'Now that I think about it, I never used the skill in this state' Ed murmured curiously in his thoughts.
He was currently inside of a large room in the dungeon. He had 80 or so skeletons each with their own weapons or level of intelligence. He had assessed any that he felt were slightly worth nurturing and sent them to the front.
'Can't let y'all escape' Ed thought as he manipulated the ground to seal all entrances and exits. The mana consumption was quite a bit considering the size of the room but he honestly couldn't care about that at the moment.
Ed then walked briskly towards a nearby wall and slumped against it. He activated the skill and his vision lost focus. His thoughts grew drowsy and in just another second...
[System link activated, connecting to host user]
He was inside of the white boundless plain. The atmosphere was just as boring and blinding as last time. Time to get down to business.
But before Ed had the opportunity to summon the monumental white temple, a glowing message appeared.
[<Sub Skill: Spirit Insertion> Unlocked]
[Spirit Room Unlocked]
'Spirit Insertion?' Wasn't that precisely what he required? Thinking so, Ed brought out the skill definition with the help of the system,
[System link lvl. 2]
Spirit Insertion ~ Upgrades the system's ability to manage life. Create or rekindle life by inserting life into capable hosts.
Basically put, the system would help him place consciousnesses into beings that could hold life.
'I think the skeleton's will qualify but I can't help but wonder if you can create golems through this method' Ed said to himself pensively.
He then shifted his attention back towards the definition. He needed to decipher its intricacies.
'To upgrade the system's ability… I suppose that means it was previously capable of this?' Ed speculated somewhat doubtfully.
Upgrading didn't necessarily mean this. Although the fact that it could be upgraded did quite literally mean it was capable of this, what mattered was if the system used to originally.
Ed put the conspiracies aside as he might not have so much time to loiter around in the system space. He might end up being expelled suddenly if the dungeon deemed it a good idea.
'The next part that really mattered was creating or rekindling life.' So he moved on to the next sentence.
As he had previously mentioned. This was exactly what he had been looking for. Rekindling life meant to reuse the consciousness he had collected. To create… He didn't know precisely what it meant.
'Does it have to do with the forge?' If Ed mixed and mashed multiple consciousnesses then one might be able to call it a new life right?
'If I put it that way then there are two ways to improve the skeleton's intelligence' One was to simply insert some of the lives lost in battle into them and the second was to modify them to create a new being.
'What I want is intelligent life so I might need to forge multiple of them together' Ed didn't know what the threshold for intelligence was, but given that skeleton's were mere wisps or remnants and were small in size, it could be inferred that larger size meant a higher intellect.
'Or at least a higher capability to hold and retain knowledge' Ed reasoned while thinking about his lost memories.
He had noticed that his body of light became bigger with each level up his consciousness went through. Coincidentally, whenever this happened he would be able to remember more things.
Ed felt as though he could finally understand things a bit better. And he would definitely put this knowledge to good use.
'Can I make an immortal army with this?' It would be a shame if the skeleton's he trained were to lose all their knowledge upon death. That meant he would need to invest some time into a skeleton school for which the notion alone was ridiculous.
[Death results in fragmented memories]
The system kindly informed him. Likely a result of being in its direct space.
'That's too bad' Ed thought lamentably. It meant that his immortal army would simply be reduced to idiots over time.
'I wonder how that applies to me though' The fact that his memories didn't fragment with each death couldn't be simply attributed to being from another world right? Maybe it was because he was an actual consciousness being…?
Ed sighed lamentably once more before summoning the white temple. The ground shook and the temple-like palace rose once more. It's magnificence was just as grand as last time.
Having learned from his last visit, Ed turned human and climbed up the steps with the help of his thoughts. It was like jumping around in an area with low gravity. The speed was better than his slow floating.
'I should check out the spirit room first then' He had an inkling that it was directly correlated to the sub-skill so it was a good idea to check it.
Ed walked swiftly as the large hall didn't have much to offer. Soon, he saw 3 open doors. One led to the forge, another to the storeroom, and the last was naturally the spirit room.
Ed glanced at the storeroom before making his way into the new room. He was simply wondering if Vorgarag's soul might be stored there. Truthly, he had no idea where the souls taken by the soul calling sub-skill were brought.
Ed entered the room and wow…
It was empty! The only mesmerizing thing was the ceiling or rather the lack thereof. In its stead stood swirling white clouds. Ed could feel a slight suction force from it. It wasn't enough to do anything though.
'There really is nothing here' The room was white just like everywhere else. It reminded him of the storage room.
'In that case this must be a simple storage room but for spirits.' Ed felt that this was the right answer. And the ceiling was probably where the spirits were summoned through for insertion.
'Then I need to find the stored consciousnesses first' Ed thought as he backed out of the empty room. He went across the hallway and entered the storage room. Well he tried...
'That's a lesson learned…' Do not fill your room like storage space to the brim!
All sorts of items ranging from crystals to sets of armors were lying on the floor covering up the grand majority of the floor and blocking a good part of the entrance. Apart from that there were many consciousness floating in the upper area squished together without escape.
The way they squirmed hoping to set themselves free made Ed feel quite guilty at the moment.
'They should have plenty of space in the spirit room, how should I get them out?' Ed backed away a bit and pondered. He then decided to simply try to move them out by thinking so. If he couldn't, then the system might help him.
He breathed out mentally and focused. He thought about either letting the consciousnesses out into the hallway or directly transferring them out. Not too long after, something happened.
Like floodgates, the consciousnesses near the door, bursted out and pushed back the nearby Ed who fell in return.
The lively wisps started to dart about, well lively yet slowly float, cherishing their regained freedom. Ed who had fallen simply watched from the ground for a bit while assessing them.
[Wisp of consciousness]
The fusion of a being's thoughts.
Coincidentally, he found the two wisps he had fused into one. The other consciousnesses read simply as X's wisp of consciousness. He didn't see Vorgarag's but the reason was simple.
[Detected 124 new consciousnesses... Do you want to offer them? Y/N]
There was quite a large number of wisps in the hallway. It would be quite hard to locate him under such circumstances if he was indeed there.
'No' Ed shot down the system. He might do so later but for the moment, he needed these for his experiments.
'I'll start gathering them into the spirit room then' Ed started to assess all of the wisps before bringing them into the spirit room via his mind.
[Assessment has leveled up]
The process became increasingly smooth as time passed but it seemed he wasn't fast enough though. Before he could finish admitting the fiftieth wisp...
[Expelling User]
Ed was forcefully removed from his own mind. He woke up swiftly without any trace of drowsiness or stiffness as he was just a walking pile of bones. He didn't bother checking himself and swept his gaze past the small army of skeletons.
The small army of skeletons was still in the room. They were doing their job by wandering around the fairly large room. If he hadn't sealed the exits it was quite possible that they would disperse.
There seemed to be some sort of weird psychological issue that made them only wander the dungeon in small groups of six or seven.
Ed proceeded to transmit his thoughts to them and they gathered orderly before him just as when he had left them.
'I should start then' Ed was a bit disappointed that he didn't get to experiment with the forge first but inserting a regular orc consciousness wouldn't be detrimental to his goal.