more of them until there were 12 of them circling the center point of the cave.

“There, the twelve praying monk formation that the Sin eater taught me.” he muttered but felt very weak because of the energy he needed to put with his own ectoplasm.

He made several hand seals which activated the formation and each monk actually moved and their closed eyes shined momentarily and they bowed to him at the center before they returned and clasped their hands like they were praying once more and each of them seemed to undalate an aura which eventually gathered into a very weak looking barrier.

When it fully formed, Mark nodded. It indeed was extremely weak but only by itself.

He summoned the Void Key and sighed as he made it hover over the center point and began to chant. Shockingly, twelve voices joined coming from the statues and the orb began to absorb ambient spiritual power as the last of the excess mass started to melt, returning to the size that Mark had fixed up before it was complete. Every pore was empty as it was revealed and the crack at the end as well so he would need to constantly refill to properly place new entrance points.

The mass gathered into a small drop and the main orb returned to Mark’s body while he continued chanting.

The small mass was rough at the start before it started to spin and soon became a perfect sphere until it began to pull and widen like something was pulling at the equator until finally, a black point appeared once the center had fully opened and the mass gathered at the edges.

A void portal was slowly opening and it kept opening until it was 30 cm large before Mark started the next chant which sent a signal to his domain.

The Sin Eater noticed and stopped feeding the domain instantly and when it noticed the incoming energy had stopped, the only other reaction it could connect to was the signal. The drop that had entered the ground began to rapidly spin where once the vent was located and after a bit, it finally opened.

It matched Mark’s chanting and it fully synchronized with this portal when he finished.

“Finally, the last part.” Mark said and started.

This time, the surroundings lightly trembled as the world of dark force began to gather around each statue and a controlled stream rushed into the portal.

In the void, the Sin eater was watching and he looked shocked, “This pressure… i remember, it was the extremely powerful soul that we ripped into some time ago. That means the boy lives on top of the previous home. Hahaha! This one is lucky, to think that he will have nearly 100 years of intense energy to draw from just from this one location. This pressure should be more than enough to trick the spirits as he adapts. I can also see the world that mirrors his own now and I can see he also has a much larger settlement within his new zone of influence as well as 7 others of equal size to the central home. Just these 8 ‘centers’ is enough to make him suffocate in energy. This one is truly promising. It is just a shame that he is so far from the cesspools to the north east.” the sin eater commented to itself.

The dark force poured into the domain and was instantly pulled into the formation and began to run and the bonds of sin and spiritual energy weakened and were decompressed before returning and entering the altar to be absorbed by the Virtuous heart where the two forces were split and ambient energy once more began to pump through the domain.

As for the Sin, the most southern pole began to leak a thin mist that the Sin eater instantly occupied and began to relish.

“It is still only a little better, I cannot wait for him to keep growing and start to form his culture of sin breaking. That is when the delicacy will arrive.” He muttered and fell silent as he began to eat sin with relish as it had now an nearly unlimited supply for itself. Only much later will there be so much that it could not eat on it’s own.

In Elizabethtown, Mark finally sighed as he felt the pressure on his Domain vanish entirely, signaling that he had succeeded and it was being powered once more.

As for the energy here, he looked up at the pitch black and knew it would not be resolved for a long long time but he could feel the energy pulling down from the top of the hole and coming in from the 180 holes, it looked like the original intention of the reborn dead had turned into a mechanism to make this the least toxic place for mankind in the future.

Before he could move, there were sudden roars from above as a swarm of vengeful spirits rushed down from above and like a tsunami, it smashed into the frail barrier but the reaction that was supposed to happen didn’t

Those that touched the barrier slowly crossed the barrier but they roared in pain as all their dark force was ripped from their souls before the soul was pulled through and pulled into the portal.

He instantly felt it appear from the portal but the domain instantly reacted and instead of making it go through the system, it instantly ejected the spirit into the void where the sin eater would do with it what it will.

The mindless spirits did not stop and like a wave, hundreds of vengeful spirits surged through the supposedly frail barrier and were sucked into the void.

The most surprising part about this is that after a bit, nodes of karma began to come out from the bottom and gather into a ball. Mark felt it was aimed for him because this formation was his own.

He walked over and touched it and it was absorbed into his body.

That said, he also felt that it wasn’t just from the vengeful spirits, the dark force itself was being repaid in Karma and he smiled once he realized this was happening.

A faint vibration came from the portal and became a voice in Mark’s mind, “You will need to come once every few days to harvest the Karma or it will fade after that.”

That was all he heard but he felt very good now that he had such an amazing method to obtain Karma.

“Now, getting out is a bit tricky but i think i can do this.” he said and breathed deeply and activated a technique that only worked near these portals.

His body turned into ectoplasm before gathering into the soul orb before it shot into the portal and rushed into the domain before rising rapidly up and out of the central altar where he appeared and fully reformed.

“It worked, sweet. I’ll be able to react to anything in Elizabethtown in this case. The center should be aligned now to the portal and the only inconsistency is the elevator but that is fine.” he muttered with a smile before he used a technique to sense his domain and the mortal space ‘above’ it and he looked at the entire range and how it reached Louisville.

