After almost a week, Mark sighed as he finally finished with the last weapon.

“Damn, that was exhausting, that said I finally finished all 26 models and even made it to the walking corpse models.” He said smiling as he looked at all the models.

All over the walls were weapons and many of them looked morbid and almost evil in design. One thing in common is that they were skeletal in design but they lacked a great deal of ‘danger’. In retrospect, they weren’t exactly ‘complete’ because every weapon was the model. If it was an official one, the nether flames would run along them and truly make them dangerous.

“I think the child books should also be complete.” Mark muttered and stored all but the last weapon that he took.

Calling it from the middle of the forge, a massive one headed axe. Indeed, this was Mark’s personal ax and now the material had changed from spiritual wood to a white bone material and the head went from jadite to dull white. That said, even without nether flames, the ax was exceptionally powerful. It finally gained a 3rd layer. All the previous models were practice materials so that he did not screw up the rearrangement of the previous two layers and the creation of the third.

He still had the strength to carry and move it with one hand but he rested it against his shoulder and felt very comfortable with the weapon as powerful as it was. He already ordered the creation of the purification formation with the more advanced circle. In all honesty, the formation can be activated without the extra part to function as a normal dark force cleanser so it also worked.

It also made sense that he got it because Elizabethtown was constantly swamped with it and they drew endless amounts of dark force from the hole, so instead of going to another domain to purify it, why not just build their own here.

Everything was falling into place. That said, his axe actually scared ghosts that passed and he was happy with the result. If it didn’t scare anyone then there would be no point in it.

In his mind, every tool was exceptionally vital to the creation of a force that normal phantoms and specters would fear at the instinctive level. However this fear was not cultivated instantly, it had to be a collection of many parts to make it run properly and most people were just fearful of the dangerous appearance, not the actual aura it emitted.

When he arrived at the altar, he saw all the burned books in perfect condition and almost shining.

“Seems I underestimated the amount of energy that is pumping through here.” He muttered and smiled.

He recalled his ax and began to pull the books out from the main altar and scanned all of them and divided them into their grouping.

Only when the last book was identified he turned to the smallest pile and started to put them into the main book at the back.

Two new pages would be born each time until the last of the hundred.

The already large book grew a small bit so that the thickness didn’t hinder its function and he smiled because it had just finished and fixed the previous three levels that had been improperly built into it.

“The moment of truth is after the next hundred, this is an entire segment for energy efficiency and should reduce everything to 1 page per book, hopefully it will also increase the number of followers as well.” He said and started on the next hundred.

It was normal until the last book when it shined once more and the thick, nearly 1,000 page book slowly thinned by half as expected before the book opened and the spirit began to write.

“Current number of child books: 500

Current number of pages 500, 1 pages per book

Currently the book can support 10 people per book

Total number of child books: 5,000.”

“Hell yes! Although it didn’t double, it certainly increased!” he said and he still had 500 more child books to build the increasingly complex system of books. Even if the book didn’t increase more per page, he would have 10,000 at the minimum. It was obvious that it wasn’t the case however because the book would evolve. Once it incorporated everything, it would go into a rest period and would literally become a sinkhole for energy as it evolved.

“That means I should be able to safely build the hierarchy. The question now is how I should filter among the soldiers.” He muttered.

With a smile on his face, he continued adding more of the child books and each of them would make subtle changes and he could feel new functions slowly forming, just like how he had rearranged the names for the obedient and disobedient, he was soon going to be able to build entire squadron systems and divisions among them.

When he finally put the last book in, the Book of Ghostly Registry shined as the cover began to change and formed a gold metal border along the edge and along the edges of the spine before it’s name turned into gold stitching.

He let it finish the aesthetic changes before sensing the book’s structure.

After about half an hour he nodded, “Perfect, I should be able to form 12 secondary mother books which go to each commander. All changes in them are reflected in my main book but the formation is easier to handle.” He said and smiled.

The book was 1000 pages thick now, like a dictionary. Of course, the size had increased to make it seem like a normal book for the number of pages.

“Current number of child books: 1,000

Current number of pages 1,000, 1 pages per book

Currently the book can support 10 people per book

Total number of child books: 10,000.”

“With energy and time, how large do you think the formation can get?” He asked.

The ink of the page vanished and the book replied, “Many of the new formations are still inactive or not fully powered due to insufficient energy and spiritual evolution. The book is functioning with the formations of only the first 600 child books. It can store weapon models and the Nether Flame.”

“Perfect.” He said and began to take out the models. The first weapon he took was a regular white sword. It was the base for all weapons. It was wisp strength and basically the most basic of weapons.

