Three days passed searching for worthy opponents since Clifford defeated the bear, only to be met with disappointment, as hardly anything could push him over the edge. Bored, he stopped searching and began his plan to gain a better understanding and control of his powers, making up his mind to continue later.
Starting with the shape-shifting ability, he hunted about five beasts and piled them on top of each other, preparing to experiment on them. Several hours later, each corpse was placed in a specific spot, separated from the rest. Then, he began devouring them one by one, based on how bright their halos were, starting from the lowest and finishing with the brightest.
Unlike the bear and the wendigo, the first two with the lowest brightness didn't force him to take on their forms the moment he finished devouring them, as they were weaker than him, and thus the core didn't capture their souls. Despite that, he was still able to take on their forms.
Starting from the third one, he began devouring part by part carefully before pausing and attempting to take their form. After a couple of trials and errors, he managed to figure out what he needed to devour to gain the form.
Devouring five of the organs, including the heart, was pretty much the condition, and the brain was what allowed him to gain their memories. This brought him to the understanding that he could just swallow his victims' heads to gain their memories without needing to eat them entirely.
The heart seemed to be the part that gave him the best amount of life force compared to the rest of the organs, but still too low compared to devouring the entire corpse. Even if he decided to feed on the organs only, which was like forty percent combined, it wasn't sufficient.
Once done with his first experiment, he proceeded to the next one. This time, he wanted to know if combining different parts from different forms was possible, as it would prove helpful.
It seemed impossible, no matter how hard he tried, but his relentless attempts eventually led to success. Initially, it turned out that once he transformed a part of his body into a form, he couldn't transform another part into a different form. However, with practice, he was able to come to a point where he could time it right and accomplish it.
For light injuries, his body would rapidly heal without any consumption of dark force. However, once the injury became deeper, developing into a wound or worse, it would cease healing until he entered an unconscious state, during which his body would start absorbing the dark force on its own.
Through testing, light injuries couldn't push his strength further. Only after piercing his left arm with an antler and causing a deep hole did he come to this conclusion. One thing he noticed after leaving the antler stuck in his arm was that his ability didn't work if anything blocked it. Upon inspection, he found that the ability's speed was faster compared to before.
This gave him the idea to push it further to the extreme by damaging himself, but it was easier said than done. His body grew stronger every time, making it harder for him to inflict any damage on himself using what was available to him now. Thankfully, his combat experience didn't lag behind compared to his strength, as consuming the memories of his prey proved to be a little useful.
However, what played the biggest part in maintaining his combat experience was the fights he enjoyed. Around a month passed following the same routine, from scouting to hunting and devouring his prey, and putting his life on the edge against foes that far surpassed his level. These opponents and their different styles pushed him further as he learned from his mistakes, addressing his shortcomings and becoming stronger time and time again.
His temperament slowly changed the more he hunted, becoming colder and colder, always finding faster ways to end his prey's life. It began with crushing what he deemed worthless, then progressed to directly slicing their throats with his sharpened claws, and eventually to take on the form of something large before swallowing them whole and getting it over with.
None of that came without consequences, and Clifford noticed it soon enough. The more victims he consumed, the more souls were thrown into his soul of consensus. As more souls started to pile in, the older ones began to awaken. Although it was annoying, he held on, as it didn't bother him much. He simply treated it as an illusion, since the only thing these souls did was scream at him to hunt and feed them, as if they were a part of him.
Another month passed as Clifford's mentality developed further and further until he finally reached the bottleneck. His strength couldn't go any further, as nothing could rival him in this area. This encouraged him to return to his city to proceed with his plan, but first, he had to deal with the problem at hand.
The souls inside him became louder and louder as they started influencing his behaviors. They made him hunt more than he needed to, stated the hunger caused by them, and randomly caused his shape-shift ability to take on their forms. It didn't stop there; he found himself having extra limbs randomly, which pissed him off so much. However, feeling helpless, he still couldn't do anything about it other than resist as much as he could.
Time passed slowly as this continued, and Clifford's defenses started crumbling gradually. All the experience he had didn't seem to assist him in any positive way. This led him to fall into a state of despair where his actions no longer seemed to matter, making him follow their will completely just to shut their voices down.