“I need to train first and restore my ectoplasm and then get those soldiers registered. After that, I am free to properly train my body to how it should be. When I finally stabilize it, I can finally start putting other nodes in the larger towns but I need to be careful in case there are other dangers like in a small town like Elizabethtown.” he muttered and nodded.

He would need to check Soul Society archives of each town he visits outside his original perimeter now that he was a walking corpse. If there are resolved threats like a concentration of dark spirits or even other reborn dead, he would have other large sources to draw from.

For now he looked at the altar and began to first run the wisp section to gather his energy and then the poltergeist segment. His skin instantly rippled for a bit before it smashed down onto his bones, breaking them and starting to rebuild. The feedback was immense because he was under the pressure incoming from the node as well.

Any fragments he produced would break and it was like that for a while but in return, his ectoplasm was slowly refilled during the process and he eventually stopped the ripple and just reformed his bones.

“Fuck… a few month's is going to be too little and the node’s pressure is so fucking huge.” He said and pulled himself off the altar and laid there in pain.

He looked at the book and knew he would need to do that soon but he had to write the names first to get that out of the way first so after resting from the damage he took, he got up and took the book and called the elders to bring the men to near the center on the south side.

He walked slowly and stood outside of the central circle zone as they arrived slowly. His own soldiers arrived soon after his order was sent out. Mark knew he would need them to beat him to an inch of his life to properly train his mortal shell but he kept that to himself.

After a while, all of the future soldiers were gathered. Very different from the first soldiers, the people before them were very common and young, not to mention very disorderly, though only a fraction because they were made to get in military line and a section of roughly 400 men got into perfect order and were as straight as a pole at attention while the rest were bored and looking around.

“You can tell just from one look at the hardships of the future.” Mark said while the top command of his soldiers were behind and the elders near him.

Then snorted a laugh because they all agreed.

“So what can you tell me about them?” Mark asked.

“Billy.” Elder Conway said.

“Aye, the 400 pristine soldiers are casualties from the US army in the Middle East wars with Iran and that group. A lot of people are filled with similar regrets like the old fellows behind us. They had our help to get back to the US and try to resolve those but as you can tell, the result isn’t that good. The rest are many young ghosts all under 5 years since they had awakened. About half already show signs of spiritual awakening while the other has spent too little time but they are… ‘better quality’ of spirits compared to the first group and their potential for growth is higher. That said, you will have to properly educate them.”

Mark groaned, “Well, let’s get to it then, let’s start at the far left where things are going to be calm and get the orderly group through first.” Mark said.

Like that, they spent another several hours just going on by one getting their names and writing it down in his book. Thankfully there it was far less stressful but besides the soldiers, the rest just fainted from the pain and he withheld the book's complete energy until he had all the names and the book was in the altar and they were awake to properly start training.

He did the 400 soldiers within the first hour before he arrived at the first that wasn’t a soldier.

“Full name.” Mark asked.

“Are you our superior?” He asked.

Mark sighed and rubbed his brows before he waved for the soldier behind him and three of them instantly appeared behind and around him and instantly he was smashed to the ground.

“He asked you a question, you little shit fly! You will answer it without asking questions!” one of the three shouted in his face and then raised him by his hair. “Full name!” he said.

He groaned and groaned out his name and the book properly entered him and he collapsed and fainted.

Mark looked at all the others, “I’m not in the mood for conversation, if you do not want to be beaten publicly you will just tell me your full name and be done with it.” Mark said, not in the mood for jokes.

Those nearby took it seriously but of course those far enough didn’t see clearly and Mark actually had the soldiers eventually beat entire groups while he stood there. They were all on the ground before they were dragged up and he just asked again.

When an entire large group of over 50 were beaten into their place, everyone understood that they weren’t in the peaceful army they assumed it would be.

Only when the midnight star was overhead did the last name get called.

“Finally, soldiers, pick up this group of little trash turds and put them in the dormitories, you are dismissed once that is done. You can also start training because by the time you finish arranging them the book will be in the altar feeding the formation of the books.” Marks said.

The soldiers began to pick up the souls in groups of 6 or 5 each while Mark returned with the elders.

“Well, that was eventful.” he said.

“Are you okay?” Elder Conway asked.

“I’m fine. I finished fixing up the domain today and sat down to train and felt my bones ground to dust from the feedback of the ripple and they only reformed once I stopped. I’ve got a way to go to properly support it to maintain a complete skeleton before I move onto my muscles, much less the organs.” Mark replied.

“That is good, we are still here to help but we are aware that there will be a drop in exorcist activity so the state army will cover your territory for the time being until your soldiers stabilize.” Elder Conway said.

“Thanks.” Mark said, happy that he will have time to recover. The nearly 60 year age growth was not a peaceful thing and now he had to fix the problems it caused even if it did drastically strengthen him. They split up before he arrived at the altar but he didn’t instantly start feeding the book.

He checked the movement of the soldiers and knew he had time.

