A dim blue light illuminated Arthur's bedroom as the magic circle slowly appeared before his hand. The casting speed of the spell was slow, thanks to the recent alterations, but there was room for improvement.
The more he cast it, the more the spell's structure would become second nature to him. Still, the casting speed for such a complex spell would always take a few minutes.
This is because casting a spell was essentially writing with mana, and even the quickest writers in the world couldn't fill a page's worth of words in a few seconds. Of course, he could always imprint it on his mana core and nullify the casting time, but he had no intention to do so just yet.
The number of spells he could imprint was limited, and this was only the first step in completing a workable necromancy spell. Arthur had many additions he intended to add to the spell before he would consider it complete and ready to imprint.
Once the magic circle was formed, Arthur executed the spell as a gentle breeze circled the room. The candlelight flickered behind him as a bright blue light radiated from the man's eyes.
It looked as if the world's brightest flashlight rattled within the man's skull, creating some sort of grotesque light show. And as the blue light pulsed, the corpse's body contracted its muscles in unison as if being electrocuted.
The man's corpse went limp, and the illumination from within his skull dissipated as if it were a lie, yet Arthur was smiling and holding back his urge to laugh.
It worked! He instantly felt a connection to the corpse, as if the man's body were just another limb to exert his will upon.
Arthur urged it to stand in his mind, but the sensation of controlling the corpse felt strange and disjointed. It was as if he was controlling his own body in some third-person virtual reality game, except his point of view was in front of the corpse instead of behind it.
It created a surreal disconnect, and Arthur felt like he'd need to relearn all his motor functions to control the corpse properly, but he had no intentions of wasting his time on such a novelty.
Every moment that passed while he directly controlled the corpse was quickly draining his mana. The spell itself had consumed a quarter of his mana to cast, and controlling the corpse for just a few minutes had depleted another quarter.
Thanks to his mana limitation, learning to control the corpse would take weeks. Another detriment was it required concentration to maintain control, leaving him vulnerable to attacks. Of course, the many uses of a puppet didn't escape him, but as of right now, he needed more mana to wield it efficiently.
"It worked? It worked, right?!" Kyren excitedly shouted as he glanced between the struggling corpse and Arthur. "Hahaha! You did it, kid!"
"Remember, it's just the first step," Arthur replied. He stopped controlling the corpse and let its struggling body fall to the floor as if its puppet strings were suddenly cut.
Arthur paced around the room, thinking aloud. "I'd need to devise some way to prevent rot, or perhaps getting rid of the flesh altogether would be simpler... Spreading disease might be a bonus if I left it as is, but I'm not immune to its effects either, and I'd likely be around them more than the enemy..."
Kyren floated over and followed him. "What are you mumbling about?"
"I'm trying to figure out what to work on first."
Kyren looked back at the corpse. "What do you mean? Is there something wrong with the spell?"
"It worked as intended. It gave me power over the corpse as if it were one of my hidden blades, but in the end, it's still a corpse. It'll start to smell in a few hours as it begins to rot, especially in Revan, where it's hot and humid.
"There's a lot I'd like to check, but keeping it around would cause trouble if anyone were to see it, and I have no intention of sleeping next to a rotting corpse for the duration of the war... Ah!" Arthur suddenly thought of something and turned back to the corpse, controlling it once more.
Using his connection to the corpse, Arthur willed its arm straight into the air before a blue light filled the tent once more. However, this time, the magic circle formed before the corpse's hand, producing a small flame that quickly flickered out of existence.
Inside the corpse's core, he could feel a pool of mana far greater than his own. However, without further testing, it was difficult to speculate what level of cultivation the corpse had reached in his life.
Nevertheless, the fact that the corpse had more mana than him confirmed Arthur's theory that the ethereal core manifested physically. Had it not manifested, then the corpse would only have a seed of mana in its core containing a portion of the mana Arthur had spent on the spell.
"Did you do that?" Kyren asked as his ethereal jaw dropped.
Arthur couldn't hold back his smile as thoughts of a lich army filled his mind.
"I was right. His mana core manifested physically... Damn it!" Arthur grumbled quietly as his urge to keep the corpse fought his rationality. "I really wish I had more time with it. I want to test whether the mana core will grow similarly to a mana beast or if it halts its growth when it crystallizes..."
"That means I'll be able to get a body with a ninth circle mana core, right?" Kyren asked hopefully.
