"This is a scam," I grumbled angrily as we exited the store. Behind us, the shopkeeper's happy voice was still shouting encouragements to come back. Like I ever would!
For once, Mia was more amused by my outrage than she was upset herself. "We got what we wanted, though."
"Yes! For, like, twenty times the expected price. At least! Those two mage souls were not worth two hundred superior souls, and you know it!"
"Yes, but they did tick all of our requirements. They used a path almost identical to the one used on Lagyel, and they were both on the cusp of advancing to greater soul. That's as ideal as it gets for our needs. At least the swordsmanship souls were cheap?"
I was about to retort when I looked at her. Really looked at her, taking in her soul and Emotions as well as her expression. "You're just messing with me, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"Why did I fall in love with you again?"
"I don't know. You did that, not me."
"Yeah, that sounds fair." I cast a glance over my shoulder, spotting our two very awkward-looking apprentices. I swear, they seemed ready to bolt.
"You two know I'm not angry with you, right?" I asked.
They both visibly stiffened, so… no. No, they did not know that.
I just sighed and looked forward. They'd either chill out a little with time, or they wouldn't. Really, all that mattered was getting them through their ascension. They'd naturally lose some of their fear at that point.
Still, I felt the need to clarify.
"It's not your fault that idiot caters to other idiots who are willing to spend ridiculous amounts of souls on 'rare pieces.' Seriously. If he'd referred to a basic mage soul that way one more time, I would have taken his head off."
I could have, too. The idiot wasn't particularly powerful. His soul told me he'd barely made it to Baron, which put him solidly within the range of my ability to handle with minimal fuss.
Probably because he was busy fondling souls all day, instead of eating them like a proper demon.
"Anyway, now that we've got that settled, it's time for you two to head into the Absorption Station. You'll be taking only the mage souls right now. We don't want you to put yourselves out of commission or make your brains leak out your ears by doing too much too quickly."
Perhaps I was speaking a touch more aggressively than I needed to. The two mortals paled and exchanged glances, but they then nodded in unison to show their compliance.
I sighed, toned down the aggression, and got ready for a speech. "Okay, so, this is how it's going to go…"
"And how are your apprentices doing at the moment?" a very smug Glaustro asked, handing us a pouch full of souls. It contained everything we needed to drag our apprentices up to the point of ideal ascension, even if they went kicking and screaming all the way.
"They're fine," Mia sniffed. My kitty cat was still not entirely happy to have been pushed into teaching, even if she'd taken to it extremely well. "They are training on their own at the moment. We can't hold their hands all the way."
We really couldn't. We had supplied them with knowledge, a place to train, and plenty of other resources. They definitely had more than enough mana crystals to climb their way to archmage, at least. Of course, I knew the process was hardly that simple, but it was a start.
We had also guided them through the process of acquiring swordsmanship knowledge through soul absorption, and handed off their chosen weapons. The fact that Ian had chosen a greatsword was a bit of a shock, but seeing Revilla pick out a slender longsword style really wasn't. Somehow, the stupid collector even had an actual elven grandmaster swordsman's soul on sale, so there was that.
Glaustro nodded, barely trying to conceal his self-satisfied smirk. "I take it this means you have some time to start working on our destabilization projects?"
Mia flicked her tail huffily. "Yes."
"Actually, about that… I had a few suggestions I wanted to run by you." I grinned like a shark, anticipation suddenly itching at the back of my mind.
My colonel matched my grin, and even dialed up the malice. "By all means."
Sometimes, the best ideas come to you when you're frustrated over how slowly your apprentice is picking up a spell.
It wasn't Ian's fault. I was starting to realize that I wasn't exactly the best yardstick for measuring people's potential in magecraft. Probably since I came from a family of people expressly raised to be good at magecraft, over who-knew-how-many generations.
Anyway, the idea that had come to me during a particularly frustrating session with Ian was exceedingly simple. We needed the various megacorps to be distracted, disinclined to communicate, and basically scrambling like headless chickens. What better way to achieve that, than to give them something they'd always wanted?
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Because let me tell you, the whole immortality project they'd been working on together was hardly the only sketchy human experiment happening in the underbellies of this world's cities.
Another popular goal was to produce super soldiers. Or, at the very least, give people special abilities. The eventual result would be raise the upper crust even further above the poor plebeians milling around beneath the towering skyscrapers.
Now, the way the megacorps actually went about this was… let's say, not the most inspired. Some tried radiation, hoping to produce mutations or whatever. Some went straight for the DNA, splicing sketchy stuff into it and hoping for the best.
Others sank deep into pseudo-science, collecting and trying to selectively breed people who had 'odd abilities' already. This was actually the most ingenious method. Megacorps had enough money, power, and influence to get their hands on people with extremely high mana sensitivity, who might have developed an ability or two by accident. But without training, or even any understanding of what they were doing, the bloodlines of these 'proto-mages' were far more likely to degrade than to develop into something promising.
