Considering what Kranor had told him that Vengeance could possibly be used as a conduit to directly affect souls, Kaden started to look into enchanting again. He had made Vengeance with it because it was at the time and still was the better way to create something that used vengeance mana.

Otherwise Kaden viewed enchanting as too unreliable crafting method so he had ignored it afterwards.

"Perhaps I should have paid more attention to it", Kaden thought to himself as he explored through the library of the phoenix clan for anything about enchanting. "Vengeance seems to grow along with me and even faster once its fed more mana and even more so when I kill my targets with it."

That property of the blade was rather curious too. A weapon made with formations wouldn't grow that way. The way Vengeance was used was basically making the blade cultivate in its own way. It had grown and changed. Grown stronger.

There were unknowns regarding the blade. When one enchanted an object, it would imbue some concepts into the object, but along with that desired mana and its concept usually came others resulting in some random end product. Ones not always beneficial.

Kaden had wanted weapon for his vengeance. That is consumed mana and specific souls was not something he could have predicted. He had back then imagined perhaps causing torturous wounds that result in slow and agonizing deaths. Technically speaking that was indeed what happens as it destroys the souls it absorbs, but Kaden had imagined more physical pain than spiritual.

Despite all the available knowledge, Kaden was not really able to find anything new regarding enchanting. It was simply because of its randomness. It was merely an idea how to infuse mana and its concepts into objects. End result varied.

There was no way to detail every possible interaction with mana on an object. Each such object was unique.

"I'll have to simply experiment with Vengeance", Kaden muttered to himself as he put away the most recent information crystal he had been reading. "But just how will I experiment with the effect on souls?"

Living things had souls and thus Kaden knew he required living things. If he was going out of Frika, he might even eventually require human souls. Not that with his knowledge there was any real difference between Cari and human souls.

"I will have to go hunt for test subjects", Kaden thought as he pondered what to do. "I should start with some High Beasts. In most cases Cari do not really care what happens to some random High Beasts unless they are their only children, favored one or something similar."

Kaden didn't have enough funds to burn through numerous test subjects. Therefore he would at least start with weaker and lower quality ones.

He made his way out of the phoenix clan quietly. Surprisingly Ciner was nowhere to be seen. Kaden assumed she was hunting for food or something. He doubted the boar would have suddenly changed her mind about following him everywhere.

Kaden found himself a good location to start his tests at. He built a very similar setup as he had when he combined the fragments into the black pentagon, but this time not quite as impressive defenses. There was no need to. Kaden didn't really care if someone discovered him experimenting on some High Beasts, but nor did he want interruptions or someone feeling lucky and trying to attack him or vengeance due to his recent assassinations.

There was no difficulties in finding proper test subjects. Frika was mostly wilderness with a few scattered Cari towns and cities. While all areas were technically owned by some party, no one really watched over the population of lower beasts. Cari kept their children under their watchful eye until they evolved into Cari.

The rest, the large majority, evolved from weakling ordinary beasts or Dire Beasts into higher ones step by step.

They were everywhere.

Kaden, in fact, decided to pay attention to which types of test subjects he was capturing. He took a few types. Weak and strong. Ones with strong bodies and ones with weaker. A few with special natural abilities. Ones with lesser potential and ones with higher.

Kaden wanted to test what worked and how it worked with various types. He didn't want this plans to suddenly grind to a halt, if something didn't work. Human test subjects would come later.

Very quickly Kaden discarded any Dire Beasts he had. They were a failure. He had not discovered any other way for Vengeance to interact with anything except stabbing them with it. Dire Beasts were too weak. Vengeance simply consumed all mana they had right away. The bodies of these Dire Beasts dried up and what was left were brittle husks.

"While I can control Vengeance and its absorbtion a bit, I cannot stop it completely", Kaden thought to himself. "It wasn't made to be gentle, but torture is probably fine."

Vengeance contained certain concepts and it worked based on those rules. Torture and other such actions were part of that, but it did allow lower power output. In the case of Dire Beasts it was still too much.

Besides, Kaden became pretty sure low power was opposite of what he needed. He required the blade to touch the souls of those who were not the targets of his vengeance. To do so he would need to stuff in more mana.

"I will probably need High Beasts at the more advanced stages", Kaden said to himself with some annoyance. Their numbers were far fewer. "Hopefully I don't require actual Cari. That will eventually draw attention."

The next few days later another problem appeared. Ciner.

