Lorelei grinned as she looked down at the instrument in her hand, “You know, microscopes are very nice. This will be very useful for advancing body training methods without… doing something stupid. If only I could watch what I was doing as I worked with the magic… but I don’t think I’d like to cut open my arm and leave it that way for a while. Plus, it would be… hard to concentrate on the magic.”

William shook his head, “I’ll pass on that idea. You might be able to do something with the bones of the recently deceased, though.”

Lorelei nodded. “That could work. I’d done some similar things before, but now I can get a better picture. Of course, a living subject would be best, but also completely impossible. The magic pretty much has to be done by the person themself, and finding someone who can handle having an open wound- possibly a large one- and also use magic well… would be quite difficult. If they’re that capable, they also wouldn’t be lacking a method to earn money, so payment wouldn’t likely sway their interests.”

“Well, on Earth we had ways to see inside people, but there’s none of the technology for that here, and even still it generally needed surgical cuts and often sedated patients, which still runs into the same problem.”

Lorelei shrugged. “I can wait. Besides, it’s probably best to finish getting rid of the Demon King first.”

William nodded. That was still something that needed to be done, but he couldn’t spend all of his time training. He had to relax sometimes, or at least rest his body.

-----

One good part of completely avoiding the use of ki during his body training exercises was that he could try things with ki afterwards. He had considered trying to use ki in the same way as magic to help temper his body, but since it was unstudied, and ki generally avoided less lasting effects in terms of physics, he wasn’t sure if it would be wise. Besides, he had more important things to do… like destroy the soul necrosis.

Having had no effect on them at their normal size, William had separated off smaller parts. So far, he’d still had no effect, but he still had more ideas… and was gaining back more of his strength as time went on.

William thought about what skills he had with ki. Though he’d tried basically every attack he could think of, there was something else that had come to mind recently. Something dangerous, though it hadn’t been for him. Cultivating Rotational Soul Pressure beyond its limits would damage the spiritual sea of the cultivator. The same idea might be applied to the necrosis.

Of course, it couldn’t be exactly the same. Increasing the pressure from inside out would only result in scattering it apart, and if he really tried to do so across his spiritual sea, he knew he would destroy its very structure before he destroyed any of the necrosis. However, the idea of rotation and causing pressure remained.

Thus, William was sitting cross legged with sweat pouring down his body, straining himself to the limit. Inside, he was pressurizing all of his energy to crush and grind one tiny point. The rotational aspect seemed important, because it gave the ki some kind of momentum, and the grinding could help.

The ki swirled around, spiraling inward, and dashing itself against a small black orb, seemingly uselessly. Because the pressure was equal from all sides, the orb didn’t distort, but only trembled slightly. The energy swirling around it disappeared as its force was consumed, but with no apparent result. William was ready to give up with disappointment again, but was determined continue until the last.

Then, as he had less than a quarter of his ki left, the orb of soul necrosis collapsed. There was nowhere for it to collapse into, but it also took up space, yet did not. Thus, it was merely a startling sight for William, as a seemingly eternal black ball reduced in size until it was… not. As far as William could tell, it was as if it had never existed. Perhaps it had been converted into some kind of energy he couldn’t fathom, or been shunted into some dimension of which he was not aware, pushed into some space that was not his soul- like wherever souls were between living in bodies. Regardless, it was gone. Destroyed, for all William knew.

He didn’t have time to celebrate as his ki collapsed harshly into the center, sending a shockwave throughout his spiritual sea. He had to spend a few minutes stabilizing everything… but there was no real damage. William then took time to congratulate himself. He had succeeded! Certainly, it was only a very small part. William wasn’t sure how much, but certainly less than one part in ten thousand. Still, he’d done it.

William had the strange thought that his spiritual sea now should suddenly have more space- not anything significant, but since the space was formerly being taken up and now wasn’t… he probably did. It wasn’t as if he could have noticed if the perimeter shrunk slightly, but he felt like that was not the case. Plus, he still had what had been there… memories. Fragments of memories. No, even that wasn’t right. At best, that bit totaled to small bits of parts of memories- a small portion of what he saw for an instant during some memory might become clearer or he might remember part of a smell that happened for an moment when he was a child. William couldn’t really say what they were, the effect was only more noticeable when he shifted around larger portions, covering and uncovering more significant pieces.

Still, he had made progress. He might actually need to be faster to finish within a few dozen years… but he would grow more proficient, and stronger, both through recovery of health and space in his spiritual sea. He would be fine. Probably. It certainly gave him reasons not to slack off.