Bro, I'm not an Undead!

Chapter 1248: Forging The Strongest...(3)

Skullius could hardly believe it. His crazy phantoms intended to add these components into the merging process, hence why they had told him to use Maximum Catalyst to pause it!

Caxellac\'s body had been heavily damaged after being struck point blank by Replicus\' final, all or nothing move in an attempt to survive the Mors Serene Grace.

The corpse still looked graceful, however limp and lifeless it was.

The long creamy hair that hardly looked like individual strands connected to form one mass, the pale, pasty skin, and deep, dark sockets on the face that had seen with shocking depth before...

It was magnificent to behold. If not for large hole dug into his body, the sanctity of the King\'s body might have remained intact. Even his dark armour had not been spared. Skullius remembered how incredibly resilient it had been. He wondered if the phantoms had a plan for its shards as well.

Caxellac\'s soul was bold and vibrant. If not for its bright, ghostly colour, anyone would mistake it for a tangible body. It too was borne through, however, damaged so badly that Serenity had claimed it was practically useless. It seemed she had changed her mind.

Where Skullius was most baffled, was with the Legendary grade artefact SoSei. It was a green skeleton with cracks and chinks all over its body.

This thing had been in Actuass\' possession. He had used it to fight and overwhelm Revia back in Evic, and when he (Actuass) and Skullius met for the first time, the artefact had come out of his storage of its own accord, Somanda piloting it.

It was then that the Arch-Lich had sought to kill Skullius with it and bring his soul back to Deadmanland. Of course, Skullius prevailed against it in the end, but only after damaging SoSei very badly.

(A/N: Refer to Ch.298).

"What do you intend to do with SoSei?" Skullius asked his phantoms. "Don\'t tell me you want to add that thing to the merge."

"Psssh! Flesh no!"

"What do you take us for Prime? Socketholes?"

"No. The skeleton is for later."

The phantoms gave Skullius much needed reassurance that they didn\'t have any weird plans.

"What about Caxellac\'s body and soul? Serenity, didn\'t you say we couldn\'t use it back then?" he asked.

"I did," Serenity replied, "but I was referring to using it to forge a weapon, as we did with the masked necromancer\'s soul. That was the only use I could think of back then, but your phantoms presented me with other possibilities."

"Like what?" Skullius said expectantly. "Do you have a way to fix my soul with this one?"

His intent in asking wasn\'t to disregard the other portion of his soul he had vowed to claim from Somanda, but if there was a way to prevent the portion of his soul on this end from going mad or to delay the effect of Doom Factor 2 - perhaps by adding extra parts - would be great!

Skullius felt like buying himself additional time would be immensely helpful. He hoped that his phantoms had been thinking of the same idea.

"No, unfortunately," one phantom said a bit sullenly. "Apparently, there\'s no way to stop Doom Factor 2, even if we acquire a Deity\'s soul to try and mend ours as you are thinking."

"What?" Skullius was dumbfounded. "How come? Is it because Somanda became a High Lich a while ago, reaching Divinity?"

"Surprisingly, no," another phantom voiced. "We seriously underestimated Arch-Liches, Prime."n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

Serenity chipped in. She was the one to have given the phantoms the enlightenment about undead Liches.

"You see, Liches are masters of the soul. That is their inherent, defining trait, even before they acquire great ranks. Perhaps you have thought to yourself before, wondering how exactly Arch-Liches like Somanda conquered worlds that are guarded by not only Rules, but the Deity or Deities who created said Rules?" she said.

Skullius reeled.

The thought had slipped into his mind before, but not for very long.

"How do they do it?" he asked.

"You\'ve seen for yourself what I told you before, about Luserus, the Deity your original body met in Opungale. He was a weak Deity. Far weaker than the Deities of Aigas. The world he made was felled by the efforts of Fulgardt alone," she explained. "He couldn\'t defend it as well as he could have because, like Quintess, Listafelle and Suzamete, he also gave up much of his strength to create it. But in his case, where he was already very weak to begin with..."

