Skullius and the phantoms tried a lot of tinkering, tunkering, and tonkering. It didn't work. The Fruit of World Myths wouldn't budge.
They wound around, reversed their logic, sought perspectives inside and outside the box, but all of it yielded nothing.
They simply couldn't pry anything out of the Fruit of World Myths. What was presented by the guidance field was all they had to work with. They could not make the flower-shaped mark edify their expertise in manipulating [Evil Darkness] and [Just Light] at all.
A crippling silence ensued.
Skullius would have shaken his head and thrown his hands out in resignation.
"There's nothing we can do about this then?" he said.
"Apparently not," a thought phantom replied with the sa degree of sullenness Skullius had.
There was another pause.
"Well, we do have another option," another of the phantoms said.
Everyone else perked up.
"What?" Skullius asked, a little hopeful.
"We could try checking the WILLS for clues."
"..."
"No."
"No."
"Flesh, no."
Skullius had been left speechless and the other phantoms flatly rejected the idea.
That was too risky.
Even though Skullius was confident and stood by what he had said before - that in a contest of resolve, he wouldn't lose to the WILLS of Fulgardt - he didn't think he should actively make an effort to poke at the hornet's nest. While he was on the path to Divinity himself, it would be foolish to underestimate the antics of soone who had thrived in that state of power for longer than him.
The WILLS were a form of Fulgardt's existence that bore his mories and consciousness. In their purest form - as they had been isolated from Skullius' body - they were likely more potent, more dangerous.
The thought phantom to suggest the idea of ssing with them muttered sothing angrily. Another expressed a point that made the group pivot in their thinking.
"Honestly, perhaps we should just hope that the fusion between our Hybrid Luman vessels and their respective affinities will grant us a higher affinity with [Evil Darkness]. I'm sure we are guaranteed to at least reach an A rank affinity after all is said and done. We can then just use the affix on the Bashful Abomination to increase the affinity to S," the phantom said. "Besides, I don't think there is a way to use the Fruit of World Myths to help us with this. Wouldn't our possessed self have used it if that was the case?"
"Fair point," another phantom said.
At present, Skullius had all the mories that his clone self and his original had had. The snippets of Fulgardt's mories that the original had possessed, were in his hands now, and none of them revealed anything related to the subject at hand.
"Fair enough," Skullius said. "What should we do with the WILLS then? Can we just throw them away?"
"Probably. I see no reason to keep them."
"I'm surprised [Restless Storm Companion] was able to isolate them from our body in the first place. I suppose Supre Skills are just that powerful, huh?"
"I imagine that wouldn't have been the case if our possessed self had inherited all of Fulgardt's WILLS. I can only imagine the process of assimilating WILLS would have continued until a perfect, Fulgardt-Festos blend was created with all the Immoral's mories intact."
Soon, the group moved on other projects.
Skullius' two souls were seamlessly applied to the now black seed, and the phantoms were relieved when it showed no sign of cracking or quaking.
They were emboldened. They started on Skullius' mana cores and affinities.
During the battle between the two versions of Skullius, his Warmoth body had adapted powerful essence like Integral Ti and Genesis Pull into his mana cores. He had applied the sa complexity of the Nature Bound Malleable Form Core for this.
Skullius had expected his phantoms to try and apply the sa principle on the cores again, since his possessed self had obliterated most of them in his Territory during the battle, but they didn't. They zagged completely. They kept the mana cores as they were, and instead tinkered with the essences derived from concepts Skullius had affinities with.
Again, Skullius was astounded by how much far the planning of the phantoms went.
He was forced to shut up and complete yet another schematic which needed 100,000 Creeds to fulfil before adding it to the seed. After this, his phantoms finally turned towards his Territories.
Skullius was excited about what they had in mind for these.
"Even if we've thrown the idea of forging more Phantasmic Retainers to chance, I believe we can make do with the one we are currently able to create - the Noboboyama," a phantom said. "Now, the Noboboyama can only hold two Seeds of the Fruit of World Myths at a ti. I believe that should be plenty for what we need. It can act as a sufficient carrier, don't you think?"
"No. These two Territories aren't simple. I doubt even three Seeds of the Fruit of World Myths would qualify as equals to Aphotic Catacomb of the Daemon, much less Purified Cadaver's
Impartial Felicity."
"Alright. Then what's the compromise?"
"Hold on!" Skullius suddenly butted in. "You... You an to tell you want the Phantasmic Retainers to hold our Territories?"
"Well, yeah," a phantom said matter-of-factly. "If we can make the Retainers hold our Territories, we can have them exert the Primary, Secondary and even Tertiary effects of the Territories outside them, like they do with the Seeds of the Fruit of World Myths."
Skullius was stunned.
"That's just like how I apply Purified Cadaver's Impartial Felicity's powers; having so of its effects apply outside rather than inside. That's genius!"
"Indeed, we know. It would cost us a lot less to cast, especially with Purified Cadaver's Felicity. Its drain on reserves is still sothing to be studied. Besides that, if we can contain these Territories in their dormant states long enough, we'll get access to their Tertiary effects. Eventually."
Skullius found himself nodding furiously - in consciousness.
This was quite the idea.
Even his Fulgardt-possessed self had had to work around the fact that he didn't have a Tertiary assault function to his Territory. There were no shortcuts to creating it. The living things that naturally grew within the Territory determined the nature of the attack.
So far, Skullius rembered seeing only two individuals with such advanced Territories: Azila, the Great Mane Mountain Ape, and Rayn. The latter was on a completely different level though. There was an entire city of full-grown humanoid beings in his Territory. "Well, since we might have a capacity problem depending on how the result of the rge
cos to pass, I might have a solution," a phantom said.
The other phantoms and Skullius pricked their hypothetical ears.
"Fractional Territory Expulsion. How does that sound?"
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