There was something deliciously attractive about making idiots pay us to mess with their souls.
Honestly, as I watched the ad again, I wanted to cackle. The footage of Ian and Revilla rampaging through the lab had made the corpos of this world lose their collective minds. I knew that for a fact, because we were scrying on most of the important corpos, and they were transfixed by what we offered.
'Transfixed' was definitely the word. The corpos were now watching the little display of power and savagery on a loop, adamant to have what we had. After all, we were selling the dream! Power, direct and personal, from an entirely new source!
Too bad the dream was literally just that: a dream.
True, a warlock could technically achieve the same level of power as our lovely apprentices. But could they be as versatile? No.
Besides, I had exactly zero intentions of applying my somewhat improved warlock-creation process to the many corpos who would undoubtedly come sniffing for our 'product.' They would receive the good old raw treatment of getting a soul sliver shoved inside of them, triggering the decline of their souls!
As for my own little project, it was going better than I had hoped.
The warlocks I'd made after my experimentation were holding up well. They weren't bastions of power or whatever, but they were stable, with a very minor trend towards gradual soul-strengthening. I had no idea how their grafted souls would hold up if they tried to follow a traditional mage path, but I planned to find out. I was keeping them under observation so I could pick out a few likely candidates.
Meanwhile, the recruits whose souls I'd messed around with… well, let's say they weren't doing that hot.
Most of them were already starting to seriously waste away as their souls continued to dissolve. I was also increasingly convinced there would be no revival in the Abyss for them. At best, they might get pulled back and stuffed into a new body, but all that would be left of them would be some minor soul wisps on top of a soul core. That wasn't enough to support a consciousness.
In other words, they'd be incognizant flesh puppets, which I seriously doubted could follow or even recognize orders. They would just lie there until they expired, or until someone put them out of their misery.
I didn't feel even the slightest bit of guilt.
If they had followed Glaustro's rules, they wouldn't be in their current mess. It wasn't like Glaustro had asked much of them, either. How hard was it to be halfway decent to the people around you? Not even that, actually! They just had to not commit murder and rape.
No matter. They had been useful, at least. Now if only I could figure out how to force one of them to ascend…
Speaking of my test subjects, the one stable warlock I had made amongst the recruits was proving to be not so stable anymore. The recruit's soul was consistently strengthening and thickening, but so were the pieces of my soul sliver.
Honestly? I was getting a little worried. With every passing day, I became more and more aware of the soul sliver I'd implanted in the mortal. I was now catching snatches of his thoughts, too.
Thoughts which were unusually slurred, slow, and incoherent.
It was like his mind was collapsing in on itself, weighed down by what could only be Woe. He felt like a never-ending feast to my senses, the Emotion leaking out of him and feeding my soul directly.
None of that was necessarily bad, obviously, but it was also highly unexpected.
I had no idea what was going to happen to him. The tendency of my soul sliver towards growth made me think that no matter what happened, it wouldn't be good for the mortal. But would it be just as bad for me?
I was starting to dread the possibility that I was producing some kind of an odd soul clone.
I had learned from my mother's library about some demons' attempts to do similar things. One strategy I'd read about more than once involved the demon cutting their soul in half, then feeding both sides souls and mana in an attempt to get them to heal back up to two individual wholes.
None of those attempts had gone well. The consequences ranged from madness, to comas, to complete dissolutions of the mind, to death.
Well. Actually, death was the most common consequence. Whoever thought it was a good idea to cut their soul in half was obviously insane. The damage alone typically sent the demon in question scrambling back to the Abyss for a quick resurrection.
Unless they attempted their stupidity in the Abyss, of course. In that case, they just died.
I mean, come on! It was relatively easy to cut the outer layers of a soul in half, but the core? The truly important layers? Nope. One 'half' of their soul would end up disconnected from that crucial core, and therefore had no chance of surviving, right from the start. The demons who tried were basically just mutilating themselves.
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And if they did somehow manage to cut the core of their souls apart? Death, and rather instant, too. With a possible side of ego-death and halting your own soul's cycle of reincarnation. So… yeah. Not smart.
Now, I hadn't done any of these things when I operated on the mortal recruit, but there were some unfortunate similarities. I did cut a piece of my soul off, no matter how small. And I did shove it inside a mortal 'shell', no matter that the shell was occupied already.
So, if my soul sliver did eventually devour the mortal's soul, what would happen? Would a secondary consciousness be born within it? Would it be more like a piece of me, completely detached from my main body?
Or, and this was my worst case scenario, would the soul sliver merge with the mortal's consciousness to produce some odd, brand new demon? One with potential access to my abilities, secrets, and long-term plans?
Obviously, I ordered the troublesome warlock be contained and watched even more rigorously. But the worry was there, niggling at the back of my mind.
