Bro, I'm not an Undead!

Hours ago...

A man was screaming bitterly as ethereal strings penetrated his body and played with his delicate insides. All around him, there were corpses of people he knew but he couldn't even recognise as right now, the pain he felt exceeded any other he had ever known.

Above where he laid, a fearsome opponent was gazing down at him from a helm like face, two blue lights acting as his eyes while the wolf like appearance he had gave the situation a grave tone.

For it truly was.

"Please.... please... make it... stop..." the man begged as saliva, mucus and tears spilled from his face.

Unfortunately, his enemy did not entertain his requests and continued twisting something within him as he pleased.

His soul.

Ferex was immensely intrigued.

The skill he had acquired through Skill Amalgamation, [Dark Soul Bending] was incredibly fascinating.

~~~

[Dark Soul Bending | Lv.3]

The user is able to affect their soul and those of others through contact. Souls without wills are easier to manipulate for the user while those with mortal consciousness are theirs to twist and toy with.

Mana Requirements: 1000 Mana Points, 100 Mana Points every minute following activation

Duration: ---

Cooldown: None

~~~

This skill rendered the skill [Spirit Touch] from his mutation, the Pseudo Spirit Walker's Hide, completely obsolete!

With his Unliving Thread, he was capable of manipulating the soul of an individual, though doing so while they were alive was extremely difficult. If he managed to kill them first and latch his Unliving Thread over their soul before it left, he could manipulate their body via said soul!

Ferex had learnt how to use the skill more efficiently from the time he and Skullius had merged to form Ogwulf just yesterday!

A truly powerful ability.

This was good and all, but it was no easy feat.

Manipulating the soul was difficult and Ferex found that doing anything other shifting it around within a corpse was his limit right now.

Other than a soul being an individual, one without a will was powerful source of energy after all.

'I need to remind Master about his promise. We need to kill millions after all,' Ferex thought. He wanted to grow [Dark Soul Bending] immensely.

What he was doing to this man right now, was nothing more than torture. It didn't help much when there was only so few samples anyway.

The Apostle didn't have a moral compass but he was dedicated to learning. From this experience alone, he had found out plenty.

"Good work."

From behind him, Replicus emerged in the Penetrator form, applauding the excellent work.

The area they were in was an abandoned town.

A destroyed and abandoned town near the Belvion Union.

This had been the headquarters of this group of deceased men and women who had called themselves the Ascendant Hunters. From the looks of it, this group had destroyed this town recently as there were a lot of signs of fresh struggle and destruction.

According to the information Replicus retrieved from one of these guys â€" through pain related means â€" they believed in harvesting a lot of cumulative mana experience. At least their leaders believed so.

Even though gathering an outrageous amount of EXP without completing tasks was pretty much a waste of time, their leader told them to adhere to the rule.

Strange.

The fact of the matter though was that this group was very large and these guys weren't important members of it. The executive or more important members were... 'shockingly' connected to the objective Replicus was hunting down.

This mysterious organisation called the Severed Union.

It was at this time that Replicus really wished he had access to [Basic Evil Sanction] but sadly...

"For now..." the Penetrator said as he reached with his bony hand from under the sleeve of [Defiant Raiment of Perversion] robes where the lights from 212 balls of compressed mana collected from the slaughtered bandits were humming and released bursts of violent Levin that burnt the corpses completely save for a few heads that needed to be sent to Skullius.

***

Present time.

Yuyui was wolfing down stacks of food that Ferex had retrieved for her inconspicuously from within of the settlements in the Belvion Union.

The Belvion Union was like the Isise. Cities and towns joined together for a common cause. In this case, there had been restructuring in order to build a close knit society, much like a small nation within Pelian.

This setup was governed by one figure, a man by the name Dionas. He was a devilishly greedy noble who rose in order to resist the incompetence of the Family that ruled the small lands encompassing the settlements fitted here.

Because the land owned by this particular Family wasn't large or even special, no other Families bothered to contend for it.

As mentioned before, proper challenges were allowed between Families and the loser would relinquish their lands. However, because this Family did not see such things, they grew reluctant and did nothing but reap the share of coin owned to them by their inhabitants without putting in extra effort against threats such as the Ascendant Hunters.

Truthfully, they lacked the means to, an exploitable weakness.

Still, the lands suffered even as Dionas rose. He did what he could to seem like the hero but behind the facade, he was more interested in acquiring power, using his campaign to fight the fools governing the land as the key.

The Royal Family wouldn't care, as always.

Upon reaching the Belvion Union, which wasn't as guarded as Genhuis, Skullius had done his research before heading for the kill earlier, one of the things he discovered being the growing hate for this Dionas character.

His true nature was starting to show over the years of having to hide it.