"I see," Skullius said severely.

There were weaker Deities that couldn\'t create Rules as powerful as those in Aigas. By creating a world, these Deities left themselves weaker, unable to fight against opponents that normally wouldn\'t be able to threaten them.

"Beings like Somanda have been thriving for a long time. They have been able to enslave the souls of weaker Deities after conquering their worlds. These souls are forged into fearsome warriors reserved only for great campaigns. I believe they are called Doom Knights," Serenity

said.

"Ah, I see."

Skullius would have liked to massage his temple.

"Yes. It would seem I underestimated Somanda\'s prowess. If he was able to mess with the souls of Deities even as an Arch-Lich..."

No wonder Sause had reacted the way he did all the way back then, in the Labyrinth of the Yoke, when Skullius told him he would be helping him to get his soul back from an Arch-Lich.

"Enough with the sombreness!" a phantom cried. "Let\'s get to business. Our aim is to create a stronger body than before. For that, we will use [Graceful Monolith of the Eminent] to combine the Hybrid Luman body, Caxellac\'s body and the Warmoth body."

"Isn\'t that dangerous? That\'s too much information in a single body. How would the racial skills from all these bodies even mesh well together?" Skullius asked, concerned. "And where

does Caxellac\'s soul come in, in all this?"

The phantoms emitted a collective, fake sigh.

They really didn\'t want to talk about the process they had planned.

"We are going to remove all the skills from Caxellac\'s body and our own bodies. We want to create the base bodies first. We fully intend to keep the Warmoth\'s Progeny\'s characteristics as the most dominant," one of them explained.

"Caxellac\'s soul will be used to enhanced the new bodies. There\'s a lot of information to be salvaged in that soul about Caxellac\'s himself. We intend to extract it."

Skullius nodded, but in all honesty, he wasn\'t sure he understood everything the phantoms

had explained. Also...

"Did you say bodies? Aren\'t we creating one body?" he asked meekly.

"Alright, Prime. Let\'s continue with the process! Deactivate [Neutral Maximum]."

Skullius grumbled once again and did as he was told.

At once, the guidance field resumed the process, but the phantoms gave him several

commands.

"Quick! Activate [Graceful Monolith of the Eminent]!"

"Quick! Isolate the skills from Caxellac\'s body!"

"Quick! Use [Neutral Maximum]! Don\'t let the Stolen Angel be merged with Caxellac\'s body

and your own

bodies!"

"Quick! Make sure the merging of bodies starts first. Halt the mutation of the skills!"

Skullius grew irritated.

In this state, the phantoms weren\'t able to carry their own weight. He had to do everything

himself.

The loathsome geniuses said it casually, but removing skills was no easy task. Skullius had never attempted to do this before.

Thankfully, using both [Sorcery of Essence] and [Mana All-Father] after holding the skills in place with [Maximum Constant] made it a simpler affair than he had imagined, even though it

took a bit of time.

Skullius isolated all the skills from Caxellac\'s body. (The ones from his bodies had already been isolated by the merging process.) As soon as he finished, Skullius used [Graceful Monolith of the Eminent].

The Blessing combined aspects of himself with other targets of his choosing. Thus, Skullius,

for convenience, had the Blessing devour Caxellac\'s body. He then had his Hybrid Luman body and Warmoth body merge through [Restless Storm Companion], and the instant the two bodies were engulfed with blinding bolts of Levin and Ju`wtte, he devoured them with [Graceful Monolith of the Eminent] as well!

Slowly but surely, the turbulent storm that had been erupting simmered down and was replaced by a large, golden seed that shone bright.

Skullius made sure the seed remained open to more components to be fused with.

After all, the seed had been planted after all the necessary inputs had been finalised.

But now wasn\'t yet the time. Skullius was just getting started.