"I'm proud of what you two managed to accomplish. It might not solve all our problems, and it might not last as a solution forever, but you've bought us far more time than I thought you could. And you are back here to help."
Glaustro's smile was a small, exultant thing. I tried to ignore how much it meant to me so I didn't radiate my need for parental approval. Really, it wasn't fair that he was ambushing us with praise like that!
"Right." I cleared my throat. "How are things here? You didn't tell us much through the messages."
"Couldn't tell you much. You know why."
I did. We had no guarantee the lieutenant generals couldn't intercept our communications.
"Things are, however, going well," he went on. "The warlock initiative you started has been paying dividends."
"Truly? How far along are we?"
"Every major corporation now has at least a few warlocks in important positions. Using the link between warlock and patron, we've been able to spy on the corporations and collect intelligence we couldn't have gotten easily otherwise."
That brought a smile to my lips. It was exactly what I'd been hoping for, especially in regards to labs which were kept so secret that the employees never left the premises. Those might actually have something we'd be interested in.
"Any particular discoveries made?" Mia purred, joining the conversation now that she didn't have to endure Glaustro's praise.
"Several things. Most notably, three different materials and two alloys the locals were able to produce. Nothing groundbreaking, but they will appeal to just about any crafter. There are also the methods used to produce the materials. We might be able to apply them to proper, valuable, mana-sensitive materials and get interesting results. That's for the future, though."
I nodded. It was also something I would need to secure and offer to Yules and Tibath, especially after all the help the latter had given me.
"What about eliminating the corpo top brass?" I asked. "Any closer to that?"
For the first time in the conversation, Glaustro grimaced. "Yes and no. We are… admittedly lacking in technological expertise. Though we've stolen the memories and skills of several experts, there are still some dead man's switches we can't properly disable yet. But we are close."
"Fair, fair. Unfortunate, but fair." I sighed, anxious to wrap the invasion up. Whether Breskwor was relatively safe for the moment or not, splitting our focus wasn't in our best interest.
"You should talk to Methialia when you get the chance," Glaustro suddenly suggested, making me arch an eyebrow in question. "She's been taking care of your 'little' operation while you were away."
Now, why did he sound so amused saying that?
"And?" I prompted.
"And it is growing. Rapidly. The megacorps are trying to produce their own warlock-equivalents, of course. Predictably, they are failing. We've kept them hopeful by sneaking demons into their labs and offering their subjects warlock contracts, but so far, that's only cost the corpos time and resources."
I smirked, unable to tamp down my glee. For some reason, it was so very amusing to watch mortals run head-first into brick walls. Besides, I could still feel a decent number of the warlocks Mia and I had left behind when we went to Breskwor. That meant they were still running around, causing trouble and chaos for the locals.
"I'm kind of surprised no one's tried to murder our employees and take over our shops yet, then!" I exclaimed.
This made Glaustro giggle. Actually giggle. It was a sound of absolute menace and cruelty.
"Who says they haven't? I hear the 'Warlock Inc.' job's gotten extremely popular among our troops. Apparently, it feels like being pampered. You're 'only' expected to make warlocks, and there are snacks delivering themselves to your doorstep every once in a while."
"Maybe I should sign up," Mia mused, grinning when I gave her a disapproving gltare. "What? Snacks are nice."
"They're only mortal souls," I reminded her. "Just the idiots the corps send to try to take us out."
"Mortal souls of surprising quality," Glaustro added.
That confused me. "How come?"
"Apparently, enduring the pressure of cybernetics produces some surprisingly robust souls, especially when combined with expert training. Nothing on the level of a mana-using civilization, of course, but it's a notable difference compared to regular lesser worlds we typically use for this kind of invasion."
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"Really?" I asked, confusion deepening into surprise.
"Yes. In fact, as the corporations continue to fail, they keep sending higher-level operatives to disrupt our shops. The increasing quality of those operatives' souls has only made the effect more noticeable."
I hummed a little at that, but ultimately shrugged my shoulders.
Honestly? It didn't matter much. Sure, the discovery made the world a tiny bit more valuable, but in the grand scheme of things? It would still probably be scrapped at the end of the invasion.
Slightly stronger souls on a lesser world didn't translate to any appreciable benefits for the legion. Not when the main reason for that strength was the pressure cybernetics put on a person's psyche. It might help those people endure ascension a little better, but that was a massive maybe, and it didn't make the world itself valuable. At most, their culture and knowledge would be carefully preserved before the world was fed to the Abyss.
Besides, if body dysmorphia or whatever was what caused the toughening of the soul, then there were many better ways to induce it in potential recruits. Chimera experiments, body sculpting, flesh warping… As demons, we had no lack of 'upgrades' that weren't healthy for a mortal's mind.
