The Necromancer had begun his manipulation of the four spirits. The steps he followed were simple ones on paper, but they demanded every ounce of attention. If his undead skin could still sweat, he would have been covered in perspiration. But since it couldn’t, it was only cold and dry.

He already figured out how his day would now go. Emil would focus on one soul, and go through all of its memories and experiences. All of which he visually categorized as chapters of a long book. He would begin work on splitting it apart and creating undead. Then the Necromancer would consume death energy and wait for the Mana conversion to complete.

However, while that should have been a straightforward process, it proved to be delayed and taken slowly. Because while he had so much time and free ability to manipulate these souls, he felt tempted. It wasn’t the practically insatiable hunger of before, as he still kept that in check.

But he wanted to dive into the possibilities, to experiment until every little thing he felt curious about was explored. There would be the tests he actually did need to run. But more than that, he yearned to travel on the frontier of new knowledge.

Though, in between those tasks while he wanted for his Mana to be restored, he did let himself take a break. During those idle moments, he let himself be lost in thought. With each result that was produced, multiple potential ideas and theories would spawn within his mind.

The first thing he had tested was if these undead would still be created if he included their personalities. It hadn’t for Mayor Duran, but that was a man he had killed and then forcibly made undead. These spirits were both understanding and willing to undergo that process, so perhaps it would work now. He first tested that theory with the leader of the guards, as she was the ghost he had spoken the most with.

Emil did as he did with the mayor, and split her soul in two. One was her knowledge and memories, and the other was her personality and will. Something which notably cost him 125 Mana. Emil cut open an incision in her flesh with a random sword. He then took the personality half, and placed it inside her corpse. After that, he repeated his usual process of stringing threads of Mana through the body. The Necromancer then placed a memory orb inside her mouth, and sewed it shut.

For a few seconds, the dead body remained still. Then a whole minute passed. Finally, after a couple of minutes later of no results, he called it there. Emil released a sigh as he pulled that half of her soul back out. He had actually been quite confident that would work. But even the failure to produce a result was still a result in of itself.

Emil began to think to himself. As he did so, he reached for a wisp of death energy and absorbed it into himself. It would give him back twenty Mana after the same amount of minutes. He reached for another, and took it in as well. There was a convenient aspect of the conversion. It was that nothing prevented him from having multiple ongoing at once. So by staggering the conversions, he could save some time on waiting for them in between tasks.

For he could now conclude that the thing that prevented the personality part of a human soul was not how willing that soul was. If both one that wouldn’t want it and one that was accepting did not succeed, then there had to be some other factor. Emil didn’t know what that limitation was, not yet at least. But there were a few possibilities.

The simplest would be that it required a degree of mastery he had yet to attain. So perhaps as his abilities grow and the System updates them in his Class Info as higher levels, that capability will open up to him. Emil inspected the separated sections of the soul. She had unlocked the System in life and attained the Spearman Class, according to her memories anyway. The second possibility he considered was if it was simply due to the inherent nature of a soul.

Somewhere in these two pieces, were the gates that lead to the planes of reality she would have drawn any of her Class’s powers from. Emil wondered if perhaps that could be the issue. He played with an idea, one that was purely hypothetical. He decided to throw a dart in the dark amyway, and supposed that those gates were connected to the consciousness of a soul. What if that presence acted as interference for using that part for making an undead?

If that were the case, it would act as a perfect solution to why he couldn’t use that half to create an undead. However, even he knew that would be too good to be true. Emil immediately realized that even as just a hypothetical notion, there was already a glaring flaw.

According to the way Alterum phrased that explanation, it wasn’t just spellcasting Classes like Mage or Necromancer that worked this way. Rather, it would be any Class the System could provide to humanity. In her case, there would be corresponding planes for her Martial Enhancement and Imbued Weapon abilities, as two examples. Emil found it difficult to imagine what such realities would even be like. But apparently, there were somewhere out there in the grand space of all of creation.

When Alterum described how the gods made them impossible to find, what was the exact wording it used again? Emil asked himself.

He would never have described himself as someone with perfect memory. Far from it, if anything. But from his interaction with the undead dragon, he could recall every word and detail as he reflected on it. From the way it had stared into and communicated directly with his mind and soul, those two meetings felt burned into his thoughts.

Ah. ‘When they made your souls, they did so while making it impossible for you to find these gates on your own. It’s part of the very root essence of your being.’ I believe that’s how it was phrased. The root essence of one’s being, huh? Maybe I should focus on looking past the outside parts. Maybe, just maybe, there might be something to find if I look as deeply as possible.

The undead dragon had declared it as impossible. Yet even so, Emil felt himself wanting to try and investigate anyway. However, as he had been interacting with and looking through this soul, these gates alluded him still. He understood already that he’d been unable to detect them within his own soul. But a small part of him had hoped that as he took this one apart and combed through every bit of it, he’d maybe find a hint. He tried to search through each nook and cranny for any kind of sign.

Yet there wasn’t even the smallest clue. It would have been one thing if he was blocked by a wall or encountered a section that seemed inaccessible. Any kind of obstacle would have at least indirectly told him the gates were there. But no matter how much time or effort Emil put in, it was all for naught. He had truthfully known that this would result in a large blank. However, for the sake of that small glimmer of maybe, he tried anyway. With that less than fruitful outcome, it was then that he gave up and moved on.

That was the biggest roadblock Emil encountered at the start. But after that point, the overall process continued smoothly. Unable to use the half-soul with her personality, he set it aside and focused on the other half. If the Necromancer left things as they were, then he could split the other ghosts’ souls in two as well. At that point, he’d be able to form four total undead.

