Rubbing my hair as I concentrated on the crude map drawn on the ground, I tried to gauge how accurate it was compared to the information I had gotten from Bihar and Goshain. Both of their memories hadn't exactly been comprehensive when it came to the layout of the Sulvanc, with most of their knowledge being about the western portion of the desert. Still, what I had gained gave me a good idea of where I was going next.

Lowering my hand, I looked at my light brown arm, reveling in being able to feel again. Though, it was a bit macabre, since I was technically parasitizing Goshain's purged soul and occupying his body... after making some necessary modifications, of course. I glanced over to my reflection in the lake nearby one more time as I contemplated how different the body looked. Instead of Goshain's musclebound form, I now had a medium build with a relatively fit physique. Gone was the square jaw and scar on my face, and instead, I looked like some average guy with my oval face and wavy hair. It wasn't 'me' of course, but it was about as far as I was willing to go with modifying the Goshain's body.

It had taken a lot of slow experimentation to use [Sculpt Body] and [Greater Heal] to get things right. It was a good thing that I had been able to isolate my newly parasitized soul from its connection to the body during the whole ordeal. Otherwise, it would have been like doing surgery on myself while I was awake and with no anesthesia.

Still, the true struggle had been getting my parasitized soul to to properly interface with the brain and the rest of the body. The experience had been very... bizarre was maybe the right world. Even with the original soul's instinctual memories left to guide me, the process had been excruciatingly slow and tedious. Figuring out how to control my legs instead of losing control of my bowels had been one of the more memorable experiences.

More than that, for maybe the first time, I had truly experienced what a personality split felt like, as Goshain's brain had rebelled against my occupation of his body and soul until I could process and eliminate his 'biological' memories. The duality of soul and biology in a living creature had turned out to be a lot more complex than just taking over an undead soul, and I was left constantly on guard for interfering emotions or thoughts. Still, the longer I used the body, the more I got used to manipulating it.

However, there was a downside to everything. While Goshain's soul produced natural mana, my soul produced death mana instead. And since I was currently parasitizing his soul, my new body tended to degrade quickly if I used any spells, as my death mana tended to conflict with his natural mana in powering spells. While [Greater Heal] tended to restore most of the damage, it still meant that I was limited in how far I could push this body at any given time.

Not being able cast spells frequently wasn't a big loss since Goshain's soul only had two Lineage spells, and permanently inscribed in it. Moreover, my estimation of his soul's stability and strength only put it somewhere in the the middle rankings among low tier souls. That meant he was at best equivalent to a couple of my skeleton summons.

However, all that didn't bother me much. My whole purpose for a human body was never for its strength. Looking down at the map in the dirt, my eyes were drawn to the little square representing Kashan. It was the closest city... large town to where I was, though there were a few dozen or so villages scattered between us. From what I understood of the Sulvanc's geopolitics, each of those spots of civilization meant a water source with the size and prosperity of the settlement being equivalent to the size of the water source. So, Kashan was my logical next destination.

However, looking up at the people settling down in the oasis that I had first wandered into a week ago, I grimaced, wondering what I was going to do with all the freed mine slaves. There were a 124 of them, and most of them weren't exactly in the best of shape. Freeing them had been the easy part, but trying to keep some semblance of order among them and figuring out their future was a completely different thing. While I had been tempted to leave them to their own fate, watching some of the men and women breaking down crying when I had Asunam free them a week ago had been disconcerting.

“Master, have you decided what you wish to do?” The calm voice from behind me pulled me back from my contemplation, and I turned around to look at a middle aged man, with a aquiline nose and a recently trimmed beard on a thin face. His prematurely graying hair and thin frame in poorly fitting, scavenged robes gave proof to how quickly he had aged working in the mine. Moreover, from his sad, black eyes, I felt the weight of suffering he must have experienced in the last three years of his captivity. Still, he seemed to have recovered a little, having taken charge of the former slaves, and while he didn't know everything about who or what I was, he knew I was a powerful mage.

Abin Mansul had once been a merchant, though not a wealthy one. He and his small caravan had unfortunately fallen prey to the sand thieves during one of their trips to the villages surrounding Kashan. He had lost his son and his wife in the raid, and while he would not tell me details, I remembered his hatred for the sand thieves and his attempt to attack Asunam as soon as he was freed. Thankfully, even though I had been hiding my mid tier body at the time, my skeleton summons had still been present to stop any unfortunate incidents.

“Are you sure the lord of Kashan has been working with the Skull Blades?” My deep voice sounded doubtful to even me. However, I was honestly confused at why some local lord was willing to terrorize his own territory.

Abin frowned while looking down in thought. “The lord's family has lost much power and influence since the former lord died. Some of those who have gained influence since then have begun to jockey for control of Kashan. It has led to many factions and turmoil, with even the city guard struggling with divided loyalties. Though the Skull Blades could have belonged to any of those factions, the names you specifically mentioned belong to some merchants, who directly serve the lord of Kashan.”

The names that Abin was referring to were ones that I had scrounged from Bihar and Goshain's memories. Their memories had also included some similar guesses about who they had been working for, but the memories had become too fragmented to fully make sense of by the time I was able to process them. In either case, having a separate confirmation from Abin made up my mind. A chaotic place was perfect for infiltration. Its population base and relatively developed infrastructure also guaranteed I would find at least some of the necessary talents I needed. Looking at the former slaves relaxing near the oasis lake and under the nearby trees, I realized I even had my first source of employees.