The only reason they weren't already being used, because I had little doubt someone among the legion's higher-ups had already noticed this phenomenon we were learning about, was because the results didn't justify the cost. There were just too many potential recruits scattered over far too many worlds.
We were taking in only the cream of the crop already. Which… when I took in the overall quality and mentality of mortal recruits, that was a little sad. Not that you could expect more from children brought up on trauma and fear.
It was a hell of a process. Just how many recruits wanted to slaughter every last demon before the legion ground down their spirit into conformity? Because I knew Mia couldn't be the only one with a tragic backstory.
Thankfully, all these distracted thoughts didn't disrupt the meeting, mostly because Glaustro dismissed us shortly after that little tidbit. That was when I found myself actually feeling excited.
I finally had a chance to look in on my experiments.
"This is… fascinating. Fascinating, and disturbing," I muttered to myself.
I was staring at the first recruit I'd turned into a warlock, the one I'd used as a proof of concept for my idea of breaking the soul sliver down into smaller pieces.
The warlocks I'd made after him, using a similar procedure on the locals, were doing fine. Better than fine. They were showing a clear tendency towards growth through training, and one had even managed to become a proper mage apprentice. They were also able to channel their own mana through the abilities I'd gifted them, allowing them to boost their power and effectiveness.
The pieces of my soul slivers were still inside their souls, but the pieces hadn't grown or mutated. They hadn't done much of anything, really. The locals' souls were simply strengthening through their accumulation of mana and its frequent use.
The original experiment, though?
The mortal was a goner.
Not in the sense that he'd died. Oh no. But the pieces of my soul sliver had grown, spread, and continued to infect his soul. At that point, 'his' soul was a bloated mess made mostly out of my soul stuff.
It was freaking me out a little.
If not for the fact that I could tell the mortal was now completely lacking any capacity for thought and reasoning, I would have done my very best to destroy his soul, down to the last sliver. Then I would have tracked him down when he was reborn in the Abyss to kill him for good.
I didn't need an evil clone of myself running around. Or a good clone of me. Or any clones of me.
Basically, I was doing my best to stay calm. I focused on the fact that the soul sliver's pieces had somehow lobotomized the guy's mind, instead of growing it into a copy of my own.
The best I could figure, that had happened because the soul sliver I'd used was so small and inconsequential. Even if it did contain a few 'memories', they were little more than stray surface thoughts that piece of my soul had happened to be processing when I lopped it off.
In turn, when the piece of my soul grew, bloated, and took over the body, it was left… empty. I could feel Woe pooling within the mess of the soul in front of me, but it was like the soul couldn't even process Emotions properly. It barely stirred, and only when a concentration of Woe in its vicinity thickened.
That did, however, leave me with a few questions.
"What in all the hells are you? How did I accidentally make you? And, most importantly… how can I use you?" I wondered aloud.
I gently 'poked' the soul with mine, then reeled away from it like it was going to bite me.
The stupid thing had reacted! It had reached out to me and tried to stick to the soul probe I'd extended with my mana. Almost like… well, like it was trying to merge back into me.
"No. Nope. I have enough weird stuff in my soul already! I do not need to add more, thank you very much. You wouldn't even be that helpful!"
I glared at the soul, which had been restored to stillness. It reminded me eerily of angelic souls in that way. Except, ironically, the stillness of this particular abomination felt more natural than what the angels had going on. At least it wasn't lobotomizing itself willingly every second of its existence.
My glaring shifted slowly to squinting as I examined the mess.
"I guess I can wait. There are still bits that haven't been consumed yet."
While about ninety percent of the soul had been taken over by, well, me, the remaining ten percent was still getting slowly devoured. I had no idea what would happen when the process finally completed itself, but at that point, I was morbidly curious.
Would I get a child, of a sort? A pure, new mind spawned from the union of my soul and that of a rotten recruit? I felt a shiver of disgust and alarm spike down my spine at the thought.
Not only did I want no part in parenting such an abomination, Mia was also liable to kill me. Several times. If I ever had a child with someone else, I didn't think she'd be reasonable about it.
Still, since I'd decided to wait, that left me with one final thing to organize: oversight of this abomination. I didn't really want to trust someone else with it. I also had no easy way to lug around a brain-dead body. Maybe I could stuff the mortal shell into my sword's spatial jewel?
I was idly drawing my sword out of its scabbard when I was hit by the most curious sensation.
Hunger.
It emanated from my soul blade, aimed squarely at one thing and one thing alone: the abomination of a soul I had accidentally produced.