Chapter 2731: Core Assimilation
Chapter 2731: Core Assimilation
Date: Unspecified
Time: Unspecified
Location: Myriad Realms, Card World, Southern Region, Blossom District, Sky Blossom City, TSR Guild Headquarters
Being hugged and thanked by Corey, my first instinct was to mock her for being too gullible. I didn’t have much attachment to the Wyatt family Sansa had killed, and I wasn’t making any grand sacrifice. I was simply choosing the path that brought me closer to the result I wanted.
Yet the words never came out.
That small gesture left me oddly speechless. For a moment, even my sharper instincts seemed dulled in the warmth of her sincerity. It seemed I had underestimated the weight a simple hug and a quiet thank you could carry.
It wasn’t just Corey. Dredre too.
The little pink god of death was far too sincere for her own good. In my hair she laid down, her arms spread on my scalp in a soft, affectionate hug. I responded in kind, using my hair to cradle her while my arms remained around Corey.
At first, I was only trying to mess with Corey, to use the moment to discuss with Sansa. But somewhere between Dredre’s quiet warmth and Corey’s lingering grip, the impulse faded. Instead, I found myself realizing something I hadn’t paid attention to before. I had surrounded myself with good people. If nothing else, I had that.
"I’ll be damned," Park muttered under her breath, clearly stunned that Corey’s naive sincerity had actually managed to disarm my mind games.
Lil’Baem stood off by Park’s side, wrapped in jealousy as she watched her mother hugging someone so openly affectionate that wasn’t her.
I noticed the hug lingering longer than it should have and gently pulled back. "Corey, let go. Don’t make it awkward."
"Right." Corey immediately stepped away, her face flushing with embarrassment.
She had become conscious of the hug midway through, but by the time she realized she should pull back, the moment to do so naturally had already passed. The longer she hesitated, the harder it became to break away, until she was reminded all she had to do was let go.
Ignoring Corey for the moment, I passed Agony’s unholy core to Sansa so she could remove the remnants of Agony’s memories and craft them into a card.
As I said, Sansa was a pro at this. It took her only a couple of minutes to extract the memory of Agony’s will from the unholy core and craft it into a card for later use. She had done this thousands of times before on paw clan members. Besides, she was only facing the remnant will of a devil, not an actual devil.
When she finished, Sansa handed the card containing Agony’s memories to Corey and returned the unholy core containing clueless will to me. Without another word, she dissolved and left to continue monitoring the new three mischiefs.
"Alright," I said, locking eyes with Corey. "Now that we have all the ingredients, let’s begin."
Park retreated into her title demon core, while Lil’ Baem shrank down and coiled around Corey’s waist, forming a white snake bracelet.
The title demon core Corey forged, Eternal Flame of Agony, was absurdly powerful. It was also far too righteous for the dark races, which made both unpopular and feared among them.
Though the dark races sought strength, this title demon core didn’t align with their nature. This title demon core was forged using one’s righteous will, something the dark races instinctively rejected. No matter how powerful it was, they despised it.
To them, it was like offering a technique that granted immeasurable strength at the cost of something fundamental. No one would willingly choose it. The dark races resented the Eternal Flame of Agony.
And yet, it existed. It had been created by a native of the Dark Realm itself. At one point, it was even popular among the misfits and outcasts of their society. But times changed. Now it was rarely practiced. Many believed that the righteous will required to forge it would become a fatal weakness, something their enemies could exploit against them.
In the end, it was the same old irony. Those who stole and schemed the most were the ones most afraid of being robbed.
At the same time, Agony’s Undead Flame of Agony was just as powerful as Corey’s version. The difference was that it didn’t require a righteous will to forge. That alone made it far more acceptable to the dark races. But it came with its own price.
The Undead Flame of Agony was incredibly demanding. It was not something just anyone could cultivate. For starters, the wielder had to be undead. And that was only the first condition of many to come. Beyond that, there were numerous restrictions and requirements, each narrowing the pool of candidates even further.
Despite their obvious limitations, there was a time when both techniques were highly sought after for forging titled demon cores. Their raw power was simply too tempting to ignore.
That was why I was able to find not only the original forging methods in the Infinity Library, but also an overwhelming amount of research dedicated to them. Countless researchers had tried to bypass their restrictions, hoping to harness their strength without having to limit to the rigid framework of these techniques.
None of them succeeded, of course. Otherwise, they would have been forgotten.
But failure did not mean uselessness. Each paper offered a different perspective, a different angle to explore these techniques. Individually, they were incomplete. Together, they provided me with something far more valuable: a starting point.
It gave me a starting point to figure out how to assimilate the two cores into a single, superior core, one powerful enough to serve my purpose and help Corey acquire the soul trait I had planned for her.
With my primordial soul pupils, succeeding where they had stalled was not particularly difficult. Nor was designing a method to merge the two cores and refine them into something greater while helping my friend ascend in strength was simply a matter of execution.