"Ancient wizards attempted to fuse the souls of other powerful creatures into their own, thereby gaining innate talents and abilities."
Baker's voice echoed through the quiet tearoom, carrying the calm detachment of someone dissecting a corpse.
"Weren't they worried about their own souls being contaminated? Or even worse consequences?"
Dago could not help interrupting.
His pupils narrowed slightly as his mental tendrils swept through the depths of his Mental Space.
There, the residual will of the Despair Winter Dragon Behelet was like a stubborn radioactive isotope, constantly emitting radiation called "despair."
He understood all too well the dangers of devouring and merging different souls.
It eroded the definition of the "self" and shifted the coordinates of one's cognition.
"Mm."
Baker nodded, his fingers brushing the rough patterns along the rim of his teacup as though stroking a piece of crude history.
"They quickly realized it simply wouldn't work. Differences in the frequencies of foreign souls would cause the 'duality' of the Mental Force Field to collapse, eventually turning wizards into madmen or monsters.
"Later, the ancient wizards came up with a better solution."
"What solution?"
"Summoning. Possession."
"Summoning... possession?"
Dago rolled the two words over in his mind, trying to decipher the mechanism behind them from their literal meanings.
"Yes."
Baker spoke slowly. "The spirit witches created a place called the Hall of All Spirits, specifically to store the souls of those powerful beings."
"It wasn't a palace in the physical sense, but a 'high-dimensional soul repository' located within the cracks of the Spirit World."
"They exploited loopholes in the rules, stripping those formidable souls from their flesh, formatting their memories, and retaining only the purest 'combat instincts' and 'insights into rules.'"
"When needed, they could summon them through marks and achieve equally powerful results."
"This method perfectly resolved the