After that he got the poltergeist rank and one by one he called out the type of weapon and the book magically absorbed it in a small space within. These would become the models for all weapons. Following poltergeist was the walking corpse rank weapons, at the end it was a copy of Mark’s axe. He naturally would keep his own bonded axe. When it was done, the book lightly glowed and formed embroidering on the cover. Each piece of the formation that was properly activated always improved it more, it was why the Sin Eater didn’t care about the materials because what was infused into each child book would slowly gather. The same for every tool and item infused into the book. The most important though was the Source Nether Flame that would be used to give birth to all soldier’s nether flames.

It was honestly the center of a lot of formations so it was vital to the advancement of the book. Without it, he doubted the book would evolve to support more than 20,000 members. With it though, he wasn’t entirely sure.

Interestingly, he actually felt his own ax react and took it out and charged both with spiritual power and saw it draw a spiritual line into the book and the formation of its body slowly resonated until it became part of the system to draw from the book.

It got pulled into the book but with a thought it would come out just like normal and maybe even a little faster.

Furthermore, with it properly activated by the book it took just a thought from Mark and it took the form of the base level sword and he wouldn’t exert more power than that.

“Perfect.” He said and stored both of them and then checked with the HQ staff about the formation.

“Yes sir, It is already complete and has been in use for the last 3 days.” the staff member said.

“Perfect.” Mark said and decided to head over and finish the formation.

It was on the south side and he found pillars like a stonehenge. An investigator was working the formation and breaking sin and Mark felt the intense energy being released.

He waited for the current process to finish and the Investigator to sigh and turn around, “Greeting sir, need something?” He asked.

“Yes, I’m sure you noticed that the purification formation I asked to build was the more complex one for those who make spiritual Flame sources.” Mark asked.

“Does sir want a Yin Flame?” he asked.

“Naturally, however, I hope to do it myself.” He said.

He blinked confused, “It is a dangerous process sir, a single mishap would result in an immense discharge of energy comparable to fission reactions.” He said.

“I am aware but as someone with a Virgious soul and not a normal one with the Sin fragment, a Yin Flame isn’t entirely suitable.” He explained.

When he said that, the investigator suddenly understood, “Ah, that makes sense. Holy power would actually counter the normal aspect of Yin flames and eventually kill it. I see but if that is the case then let me control the formation and you power it then.” He said.

“Do you know how it works?” He asked.

“Investigators are required to be able to activate all functions of this formation because yin flames are a big money making process. It also drives a lot of energy through it so under normal circumstances, the price charged is in the millions but that is only if the person asking wants us to power the formation. If you are powering it the price is pretty cheap, just 100k is enough because the technical aspect is extremely difficult.” He explained.

“That is fine then.” He said and paid up front.

The investigator took it with a smile and asked for a moment of respite to gather his energy and rest while reviewing the process since it had been years since he last did it. Mark actually joined to see and compared it to the information in his head and surprisingly it was the same thing.

“Seems Sin eaters have been pretty present in teaching things in preparations for the appearance of the underworlds.” he thought.

After some time the investigator nodded, “Alright, I got it. You just need to stand over here and when I say, release your holy power.” He said.

He put Mark in one spot and told him the important parts of how to make this work. Mark naturally knew as well but he couldn’t show it so he just let him talk until it was time to work.

The Investigator still had a lot of unpurified crystals with dark force so he filled up the formation with them and then got near the activation zone and finally nodded to Mark, “You can start.” He said and made a hand seal while Mark was sitting and put his hand down on specific points that the investigator did not even mention but he knew were the proper energy ports in the formation.

From them, the white lines rapidly shined and changed to golden before going up each pillar as the energy spread through the formation but the Investigator had closed his eyes to focus and the dark force began to break out once the last pillar began to glow.

Slowly in the air, a small portal began to form and it opened to only about the size of a person’s head but it was enough to gather the void energies while the dark force began to shine and countless forces began to appear beyond just the powers of spiritual energy and sin.

Bolts of lightning smashed between the portal and the cloud of dark force that grew as more power gathered and Mark watched but began to sweat as he felt the amount of energy used for this.

As the mass of energy slowly split between a dense cold sin and ambient spiritual energy, a huge force between them formed trying to pull them together and that was when the void energy, just a tiny cloud, formed while visible stands of holy power gathered in the middle of that chaos and suddenly it began to blend and suck up that force pushing aside both energies and growing hotter and hotter until the last of the bonding force was absorbed and the Sin was absorbed into half of the crystals and the pure spiritual energy into the other half but at the center of it all a fierce orb of power came and Mark frowned as he moved the position of his hands and several parts of the formation deactivated and activated in a different sequence.

It surprised the investigator to feel the change but the pressure on his mind instantly weakened and he continued and the formation began to affect the energy.

With the purification done, all the power focused on making the flame source and Mark’s holy power spilled out to the point that he converted most of the interior of his body to ectoplasm to direct more energy to the process and it continued for a good hour until finally, he felt something spark at the center and suddenly the orb seemed to implode as that small point sucked up every last bit of power in the orb and formation turning it off.

