“Ugghh... the balance still sucks. Whoever thought of creating the stupid [Sculpt Body] spell should have thought about creating some kind of test drive mode or something.” I was busy running up and down the dark hallways of my inner sanctum, trying to get used to my new, wight body. It had taken a bit to finish everything, as not only did I have to use a higher tier spell [Purge Soul] to try and scrub out memories of the metal eater's soul but I also had to parasitize what was left of the soul to take over the wight's body. However, even then, there were still some negative feelings and anger left over in the soul that I had to slowly work through. Having the feeling of wanting to attack my lich self on my throne had been interesting, as my lich self had gotten a great show of my new body twitching and shaking like some addict hyped up on too much synthetic drugs. Unfortunately, it sucked that the same thing would occur with any mid tier or high tier soul I messed with in the future, unless they were my fan girl or fan boy or something.

That wasn't all, as the body's balance was off. Cramming exoskeleton, muscle, and bones together to be aesthetically pleasing didn't exactly create a stable body. So, I had to use [Sculpt Body] a few more times to edit my new body until it performed relatively well. It helped that the spell had done most of the hard work in creating the mana network through my body, properly interconnecting the muscles and bones to the soul. It was a very simple construct, but with the soul providing most of the 'energy' to keep the body moving and literally controlling the body, there was no need for any organs, nerves, or any other stuff. The wight's built in mana senses also took over the job of acting like my vision, sense of touch, and hearing.

When I thought I was finally done acclimating to the new body, I went back to the foundry/workshop. My two remaining skeleton avatars were till there with around 10 or so summons, standing guard at the choke point entrance to my inner sanctum. It was a relatively weak force, but it was all I could get away with considering the constant mana requirements for all the summons. The rest of what I had, I decided to save to use in my wight body, that was now capable of casting a decent number of mid tier spells. If I had to, I figured I could still fight a half hour, mid tier spell battle with what I had access to.

So, I left behind my allies and strode into a passageway which per my memory led to the less specialized metal works, containing the massive smelters, furnaces, and other large equipment that had been meant for 'larger' purposes than individual armor and handheld weapons. On the way, seeing most of the walls stripped bare and all side passages containing nonexistent doors, I gritted my teeth in annoyance. “Of all things, it had to be metal eaters. It couldn't be some stupid goblins or even some orcs? Shit!”

There was a reason why metal eaters had been exterminated with prejudice in the past. Most civilizations required some form of metal to drag their asses up from primitiveness, but when you had a species that had a taste for that very metal, it was like fire and water. However, their species thankfully had some major limitations. Like any ant colony, there always needed to be a queen, but unlike ants, the metal eater queen wasn't as fertile. Moreover, metal eaters usually required large amounts of metal to survive, which meant they often had to eat a lot of raw ore just to barely keep moving. More often that not, most metal eater colonies collapsed when there was a temporary dearth of metal available or if their colony structure got wrecked.

“Of course, this place must have been a fucking smorgasbord of their favorite food!” I was tempted to go on a slaughtering spree, but I didn't think there would be much of a reason to unless the queen was a high tier monster. However, considering the fact that only one mid tier metal eater had shown up the entire time I had been busy slaughtering its younger brothers, I didn't think the queen was a high tier monster. It was a willful assumption, but since metal eaters usually acted like army ants in calling for stronger reinforcements, it was safe to assume that any reinforcements they had were probably not more powerful than the group I had crushed.

Either way, I had more important business to attend to. Entering a massive open area, littered with the expected debris, ruined constructs, and collapsed stones, I ignored the one or two metal eaters I saw in the distance and instead made for my goal. It helped that I didn't have a ball of light floating above my head to draw attention, since the heightened mana senses from the wight's body allowed for a 'infrared like' vision using mana concentrations around me.

My aim was the outer ring corridors that ran around the fortress, linking the different zones of the massive lair. The large corridors had been an important part of the defense network of the fortress, as they had allowed for the defenders, even the 'larger' ones to traverse across the fortress quickly to defend against any intrusion. Reaching the entrance of one of corridors, I stared into the wide passageway that was almost three stories tall. It was dark like everywhere else, but that's not what made me hesitate.

As far as I could see using my mana senses, there were large gouges in the walls with chunks completely missing in places. Dark splotches stained the floor and walls, and pieces of what looked like shredded exoskeleton littered the ground. There were no dead bodies left over, but I knew the remains of a long past battlefield, when I saw it. Something had used the metal eaters as chew toys, long before I did. However, the question still remained. “Who or what the fuck did this?”