"Haaaa, finally this place is looking decent."
Sitting on a plush sofa, Viltz took a sip from his wine glass and looked at the office he made for himself, what was once a room full of rotting wood and cobwebs was now an elegant office with book shelves, an intricately patterned carpet, a very comfortable sofa he could comfortably nap on, an elegant desk and chair made of dark wood and carved with intricate patterns.
"Now it's time for the next step."
Rising from the couch, Viltz sat down at the desk and pulled out a pile of bluestones and a chisel and hammer.
Grabbing one of the stones, he placed it in front of him and began carving an intricate rune with the chisel and hammer.
When he was finished, he poured his chaos power into the stone and the rune carved into it began to illuminate with a blue light.
When the rune was fully illuminated, he set it aside and picked up another stone with which he did the same process.
After a few hours he finally finished engraving the last rune, counting the total, he noticed that he already had a total of fifty stones with rune engravings on them.
"Good! That's enough."
Putting the runes in a sack, Viltz loaded it on his back and left the castle, heading towards the lake.
He stood at the edge of the lake and drilled a hole about three feet deep, then put one of the rune stones in it and plugged it up again.
After half an hour, Viltz had surrounded the entire area encompassing the lake and the cliff on which the castle stood with the runestones, much of the area was made up of the lake so it was up to him to dive deep to bury the runestones.
"Well, I hope this works."
Raising both hands in the air, Viltz began to chant a spell and a blue light began to emanate from the places where the runestones were buried,
a hemispherical barrier began to slowly rise, covering the entire area.
Standing outside the barrier, Viltz snapped his fingers.
"Now, the final step!"
The blue barrier became invisible and the castle on top of the cliff distorted for a few seconds before collapsing, the same happened to the long stone bridge connected to the cliff.
"Now, let's see if it works." Viltz snapped his fingers again but this time nothing happened, but far from being disappointed, Viltz looked at the clear sky and calm lake and a big smile came across his face.
Viltz moved, entering the invisible barrier. On the other side, a gigantic blue whirlpool formed over the lake and large amounts of seawater began to fall from it, the destroyed castle and bridge returned to their original state.
Snapping his fingers again, the blue vortex closed again.
"Great, with this illusion matrix I don't have to worry about anyone noticing the giant whirlpool constantly appearing in the lake and if any passersby notice the castle and wish to explore it they will simply give up upon seeing it in ruins and seeing the destroyed bridge."
Stretching, Viltz yawned and went to sleep again.
In the middle of the night, a round crystal on his desk began to beep and glow blue.
Getting up, Viltz grabbed the crystal and walked out onto the balcony.
Snapping his fingers, the blue vortex appeared again and this time, next to the seawater, a gigantic sailboat appeared overhead and began to plummet toward the lake.
Falling from such a height, the sailboat broke in two as soon as it landed.
A roar sounded in the middle of the silent lake.
"It seems that the plan has been a success. With this, I have just taken a small step towards completing the Genesis project."
A fire of completely insane ambition flared in Viltz's eyes at the thought of the project he decided to dedicate his life to, but he quickly calmed down and surveyed the scene in front of him seriously.
The six huge monoliths emitted a buzzing sound and the runes on their surface lit up blue, causing countless blue lights to fly out from inside and around the ship, directly entering the central monolith.
The light from the runes on the central monolith lit up more brightly.
At the bottom of the central monolith, there was a small compartment in which three small daggers with all sorts of runes drawn on their blades floated quietly over an unlit brazier.
A blue flame suddenly flared up in the brazier and began to burn the various balls of blue light that fell one by one into its interior.
The blue fire burned the balls of light, causing a terrible inhuman shriek to come from within, leaving only a small sphere of light the size of a grain of rice that was attracted to one of the daggers, plunging into its runes.
For each light that entered the dagger, the light from the runes on the surface of the dagger became more condensed.
When the last ball of light entered the dagger,
The blue flames of the cauldron suddenly went out along with the runes covering the monoliths.
