Mark was completely baffled by the description of how walking corpses trained, particularly due to the shortened explanation. He got so irritated as he tried to piece it together that he called Billy.

Naturally the cowboy was shocked by the number of child books but Mark didn’t allow him to dwell on it as he instantly started to ask about the training method.

“What the hell is with this description ‘Walking corpse: The first layer of the mortal shell fully forms but they lack vital signs and are easy to notice if it was one formed of ectoplasm. Those with their original mortal shells, they will be able to form all of their mortal shell at mortal levels.’ how does that explain how the fuck to train.” Mark asked.

Billy smiled when he saw that and sat down.

“It said it, the ‘first layer’ of the mortal shell is formed. For normal poltergeists, they usually solidify their skin and bones before their ectoplasm of the rest automatically solidifies once it has taken shape, it would be comparable to the ‘soft’ organs you talked about but they are still solid. You did the same, the difference is that you didn’t notice what was lacking. When it says ‘first layer’ it means that very seriously on the biological level. Skin, bones and organs are formed of several ‘layers’ in their biological structure. Your body and all your organs are formed of 100% the first layer of each organ. That is why your stomach, the only open ‘sack’ that you break down matters to energy and your intestines are useless closed off muscles. Even your heart is one big muscle with no passage and the arteries and veins are just tubes of muscles with no passage for blood.” Billy explained.

“So… despite having a natural mortal shell, the internal structure is wrong?” He asked.

“Yes. For example, I’ve personally already formed all of my skin, all layers of my heart muscles and opened all my arteries. That is why it is easy for me to move around undetected, my heart has the proper vessels and even has a heartbeat despite only being filled with liquid ectoplasm for now. I’m in the process of producing my skeleton’s third layer, the spongy tissue which also tends to be what produces blood and plasma which will in turn produce blood.” He explained.

“I see… that makes more sense if you put it like that.” Mark said.

“If you look at the technique, it is heavily divided by different organs and structures. My suggestion for you is to do the heart first and perfect it because it goes through the entire body.” Billy said.

“What about the brain and nerves?” Mark asked.

“That is my next one I will do after I finish.” Billy said.

“Yeah but won’t it be harder with your solid bones?” Mark asked.

Billy shrugged, “It depends how you want to do it honestly but I would do muscles and organs last because they are the most complex. You will be reforging each cell with their proper function. It is the reason why the walking corpse is a 10 year old phantom but the stiff corpse is 100 year old. The time to grow that naturally is just that long.” He said.

Mark nodded understanding and felt calmer after getting the mystery behind this out. “Fuck the writers of this, shit suck hard.” Mark said and wanted to rewrite this passage but he didn’t have the authority to modify his own book.

“Well, it is the librarians from 100 to 500 years ago managing the writing so you will find a lot of head scratching stuff the higher rank things get since only the older fellows are at that point.” Billy explained why it was so weird.

“Fine, thanks for the help and sticking around after the elders left.” Mark said.

“Someone needs to watch over you.” He said. “Still… this is a lot of books.” He said.

“Is it? I’ll soon be expanding my domain's population to a healthier amount and will need people but more than that is that we will need a proper police force throughout the area.” Mark said.

“Do you think the book will change and improve?” Billy asked.

“Probably, I’ve made some small efficiency improvements in the spiritual structure of the books so I’m hoping that it will start to improve. Even if each book is reduced to 1 page each child book, if they increase to handle over 10 people then I am set.” He said.

Billy nodded because that would be 10,000 soldiers and would truly constitute an army.

“How much did you change it?” He asked.

“Well… it was originally a very ‘raw’ tool but after studying for a year I’ve started to pick up small things that could improve such as a hierarchy system. It will remove a lot of pressure from the main book. It would make organization and feedback better. That way you can see who is honestly better despite getting a weaker impact of energy instead of everyone swallowing up the same huge impact.” Mark explained.

“Oh, that is true, wisps, poltergeists and walking corpses all need different amounts of energy so if it can be funneled to cut costs then it would really improve the formation of the book.” He said. “Do you plan to publish the changes?”