He took the book and blew a small spiritual flame out around it but not to melt it but to display the formations.

“Don’t worry, I’m just making small changes, not a big refining.” He said to the book spirit and on the exposed lines of formations in the book he changed one rune or another or added something in a line until both front and back of the cover were finished and then he went through every page. The changes were small but each small change piled up by the end and when the last page was changed, it was like a dam had opened and it began to glow and slightly change but the capacity of child books didn’t change but the functions slowly shifted.

When it ended he put it in the secondary altar and it instantly started to suck up spiritual power like crazy and not just for itself, to continue the transformation, but transmitting to each soul to properly start their transformation and even extra for each child book.

“Now I can build a hierarchy system with the book. It is still very basic but soon I will be able to build the merit system and the book will be able to stop karma infusion and will transform that into merit that can help in evolution.” He muttered, in awe at the amazing capacity.

In other words, the soldiers he already had would remain with their changed souls but the new ones would only receive his exorcist spiritual power while the mother book withheld the karma in the holy power.

At the same time, spaces like in the domain began to form in all the books which would permit him to place a model for the growing weapons but that required the many different functions of the book to properly make and he didn’t have the necessary materials because his domain didn’t have the materials.

He thought about the first condition to evolve his domain and then shook his head, “I can’t handle the pressure yet. When I am an official walking corpse I will probably.” he told himself.

He breathed in and calmed down before. He did activate a new formation to his altar though, it was a lockdown formation for when he wanted to close up to purely train. He activated that and finally took out the small fragment from the Void Key that the Sin Eater had given him and began to examine it.

Just as it had explained, the fragment was similar to the key and had pores that needed to be filled to grow before it was fed immense energy so he did just that and filled each pore and only when he was done did he put it on one of the secondary altars.

It began to suck up spiritual power like a pit before he did the same to the void key so that it would produce its excess mass once more so that he would be ready. It took another hour until it was full and he placed it on the third of four altars and finally was done with his prep work and finally started to train on his own.

As for those in the surroundings, when he placed the book, the connection was completely opened and spiritual power rushed forward.

Although it is said that the book will withhold the karma, that was after the child book fully transformed as well as when their souls were cleansed of sin and had the sufficient karma to replace it.

At this moment, 1,600 souls who had begun to train the exorcist training technique were releasing a mist of sin that was instantly sucked into the ground and processed perfectly without anything being seemingly wrong with it.

Like the first, it took upwards of 6 hours for the purple flames to finally expel the last of the sin and after another hour the souls were balanced with karma before the karma was bottled up at long last and the flames turned white but still burned as strongly.

The flame weakened slowly until all that was left were the unconscious souls over their altars receiving a stable supply of pure spiritual power to replenish their souls.

Mark on the other hand didn’t stop this time as he continued through the night and almost through the entire week that the new recruits were unconscious just training his skeleton.

When he finally felt their minds start to stir and start to wake up, his bones were in perfect solid state while rippling with waves comparable to a sea storm but they were solid.

Countless micro cracks formed and were healed instantly and it slowly weakened until his bones stabilized and finished healing.

“My bones are finally able to withstand the ripple as a solid object now.” He smiled. He could sense the soldiers getting up but they were only the first.

“I spent the week here so let’s gather the karma at the portal before I go wake them all up.” He said.

He gathered the fragment and used the void key to transport himself through the domain to the portal and come out safely at the other end.

When he came out, he was shocked when he saw a head sized orb of karma that was actually releasing mist from evaporating energy.

“Holy shit…” Mark said as he saw that energy and even the heat coming off it.

He looked almost a little fearful but he breathed in and touched both sides and the karma finally found the source of its creation and began to fill his body.

It was hot like boiling water and it entered his body before it gathered around his core. It spread to every corner of his body and filled his dead shell of a body with warmth.

Even he felt a little suffocated by the amount of energy. He took a moment to check and was shocked that this was equal to nearly 8,000 vengeful spirits being purged. In fact, there were actually at least 2,000 vengeful spirits that were actually purged in the process of attacking the portal.

This was because of the trap that the barrier created, it seemed frail which led even vengeful spirits to attack because it didn’t activate their instinct to flee, instead it incited them to attack it.

He huffed and only when he finally felt his body calm down he was able to return to the domain the way he came and sit down to train for roughly another hour as his body processed the karma into more concentrated holy power.

When he finally walked out, he felt great, like he had a living body even. The feeling of softness in his muscles and organs was still there but his bones were now drastically harder and he was sure to be much stronger now.

Finally he deactivated the altars lockdown mode and called for the soldiers to wake up all the new recruits so that they can start training.

At the same time, Mark checked how the Book of Registry changed.

“Hmm, it seems that 12 is a very important number for Sin Eaters, the formation and even the book changes involve that. I can support 12 commanders with this and from them I can funnel the energy down the ranks. As I go up the ranks this will transmit down into 12 divisions as well. If that is the case, I will need to pick proper heads of divisions as well later on.” He muttered before closing the book and storing it while holding only his book that bound him to earth and headed to the training ground and waited for the recruits and soldiers to start to appear.