The whole thing was hilarious, really. Most of the 'proto-mages' only got as far as they did because they lived in areas where mana pooled naturally. Taking them away from those places was more harmful than it was helpful to the scientists' cause.
Regardless, as I was saying, training Ian (and occasionally Revilla) had reminded me of something most demons could do but few ever bothered with: creating warlocks.
Warlocks were a rather fascinating subject I had come across in my mother's book collection. The process was simple. A demon would separate a sliver of their soul, find a willing mortal, and then forcefully inject that sliver into the soul of the mortal. The result was a mortal with a bunch of abilities, instinctive spells, and access to a much larger mana pool than expected, along with the potential to draw on the mana pool of the demon who had 'uplifted' them to begin with.
I say potential, because the ability varied in effectiveness based on certain factors: the power of the demon themselves, their willingness to entertain the mortal, and their proximity to that mortal.
A Grand Duke could probably supply their warlocks with power from wherever they were within the full scope of reality itself. A Duke would have a ridiculously large range, but wouldn't be quite as impressive. The ability declined sharply from there, which is why most demons didn't seem to find warlocks all that useful or impressive.
Still, the soul sliver inside the mortal could let them bumble their way through casting as many different spells as the demon donor cared to let them. This meant you could, theoretically, pick up a completely normal mortal and turn them into an archmage overnight, plus give them access to your mana pool so they could fight in your name while you chilled out back on base.
Why, then, were warlocks not more popular as a method to quickly and effectively produce troops during invasions?
To start with, because the process more or less magically crippled them.
Turns out that having a demonic soul sliver shoved into them was Not Good for mortals. It overwhelmed them, overwrote their natural talents for magic, and put a hard limit on how much they could advance. They could get a tiny bit better on their own, but past that, the only way for them to 'advance' was for the demon backing them to increase the size of the soul sliver and expand the scope of abilities they had granted them. Without that, the warlock would struggle even to learn a new spell.
Furthermore, shocking absolutely no one, containing a piece of a demon's soul was harmful for a mortal's health and psyche.
The more the warlock used their power, the more the Emotion of the demonic soul donor would gradually infect them, inevitably leading to excess, insanity, and the complete dissolution of personality. If they somehow avoided that, perhaps by refusing to use their powers, there was still their mortality to contend with.
Having a piece of an extremely powerful soul shoved into your own did not exactly mean your soul was uplifted. It was more the equivalent of shoving a human into a mech and sending them off to battle. Sure, it would be amazing at first. They would feel invincible. But the real human inside would still be squishy and easily killable.
And if the warlock tried to improve their soul, and actually walk the path of magecraft? They'd fail.
With their soul infected and effectively welded to a demon's, its ability to grow and shift in quality was shot. Point of fact, the demonic influence would gradually erode it. Warlocks rarely lived longer than regular mortals. In fact, they tended to expire much faster, typically suffering from some kind of horrendous physical side effects.
Still, while warlocks had all those flaws and several more subtle issues that I haven't mentioned, they were also perfect for our current needs.
The locals wanted people with strange and esoteric abilities, right? Well, then we'd give them some.
In fact, every megacorp was getting a few. I had Divinity, and it wasn't like the soul slivers required to pump out some basic warlocks were that difficult or harmful to extract.
So, as Mia and I strolled through another sketchy underground facility backed by a megacorp, we did so with the air of someone shopping around for a particularly appealing piece of stationary.
"What about those two? They look suitably angry, desperate, and depressed." I pointed towards two women, girls, really, huddled in a corner of the massive room and glaring at everyone and everything that dared come near.
Not that I could blame them. The corpo assholes managed this particular facility a bit like a prison. When the 'subjects' weren't being prodded and poked to figure out how they worked, they were released to mingle and socialize for 'the sake of their mental health', which… yeah.
"Mmmm, no. They're not… vicious enough," Mia grumbled.
She turned away and continued assessing the many mortals around us.
Really, I couldn't stop chuckling to myself. What might the corpos think if they spotted us, casually strolling through their facility like we were on a shopping date?
"How about… aha, that guy over there? And maybe that woman prepping to pummel the asshole hitting on her?"
"Better. The woman I can agree with. The guy's kind of wimpy-looking, but we shouldn't waste too much time…" She trailed off, her gaze wandering back to the two girls I'd originally suggested. "I guess we can approach those two, also. It's not really that important to be picky, now that I think about it."
She was mumbling to herself by the time she finished, probably not wanting to admit that she hadn't bothered to assess the two emotionally the first time around.
They positively radiated Vengeance.
I grinned. "Sounds good."
I strolled right over to the two girls to kick off this entire thing. Mia flexed her mana, and suddenly the girls could see us, while no one would be able to see their reactions to our offer.
"Hello there," I said, with my best smile affixed to my face. Please allow us to introduce ourselves…"
Two hours later, the screaming started. A girl stood over a fallen guard, grinning viciously as crystal grew under his skin and turned his body inside out.
We left shortly after, unseen and unnoticed, on our way to the next facility.