On the large sandstone slab which hosted his arrays, an outer ring instantly activated on command. After a few seconds, it released a soft white glow from the base and a bubble of cloudy white encapsulated the whole platform. As soon as this was created, the arrays at the centre also lit up, the Trigger array detected a suitable protective dome, and so the process began.

Akevorax threw an assassin’s corpse, with a hole still blasted through their body, onto the central array. Then its soul flew out and joined it. While the tiny, shaken thing tried to collapse into pure energy, Akevorax and the barrier maintained its state by force.

“This is surprisingly easy… Just throw in souls and bodies when the glow turns red,” Akevorax commented without much thought as though watching a rather uninteresting play.

Below the corpse and soul, a thick bloody light sprouted from the yellow sandstone as though a wellspring broke through. However, as bodies of beasts and souls of everything flew into the array, he saw the redness recede until a soft white glow only remained. It was such a simplistic and direct process, but that’s because all forms of True Necromancy existed for someone to recover a lost loved one!

These people only had to revive weak individuals. So why develop a method for the powerful with long lifespans and low odds of death?

Fortunately, a soul without any fortifications worked precisely the same as every other. Bodies became an issue the moment someone upgraded to one made of crystal. And Minds were… strange. Technically speaking, True Necromancy even worked on those with Mind Worlds, albeit with an unbelievable cost as the world required countless more materials to form than a tiny region for a palace.

Those who directly reinforced their Mind obviously had the lowest cost as well. Just like these assassins, making each ‘resurrection’ cost just a couple mithril tier bodies and souls.

From there, the array took care of everything for him. An intentional design such that even those without experience with arrays could operate it repeatedly. Now came the first test of the process. Akevorax watched the free-floating soul slowly merge back into the cold body and slowly regain some brain activity. From a completely dead corpse, it somehow regained a hint of life, and eventually, the still blood pumped once more. A weak heartbeat grew stronger with every moment, and the assassin, for all intents and purposes, was alive.

Too bad Akevorax already cast the spell Mind Seizure on him, an Adept true spell which he learnt instantly with the Mind palace. The spell took form as a formless wave that simply passed over the corpse, kind of like a shockwave through air, and forcibly separated its living Mind from its body.

Now under his control, it was as simple as taking candy from a baby for him to pluck out the assassin’s soul once more and force both into his Mind palace…

Unfortunately, while he managed to keep the two components alive, they could not be merged together like his own. It appeared that the main feature of the Dragoncored bloodline only applied to him.

A fair result too, as the option likely came as an upgrade of his Draconic Palace bloodline. That did blow a huge hole in his plans though.

“They can’t merge… But why is the Mind alive? It doesn’t seem to be dissipating?” Disappointed in the fact, he still managed to come up with a fairly strange observation. Of the options, he only ever foresaw two outcomes. Either complete success or utter failure, but somehow he was met with considerable failure and a spark of hope.

[It is a combination of factors, but the Mind is still collapsing over time. This rate is extremely slow though… So, in theory, a method to further slow this reductive existence would keep it in a stable form]

“Further slow it, that’s a simple way to say it. Can I just move the body into my palace and use that to sustain the– Of course!” His eyes lit up with inspiration at the sight of the comatose body nearby, the flash of hope he received immediately grew into a noticeable tinder. With just a little bit more effort, he saw hopes for it to become an unwavering flame in the dark.

Within his Mind palace, an eye kept on the coupled Mind and Soul saw how the former indeed shrunk in size constantly. However, most of his attention focused on the mass of mana in front of him. It slowly converged into a humanoid figure roughly the size of a child.

A metre tall, relatively slim and weak, he controlled the mana within to transform the material into that of metal. The body was not whole though, instead formed from a dozen or so parts to give the limbs and hips joints just like a normal human may have. However, from there he met with the first problem… one resolved mere seconds later as he forced a solution through the best method available.

Arrays. And in his case that meant to build one which stored the Soul and Mind within this mechanical body. From there he just needed an array which could merge all three together, allowing this golem to contain a real soul!

It’d be a machine capable of building his Mind palace for him!

Whenever he came up for a solution regarding the couplings at least. For now, all he could do was forcibly sustain the created Mind through mana. However, he quickly began to rethink that decision as he never actually tested the characteristics or qualities of this newly formed Mind. What if it held intelligence or intense desires for revenge?

Or he just created an unloving psychopath that took pleasure in torture?

A bit of a leap there, but the point stood. And so, like you’d squeeze a grape and watch the insides pop out as a mush, he crushed the Mind created not too long ago. His first success of True Necromancy was already destroyed as he did not trust its ability.

[Killed level 52 Dark Assassin! Received <1% EXP]

Akevorax’s memory regarding a list of levels wasn’t the best, but he faintly remembered that the average of those assassins was slightly higher than that. Just to confirm, he asked, “Their level decreased?”

