The Secret of Soul Mutation

"Bell pays his respects to Master!"

The moment the Soul Leech burrowed deep into his soul core and took complete control of his consciousness.

Bell's perceptions changed as well.

From that moment onward, Roger was his master.

"Get up. You're now the third Soul Slave under my command, but there's no need to announce that. Just say you're my Follower."

Roger smiled as he looked at the utterly submissive Bell. "Come on. Return to Bloodstone Castle with me."

"Yes, Master."

Bell replied respectfully.

"Master, congratulations on gaining another fine servant!"

Seeing that the battle had ended, Mia hurriedly flew over to congratulate him.

"Mm. Let's head back."

Inside a secret chamber.

Bell had fallen into a deep sleep.

Roger's death clone extended a wisp of soul power into the depths of Bell's soul and began carefully studying the differences between someone with a mutated soul and an ordinary person.

Half a month later.

Only after examining Bell's soul thoroughly, inside and out, did Roger withdraw.

"Soul mutation... To think the mutated region is the very same region where divine beasts produce innate energy. What's more, the soul structure within this region has been completely reshaped. Replicating it would be virtually impossible..."

Recalling the peculiarities of Bell's soul, Roger felt utterly at a loss.

The structure of the mutated portion of his soul was so complex that merely tracing through it once had taken Roger nearly ten days!

With his current soul strength, Roger could not even fully memorize that portion of the structure, let alone study it in depth.

It looks like I'll have to wait until the Jade Disc evolves again, or until I make another breakthrough in the death edict and reach the Paragon level, before I can continue studying it.

Roger thought reluctantly.

Soul mutation was exceedingly rare, yet the resulting structure was extraordinarily complex.

Even with the experience Roger had gained from dissecting vast numbers of souls over the years, uncovering the principles behind soul mutation was virtually impossible for now.

And so.

Roger woke Bell and had him patrol outside with Mia and Shelly, continuing their search for promising candidates.

In the blink of an eye.

Several thousand more years had passed since Roger enslaved Bell.

Throughout that time, there was still no activity at Undead Sacred Mountain.

Roger occasionally searched the Sanctuary Souls captured from the Undead Realm, but found no sign of teleportation arrays appearing in the Material Planes.

Thus, while cultivating, Roger continued stripping apart large numbers of Sanctuary Souls, deepening his accumulated knowledge of souls.

As he dissected souls in greater depth, Roger uncovered more and more of their secrets.

He also occasionally had Bell cooperate with his research.

Roger's understanding of souls grew at a slow but steady pace.

Time continued to pass.

Another piece of good news over those years was that Allen finally broke through his last bottleneck and cultivated to the Highgod level.

Netherlo City gradually expanded, with more tribes and powerful individuals joining it each year.

The number of Highgods within Netherlo City also continued to grow.

The credit for this went mainly to Mia, Shelly, and Bell.

While patrolling around Undead Sacred Mountain, the three now frequently encountered unfamiliar Highgods.

If those Highgods knew better and kept their distance, Mia and the others would not trouble them.

If they trusted in their own strength and tried to force their way into the Undead Sacred Mountain region, Mia and the others would strike without hesitation.

Naturally, the Godheads obtained from killing those Highgods could not go to waste.

Some were kept to bolster the patrol force, while the rest were sent to Netherlo City for loyal subordinates to refine.

That way.

Order could be maintained in Netherlo City even as it continued to expand.

After all, with so many people, Roger could hardly step in personally over every trivial matter.

As Netherlo City's influence expanded further, it gathered more and more information.

An increasing number of powerful individuals came to Roger's attention.

Some were lone wanderers, some led factions, and others had established cities just as Roger had.

Looking over this information.

Roger knew.

The Netherworld had finally entered a period of explosive growth in powerful individuals.

The Infernal Realm, the Celestial Realm, and the Life Divine Realm were presumably experiencing the same thing.

As he watched powerful individuals continue to emerge.

Roger knew that the appearance of teleportation arrays, followed by the descent of Sovereign Sparks, might not be far off.

To give himself a greater competitive edge when that time came, Roger entered seclusion more frequently and for longer periods.

Inside the great hall of Bloodstone Castle.

"Master, we've discovered a divine beast. It's a Highgod, but its strength is unknown."

Bell spoke respectfully. "Its innate divine ability produces a powerful suction force. Should we capture it?"

"An innate divine ability based on suction..." Information about the divine beast Bashé surfaced in Roger's mind. "Take Mia with you. Beat it into submission, then have Mia enslave it."

Bashé was only an ordinary divine beast with fairly unremarkable potential, so having Mia enslave it would suffice.

"Yes, Master!"

Bell immediately took his leave.

Over the years.

The number of powerful individuals appearing around Undead Sacred Mountain had also begun to rise.

The main reason was that the place stood out far too much.

It towered tens of thousands of meters high, and the entire mountain bore the pale color of bone.

Anyone with a little strength wanted to come and investigate.

Most of them were quite ordinary in strength, but a few tough opponents occasionally appeared.

For ordinary opponents, sending out a few Highgods who had refined Godheads was enough.

Those tougher opponents required experts like Mia and Bell to take action.

Those encounters also often yielded substantial gains.

Several days later.

An enormous snake ten thousand meters long, its dark blue-green body covered in dense, hard scales, was carried onto the open ground before the castle.

"Master, this fellow had strong soul defense. I failed to enslave him, so I could only kill him."

Mia spoke apologetically.

Although powerful individuals had begun appearing more frequently over the years, divine beasts were still rare, especially those that had cultivated to the Highgod level.

After all, even an ordinary divine beast was ten times stronger than others at the same level.

Thus, a Highgod-level divine beast was at least comparable to a Five-Star Fiend.

"It's normal for a water-attribute divine beast to excel at soul defense. If the enslavement failed, so be it."

After confirming that this divine beast was indeed a Bashé.

Roger did not find it a pity.

Ordinary divine beasts like this could now be seen every few years.

Successfully enslaving them was ideal, but failure did not matter either.

"Leave the divine beast's corpse here. Take its Godhead and find someone suitable to refine it."

Roger extracted the Godhead and tossed it to Mia, then put Bashé's corpse into his Interspatial Ring.

He arrived at another exceptionally spacious laboratory on the mountaintop.

Roger had ordered his subordinates to build it specifically over the years to make studying large divine beasts and special lifeforms easier.

Roger brought out Bashé's enormous corpse and began extracting its blood essence.

Through his research over the years.

Roger had discovered that a divine beast's blood essence was the most valuable thing in its body.

Although he had yet to discover any use for this blood essence, collecting it before it lost its vitality could hardly be a mistake.

In Roger's plans.

Studying divine beasts' innate divine abilities and researching how to strengthen the body were also important avenues of inquiry.