“It’s still experimental so no. Once I’ve confirmed actual progress and established the proper formation blueprints for it then I will publish.” Mark explained

“Are these changes possible on other developed books?” He asked, worriedly.

“Well… the efficiency one yes but I’m sure there are people much better in spiritual knowledge studying to do the same thing. They might find even better stuff than me so you shouldn’t worry about just mine.” Mark said.

Billy nodded and thought for a while. “I heard you asked about recruiting fragments?” He asked.

“Yeah, I just made sure to confirm how it would work. I also plan to build a prison to properly control phantoms that cause trouble. It would be too easy to just send them on after all.” He said.

“A prison after death doesn’t seem like much.” He said.

“Yeah but who wants to face prison time even after death? Phantoms that do evil will have to pay the price beyond just feeling their soul break and have me piece it together again.” Mark explained.

Billy felt his brow twitch that it was indeed true that Mark could make a torture out of using his soul eyes to pull souls back.

“Alright, I’ve got work to do, when you finally decide to bring people, make sure to inform me so I can call others like me to properly register them.” He said.

Mark nodded and let him off before looking at the system of separate training systems for each part of his body.

“Let’s do circulation and nerves first. Even the skin has nerves and blood vessels so let’s not make it harder on myself.” He said but he didn’t start immediately.

Instead he began to think about the countless things in the Sin eater’s information in thought. He slowly pulled and organized everything before taking out paper and started drawing out blue prints. These were special tools, it was the tools that the books would hold as the base models for its fighters. Among them was also clothing which was higher quality than the one they had now.

“Reaper’s Blade, Soul Chain, Reaper's Garbs, Capture orb. These are the basic wisp tools that beginners get. Poltergeist, everything slowly evolves with the person in question and then they will also obtain the Nether Flame spark which will be housed in their souls. Damn, this is going to be a harsh reward if they commit crimes and sin with power.” He said and smiled.

The flame was a very powerful weapon controlled and powered by holy power, not spiritual power. When absorbed by something with sin, it will instantly attack that being. If the sin is low and they have sufficient karma but never fully replace sin for karma, the flame will do that and stabilize the soul. With the merit system controlling the flow of karma, all the karma will flow into their books and release only what the book permits until they are elevated in rank.

“With the flame empowering the chains and sword they both evolve greatly and the capture orb will drastically increase in size and be able to hold stronger dark spirits. The question is what others will think about it once it is finally done. I don’t have any way to explain how I came upon the concept for Nether flames because it doesn’t exist on earth yet. The lanterns are still a secret as well.” He muttered.

He closed his eyes and held his head in thought while sitting in his altar as he looked in depth at exactly ‘what’ nether flames were.

He continued to organize the information while he looked for specifics including organizing the massive list of underworld material. In the end he was able to find it.

“Nether flame: A flame born when the energies of the void mixed when sin is mixed with mortal world energy, you know it as dark force. The reaction of breaking it generates a momentary spark of special power which gathers the energy of the void and forms into a special flame which burns sin. This energy has a high affinity to karma and can be mass produced if the portal to the void is opened during a man-made process of dark force purification. It does, however, consume a very large amount of holy power.”

Mark’s face shined brightly when he came upon this. “That’s right, this did appear and was part of the massive pack of information that I purchased to fill the walking corpse segment. I purchased all 6 tiers of information and just skimmed over it but there was a ritual for this.” he said and quickly began to look for it on the book’s codex until he finally found it and read through it.

“Hmm… the formation is already half complete. It takes only one more additional circle that contains the instructions.” he muttered.

That said, he was surprised that the book turned white and turned back to the codex and the information right under shined and opened a new section that seemed like a continuation.

“Huh! They already have a nether flame formation!” He said and looked through it.

“I see, it’s called a spiritual flame. The energy of the reaction in breaking the dark force is special and was noticed long ago making it possible for them to fabricate rare Yin flames that ghosts could carry. Nether flames are Yang flames meaning it is dangerous to phantoms though and only those with more karma than sin can store them. Interesting.” He said.