[Defective Mind resulted in reduced power, they didn’t meet our requirements for intelligence]

Now that he thought for a few more moments, he realised that a revived intelligent being ought to restart at level 1 by all accounts. The fact it had a level could be used to gauge whether it was intelligent or not… Which raised the question of whether or not he wanted them.

Sure, less intelligence made them easier to control. But no intelligence might mean useless Minds.

“Guess I can worry about it later. I need a new array first,” he sighed at all the new questions encountered so far and now returned his gaze to the necromantic array. A deep itch came as he knew what he could do, but held off as the mistakes made warned him against such things. Akevorax asked, “Can I purchase the missing details for a perfect resurrection method?”

[Purchase Resurrection for 0.15 Authority?]

“Yes, I need the details.” The instant he finished the forlorn sentence, a quick zap caused him to pause. It took a few moments for him to find the full book in his Mind palace with the little bit of missing detail added in, in truth barely 10 extra pages, as well as a hundred or so corrections.

Overall, a lot of the corrections came to the array itself. Simple optimizations and connections which resulted in a more robust and sustained creation process, the result of which reduced deformations. This also reduced the quantity of required objects to create a part, but he didn’t care for that. What troubled Akevorax even further was that it encouraged a preparatory rite to be performed on whatever two parts you had on hand, but the resources required were somewhat tough to get ahold of.

Namely because their growth required countless deaths, at least hundreds of thousands, and there were four of such items on the list.

The rest really weren’t hard to obtain, he could gather them in minutes from the dragons… “Do they have some? Surely they would, maybe I can ask Pritaslo.” He muttered to himself in relative sureness, and left the area shortly after a modification to the array finished just as asked of him. Additionally, the completed book noted that some sort of adequate barrier should be placed around the resurrected individual to ensure they didn’t just escape.

He took this to heart and included a new array capable of blocking most mithril tiers for several minutes, only high damage spellcasters like himself or Mala broke it straight away.

Not long after, Akevorax finished the constructions and headed back to the Dragonlands, rushing off to the other peaks to see if any alchemists had the required materials. Pritaslo naturally didn’t, as she lacked experience to just play with such rare things, but her power on Casstilandri’s peak reached a fair degree. In exchange for almost a ton of grade 2 ores, he received most of the ingredients outright. In fact, he even acquired one of the four hard-to-locate things!

A plant called scythe stalks, a type of bean which grew in pods on battlefields. The scythe-shaped pods actually had a fairly sharp edge along their back capable of slicing through unaware steel tiers with ease. So long as the battlefield managed to absorb a large number of souls, it had a small chance to ‘create’ scythe stalks randomly.

In this example, large referred to a number over 50,000 at the minimum.

Two more ingredients also came about easily as he researched them in the library and discovered they held immense alchemical uses for those with Adept mind palaces!

It took a while, but eventually a master tier dragon willingly sold Akevorax a dozen of both for a master tier scroll and an ingot of cornem tier metal he took from the vault. It was specifically an easily melted metal, supposedly used for certain alchemical recipes. In function it behaved like mercury, as compounds formed from it lost their toxicity. That just left the final material… One which had similarly ridiculous situations to grow.

A thousand gallons of blood germinated the seed; Ten thousand developed the sprout; One hundred thousand created the flower; Two hundred thousand bloomed the bloody rose.

The problem with all this?

It was an authentic master tier material.

One with great runes infused into its body, which meant even amongst the dragons it fell into the grade 1 vault. And yes… He did ask.

They had a few such roses in the vault. Would he use the chance to collect this final material though?

It took some hours for Akevorax to come to a decision as he sat alone in front of the Resurrection array. A ton of soul-searching and tough questions weighed down on his mind. Things where he thought how Rebecca would react to this realisation of her revival. Or how the team might react. Whether he could make this decision for them, or if he ought to just own up and allow someone else to handle the body as a safety precaution against this. Except he chose none of those options.

…

“I need you to make the decision… We both know what happens if I went to anyone else here,” Akevorax didn’t hide his shame nor guilt here. Facing the lightly bearded archer who staggered at the question.

“You want to revive her, and you know we shouldn’t do this. The method is risky and–” he replied with a hint of apathy, trying to remain impartial in the face of reality and convince the dragon of this mistake. But without someone to lay a foot down and stop the process, his weak words were cut off immediately.

Akevorax spoke, and while he didn’t mean it, the words were incredibly manipulative, “I don’t need your judgement, just an answer. Are you in? Or out?”

The two, alone without anyone else to bother them, were left to their own devices. No one sought to stop them… And so the experiments began.

Akevorax refused to accept anything short of perfect. Taking as many attempts as required.