After a silent moment that the investigator opened his eyes to see what happened, a small point suddenly ignited a small green flame but instantly the investigator felt his heart in his throat.

“W-what is that flame…” He muttered.

Mark, on the other hand, smiled, “It worked!” he said and sighed in relief. Different from the normal investigator, Mark felt a comfortable feeling from the flame and raised his hand to call it.

“Wait! That’s dangerous!” he shouted but the flame flew at his call and peacefully sat in his hand. “H-how?!” The investigator said but didn’t dare get close.

“What do you mean, how? Didn’t we already discuss this before even starting?” He said and looked at him strangely as he got up. Mark felt exhausted however but the flame was formed so there was no problem and he would just need to rest.

“T-that isn’t safe to have here?!” the investigator said.

“Well, if it touched a normal ghost that is true but that is honestly why I asked to make it. Thank you for the help.” He said and walked tiredly to the altar where he sat down leaving the dumbstruck investigator.

This time when he walked holding the flame, besides his soldiers, everyone that crossed his path had genuine fear as they looked at the flame and this is the true result he wanted. The elders had shown Mark that without fear of someone’s power, they would not respect their authority even in their own homes.

He didn’t know the strength of this but he was sure that it would be a big boost that would set his soldiers apart.

At the altar, he took a rest and absorbed ambient energy, not directly from the altar, and regained some energy until he had enough to spare for the process.

Compared to the weapons, infusing the flame into the book was not as easy an affair so he put the book into the central altar where it instantly began to suck up power like crazy before moving the flame above it and sitting down kneeled and began to a long complex chant.

The feeling of the flame kept everyone away unlike before and he was undisturbed as small fragments of the source flame came out and the book opened to absorb it. Without saying anything else of it, the book was surrounded by the tiny bits of flames and each time would come out singed but would gather power and its formations would repair itself after about a minute and a new piece would come down.

A day went on like this until the very last piece, and the very core of the flame, was finally absorbed. The entire book’s cover had changed to a natural black while all the embroidery was almost like the flame had been made into threads.

When it did that the book fell silent but it became a whale even stronger than before as the flame and the book was now sucking up power together to grow.

Mark sighed and smiled with a lot of sweat.

“This is great, finally done and now I just need to start training and wait for the book to finish.” He said and looked up before he vanished.

He appeared in the twelve monk formation and began to absorb the karma under the portal. With his body weakened, it was like water from a hot spring hitting his insides but he slowly spread it and contained it inside his body before going to the other 8 and absorbed what it had.

The largest was naturally Louisville because it had more spirits and the most collective energy while Elizabethtown had the highest density.

When he was done, he felt stuffed with the Karma and teleported back and knew he had to train and infuse this into his soul if he wanted to do anything else.

He didn’t go to the center vein, that was suicide, the secondary ones were a third of the vent so it was far safer at the current output.

He sat down and felt the immense weight but he didn’t think once as he started the wisp stage and drew himself back into a soul orb that instantly got surrounded by a powerful golden flame of karma and spiritual energy.

He felt his very core pull and the karma slowly blended with his soul. As time went he got a feeling like a limit and each thread took a long time to blend until the last bit of karma.

When it was finally absorbed, there was a change at the core of his soul and instead of a golden point, a pure white soul piece formed at the center and the core of his soul entered that and the rest of the soul went silent before that fragment began to suck up everything from the inside and grow.

At the halfway point, the inside and outside orbs met and the old soul broke down and was fully absorbed to grow the new soul and it grew rapidly until it was full size and burned with a weak white flame just over the surface but it was very strong but after it was done, Mark activated the poltergeist technique.

The orb broke like an egg hatching and pure white ectoplasm came out and formed his skin that was instantly struck by a heavy pressure.

That said the skin was already strong and soon it supported the pressure and each following part reformed as his body absorbed and produced holy power and eventually the poltergeist stage ended.

He opened his eyes at that point and checked the time.

“Woah… that was barely 6 hours, did my speed at channeling also go up for training or was it because the earlier techniques were easier.” He said.

He was confused but looked at the book and saw that it was lightly covered in the green flames that were slowly helping the evolution.

He thought about how the impact had weakened a bit and walked over and knew he had to bond together with the flame as well so he went to the central altar and pulled the book inside and felt the even more intense force but his soul had improved to a Level 2 Virtuous soul and he had yet to improve the virtuous heart from when he had become a walking corpse. Both the purity and density of his holy power was stronger making it easier for him.

“Good.” He said before sitting back and absorbed spiritual energy. What he didn’t expect was when the power of the flame mixed with his holy power and filled his body and covered him in green flames from the inside out.