He stored this in his mind because it was important for his own growth while looking at the information for the walking corpse tools.

When he got to that point he frowned as he was getting to rather cryptic things. “Well… there are a lot of things for sure, although i learned everything forcefully but I’ve got to spend a lot of time to arrange all the information.” he said, shaking his head.

He could only quickly organize blueprints that were hard to understand and he could feel the world of spiritual knowledge passing by as he skimmed. Among the things were dozens of different models of blades for both poltergeist and walking corpse stages

“Hmm… it seems I have to ‘raise’ each model and put it in the book. The book would in turn pick the best option but many of these looked almost demonic despite nether flame being karma energy. Just goes to show Sin eaters aren’t heavenly creatures.” He muttered as he drew out every model and their specific formations. The material was the same but it was like adding layers, in fact, it basically was. The book would require more and more materials to transform and evolve the weapon into a higher form by producing layers in the weapons.

Soon after he found the armor as well and nodded.

When he got through the weapons, he came upon a building blueprint and examined it and frowned. “This is an altar… a massive one, calling it a castle is probably better, damn.” He said shocked by the design. There when he started to sort, he didn’t find one, he found countless and eventually found separate parts for all the materials.

“This is my central home in the domain meant for the lord of the underworld.” he muttered. He decided not to draw this out since he was far from that point.

After moving along he found something different however that made him grin.

“Soul call platform. A special platform which is created on a special location inside the domain. There are many unique ‘pooling’ areas which can be identified using the art of Feng Shui to find the geographical position. Once this is created, it will become the ‘entrance of hell’ and will draw in souls of the dead. Within a short time, fragmented souls will gather and piece themselves before appearing in the domain. It is also used to call upon special souls of high merit but not high enough to be sent to heaven or with too much sin initially.” he read.

Right under it was another structure that is built right in front of it, the Gates of hell.

‘This structure isn’t buildable, it will form once the ritual to produce the soul calling platform is complete and will become the first official ‘office of the underworld’.

“As great as both of these are, I’m too weak to hold up against the impact of making this. I need to be at least an earthbound spirit and have at least the two books formed. Maybe even the entire thing formed and bonded with the domain to make it into the underworld. Otherwise my soldiers will not be able to properly see the sin’s and sort the souls.” he thought in silence.

To say nothing else, the space required to house so many souls is not possible and he knew he couldn’t do anything extensive with his domain. The Nether flame can still be explained with the second formation when piloted by someone with holy power but the gates of hell. There is no way he will actually know how this works.

After that were many different structures, which required these special locations. This wasn’t China which had the yellow river or whatever that ran through the underworld bringing with it unlimited power and separated the land of death and life.

Mark could see many of these things and found that the underworld had many ‘solid’ aspects that needed to be adhered to.

The first was that it required the gate, second is that once it formed, there would eventually be a tribulation that would form a massive ocean on one side which was lethal to the living and on either side required a port and the creation of a special boat that can cross this ocean safely. Under this was an abyss, it was basically open to the void and the water sealed void beasts from invading the domain but souls that fall in are subject to other creatures known as soul eaters.

If this ocean was not properly established and the rule of it properly organized, it would become a place which leaked the immense energy of sin that the domain was filtering as well. That said, it brought with it immense benefits as well because it permitted more void energy to enter and be caught in the flow, producing the many exceptionally rare nether materials in the ever growing list in his head.

Establishing the river of death and the gate of hell was the first step to making a proper underworld. When he reached the end of the blueprints for the walking corpse rank, he found his knowledge locked. What he could vaguely peek at hurt his head and knew that he had to learn all spiritual knowledge from the previous steps.

“This is more than enough to work with for years to come.” Mark said and rubbed his head before getting up and ordering materials to produce all the models for the reaper weapons up to the walking corpse rank. He looked at his ax and smiled because it already fit more than two thirds of the conditions and he needed to just modify the earlier forms and modify a few parts of the formations and change some runes before finally adding the third layer.