But that was if he left it at that. Emil still wanted to try pushing the splitting of souls further, to see if he could with the increased levels in his Class Info. He looked down at the other half of Jule’s soul. She had understood that this could be a one-way street. But even with that risk, the dead guard sensed his emotions and intent, and had already accepted that outcome.

Emil intensely focused on the half-soul. He was going to attempt to split it in half again. So there would be half of her soul with her personality. Then the knowledge section would be effectively made into quarter slices of the original whole.

If successful in both that and using it to resurrect a corpse, the number of undead would double to eight. In his mind’s eye, he reopened the mental book of her knowledge and memories. Emil would need to shuffle around the chapters and their contents.

To make this work, both of the new halves would need a fair split. Luckily, there was more than thirty years worth of life to pick from. A lot of a human life was the repeating of simple motions, over and over again. The undead wouldn’t need every memory she ever had of walking or using a weapon.

If one undead had memories of bodily movement from when she was twenty-eight years old, would the other undead be that different if had those from when she was twenty-nine? For the basics, there wouldn’t be any difference. But what about something more complex, like her training with a spear and other weapons? That proved a tad tricker for him to work with.

There were two things to consider. The first was that the number of years she had with weapon training was relatively shorter. The second was the quality of her expertise and experience. Unlike basic things like walking, that was massively different. The memory of her first lesson was in no way equal to a memory that came after years of training.

But Emil was eventually able to categorize that part of her knowledge even further. He would effectively split them into every other memory. One half would days one, three, and five and so forth of her weapons experience. While the second would get days two, four, and so on.

Was it the best solution that could possibly exist? No, probably not. Even so, he did believe that it would work. But if he did have the chance to test different things out, he likely would have been able to find something more efficient.

However, Emil had to remind himself that these ghosts had volunteered themselves and committed to a single purpose. For him to try and freely use them to test out experimental ideas would be a breach of that trust.

Helping them avenge themselves to get justice was one thing. Using them to satisfy his own desires and personal whims was another. So even though those thoughts still lingered in the back of his mind, he had to ignore them. But now with her knowledge more or less prepped, he could begin the process of splitting it.

Nearly a full hour later, he finally did it. It had proven to be far tougher than the initial split. It was like the soul had already adapted to being cut in half. And from that, it became a lot more dense compared to its original form. But eventually, Emil was able to successfully force it into being sliced apart.

-165 Mana

But that was the limit of what he could do without more Mana. But there was still one more thing he could finish before he took a break. With the corpse of Jule already prepared, he put in a single one-fourth cut of her soul. Once it was in, Emil was able to finish casting his Undead Creation ability. And this time, it worked beautifully.

It was nearly exactly the same then as it had been for Duran. There was a moment of calm, before the Necromancer felt a wave of power rush through the corpse. Each muscle in the body then spasmed as every part twitched and flexed. A few seconds of this passed before it went still.

Then, the largely burnt corpse of the guard sat up, its one remaining eye wide open. The undead form of Jule the guard slowly began to stand. Flakes of charred flesh fell to the ground as she moved up to her feet. With just one-fourth of her soul, the undead guard was now ready to follow his will.

However, it was at that point that Emil needed to replenish his Mana and wait for it to convert. Even with the amount, he converted earlier, that second soul split had cost him quite a lot. To the point that if he repeated the same procedure again, he frankly wouldn’t be able to do it all at once even with a full Mana Level. To both divide a soul twice and prepare an undead simply cost more than its max capacity.

But later, once his Mana had been restored, the first thing Emil did was use the other quarter soul. He picked out the corpse of another person, and readied it for Undead Creation. Before he moved on to the other ghosts, he needed to first check something.

Emil wanted to be sure that their split souls would be viable for making other bodies undead. Fortunately for the Necromancer, it succeeded with no issues. From the soul of just one person, he had now created two undead humans. With that result now safely concluded, he could begin to work on the second ghost.

It actually took him a bit less time than the first. As he felt more used to cutting a soul into fourths, the process sped up. It had still been before noon when Emil first started. But as he worked and needed to restore his Mana in between costly tasks, the hours steadily passed by.

Eventually, the Necromancer was almost done with his work on the spirits. The number of undead guards under his command grew from two to four, then four to six. There was just one more ghost to go, then he would be done. As Emil waited for his Mana to be restored, the bushes off to his side began to rustle. From them emerged Theo, who had now returned from its own task.

The undead spider approached its master. Emil placed a hand on it, and read through its simpler mind. It had been successful in locating the ones who had attacked these people. A fair distance away from their current location, there was an encampment of humans.

And from what Theo had been able to see while remaining hidden, Emil confirmed it was them. The appearances of the people there matched those he saw in the memories of the dead guards. With a nod of thanks for its good work, he dismissed the arachnid thrall.

Emil looked up at the sky. Most of the sun had already disappeared under the horizon. He estimated the amount of time it would take to complete the final two undead. Then once they were done, he needed to fully restore his Mana one last time. After that, he considered how long it would take for them to reach the bandits’ camp. The Undead Human believed that when they arrived, it would be at least past midnight.

That was perfect for him. It would be deep enough in the night that they would be unprepared for a sudden attack. And under the cover of darkness, the bandits would never see him and his undead coming. Not until it was too late, anyway.

Pleased with that imagined play of events, Emil felt ready to go right that second. But he still had to be patient. Once he had the Mana to finish the last pair of undead and then restored it again, he could go. Until then, however, he waited for what was to come.