Rio himself has the ability to manipulate souls, but even he can’t safely put two souls in one body without making them clash with each other.
Placing two souls in the same body is almost on the same level as eternal torture!
Those souls will constantly clash with each other, damaging each other, which will cause immense pain directly in your soul, and eventually both of those souls will be destroyed while suffering immense torture for a long time.
’In fact, I don’t know how my soul came into this body but if it hadn’t fused with the original Rio’s soul than even, I would have been suffering the same fate...’
Rio hasn’t been able to solve the mystery of his own body until now, and he doesn’t know how his own soul managed to fuse with the original Rio’s so easily without any damage.
But this weird creature is definitely not in an ideal situation like Rio’s.
Its entire body is horribly distorted and twisted due to miasmic corruption.
In fact, it seems more likely that someone just took a random rotting piece of meat and slapped dozens of souls inside it.
Then corrupted it all with miasma to disfigure and transform it into something that could move around on its own.
The souls inside it clashed over and over, making them all suffer unbearable pain continuously, and all the faces cried tears of blood because of pain and suffering.
But that wasn’t even the most horrific thing; the most horrific thing was that Miasma was actively healing their damaged souls, and thus these souls were in eternal torture!
They couldn’t fuse and couldn’t destroy each other either, as miasma kept healing and corrupting them at the same time!
*HEEHEHEEEEHEEEHEEEE!!!*
Some faces were crying, some were laughing like maniacs, while some were so corrupted that it was hard to tell whether they were even faces or not.
"What the actual f*ck is this thing!?"
Rio had never seen something like this; it was so uncomfortable to look at that if he could feel the emotion called ’disgust,’ he would have already vomited a ton due to nausea.
Just when Rio was feeling uncomfortable, more of such creatures crawled out from the lake, and some even had rotting organs growing outside their already disfigured bodies.
One of them had a massive eye, and it kept staring at Rio.
Rio is able to notice soul fluctuations and can guess the emotions of others, and that giant eye was constantly pleading for help and mercy.
It was looking at Rio with immense sadness and hope!
’No wonder everyone was saying that this place is not ordinary... it’s really a very uncomfortable place to stay...’
Rio does not have enough emotions to feel sympathy or pity for others, but even he became uncomfortable at the sight of all this.
Which obviously shows that if it were anyone else in this place, they would have already become corrupted to the core by now due to mental breakdown.
’You need insanely powerful mental fortitude and powerful ability to resist miasmic corruption for extended periods of time if you want to walk around freely in this kind of place...’
[Sword Intent!]
[Elemental Sword Art: Light Type: Purifying light of hope!]
Rio raised his flute toward the sky and used light elements to radiate powerful purification light in all directions!
The moment the light of purification fell on those corrupted creatures, all of their bodies started to evaporate into nothingness almost instantly.
While being evaporated, all of them were feeling ’relief’ and were thanking Rio from the bottom of their very existence.
All of their souls shattered on the spot as they were all heavily corrupted by miasmic corruption, and purifying them liberated their souls.
Miasma was forcefully keeping their already damaged souls from shattering, but after its influence was stripped away, they all broke apart instantly.
After purifying those weird creatures, Rio jumped down from the giant boulder and landed on the ground as he summoned the ’cube of possibilities.’
He let it float freely around him while protecting it with his own sword intent and started moving forward.
’This place—it’s making my intuition confused and useless!’
Rio could feel that his instincts as an S-ranker and his ability to intuitively predict things were going haywire after entering this place.
Although Rio was able to control the miasma even in this place, it seemed as if the miasma here was actively trying to disobey his control.
’How weird, it’s acting very odd...’
Rio already knows that miasma is partially self-conscious and it’s a very violent power.
But usually it’s very docile when Rio controls it.
The miasma inside the spirit realm is behaving like how a child becomes stuck and confused when asked who they like more, Mom or Dad.
The miasma is also behaving in a confused manner; its self-consciousness is trying to confuse Rio’s intuition, while it is also reluctant to attack Rio.
’Forget it, I don’t have the time to contemplate what is going on the head of a ’law’ of ’miasma’ and I don’t even know if it has a head or not...’
Rio shook his head and waved his sword.
[Sword Intent!]
[Elemental Sword Art: Miasma type: Miasmic Detection!]
Rio used miasma that’s already spread in all directions to make a detection range for himself.
He can use his own mana for this, but his mana is limited, and he wants to save it, so he just used miasma to make the exact same thing as ’mana detection.’
With this he can detect everything around him even in this miasma-filled environment without needing to consume mana at all.
Rio walked forward at a slow but steady pace and didn’t fly, as he was trying to keep a low profile and stay as stealthy as possible.
The spirit realm is home to many powerful evil spirits, and hundreds of corrupted monstrosities are likely living here.
If Rio rushes forward at fast speeds or even tries to use powerful space distortion skills here, it will create powerful disturbances in the flow of miasma here.
Which will be easily noticeable if there happens to be any SS-rankers nearby.
Thus, it was better to stay low-key than rush forward like an idiot.
*URRRRRRGGGGG OOOHHRRRRGGGHHHH!!!*
While walking forward, Rio came across another weird monstrosity.
It was a giant flower, but it was not made up of various organisms fused into each other.
It was actually in the shape of a giant lotus, and a massive stem curved downwards with the flower hanging on it.
The stem was actually hundreds of hands; some were humanoid, some looked like elven hands, and some belonged to other creatures.
All fused and jumbled together while rotting like crazy.
The flower was made up of huge petals, which were actually rotting organs enlarged and bleeding black blood continuously.
And finally, there was a huge face in the middle of it, which had a massive mouth, and it was constantly vomiting miasmic filth all over the place as the flower walked with the help of those fused hands.
*KEKEKEKEHHEHEHEHEHE!!! UUUUWWWOOORRRGGGHHH!!!*
The weird creature laughed like a maniac from time to time before continuing to vomit once again.
Just looking at the thing would have been enough to give a normal person lifelong PTSD.