Nicola was facing a raw ore slightly larger than a fist, it was totally black without emitting any shine, on the contrary, he seemed to absorb the little illumination around it, making everything darker. Its surface was completely surrounded by strange marks that looked like faces, and it made a low sound like the wail of souls. A long time ago, Ogume showed him and Tiane a booklet that contained information about the legendary metals, and unless he was going crazy, that ore in front of him was a soulmetal ore.
However, there were two things around the ore, just below it was a completely black sphere, as if it were a materialization of the darkness itself, Nicola could feel the mana that permeated this place slowly leaking out of this sphere, unknown patterns were forming around this sphere like celestial marks, nothing created by cultivators could reach that level of perfection. He knew that these were two treasures that he should keep to himself.
Finally around these two items was a human body, dirty with black earth but in perfect condition, the position he was in was still maintained, as if trying to grab the two items in a greedy position, in fact he could still see the gleam of greed in your eyes. The emotion was still so strong that it emitted from his corpse and the core of greed in Nicola's dantian began to feed and develop quickly.
"I believe we have discovered the reason why you are trapped here, Tuatha." Nicola said as he turned to the wisp. "I'll be honest with you, that ore is soulmetal, a very important metal for me and I would like to acquire it. This sphere underneath I don't know what it is, but it seems to be very useful to me, and this body I have an idea of what it is but I think you already know whose it is, just like me. "
"Yes Nicola, even though I became a living dead and lost all memories of when I was alive, I still feel the connection of my soul with this body, this corpse was the self of old and probably died here trying to take these two items. " He paused as if to regret something before speaking again.
"I don't want any of this, it just brought me death and an eternal prison inside this cave, you can take them, maybe that will free me from being a prisoner, but I must warn you to be careful. After all, it was the cause of my death as you can see for yourself."
That body no longer served Tuatha, once transformed into the living dead, there was no way to return the process, even though he still had a connection with that empty body, his soul became a new soul, suitable for a living dead and a new way of life.
Nicola understood what had happened here, the old Tuatha came to take these items and died here because of the reaction of the items, not everything was allowed to be taken so easily and this sphere was one of those items that reacted to any attempt.
So the human body of Tuatha died here and his soul did not follow the path of reincarnation becoming a wisp, and despite being free, this black sphere connected to the corpse preventing it from decomposing and created a chain that imprisons him in that place, using the corpse as a medium. So the most effective way to resolve this would be to take the sphere away, in order to break the chains that hold the wisp in place.
Nicola nodded to Tuatha and approached the two magical treasures. Walking slowly towards them, Nicola then coated his four hands with the elements of darkness and tried to remove the soulmetal first. But he did not expect the sphere to react, creating black tentacles that clung to the ore preventing it from moving.
And then it went through the protection with energy from the darkness as well as a drop of water being thrown into a lake and came into contact with Nicola's skin. Unlike what he thought, the sphere did not attack and destroy his body. It just crossed over and ran directly to his dantian, where the elementar core was located. Nicola panicked when he thought that his cultivation would be destroyed and tried to create barriers within his own body to prevent the sphere from advancing, but all of them were easily broken by it.
Then, when it was close to colliding with his core, something happened, something that even Nicola did not expect.