The process of assimilating a Remnant was quite like grasping the Core itself: She felt out the location of the Remnant’s densest portion, then placed her hand at that location after having brought out the Phantom Core. From there, she had to unravel the Remnant and wind it around her core. It had been described as “convincing” the Remnant to join her, necessitating a fighting will stronger than that of the Remnant, thus making duels the easiest way to ensure one could actually subsume a Remnant. The Scripture had even warned that trying to absorb a powerful Remnant could place the practitioner at risk of possession, driving them into a lucid rampage.

Zefaris encountered no such challenge, not in the process of forming her Inner Phantom at least. One by one, she simply pulled remnants apart and took them for herself in the form of glistening, ghostly threads. One by one, her own Inner Phantom took shape, starting as a barely-humanoid wireframe and growing into the humanoid form it had taken in her thoughtscape. The Scripture had said that she would know when it was complete, that it would be an obvious feeling, and it had been correct. It had taken over a platoon of Coherent Remnants and another of Scattered Remnants, coming up on a total of forty-eight. Using solely Scattered Remnants had been an option, but on this matter, Zefaris deferred to the Scripture, only moving on to Scattered Remnants to fill in the gaps.

She inspected the Inner Phantom’s manifestation, recalling a section of the Scripture which spoke of how it should look.

“Any imperfections in your foundation will reflect upon the Inner Phantom as wounds and signs of decay which your Phantom Core’s human shape did not carry. Should it take a skeletal form, quickly disperse it and start over, else you shall be stuck with a crippled foundation. Thus, should your Inner Phantom take the same shape as your Phantom Core, you may consider it an ideal foundation. Take heed and do not carelessly employ your Inner Phantom in combat, as any injury it sustains will be reflected upon you.”

Now would begin the work of transforming all these other Remnants into Phantoms.

She began with the Coherent Remnants of four doppelsoldaten from the fort, matching others of the same affinity to them. It went along much like forming her own Inner Phantom, the difference being that it took noticeably less to complete one and she could control what form the Phantom would eventually take. One by one, the remnants of many fallen became four complete Phantoms, two Gun Phantoms and two Sword Phantoms, clad in the same fictitious doppelsoldat uniform as her own Inner Phantom. The Gun Phantoms took the same skeletal countenances as Death’s Lieutenant, both of a female build, their uniforms shaped as if they weren’t merely skeletons. The swordsmen, meanwhile, were wide-shouldered, masculine figures with tied-back ponytails, their faces obscured by fog-filled gas masks. Only once the Sword Phantoms were finished did it dawn on Zefaris she had made their hair, their only truly distinct human feature, identical to Makhus’ hairstyle.

Gradually combing through the whole of the battlefield, she came upon one more Remnant as distinct as That Inquisitor. It wasn’t a doppelsoldat, or a tankman, but an utterly mundane foot soldier, his skeleton splayed out on the ground, overgrown by flowers. By the damage to his uniform and the broken ribs, he had died instantly from a bullet through the heart. His right shoulder, visible through the tattered rags of his uniform, was abnormally thick, as if it had been repeatedly damaged and healed. An archer, maybe. It wasn’t unheard of.

His Remnant knelt, bracing a huge bolt-action rifle against his shoulder. Zefaris knew what that was; one of the field-test prototypes for the mass-production model of the Type-Z Anti-Cultivator Cannon. His steely gaze momentarily locked onto her, but he was still just an echo, a remnant. That made for a total of five “Extra-Concrete Remnants” that she was aware of: The Rifleman, That Inquisitor, and three Tankmen. They would be her top priority to complete. First, however, Zefaris brushed aside the flowers, and found, buried in the mud, the Rifleman’s still-intact Type-Z. After extracting it from its untimely resting place and putting it in Storage, she returned to work.

Long into the night and unto dawn she worked, and by the end, she had completed two Inquisitor Phantoms, gas-masked and clad in coats like Alcerys; thanks to the Inquisitors’ training and a careful experiment in trying to balance the overall armament affinity, she managed to make them both come out with a ghostly Aquila Calibur in one hand and an inquisitorial pepperbox in the other. Every single Tankman Remnant, alongside several others, had become a single Tankman Phantom.

Then, there came That Inquisitor and The Rifleman. Having looked over the Inquisitor’s corpse, Zefaris now knew that he was Brother Manus, a fitting name given the perseverance of his will to fight. Thus, he became Phantom Manus. The Rifleman, however, inexplicably lacked any identifying marks, and so Zefaris decided on the Nameless Phantom.

In both their cases, the number of Remnants required to turn these two supreme remnants into Phantoms was a fraction of the others, and Zefaris made no attempt to shape their forms, merely reinforcing them and filling in the gaps.

Lastly, she made five Formless Phantoms, wrought from Remnants with no distinct affinities. She gave them forms to match the Gun and Sword Phantoms as well as Death’s Lieutenant, mentally folding them all under the Death’s Platoon as a mnemonic aid. Having peered deeper into the Scripture to see if she could store Remnants for later if she didn’t have an appropriate Phantom to feed them into, Zefaris stored eleven more Scattered Remnants as Remnant Seeds inside a glass phial. They were tiny, pearlescent grains barely two millimeters across. The same passage that detailed the creation of Phantom Seeds also touched on Soul-Seeds:

“Should you be so fortunate as to chance upon the Soul Seed of an enlightened sage, treasure it. They are valuable materials for developing your Phantoms at later stages.”