The Experiment Continues

A very pleased masked Cyrus was currently standing in his lab, his two assistants behind him, and a pile of resources and equipment all around him.

"Quite the surprise if I do say so myself, that you would bring such gifts" remarked Cyrus, looking through all the new equipment that had arrived today.

Completely ignoring the two Legionaries after such a remark, he hurriedly put everything away as neatly and orderly as possible even double and triple checking that everything was in its place.

Finally satisfied with how everything was arrayed, he ordered the next prisoner to be brought in and shackled to the wall, so focused on the task at hand that the two Legionaries might have been as animated as the tools he had just put away.

"Now that I have all my will to spend, what should I focus on?" thought Cyrus as he paced around his lab for a moment.

"My other half is always interested in slowly laying the foundations, answering every small question in order to paint the clearest picture. Admirable to say the least, but extremely dull in practice. What I am interested in is far simpler: Power and Control. How far can I strengthen the specimen and how can I control them and bend them to my will. All the boring stuff can come later after progress is made…"

He then drew his blade, severing both the neck and life of the prisoner shackled in front of him while creating what he guessed was enough death essence to turn it into an undead. He even went so far as to make use of his odd ability to use magic that should be outside his grasp by sacrificing some physical stamina, the result of this was exactly as he had done in the Arcane Exam: Rapid undead creation.

Watching closely, confirming that the process was exactly the same as his counterpart had observed and recorded the previous day, he watched as the hollow eyes of the undead lit up with a white glow that was far stronger than what had been created the other day.

"If you feel that anything is wrong, eliminate it immediately" ordered Cyrus.

"Now, for the fun part" thought Cyrus.

Mimicking the the methods of the night dwellers as best as he could, he created the same black mist that had been used to break out of the world within while taking also masking it in an impressive looking mist of death essence that looked far more threatening than it actually was.

"Should I call this method Soul Tunneling?" was the thought on Cyrus' mind as he used the mist like a drill, driving it into the glowing eyes of the undead.

The moment the two connected, Cyrus could feel a connection with the undead just like what he felt when he separated a part of his consciousness and created a second self-outside of his body.

"This is still such a surreal feeling, it's like moving a sense organ that is not connected to my main body. I can just 'feel' the distance, as well as the slight delay due to the small distance. So small the delay is that it may not even be there, but it just has a feeling of something being off" thought Cyrus as he wormed his way around what he assumed to be the soul of the undead.

He closed his eyes and even turned down his senses in the real world by almost half, immersing himself fully in the soul world of the undead.

Opening his 'eyes' in the foreign space, he looked around and took in the sights as best as he could.

All around him were disjointed scenes, as if someone took a large picture and cut it into several pieces but tried stitching them together again but in a completely random order.

The pictures moved as time passed, just like when he had created a replay of his counterpart's memories in the world within.

"These appear to be the memories of whoever this person was before death and then the subsequent unlife I bestowed upon it. I might as well be looking at the drawings of a child though, they make absolutely no sense. The figures have no distinct shape, the sceneries are all disjointed and out of focus as well as it looks like some kind of corruption is eating at everything. This should be the equivalent to the world within, but this place is just a confusing mess" remarked Cyrus as he traversed the soul world of the undead, something that was difficult in a place that had no concept of direction.

Eventually he gave up trying to move around like he was in his own soul, instead opting to spread himself out like a cancer that jumped from memory to memory searching for something useful.

"There should be something like a core or perhaps the true form of the undead…somewhere."

Time ticked by, as Cyrus' patience and control over his new set of abilities was tested with each passing moment. Luckily his search was not in vain, as eventually he came across something surprising.

"There it is, whatever it is" thought Cyrus as he came upon what appeared to be the linchpin of this space.

A man stood in the center of a small platform, sitting on a chair with an absentminded look on his face. Attached to him were hundreds of writhing venular looking tendrils that sprouted out from the man's body and out towards the surrounding space. They looked like they had a mind of their own, as when Cyrus approached they froze in their movements and swayed defensively towards Cyrus.

"This must be what controls the undead's body parts in the real world, the extension of the soul. The man in the center should be the representation of the soul's controller just like how I appear in the world within. Yet, this one is clearly not aware whatsoever. I suppose dying will do that to you."

Turning one of his 'hands' into a whip, he cracked it towards the man in front of him to try and see if he could take control of it somehow. Yet his efforts were for naught, as the moment he was about to make contact the pulsating tentacles rushed back towards the man and formed a shield with their bodies.