After that he needed to make a very large number of swords from which the models would branch.

For the soul chain, he would need to work on it over time with his own version of it. As time goes on it becomes a complicated system which increases the number over time. From what he understood, when it got really high, he would be able to extend it over an entire state and seal the area down to not allow anything to escape.

The only thing that might give him away is that among the requirements is the core of a sword embryo.

These are similar to book embryos but they aren’t sentient but they are very spiritual. Of course, they aren’t nearly as rare or nearly as valuable and basically constitute the heart of a spiritual weapon and are the main material for any spiritual weapon.

“I’ve really used a lot of money recently.” He muttered and checked the amount he had left and sighed but couldn’t do much except wait for farm work to start producing excess that he could sell. Though he did find a tibid about burning real money into spirit dollars but this would require the money to already be in the print and everything and he had no way to print money and he doubted anyone would let him do it.

He couldn’t do much about it so until he could he wouldn’t touch anything on that and headed out to test his lanterns.

He looked through the app and just any random specter. He drove quickly to the haunted residence and walked in.

Many unfortunate souls couldn’t move on and were even turned into specters or even vengeful spirits so there was still a lot of work to do.

When he arrived he didn’t take much time to find it, his ability to see through spirits was even higher now and he didn’t even speak as he looked at the soul and the veil of dark force forming around it caused it to write the name of this person.

“Hmm… it’s a child!” He said, shocked. It looked distorted on the count of the dark force that infected the poor thing and it was very degraded already but it was still a specter. “Poor little guy, let’s gather you up.” He said and extended his hand.

Instantly the specter roared in pain before his body broke down and turned into a ball of soul flame and rested in his hand.

He raised it and called the remaining parts and soon a few flashes came through the building until the sin fell and the corrupt soul was complete. The sad part is that the last parts of the consciousness was in several pieces showing how degraded it had been.

He tossed it out and it was even more warped as it tried to conform to the changes in the soul and try to push out the dark force while the consciousness was extremely damaged.

The child had no sins, unless a child was taught to kill and had killed they had no real sins. The sin wrapping him was not his own so Mark took out one of the lanterns from a ring and with his spiritual power he opened the lid and the specter instantly looked and howled before turning to run but a powerful suction came as Mark activated the lantern and the specter was pulled as it returned into the flame form and was captured and sealed inside.

To Mark, he could feel a pained howling like a monster while he sensed the top lid pulling sin as if it was smoke.

Mark looked deep into the flame and at the center was the form of a crying child while the sin around it was what roared.

“Good, the child’s soul itself is not injured. Once the sin decreases, the flame should strengthen the damaged soul fragments and heal the total construction.” he nodded. Although painful, this was a perfect ‘cure’ to victims like this. Sadly, he was the only one that could actually do that but others could capture specters and he could call on fragments in secret. It would help, he still remembered the cloud of damaged fragments he had gathered outside of Elizabethtown.

When he thought of that, his eyes suddenly shined but he stopped for a moment and looked at the surroundings before the lantern opened and produced a new and more powerful suction.

Slowly dark mist came out from the walls and few into the open lantern thicker and thicker until the house produced no more. The heavily stuck dark force had been stripped away and he smiled as he put away that lantern and took another out and made sure of that.

“Although it doesn’t produce the ability to make the nether flame with the dark force, this is more than sufficient to clean the surface. Now, let’s get to those damaged fragments before they fully vanish!” He said and quickly ran out and drove to the area just outside of town.

When he arrived, he scowled when he saw the condition of all of them had deteriorated. Limbs were literally breaking and the fragments were rotting to the point that it almost caused eyes to pop out.

“Urg!” He groaned and almost vomited, seeing the near zombie-like beings, in the air.

He had to shake his head quickly before he looked at one and slowly the name appeared and he was happy that it still worked with this level of damage.

He quickly took out a lantern and summoned the fragment.

He felt cold when he saw how many rotting pieces the fragment had broken into and gathered at his hand.

He continued to call and what came was as expected, an angry specter but it could do nothing as the other pieces also came and its body turned into a soul flame and gathered into a whole.

