Seth hummed softly to himself, humming the usual tune that he would tap with his fingers as he examined the corpse of the Dwarven Giant. His fingers would have been tapping this tune instead, but they were currently otherwise occupied.

He held a crystalline core in his hand, this one was more manageable at the size of a golf ball, rolling it within his palm and playing with it idly as he thought. He was still low on mana so, while he couldn't fill up an entire core all at once, Seth instead resorted to a trickle charge.

Mana was gently flowing down his arm and into his fingers, causing them to tingle ever so slightly as it exited his fingertips and slowly entered the crystalline core, charging it slowly. It wasn't as effective as the instant charge he gave to the last one, but it meant that he didn't have to sit around waiting nor suffer from any more mana exhaustion.

He was simply pouring mana into it at the same rate he was recovering it. It took longer, but he was using the time to further other studies. Mainly, something that he had theorised after the creation of Titus.

His journal levitated beside him, open and primed to a blank page under his personal studies collection. Beside it, a quill created from one of Omelette's smaller feathers was bobbing in the air, waiting obediently to write its masters thoughts.

Seth narrowed his eyes, briefly halving the amount of mana that was trickling into the core and sent the new stream directly into his eyes. His vision immediately shifted, the world becoming grey as its colours were muted. Wisps of ethereal fog from unknown origin drifted around, and through, his feet as he gazed into the realm of souls.

A mote of light manifested itself above the Dwarf's corpse, just as expected. A small candlelight flame that was the remnants of its soul. Not as powerful nor complete as when it was alive, but even this mere remnant was powerful on its own.

If Seth wished to turn this body into one of his puppets, he would first have to consume this soul and then fight against the power remaining in the physical body to gain control. If it was too strong, there was the possibility it would consume him instead, just like what had happened with the Shelled Drake.

However that was not Seth's intention here. Not just because a headless, blown apart mess would make for a terrible puppet, even if it used to be strong. It was simply too ruined to be useful, like a house with half of its roof torn off and the other half filled with holes.

But even if it was in pristine condition, it was not the body he was interested in, but the remnant soul attached to it. That was why, even though his eyes had already achieved their brilliant white glow and allowing him to gaze into the soul realm, he kept pouring more and more Mana into them.

They started to burn, just like when he had first used his 'Soul Sight' to gaze into this realm. But even when they felt like miniature suns trapped within his skull, he didn't let up. He forced them to accept more power, willing them to change.

You see, Seth had a theory. It came when he was reminded of the drifting souls, in the form of spirits. He still saw these wisps drifting about the castle, seeming much more at peace with their existence than previously.

But the sight of these spirits made him remember how they had possessed his puppets. How they had been flooded with power and how the spirit had gained control of them temporarily and was able to exert their will upon his puppets. His soul had rejected these foreign bodies within his puppets, consuming them as they themselves destroyed the puppets from within with their overwhelming power.

However... What if they weren't a foreign element, or if he added in something familiar to stop his soul consuming the entity. What if, instead of shoving a powerful soul into a new puppet, that was too weak to handle it, he put it into a body that was crafted and created to withstand the overwhelming energy and turn it into its own power.

You see, while his living puppets, at least based on what he knew from Bob and Titus, had the capacity to manifest powers of their own. They started with none, they were like new born babies. In fact, with the way this new world treated infants, they were weaker than newborn babies but had the same potential.

However... What if he combined an already powerful soul, just like the spirits did with his normal puppets, with the process of creating a living puppet. Could he create something even more powerful? Would it have the powers of the previous life or new ones? Would it be a fatal risk or a powerful ally?

Would the previous life form be able influence his new creation and would he be giving them life once more?

He had no idea. That was the answer to any and all of those questions. No clue, not a scooby. There was no way he could know, that was the problem with treading new ground. But just because he didn't know, did that mean he shouldn't do it?

Just because there was risk, should he fear it and never try to advance? It might have been the smart thing, even if it was quite cowardly. However, could it really be science if it didn't blow up in your face sometimes? If matters of the soul and creating new lives could still be considered 'science' anymore.

While he was pondering these questions, Seth eyeballs were burning hotter and hotter within his skull, until finally his vision shifted once more. The world around him did not change, like it had previously, instead it was the flickering soul flame that changed. No... It was more accurate to say that Seth's perception of it changed, opening up a new world of knowledge to him.

It was as if he was looking at the world and finally being able to see green for the first time in his life. If Seth had possessed a mirror, and had looked into it at this moment, he would have noticed that the appearance of his eyes changed with his new perspective.

His eyes, which had been pure white in this iris and black as the void in the sclera, began to become altered by the new mana fuelled stat. The glowing white light of his iris' leaked out, pouring over his pupils and leaking out onto the sclera, until the entirety of his eyes were pure, glowing white.

As the pure, almost divine colour took over his eyes, white smoke curled from the edge of his eyelids, as if they were boiling within his eye sockets. In fact, they felt like it too.

The soul flame before him glowed brighter, his gaze being drawn deeper into it revealing an intricate weave of familiar, ethereal threads holding the soul together like a tapestry of life itself. It was a tapestry that was damaged, torn apart in places and littered with holes, some threads hanging loosely and completely severed from what it was once connected to.

His quill was rapidly dancing across the page, rapidly drawing every sight that his eyes greedily drunk in. Yet even as he drew it, the act of copying this marvellous weave felt blasphemous of the highest degree.

Even if he created a perfect replica in ink, down to the smallest detail, he felt that it would be a wretched, life-less pile of slop compared to the true thing. So his poor copy almost made him sick to think about, as if he was spitting in the face of a grand creator and telling them that he could do better in his feeble ignorance.

It was a mere fraction of the whole, a simple remnant of what had once lived and existed. The tapestry of life was utterly intricate, weaved together in a most resplendent pattern with such delicate precision. It was so expansively large, that no matter how wide he opened his eyes he could not absorb the entire thing at once even with his outside perspective.

It was simply the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life, that he could ever see in his life. If he died looking at this then it would be a life lived without regret, as he could finally see this blessed sight.

It was... it was... It was overwhelming. Too overwhelming. It was far too much.

Rapidly cutting off the mana to his eyes, the white colour immediately turned back to a metallic silver and receded back to his Iris', revealing the void blackness of his sclera once more.

He blinked rapidly, tears welling up in his eyes as if they were trying to douse the blazing inferno that his eyes felt like they were about to erupt into.

As he did so, with vision blurred from tears, Seth gazed towards the journal that was floating beside him and at the crude, blasphemous copy of the divine soul weave. Yet instead of being marvelled by the intricate details, since his vision was blurred and he could not see these details, Seth tilted his head slightly in confusion.

He blinked out the tears, his vision clearing, yet he did not turn his gaze away from the open page. He stepped away, not closer, as he tilted his head in confusion. Focusing his eyes not on the weave itself, but the pattern that it had created.

It had been hard to see before, with his mind overwhelmed by something so divine that he struggled to even comprehend the entirety of an entity that seemed limitless, but he did not struggle to look at the entirety of his crude drawing.

It was a drawing of a single section, insignificant to the whole, which was in and of itself a fragmented section. Yet as he looked at it now, he felt it was more like a puzzle piece that was clicking itself gently into place.

'Is that... A rune?'