They did not make it out unscathed, however, as the all-consuming nature of Cyrus' technique was devastating if he decided to let its power flow unchecked.

"The problem here is that they are many and I am one. I only have two hands but-" began Cyrus, before realizing how stupid that assumption was.

"This is not the real world and I am not in my physical body, why am I assuming to be constrained by such limitations then?"

He then turned his entire body into a string of whip like appendages that were all connected to a single point, using these appendages like shears as he slowly made his way through the defenses of the man in front of him.

"How easy" thought Cyrus, having just broken through the last of the defenses and pierced the 'head' of the man in front of him.

The moment he did, however, the man suddenly became animated. Turning his head at an impossible angle to face the core of the technique that Cyrus was using, he opened his mouth in an attempt to speak.

Cyrus paid little attention to such details, as he directly invaded the core of the man's soul and tried to exert his will.

"I…I did not want to do it. I was forced to, why was I punished so? I had dreams, grand dreams of becoming a proper scholar ever since I was a boy. I studied day in and day out, trying my best in all regards. Everything went well, so well…all the way up until my family ran out of food" said a voice that came from within the depths of the soul Cyrus was no connected to.

Its tone was guttural and course, sounding like the dying screams of some animal that just happened to mimic a human tone.

"So what? I saw your crimes, eating not only your own family but joining a cabal of cannibals once you became addicted to the taste of human flesh. Forget such pointless things, and submit to me" demanded Cyrus, as he discovered the core of the man and attempted to take it for himself.

"You…would not understand. I had to do it, I just HAD to. I was so hungry, so, so hungry. I tried eating grass, I tried eating dirt, I tried eating dust, I tried eating my own fingers, I tried EVERYTHING. Nothing worked, nothing would make the hunger go away. It was always like having hundreds of worms crawling in my stomach, the pain, oh the pain was so much. Too much…too much…it never went away, no matter how much I ate from that day onwards…the day I ate my own parents" bemoaned the voice, as in its madness it began burning its own soul in order to defend its core from Cyrus.

"Damn. Is this why the night dwellers tried breaking me mentally first before trying to fully take me over, even after having penetrated so deeply into my soul? It seems that the power of sentient life is nothing to scoff at indeed as the soul would completely burn out long before I broke its defense. A burnt-out soul is one I have no use for…" thought Cyrus as he tried to come up with ways to completely dominate the individual in front of him.

Breaking him from his thoughts, however, was a commotion that the part of him he had monitoring the surroundings of his real body picked up.

"The Legionaries are acting? Why…oh, I see. It appears that I took too long" thought Cyrus as he watched the events unfold in the real world.

He had been using the night dwellers technique for so long that it had long began to take a toll on his real body, sending pain signals throughout his entire body as the mental burden became so immense that his legs could barely keep him standing.

The Legionaries noticed this, as well as the still unmoving and even unblinking state of Cyrus, and no doubt took this to be the 'unusual circumstance' that they had been warned about.

Thus, one of the legionnaires promptly clenched his fist and punched the head of the undead, shattering its skull into pieces.

Cyrus watched in real time as the soul world he was in immediately darkened, its entirety immediately contracting into a single white dot where the man's figure was but a moment ago. A small hole was then opened up behind the dot, as it was dragged in by hundreds of hands into the hole despite its struggles. Within the hole was a single eye that was of every color at once but also not a single color at all as it flickered from color to color with even its iris' changing shape several times a second, its gazed fixated on the white dot all the way up until it was dragged into its depths. Then for but a single moment, just one instant, it snapped its gaze towards Cyrus.

The next thing Cyrus knew, he was forced out of the soul world as it completely dissipated following the permanent return to true death that the undead had just experienced.

Retracting the technique and disabling the mist of death essence that he had been creating to hide the technique, Cyrus grabbed the table reflexively as his knees threatened to give out.

Struggling with his weak body, he dragged himself to a seat and sat down, all automatically as his mind was still processing what he just witnessed at the end.

His mind kept playing the last scene where the eye looked at him, again and again. He continued to do so until one of the Legionaries walked up to him and said,

"Are you okay? You have a look of terror and fear on your face right now, did the experiment go wrong somehow?"

"Terror, fear…? Me?" thought Cyrus, completely dismissing the fact as he instead tried to find another way to explain what he was feeling.

The more the thought however, the more the truth became obvious.