He felt immense pain from the heat and did the poltergeist stage but instantly felt pain and went even further to the wisp and finally there was a better reaction as the nether flame absorbed energy to kindle more fire while another part fused with his soul. It went on for the same amount of time as before and when he finished he went immediately into the walking corpse segment.

The flames were contained within his body but his heart and blood vessels were all covered in green flames and powerful vibrations smashed every bit of the ectoplasm in its constitution before the technique took effect to give birth to tiny muscle cells and slowly stretch them through the heart’s natural shape one by one.

For the next 12 hours the heart formed the first layers of natural cells of the heart beyond just the raw layer of solid ectoplasm.

It still lacked the complex functions of the heart though but it was the start and the flame source had adhered to Mark.

When he checked, the book had finally activated. Everything to a basic amount so he left it to absorb more power now that the book itself was activated. The 2,000 soldiers would face this tribulation as well. He couldn’t wait until it was completely active but he thought about the material requirement for all the tools and knew it would be a while until every soldier had reaper blades and robes.

Of course, it wasn’t the case for himself as he felt the reaper robes he had made for himself. There were equally separate levels and he had made all three models for each existing level and now that it was fully active, he couldn’t help it.

He pulled the book inside and from within, the robe appeared and completely replaced his casual spirit clothing before he extended his two hands.

On his left arm, the soul chain appeared and on the right, the sword appeared. Of course, that wasn’t the end, the final point activated after it all formed.

The Nether flame burst out and flashed from his eyes and everything reacted and began to change.

The robe tightened around him before forming the shape like armor made of bone while his face seemed to be surrounded by the hollowed image of a skull.

The single soul chain divided into several and each was in clear control of Mark’s poltergeist capacity and finally the blade transformed into the full giant axe. The single bone shaft turned even more menacing as it became like the vertebrae of a creature and each segment released green flames while the ax head became segmented and jagged while emitting green flames.

As soon as his form took shape Mark’s soul form changed from humanoid into a powerful skeletal like warrior and it felt shocking to him that something like this could exist but even more was that this aura spread out.

Outside, everyone within a 500 meter radius almost felt like running away from this direction as they looked at the altar in fear but couldn’t see anything but they felt fear from the bottom of their souls.

Mark looked out through the green flames in the bony sockets of his eyes.

“Amazing, it’s like I’m releasing a suppressive aura out. I wonder if when I can't upgrade the book anymore, it will become a holy book like the book of life and death.” he muttered before drawing all the power back inside.

His body returned to normal including the weapons that were activated to 100% with the nether flames.

He put the book on the altar to charge and laughed as he walked out feeling extremely good but those he passed looked at him fearfully and he knew the effect would be of fear for soul society’s future until he openly demonstrated the power he had cultivated and somehow explained how it even worked. The thing is that he didn’t need to.

“Okay, time to start gathering more souls.” He said and headed to the HQ and they were frantic to quickly attend to him when he asked for a rough estimate of how many people the domain actually required to run properly and expand with its current industries.

The estimate was unsurprisingly high at an estimate surpassing 10k.

“Alright, I’ll see to it.” He said and headed to Louisville to gather people. He had to take a car though to not reveal he had the portal there.

Like that he began to work on gathering all the town’s soul fragments over the next week or so including the fragmenting consciousness.

Those that weren’t turning into vengeful spirits he would piece together and fill several soul pearls where he would gather people to register and explain to the many new souls what was going on and gather their information.

For the souls that were being corrupted, he would gather them in the nether light lanterns.

It would take about 2 days to break a large amount of the sin from their souls and after making a small pedestal that absorbed the sin into the ground he would move them out once the consciousness was healthy enough to heal on its own.

After that these souls were put onto small altars that channeled spiritual energy to produce a healing aura favorable to the soul. He purchased many of these to recover souls from being specter while they could and it was already proving to be successful.

After a week, he had upwards of 12k and at least 3,000 of these had recovered or were recovering from nearly becoming vengeful spirits.

The population of the domain went from roughly 20k to over 30k and after the phantoms properly adapted, more work would likely open up.

As for souls of criminals, it was impossible for Mark to recruit criminals, every soul he pieced together had to have their names appear on the two pages in his soul and he would see every soul.

At the moment he couldn’t do anything about the rights and wrongs of people but he could reward good people with a peaceful life after death instead of letting them rot away in this slowly sickening world.

In fact, when out of his domain, Mark noticed that even outside of the cities, the aura of the world wasn’t as fresh as it had been in early 2020. He had felt good in the highways but he didn’t know when it was that it felt constraining all over like the entire world was starting to release negative energies.

He was actually getting worried about this and with this strange premonition he decided that what could be done was only get stronger and build a sufficiently strong organized force that could actually protect the population he was asked to protect.