Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Chapter 15: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

The rumors were true after all—lichs were evil creatures!

Utterly evil!

Isabelle fled Amber Xiu's study with a red face. If this had been a human lord, there would have been all sorts of sordid rumors going around.

But within this gloomy Ancient Castle, no one cared about such trivial matters.

A group of uneasy civilians gathered in the center of the Ancient Castle's first-floor hall, each harboring their own thoughts as they stared at Isabelle on the stairs.

At last, the land-clearing plan was about to be announced. To them, this was a turning point in their lives.

Isabelle had never spoken before more than a hundred people. Even after gathering her courage, she still stumbled over her words.

"Um... the lich lord said we can begin clearing the land today... As for the specific arrangements, we'll divide things according to the number of able-bodied adults..."

Before she had even finished, someone impatiently asked,

"What about the land we had before? I had two mu of land and a house in my old territory!"

"Yeah, I had one mu too."

"I even had a cow!"

"Didn't they say everything would get better after coming here? If we have to start over, we'll lose everything!"

The crowd all started talking at once, completely drowning out Isabelle's voice.

The young girl had never encountered such chaos before. Her face immediately turned pale, and she collapsed onto the stairs.

As the scene descended into disorder, Isabelle began to panic as well. The crowd grew more and more agitated and kept pressing toward her, as if they were about to surround her.

Hadn't everything been fine before? Why had these refugees, who had been at the end of their rope, become so terrifying now that they were about to begin a new life?

Just as Isabelle was about to flee in fright, a harsh scratching sound rang out, like blades scraping across stone.

Everyone turned toward the sound and saw Raul standing in the hall with a cold expression.

He held a large iron hammer in his right hand, while a strangely shaped skeleton stood to his left. The ear-piercing sound had come from the skeleton's scythe-like arms scraping across the floor.

This was Kazik One, the Mutated Skeleton created by Amber Xiu. Quite a few people present had witnessed this skeleton's power. When they fled, the Lord had sent troops after them. Thanks to this strange skeleton's intervention, they had managed to drive off the Lord's pursuing soldiers.

The skeleton looked bizarre, but its combat strength was enough to crush a fully armed militia squad.

Raul carried the iron hammer over his shoulder and walked toward the crowd step by step.

The crowd, who moments ago had been so worked up they seemed ready to revolt, now fell utterly silent. They automatically parted to either side and made way for him.

Raul walked without saying a word, and the Mutated Skeleton silently followed behind him. The footsteps and the scraping of bone claws echoed through the Ancient Castle, seeming even more deafening than the earlier quarrel.

Raul walked all the way to Isabelle's side and said sternly, "Stand up, Isabelle. Don't disgrace the lich lord."

Isabelle hurriedly got to her feet and apologized, "I'm sorry, I..."

Raul cut her off. "This is not the time to apologize. Have you completed the task the lich lord gave you?"

Isabelle had not expected Raul to speak that way. He sounded like Amber Xiu's loyal servant.

Raul helped Isabelle up, then turned to the timid, uneasy refugees and said, "Do you have any objections to the lich lord's arrangements?"

Everyone's eyes fell upon the bizarre, clawing skeleton. They had completely calmed down and remembered once again that the master of this territory was a lich.

Deep within the Ancient Castle, Amber Xiu watched everything happening in the hall through a magical projection. He had arranged for Raul to help Isabelle stabilize the situation, and it now seemed he did not need to worry any further.

Amber Xiu was quite satisfied with Raul's transformation. Once even the meekest sheep had personally tried slaughtering its own kind, it would begin to change in the direction of a beast of prey.

With a wave of his hand, he dispelled the detection spell and turned his attention back to his research.

He had already given Ghost Reproduction Research a rough read. He might not yet have fully mastered every experimental detail, but he had completely grasped the fundamental principles.

Master Morgan had found inspiration in the process of human reproduction.

Humans reproduced by carrying a child for ten months before giving birth, and newborns naturally possessed souls. Setting aside the physical body, from the perspective of souls alone, two independent souls somehow gave birth to a new soul.

Likewise, every race that possessed souls had some method of increasing their number of souls.

And since these newly born souls had not experienced physical death, they were not Undead by nature.

As long as this process of soul growth, where one plus one became greater than two, could be replicated through magical means, the newborn souls could be made into Soul Puppets and become special Undead Troops not countered by light magic.

It sounded simple, but abandoning the assistance of the physical body and reproducing through souls alone was harder than for a mortal to become a legend.

After spending a thousand years on it, Master Morgan had finally created a special ritual spell capable of reproducing at the soul level. Master Morgan named this ritual spell Soul Embryo.

The entire Ghost Reproduction Research revolved around explaining the ritual spell Soul Embryo, laying out all its principles in meticulous detail.

Creation was difficult, but replication was much easier.

Amber Xiu was confident he could reproduce this ritual spell. The only problem was—its cost was far too high.

Completing a single ritual spell would cost nearly fifty thousand Gold Coins.

And that was only the cost required for the newborn soul. Next, a suitable Soul Puppet body had to be made for this fragile soul. Otherwise, the newborn soul would quickly "die" from losing the nourishment of a physical body.

This death did not mean the soul would disperse. It meant it could not remain in an "alive" state and would rapidly transform toward Undeath. Only specially made Soul Puppets could keep the soul active while also providing the convenient, easily disassembled and reassembled nature of Undead Troops.

And creating a Soul Puppets' body would cost a great deal of Gold Coins as well. If it was meant to possess any combat capability, the expense would be astronomical.

To create a Soul Puppet comparable to a High-level Undead, the conservative estimate was two hundred thousand Gold Coins.

Amber Xiu muttered to himself, "Two hundred thousand Gold Coins for a Soul Puppet with only the combat power of a High-level Undead? I'd be better off spending two hundred thousand Gold Coins to hire several high-level human professionals to work for me. No wonder this thing never became widespread. The cost is too high. It has no value for money at all."

But Amber Xiu was not disappointed. Instead, he was so excited that Soul Fire nearly burst from his eye sockets.

Because he had discovered that he could greatly reduce the production cost of Soul Puppets.

Simulated Soul was a special spell Amber Xiu had obtained when he advanced to legend. He could create different souls according to his needs. The reason those Mutated Skeletons could operate perfectly was entirely because Amber Xiu had crafted exclusive souls for them. Otherwise, making a human soul control eight bone claws would definitely yield twice the effort for half the result.

After reading Master Morgan's work, Amber Xiu estimated that he could use Simulated Soul to replace the Soul Embryo ritual spell, greatly reducing the cost.

As for the Soul Puppet body, Amber Xiu looked toward the large glass bottle on the table—the cheap bottle of Living Mercury. Living Mercury had a body with high magic resistance but no soul. With only slight modifications, it could perfectly accommodate the Simulated Soul customized by Amber Xiu.

Magical research truly was fascinating. Master Morgan probably could never have imagined that several centuries after his fall, a lich would obtain the legendary gift of Simulated Soul. Nor could he have imagined that those lunatics in Alchemy City would create the perfect Soul Puppet material known as Living Mercury.

And now, standing on the shoulders of giants, Amber Xiu was about to embark upon a glittering road to wealth.

"Master Morgan, if you hadn't fallen, I truly would have liked to exchange ideas with you."

Amber Xiu sighed. If this master had survived until now, Alchemy City might truly have been able to complete that mysterious God-Making Plan. Such was the power of knowledge.

After his moment of reflection, Amber Xiu began preparing the materials.

His first Soul Puppet creation experiment was officially about to begin!

(End of Chapter)