She literally floated from the sky as Kaden incredulously watched her appear from her mist. She was able to float down, but it appeared no actual flight. Kaden was also not able to tell where Ciner had hurled herself down to float to his place.

"Soon I will fly!" Ciner told Kaden happily. "I had figured it out while chasing that fake you so kindly gave me to play with! How very nice of you."

Kaden almost groaned, but decided to keep his opinions about Ciner's intelligence to himself. He felt even more pressing need to finish his research. Ciner would have problems following him out of Frika. He planned to have a way to avoid problems, but Ciner generated them. As long as he could get away from her for a moment, he knew it would be fine. Then the boar could then die against humans.

That is if she decided to follow...

Ciner caused trouble for Kaden and his experiments. She wandered around scaring away many of the beasts in the area.

After Kaden complained to Ciner about it and told her to fuck off, Ciner did disapear for a while.

A few days later Ciner appeared again ... or more like she left brutally maimed High Beasts at Kaden's door.

Kaden wondered for a while whether he should accept her 'gift' because it could perhaps be considered accepting her advances.

"It would be waste to not accept", Kaden finally decided. He could experiment far more with abundance of subjects. Kaden only wondered Ciner's motivations. The reasons at least were extremely questionable. "She will die eventually or realize whatever lunacy drives her fixation is idiotic and leaves me alone."

Due to Ciner's help Kaden's experimentation rate became much higher. He could attempt far more extreme things without fear of wasting too many test subjects and having to go out find more.

In fact, after a few more weeks of experimentation and piles of corpses with their mana sucked out Kaden finally got some success.

"This is the first step!" Kaden thought as he watched vengeance mana envelop soul of a lizard High Beast. "I now have a method to touch souls. I only needed to gather up several points of mana and then unleash them at the same time through Vengeance."

This method basically overcharged its effect. It no longer needed to be a target to touch their souls, but it required quite a bit of effort to generate enough mana for single attempt. The soul was basically torn off from the body. The lizard screamed in pain as its body died, but the soul was bound with vengeance mana.

Kranor had been right. With enough mana Vengeance could theoretically do what Kaden required.

"Now what will I do with this discovery", Kaden pondered for a moment. He didn't really have need for the soul.

In fact, after several minutes the soul faded away and passed on wherever souls go after death.

"Could it be possible that I can imitate some miniature version of the training formation and keep these souls around?" Kaden wondered as he paced around. "Those require a lot mana to keep functioning, but I think most of it goes to produce their attacks and form the opponents."

A body would be better container for a soul than some formation. It was the place where souls usually were... as long as the body was alive.

"I should concentrate on keeping the subject alive while taking their souls", Kaden understood. "Does a body live without a soul?" Kaden sighed and then muttered to himself. "I would like to speak with Nosran, but I cannot go there as it is."

The necromancer likely knew a lot about souls even if his constructs and minions were mostly basically meat puppets animated by mana. Even his wraiths were just mana constructs. No souls involved. Yet, Kaden was pretty sure Nosran should have studied secrets of souls at some point.

Kaden stopped to plan his next move. He now had a reliable starting point. If he could use these souls to control either some construct or perhaps animate their body, they would solve the control problem. Then add some way to bind them into his control. If body would survive the process alive, it would also solve the power problem.

It was all there. Its not like the idea was new, but all sorts of slavery spells were not perfect. There were faults. Kaden merely hoped to achieve something usable and whatever drawbacks existed should remain in controllable levels.

"If I can make this work, I can have personal minions to work in my place inside human empires", Kaden thought. "Minions are far better solution than, say, a proper disguise. If a failure happens, I would be in trouble, if I were to use a disguise. Minion? I can discard them. Add a few failsafes to be sure."

Slaves as minions were a better choice for the moment. Clones that he had attempted too would reveal him. Even if he were to alter such clones to not appear as himself, someone would eventually get a good sense of his mana. A slave would mostly, if not entirely have their own mana.

Kaden wasn't certain, if the empires had discovered who created the godless mana system. If they knew they would hunt him down immediately.

In fact, if it turned out that the empires knew of him, Kaden seriously considered that he would have to grow to at least level of True Magus or True Cari before attempting to make any moves in human territories. At that level he would be able to fight back or escape. An Archmagus was unlikely to appear before him due to their rarity and leadership positions.

Yet, a True Magus could easily be sent after him and at his current level he wouldn't even be able to resist.

"I must remain patient and careful", Kaden told himself.