A thick black light of the sin appeared and Mark opened the lantern which pulled the flame inside before sealing it.

He didn’t wait to confirm and stored it before doing the next. Sadly he only had 100 of them and there were far more souls. He looked through the souls and checked the sin and merits and began to look through their professions. Healing them would make them far better as workers that possessed higher education. At the moment, his domain required skilled professionals.

He looked through them and gathered 98 others whose professions ranged from carpenter to civil engineer and lawyer. There weren’t many since this town previously only had 30 thousand but it was a start.

As for the rest, he gathered them up and fully sent them to the afterlife.

“Alright, that worked out well… let’s see how the domain reacts to the active lanterns. My stuff should also be arriving so I can start right after on the weapons.” he said excited to see the reaction of many things and headed back to find the materials and pay for the delivery before taking it inside.

***

In another domain, one of the Nature spirits that had moved into the capital city of Kentucky, he was reading a report.

“Mark Black has been acting strangely recently sir. Ever since that orb completed and he fainted and seemingly aged, he has been doing many things that aren’t like him before.” a voice said through the computer while the nature spirit just looked through the files.

“Billy, what do you think of the orb? I did get a report from Elder Conway and how he used that orb as a medium to teleport even those stiff corpse old men out of there.” he said.

“The last few days have been weird, he was quite respectful before, after the orb came and his sudden 3 month trance, then he… well.” Billy said.

“The orb gave him a higher control and perception of the interior of the domain. After he also got first hand information and compared it to what he felt, he felt betrayed by those you personally see as allies. The only reason those old corpses did what they did is because Mark can’t do anything to them, they are stronger, now there are only walking corpses in the domain and he is an exorcist who is stronger. What he is doing is maturing to develop as a proper ruler of quite a decent amount of land if you think about it. When he reaches my level of strength, he will have enough land to match the national size of most small nations.” The nature spirit said.

Billy was silent for a while, “The other thing I find strange is the feeling of his domain. It feels different than a few months ago. Initially there was no problem but after a bit it got more obvious, it is like I feel something dangerous under my feet when i walk through it. Other walking corpses agree while weaker phantoms or Mark’s soldiers don’t feel anything. The further from the center, the safer they feel as well.” Billy explained.

The nature spirit just shook his head, “Of course they would feel safer, if they are phantoms, being close to the vent is dangerous to their survival because the spiritual pressure is much higher, not to mention that the energy his vent produces goes through a virtuous heart and comes out as lightly affected holy power. What you feel is likely your sin reacting to his holy power. You aren’t an exorcist so you naturally don’t generate karma.” the nature spirit said.

“Yes sir.” Billy replied.

“Good, now tell me about these changes he is making to the book of registry?” he asked

“I didn’t get much, he mostly said that he is just doing tiny changes to the spiritual runes to improve energy efficiency. He said he aims to eventually upgrade the book to be able to divide the feedback in an hierarchy system so that weaker members or members with less merit will receive only the sufficient for their rank while higher ranked and those he favors will be in higher positions and receive greater amounts of energy and be able to grow more efficiently. It seems he is only at the planning stage and fixing the existing book at the moment.” he explained.

The Nature spirit’s eyes shone when he heard that because it was a great way to change the book. It was still an unorganized tool which only fed the same amount of energy to all registered names but if it can be organized, they can assign ranks by merit and rank and would help to improve the organization of the armies. Talented people can also be found if they have higher growth with weaker energy sources and these can be cultivated into loyal followers.

“That is indeed a great method. Also, I got a report that he ordered sword core embryos.” He said.

“I don’t know about that. I assume that because he learned spiritual forging he wants to save the extra money by training to do the art to supply weapons instead of having to constantly pay for us to make weapons for him.” Billy said.

“Smart man, if you can’t make your own weapons then that means you are doomed to fail as the leader of a military. This is fine however, you mentioned a strange tool?” He asked.