'There are some really ambitious people in this world,' Skullius had thought.

Right now, as he looked at Yuyui stress eat while they sat within the same large house the bandit group had used, he couldn't help but attach the word ambitious to Yuyui's bottomless pit of a stomach.

"How are you feeling now?" Skullius asked.

Yuyui took the time to masticate the food chunks inflating her cheeks before daring to look sullen. The messy kind of sullen where food stains clung to her lips unpleasantly.

"I don't know," she said with a weak voice.

"I thought you'd say 'full' at least," Replicus mocked lightly, his thunderclouds as he sat in the far corner, away from the girl so as to not distract her meal with the flash of his sockets, spawning endlessly.

Yuyui gave him an 'I'm not in the mood for that' look.

"If...if what you say is true then... I'll become a fugitive won't I? This profile your other self told us about... They must know what I look like now right? So how will I be able to travel anywhere?" Yuyui asked with genuine worry.

"You won't need to travel much for a while. Worst case, we'll settle in the Belvion Union from time to time. They have only a single Temple among all the stacked towns, a small branch of the Association with pitiful mercenaries and their security is average. I bet they keep hiring mercenaries from Genhuis whenever they get bullies," Replicus said. "The best way to hide is to do it in plain sight."

That worked.

Yuyui nodded and took another bite of her food. Her resolve was still under construction and her will to go back to the Temple of Unlusted Tears to 'negotiate' with Bassbion again was slowly climbing back up.

She still needed to get stronger.

The Penetrator rose from his seat and walked outside.

"Our guests will be arriving soon. I gave Kenno a specific time hoping that I'd be free enough to both meet him and take care of these... Ascendant Hunters. Looks like I wasn't wrong," Replicus said as he summoned the guidance field and had it expand, showing a map of everywhere he had been to, including his current location.

There was dot representing Kenno, as Replicus could track him. He had become his <Attachment> because of the lent guidance field and thus, even without a <Marked Spot> he could trace his movement on the map. Likewise, there was another dot representing Yuyui who was with him right now.

"Now. All that's left is to setup a location. My other self was right. I have to make a good first impression on Kenno and his group. They'll be the first additions to Operation 'Living Solutions' after all. Hehehehe!"

Replicus looked up into the sky.

The sun was shining bright. A little too bright actually.

It was nice still.

Wait...

'Right! A sun!' Replicus thought with a jolt as he took out the Brilliant Dent, the storage pouch claimed from the Grand Priest and peeked into it.

Its description was made Replicus think.

~~~

[Brilliant Dent]

<Mythical>

A special storage pouch that can carry the weight of multiple continents while preserving the life of anything that is kept within it. The Dent can duplicate concepts observed by the user within its space, allowing them freedom in manipulating them as well.

-Special Effects-

•+50% to all stats for all inhabitants

•+90% energy regeneration for all inhabitants

•Can easily erect safety mechanisms the user desires

•Remains hidden until used or called by user

•Devours whole anything the user desires, but cannot guarantee permanent enclosure for special cases

•Filters energies

~~~

Everything about this thing was extraordinary, fitting the grade of Mythical but one thing interested Replicus most right now.

'Can duplicate concepts observed by the user within its space...' Replicus thought.

It had suddenly struck him.

The inside of the Brilliant Dent while inhabitable was still just a barely lit blank space. There were the mountains from Fortune yes but...

There needed to be more... vibrance.

A sun would do right?

The sun...

Could it be counted as a concept when dealing with this storage pouch?

The only way to find out was...

Replicus extended his fingers into the air and pinched at the far away sun while opening the mouth of the Brilliant Dent in his other hand.

He then withdrew his fingers with the image of the bright sun between them and...

...!

It never left!

A shocking brightness descended over the entire ruined town with an unforgiving light and fierce heat that...

VWOOOOSH!

Fire!!

Yuyui fell over from her seat from the light and flame that suddenly engulfed the entire town in an instant before Replicus hurriedly chucked the sun fitted between his fingers into the Brilliant Dent!

Everything returned to normal... for the most part, but Replicus' body was burning ferociously under red flames that were then quickly suffocated by the [Defiant Raiment of Perversion] before doing any form of damage to him.

"Well... crap!" Replicus said with his sockets flashing madly.

The entire town had turned black, charred beyond belief!

"That was incredible! This thing can recreate what I see! The result might be far from the real thing but at least I can control it as I see fit," Replicus said while analysing what had just happened.

This was insane!

This was the might of a Mythical grade tool!

Intriguing!

He peeked into the Brilliant Dent and saw the replicated sun he had just created lively resting high above the mountains while providing much needed light!

The Penetrator couldn't help but chuckle to himself.

"This should make a pretty fleshing good first impression."