"It's possible... I still need to do more testing with the spell. Don't get your hopes up yet. It's also possible that ethereal mana cores dissipate over time. This guy only died a few minutes before I cast the spell, so we can't conclude that's the case without more tests."
"If it dissipates, then you can just kill a ninth circle and give his body to me." Kyren stuck two thumbs up and smiled.
"Pfft." Arthur rolled his eyes and laughed. "Yeah, right. Hold your breath, and I'll get right on that."
Unlike in Earth's fiction, the supreme level of power on Nithe was just as vulnerable as an average human if they didn't actively defend themselves. Mana, by itself, offered no physical alterations to the body outside of increasing memory and processing speed.
So, in theory, Arthur could stab a ninth circle mage in the heart with an ordinary sword, and they'd die just the same as anyone else.
Of course, one doesn't reach the apex of power without learning to defend themselves, but that vulnerability is another barrier to achieving greater heights of power on Nithe.
Arthur's head perked up as a rather terrifying thought entered his mind. Since he could use the corpse's mana core to cast a spell, did that mean the mana was his?
One of the perks of hunting a mana beast was their mana core. It was less efficient than aether crystals, but mages could use them to cultivate and increase their mana.
Unfortunately, mana doesn't like to mix with mana from a different source. So, in the process of cultivating with a mana beast's core, the vast majority of the mana is lost.
Still, it's an invaluable resource to those poor mages who can't afford a steady supply of aether crystals to supplement their growth.
That all changed if Arthur's mana core recognized the corpse's mana as its own. It would mean that he'd have a second mana core loaded with mana greater than his own that he could draw on to cultivate.
Arthur excitedly sat beside the corpse, placing his hand on the man's head before closing his eyes. A new, larger blue star stood within the void before his own. He watched curiously as clouds of aether gently flowed into it as if pulled in by the star's gravity.
The star's form of cultivation appeared much less violent than his own. Where Arthur would form a vortex and suck in aether like a raging river, the aether seemed to flow naturally toward the other mana core.
The scene didn't necessarily lend credence to its ability to grow beyond where the man had reached in life. Mana cores were like the vessels in which mana resided. They could be stretched by adding more mana than the core could handle, but when a mage used their mana, it wouldn't shrink. In short, mana cores only grew larger, not smaller.
The aether entering the man's core now could just be replenishing his mana. Unfortunately, there was no real way for Arthur to tell other than to exhaust the corpse's mana daily and count the number of spells it could produce each day to see if there was an increase over time.
No matter the reason for it, Arthur didn't enter the void to test whether a corpse's core could grow. Instead, he came to see if he could steal the corpse's mana.
He wasn't sure how to go about it and decided to treat it like the mana core was aether.
First, he tried to will a small part of the star to come towards his own, but it had no effect. So next, he focused his mind on the entirety of the star, but once again, his efforts were fruitless.
After trying a few more times, Arthur finally gave up. It was a long shot, anyway. However, he still found it strange that he couldn't even get a portion of the mana since the corpse was similar to a mana beast.
"Did you just try to cultivate its mana core, kid?" Kyren asked as Arthur opened his eyes.
"Yeah, but I couldn't get it to move. Have you ever cultivated with a mana beast core before?"
"Of course. Before I got picked up by the imperial family, I would hunt mana beasts to increase my mana."
"What did it look like when you cultivated their cores?" Arthur asked as he stood up and grabbed the sword beside the corpse.
"It looks like a big ball of aether clouds, just blue. Why?"
"Thought so..." Arthur paused and thought for a moment. "When I tried cultivating his core, it looked no different from my own, just larger and without circles rotating around it."
"That's impossible... Didn't you say that I could only see other people's mana cores because I was a spirit or whatever?"
"Yeah. That's why it's odd. It appeared as if I had two mana cores, and strangely, it makes sense, considering the nature of the spell. I believe the corpse's core is considered my own, which is why I can't use it to cultivate." Arthur replied as he stood over the corpse.
He felt sick just thinking about what he was about to do. He wasn't particularly squeamish, but unsurprisingly, cracking open another human's skull and digging around inside for a crystal was where his stomach drew the line.
Arthur could sense the mana core's location at the base of the man's skull, so he wasn't worried about damaging it with his swings, but the more he thought about it, the more squeamish he became.
It was one thing if he had to swing a sword at an enemy coming for his life, but mutilating a corpse seemed to be too much for his stomach to endure.
Arthur sighed as he walked to his bed and sat down. "I think I'll let Foster handle it."