I sighed, rubbed my forehead, and tried to focus again. We needed to monitor the reactions of the corpos, not to mention manage the first wave of people looking for our enhancements. They would, no doubt, all be 'spies' for the megacorps, but I didn't mind giving them guinea pigs.
They were never going to be able to replicate the process without a demon anyway.
"So, how are we doing?" Glaustro asked gruffly. Not because he was upset with any of us, but because he looked three stages past 'dead of exhaustion.'
Truly, the man was lucky to be a demon. A mortal would not have survived what he was doing to himself.
"We're doing great!" I happily reported, with much smug nodding from Mia. "It's been only one week, and we've already had close to two hundred people approach us for our 'esper establishment and enhancement' treatment. Bit of a mouthful, but hey, the corpos seem to react well to names like that."
And did it ever so amuse me that I'd had to hire another succubus for marketing consultations!
Sure, people typically associated succubi with lust and excess. But, as Desire amply demonstrated, succubi were also creatures of commerce. Sex sells, after all. They'd been working out how best to market it for ages.
In that respect, the corpos of this tiny world simply could not compare. Our succubus hire did amuse herself by studying the local businesses and marketing strategies. Apparently, she picked up 'a few useful tricks', but she mostly treated the local professionals like they were kiddies playing in a pool much too deep for them.
"Our latest hire is really paying off, too," I went on. "Seraphia, that's the succubus' name, helped us make promo material. Ads, some catchy slogans. We're about ready to hit the public with it, but we're holding off until we've properly gauged the response of the corpos."
Glaustro's expression seemed caught between amusement and exasperation. "Is that so? And how many of the two hundred or so customers that you've had were there just to scout you out and take back 'the technology' to their megacorp masters?"
"All of them? I think. A couple might have been security, bodyguards and the like, who want a leg up on the competition. I'll need to check, but I ordered those be given the 'stable' warlock treatment. If they really were there just for themselves, we can use them as s."
"Mmm. And you're not doing all the warlock conversions yourself?" Bronwynn pressed, the concerned note in his voice mostly hidden.
"Obviously not," Mia purred. She made herself a little more comfy on my lap. "We have apprentices to teach. Besides, even with Divinity to heal, we'd eventually have more bits of our soul on the outside of ourselves than inside."
And that would be bad. Not sure exactly why or how bad it would be, but it was more or less universally agreed in every text on warlocks I had come across.
Of course, the same texts were frustratingly vague and not particularly helpful, due to how little people tended to think of warlocks. I kind of wanted to demand back the hours I had spent studying them.
I might have been immortal, but that didn't mean I wanted to waste my time on useless shit!
"Excellent. Who did you pick for work in the clinics?" Glaustro rumbled, sounding much happier.
"We recently went through our ranks, particularly some of the soldiers who showed the most promise and loyalty, and did a deeper dive into their motives for being with us. So far, we haven't caught any spies. Not that any of those would be blatant enough to approach us freely, I don't think. A single slip of their Emotions, and we'd catch on, after all."
"And your apprentices?" Glaustro pushed.
Mia was the one who answered this time, with a self-satisfied smirk. "They're doing great. Better than ever. They seem to enjoy the little excursions we've been sending them on. Their progress has sped up now that they're applying what they learned. We also warned them about spies and traitors, so they'll know how to behave if approached. Though…"
"Go on," Glaustro encouraged when my kitty cat faltered.
"Well… They're not great at managing their Emotions. They're only mortal, after all. So, we put together suppression artefacts for them both. People will obviously notice their Emotions and souls have been shielded, but we're hoping everyone will assume we're just protective of our apprentices."
"You are protective," I chuckled, tightening my hold of her so she couldn't wiggle out and try to claw me up. "Those extra defensive measures were entirely unnecessary. They can probably survive a nuke now."
"I don't like your tone."
"And I love the way you're glaring at me," I breathed, low and husky, making the kitty cat flush and look away.
Seriously, though! She had insisted on so many defenses, and most of them were unnecessarily complex. After all, she wanted items that could save our apprentices' lives, but which wouldn't hinder their progress or instill in them a sense of invincibility. The solution was a very complicated bit of enchanting that only activated to protect an item's wearer when they were at death's door.
Our apprentices could get brutalized, have their limbs chopped off, etc. They'd only be protected at the last moment, at which point the artefact would stabilize them and then teleport them to Mia or me. Whoever was closer.
I didn't object, though, not even to how expensive the dang things were. I was growing rather fond of the goobers myself. I didn't cherish the idea of losing them to some stupidity, either.
"Very well." Glaustro sighed. He then gave us an apologetic look, which put us both on edge. "In that case… I ask that you take a small break from this invasion. You are needed on Breskwor for a while. Imthala asked for help."
Ah.
A small smile stretched over my lips as I exchanged a happy look with Mia.
We were going home.