The dagger stopped glowing and returned to its previous calm, floating quietly next to the other two daggers.
Viltz looked at the crystal in his hand that stopped glowing and snapped his finger, causing the whirlpool to close again.
Grabbing his saber and sword, Viltz ran towards the spot where the ship fell.
Arriving at the spot, he noticed a few bodies floating on the lake.
Viltz checked them one by one, noticing that they all carried scimitars or daggers.
Viltz first checked to see if they were still alive before pulling them out of the lake and removing their weapons.
He began to do the same with any sailors he came across and quickly formed a pile of bodies on the shore of the lake.
Finishing clearing the surroundings and noting that no one was alive, Viltz began to move towards the ship.
Looking at the broken flag fluttering in the wind, Viltz noticed that it was the flag of the Skellige Islands.
"A ship from the Skellige Islands? I wonder if there's anything interesting inside."
Viltz entered the wrecked ship and began to explore.
He found a few mangled corpses but found no one alive.
After exploring the ship for a while, he realized that it was a supply cargo ship, as it was carrying a large amount of sacks of wheat.
"Good thing they're securely tied up, otherwise all this wheat would have gone to waste."
Snapping his fingers, he opened a portal leading inside the castle and began to shift the sacks inside.
He then closed the portal and continued exploring until he reached the captain's cabin.
Kicking the door open, Viltz scanned the inside of the cabin with his eyes, the first thing he noticed was a man covered in blood with the neck of a bottle embedded in his throat.
"Poor guy, at least it looks like he died doing what he loved." Viltz approached the corpse and ripped the bottle from his throat, causing a stream of blood to shoot out, which he dodged by moving to the side.
Waiting until the blood stopped gushing, Viltz chanted a spell and the stiff corpse suddenly rose from the ground.
It now had a dull look on its face and its expression was stiff.
"Okay, collect all the corpses lying around the ship and take them to the corpse pile outside."
The zombie looked at Viltz with his vacant eyes and nodded mechanically, leaving the captain's cabin to carry out the orders assigned to him.
What Viltz used on the corpse was one of the most basic necromancy spells he learned at the academy, because necromancy was considered black magic, the sorcerer's brotherhood banned it and they only taught superficial things about that branch of magic and only focused on the physical aspect and vehemently forbade the practice of necromancy with the souls of the dead.
One of the things they taught at the academy was this spell, which had a limited duration and only served to reactivate the brain of the corpse by supplying it with chaos power and its use was limited at best since the brotherhood taught it so that their apprentices could control them to do relatively simple things like extract information from their last hours of life, this was quite simple since such information was still recorded in the brain of the deceased.
When he learned of this, Viltz was deeply disappointed as things like the study of souls interested him quite a bit, but after meeting the elven prince, his curiosity about the soul was partially satisfied.
One of the spells he learned from the elven memory crystal allowed him to capture souls and encase them in a container, Viltz came up with the idea of using this spell along with another spiritual attack spell to create a weapon to kill the souls of those troublesome enemies with insane healing factor such as dragons or superior vampires.
"The original Vilgefortz used a ritual to infuse chaos power into a runic dagger for over a week, with that dagger he was able to reduce a supreme vampire to ashes.
Heh! I wonder how powerful my runic daggers will be once completed, since unlike the original Vilgefortz's, mine feeds on souls and targets not the body but the soul, surely that old man Toussaint would have his soul reduced to nothingness with the slightest touch of one of these daggers."
Viltz began to drool just thinking of the benefits he would gain if his plan succeeded.
"Calm down! I must be patient, I must let the daggers' spell strengthen to its limit and with my current power I wouldn't even be able to stand up straight in front of that old man, much less stab him.
By my calculations, each of the daggers will reach its limit when it consumes 10,000 souls, so it could take me decades or even a century to collect that much using only the Sedhna Abyss.
Sigh, I'll come up with some method in the future."
Putting that thought to rest, Viltz began to search the captain's cabin for valuables.