Chapter 283 - Did It Work? [Inferior Soul Forging] (Partial technique) [Combines a weapon with a soul imbibing the strength of the soul into the weapon and vice versa, imbibing the strength of the weapon into the soul] [Both the weapon and the soul can be fused only if appropriate conditions are met. The strength of the weapon and the strength of the soul has to be in harmony] [The forger has to wield superior mana to hammer both the weapon and the soul into submission] "Oh. So this was just an inferior version of the skill?" Liam read the description of the technique which vaguely talked about the various ins and outs. This was the skill he had obtained from the old man and this also should be the skill using which the black dragon sword was forged by that unknown master. At first, he was excited thinking that he could easily obtain the missing bits and pieces from this skill, but now it looked like they both were a bit different. One could even be called a subset of the other. Liam tried to understand what was written in the description, but most of it was just general guidelines to something vague. "There is nothing about what I exactly need to do huh…" He frowned. Nevertheless, he went through it a couple of times. After the third time, he paused, "Hammer the weapon and soul using mana? They couldn't mean it literally right?" Liam suddenly had an idea and he decided to try it out first before heading back to Xion realm to hunt down players in his list one after the other. He located one more pack of demonic hounds and killed all the beasts except for one. He then slaughtered the last one as well but immediately summoned the nether around to completely drown the beast. He kept adding an excessive amount of nether, making the beast's corpse now pitch black in color, wrapping it in a cocoon of nether. He then did not stop and continued adding more and more nether to the same, as if he was suffocating the small corpse. "Is it really not possible?" Liam looked at the black bundle in front of him and still felt nothing. He felt the bones, skin, flesh, blood, organs of the hound, and nothing more. There was no soul or anything else inside or at least he couldn't sense it. "Hmmm…" Liam tried doing the same a couple more times before taking a break to think about everything. He then sighed and stood up to try again. "Luckily I am still getting experience points." He chuckled and spent another hour trying to do the same thing. After a while, he realized that he had missed something obvious. On the next try, he tried to summon both mana and nether at the same time. Liam then freshly killed a demonic wolf and now flushed its body with both mana and nether at the same time. Controlling both at the same time felt a bit different as if he was showering in both cold water and hot water at the same time, but he slowly and gradually tried to get used to it. Since he did not need to finely adjust or control anything, it was a lot easier. Liam sent as much mana and nether as he could possibly summon and wrapped the corpse with the two different energies. After a couple of hours, he was able to do it, the problem was that the process was very mentally taxing. It tired him and drained him out. But he took a breather here and there and continued going through with it. Finally, almost at the end of the day, he was able to get the intensity that he wanted to reach. The freshly killed wolf's corpse was now completely flushed with nether and mana, though the intensity of nether was a lot more than that of mana. "This shouldn't matter… maybe…" Liam tiredly yawned and tried to stuff in more energy when he finally felt something small and solid? No, it was not solid. It was something in between liquid and solids? Perhaps a jelly? "No. That's not important right now." Liam shook his head and then tried to grasp the feeling of the small tangible and yet intangible thing. He was finally able to sense it after hours and hours and he did not want to lose it. "What are you?" He gazed at the thing in perplexion. He could feel the weight and intensity of the small thing. There was an unimaginable amount of energy present within it. He could feel it. But at this point, Liam could not hold it anymore and he let everything go. Almost at the same time, a series of notifications loudly rang out. [Ding. You have learned the skill - Soul Sensing] [Ding. You have unlocked the skill - Soul Forging] [Ding. You have now acquired 20% of the Legacy] Liam fell back onto the dry sands, huffing and panting. "That actually worked? That was the soul?" He did not expect it. "At least I didn't have to die again for it." He tiredly opened the system interface and checked the description of this new skill acquired. And this time… there was no tag on it deeming it be inferior or superior. [Soul Forging] - Active skill; Forge the soul into an eternal warrior; Chance of success increased by 10%; "Hmmm…" Liam read it and then looked at the other skill description, the skill that he had learned. [Soul Sensing] - Passive skill; Able to sense the soul of a being, living or dead. "Both the active skill and passive skill doesn't have an energy consumption? This is not possible." Just the small attempt he did in order to sense the presence of a soul had completely tired him out. How could this skill possibly cost zero of anything? "Ok. Let me try activating this skill with the system's help." Liam sucked in a big breath of air and tried to recover as much as possible. He then dashed towards a group of scorpions in the distance. He unsheathed his sword, killing several at the same time and he quickly activated the skill. [Soul Forging] Liam mumbled. His eyes widened in surprise as he could now feel seven small white balls like that of mist rising up from the dead scorpion corpses. They seemed like a cluster of cotton dust, ready to disperse at any given moment. [Soul Forging] [Soul Forging] [Soul Forging] Liam muttered again and again and again. *** Bonus Chapter~~ Please thank Steamed Arrow for sponsoring this bonus chapter!