“Yeah, it was something he was examining as I arrived and put it away when I got close. It sent a cold down my spine as soon as I saw it. It had a very weak green flame but I can’t think of anything with green flame that could put that much fear in me.” He said.

“Green flame… I’ve never really heard of any spiritual fire that was green.” the nature spirit said. “Then again, I’m also not someone with Holy Power or a virtuous soul.” he said pointing out the main component of difference between them.

“Do you think it has to do with his holy power?” Billy asked.

“Most definitely, you underestimate the capacity of this. If it was easy to get, everyone would attempt to form the soul.” he said.

“But isn’t it just purging 10,000 dark spirits, I know he passed on fragmented souls as well and earned karma but…”

“Don’t underestimate the task. He did 10,000 specters and broken souls, it might have seemed fast but he spent most of his first year after becoming a wisp to do that and because he wanted to. For a normal exorcist, they will do ten or twenty equal rank jobs to supply the money for their living expenses at most, not to mention that common phantoms can’t even purge ghosts until now.” he explained.

Billy nodded and sighed. The virtuous souls were one of the biggest things that differentiated Mark from common phantoms. The fact that all his soldiers get their sin purged and lightly fused with karma in its place was unique as well.

“Most likely the flame you saw was something resulting from his Karma, in other words, a strong yang flame bred by a spiritual being. It is different from the common Yin flames born from normal souls which contain the sin fragment instead.” the nature spirit said, understanding the basic nature.

“How dangerous is that to ghosts?” Billy asked.

“Who knows, from what you said, it is likely that he can’t exactly produce it himself, it is likely a tool he is developing to capture dark spirits for some reason, maybe it is a seal and support item for all we know.” He said.

“I see… I just wonder where he is getting so much inspiration.” Billy said.

“Is it strange? A young man born at the turn of the century with so many animated cartoons with so many wild and crazy plots, fantasy novels of what people imagine the underworld and many other things.” the nature spirit said, showing his wisdom.

“Wait, you’re saying that Mark might actually be thinking of making an underworld? Like hell?” Billy asked.

“Isn’t that basically Soul Society’s greatest dream? A man whose greatest regret is to be the most famous and well known exorcist, it isn’t strange that he is a major fan of anything occult to mortals and has likely watched many of these things. As time passes, the things he once saw or once read about is going to mix with his ever increasing knowledge of spiritual runes and formation building and it will result in greater and greater artifacts, especially with his never ending rise of strength.” the spirit said.

Billy frowned while looking at the screen, “Sir, within the next 10 years, how high do you think he will get?” Billy asked.

The nature spirit sat back and pulled up Billy’s video feed.

“He was said to have aged to 60 years old or so and was rapidly growing to walking corpse when his body solidified the first layer. With the exorcist training method, I feel that his soul isn’t finished growing, he was just limited by the technique that aimed to only form the first layer. Exorcists have been known to reach the stiff corpse by 20 years old because their souls aging causes a lot of effects like how herbs grow more spiritual with age as well. I wager a guess that he will still be experiencing explosive growth. How this impacts his work, I don't know but this is just my guess.” he said.

Billy looked uncertain, “Is it safe?” He asked.

“There have been so many ghosts before him that we have had people as the same thing and yet mortal civilization and society is standing, soul society is standing and we are here to speak of this. Even if he becomes a threat, unless he becomes a spirit lord, there will always be someone to deal with him.” he said with confidence.

Billy thought and nodded.

“In that case, you’re dismissed, just keep watching out for his changes.” He said.

“Yes sir.” Billy replied and the video feed shut.

The Nature spirit was sitting back before turning to the window behind him to see the open world that had formed of his domain expanding far into the horizon with red flora.

“Green flames that put fear in ghosts…” he muttered before he expanded his finger and a sharp but shiny fang appeared and he felt the interaction with his domain and through it he could feel the entire domain. After some sensing he felt a strangeness and pulled it only to find a red crystal with the embers of a green spark in the center.

He watched it and looked at it on all sides. He then looked at the fang and began to fill the pores in its structure before taking the crystal and going to a spiritual forger to see if he can’t make anything with this crystal.