Black blood spurted out as Liam used a small knife to cut open a small wound on the undead's skin. Not that he lacked open wounds on his body to begin with but Liam wanted to find out if only the exposed blood was tainted or if simply everything was tainted.
Turns out that it was all of the blood that was black in color and smelled rotten to the core.
"Ow. Ow. Ow." Shayen cried in agony. "This is torture! You are a monster! Monster! What did I ever do to you?"
"Shut it. It's just a small cut. Why are you being so dramatic? And yuck! You stink like a corpse!" Luna growled at the poor guy, making him snap shut his mouth out of fear.
"I guess you are a corpse so it's only natural you stink like one." The fox continued to snarl at him as she circled him with evil eyes. "Stupid zombie. Shut up and don't disturb my master's research with your stink breath!"
"Who are you calling a zombie? I am a risen! A RISEN!" Shayen shouted back, unable to take this kind of humiliation with his mouth closed.
Luna sneered, clearly happy that her words had touched a nerve. She doubled back on it. "Ugly zombie. Bow down to this princess. How dare you raise your voice?" A fiery aura started gathering around her paws.
Liam sighed, breaking out the fight between the two.
"Liam" Shayen started but quickly corrected himself as the fox let out a low growl. "My lord, listen to me. It is impossible for you to create a Risen by yourself." "First of all you need to be inside the undead empire. You need one of the risen creation arrays. Then there are some materials. Creating a Risen is an art form. Just anyone cannot casually dabble in it."
Liam patiently listened. The undead or rather the risen Shayen was happy to talk about the glories of the Undead Empire and Liam continued listening.
After a few minutes, Liam had a basic idea of what he was undertaking. Granted Shayen did not have the full details of everything he needed to know but the man's rant was enough to get a jist of it. Apparently, the method was quite popular and there were several versions of it, all to promote the glory of the Undead Empire. For the simplest version, even Shayen could do it. The only problem was that a Risen awakened in this manner wouldn't even last until the end of the day.
As the complexity of the ritual increased, the durability of the risen also increased. Add in the bloodlines and other expensive array networks, and a fully functional undead is born, a being at par with a living being, except for distinct physical properties and makeup.
Liam had also already prepared some things from the system store. Tilia had helped him procure a few techniques through the back channels. These techniques had either been spread by the undead empire itself or taken from scouring the spatial artifacts of the fallen undead.
Liam did not specifically care about how the methods were obtained. He paid a good amount of money and immediately purchased them. He had big plans for his soul army and it all started with these techniques.
Leaving the disgruntled undead under Luna's supervision, Liam then dove into all the materials he had procured. Ever since he had met Shayen, he had a gut feeling that this was his next step in truly forging his soul minions. He knew he was close and he did not want to give up.
Even though the process was elaborate with array networks, rituals, and expensive consumables, the essence of it was still simple. Truly only one thing mattered and Liam could tell that he would be able to do it.
After spending several hours immersed in the reading materials, Liam decided to not delay anymore and dive right into the thick of it. It was time he gained some practical knowledge.
He took out a random corpse from his spatial artifact and first started with one of the oldest minions he had ever forged. A five headed chicken soul minion. The corpse was that of a chicken-like bird he had killed back in the elven world. He had never bothered to forge this one so he decided to use this as a training experiment to see how much body compatibility mattered.
Also, this was his typical practice summon that he usually tinkered with before moving to a more valuable soul minion, and he instinctively grabbed the same guy.
Bok bok boko boko boko bok bok!
The five-headed chicken proudly jutted around when Liam in one swift motion dragged the soul into the corpse. He did not use any fancy technique and simply tried to nudge the soul into the body if that was the word for it.
It was an indescribable feeling to him and he sure as hell did not know what he was doing. He was blind in there and forcefully held the soul inside the body or at least in the same space until he could see something snap in.
Seconds ticked by when he loosened his control a little bit and the next second the five-head chicken casually walked out of the corpse like it was nothing, body and soul separate.
Liam sighed. This was going to take a lot of time. He once again grabbed the chicken and shoved him into the corpse, this time condensing him back into the soul bead form and forging it whilst holding the bead inside the corpse.