Chapter 6593 The Dark Descent Transforming the soul of a Journeyman Mech Designer into a 'demon' was not that simple. As a spirit derived from a human who had barely passed the threshold of the first major cultivation rank, it was easy to go overboard and break it outright. Souls were normally fragile existences. Without any of the vitality and protection that came from occupying a living body, they became defenseless and could wither away at any moment. Perhaps that was why Demoncasting and Demonforging centered around the use of demons as opposed to uncorrupted souls. The former had already undergone a process of demonization, which caused them to undergo a bizarre transformation that radically strengthened their substance. Even if the mutations caused the souls to become ugly, corrupted and irrational, they also gained a lot of strength and endurance, allowing them to withstand punishment that they previously could not endure! This sounded perfect for Demoncasting and Demonforging as both these production processes subjected their intangible ingredients to a lot of abuse before they adopted their new forms. Now that Veronica understood a little more why she needed to obtain a demon, she grew more eager to produce one herself. After all, being able to convert one from a random soul plucked by Helena would save Veronica 5 Ascension Points! After Helena fixed the soul of a Journeyman Mech Designer in place, Veronica repeatedly began to strike it with her Soul Whip. The soul started to utter a soundless scream of agony. Soul Whips were effective against cruel and tougher demons, so an uncorrupted soul without the protection of a corporeal body was much more susceptible to pain produced by this technique! Veronica felt more and more lucky that she managed to obtain such a fitting technique by stacking 10 golden lottery tickets at once. The Soul Whip offered a lot more utility than he initially expected. With every lash of the intangible whip, the soul of the deceased mech designer experienced further torment, but never sustained all that much damage to its integrity. The Soul Whip concentrated almost all of its damage potential to stimulating the intangible pain receptors of its targets. This was why the soul of the Journeyman Mech Designer deteriorated a lot slower than it should. Both Veronica and Helena knew that if they struck the soul with a more conventional spiritual attack, it would have lasted for a couple of blows at most before bursting apart like a balloon! Whip after whip struck the soul as if it had entered hell and needed to undergo unending torment. However, after Veronica whipped the soul 20 times in a row, her feline expression gradually started to frown. "There isn't as much progress as I expect." "That is no surprise. Turning a soul into a demon by relying on the simple application of pain is a stupid method." Helena said. "The more refined way of turning a soul into a demon is to combine it with psychological attacks. You need to completely collapse all forms of strength and sustenance. When the soul has completely and utterly lost all hope of salvation or relief, that is when it has finally reached the tipping point." That was an informative explanation. The Cyborg Cat already devised a few possible solutions on how she could increase the efficiency of this tedious and monotonous process. However, Veronica refrained from modifying the application of the Soul Whip technique. She also declined to employ her Devil Tongue to add psychological pressure to the soul. One of her purposes this time was to create a baseline. Time passed by. The soul, despite belonging to a mere Journeyman Mech Designer, still held out for a surprisingly lengthy amount of time. Veronica no longer bothered to count how many times she whipped the soul. She figured out that there was some sort of diminishing returns in effect. Whipping the soul once generated a huge amount of pain, but doing it on repeat would eventually cause it to get acclimated to his new condition. Part of that was because Veronica made no effort to vary the Soul Whip. Another part of it was because Veronica's proficiency in the technique was mediocre. A third factor was her relatively low cultivation rank. A Soul Whip generated by his mother would definitely be at least a hundred times more painful! In fact, if a True God channeled a Soul Whip at full power, it may outright blast apart the unprotected soul of a Journeyman Mech Designer due to the enormous disparity in strength! Veronica was still far from reaching that level. The lackluster size and the dim manifestation of her whips reflected their lack of strength. "This is getting tedious" Even though Veronica and Helena both grew bored when nothing seemed to change after a while, both of them were patient enough to persist. Helena constantly split her attention, so she was never idle or bored. Veronica could assist Ves in design work by acting as an additional urce thought. After two hours had passed, the Cyborg Cat finally started to perk up again when she finally noticed a difference. "We are getting close." The Helcat said as the avatar grew a lot more active again. "I thought the soul would last for at least a couple more hours, but this mech designer is ultimately too... weak-willed." "What do you expect from a civilian and a mech designer? Not everyone from my profession is similar to me or Ketis." Veronica tried her best to maintain the current frequency of lashings. She did not seek to introduce any variables that could interrupt the process that was coming. Soon enough, the soul of the tortured mech designer finally underwent a transformation. With every Soul Whip that struck the victim, the soul began to darken at a rapid speed. The faint amount of negative energy available in the Nyxian Gap also played a facilitating role. The tainted soul began to suck up as much negative energy that it could draw from the surrounding environment. This accelerated the process of demonization and also caused the soul of the mech designer to become affected by foreign pollution. Mutations began to occur at a rapid rate. At first, the soul looked like an identical version of the Journeyman back when he was alive. He even wore his most common outfit which was a casual suit covered by a plain white lab coat. Now, his clothes became filthy and frayed. His lab coat maintained its pale coloration, but it started to acquire scuffs and holes as if it had been subjected to years-long abuse. The body of the mech designer mutated as well. His skin grew darker but also paler until it reached a dark blue tint. The proportions of the mech designer's body also began to fluctuate. His back started hunching over while his arms grew unnaturally long. His head began to warp and lengthen while his teeth started to mutate into fangs! When the blue-skinned monster spawned a long and slender tail for no apparent rencon the damonization process had finally reached its end! "So this is a real Minor Demon." Veronica saw that this freshly transformed demon had much in common with the fiends produced by the Geist System of the Phobos. In fact, she even speculated that they possessed the same root. That was a naive thought. Veronica finally understood what set them apart. Demons were beings of pure malevolence and negativity, but they did not start out that way. Every demon once lived as a normal living being. They started off as positive life forms, but experienced so much suffering and despair that they degenerated into negative life forms. They underwent an evolution in a very dark direction, but they still retained a number of advantages of their previous life phase. Fiends on the other hand were completely artificial beings that were periodically spawned by Ves and later Helena out of raw spiritual energy. They started off as pure negative life forms from the onset, and lacked the growth and accumulation of a regular life form. Their foundations were therefore vastly inferior, and their growth potential was likely stunted as a result. It was like the difference between cloned adult humans and people who grew up naturally from birth. The latter may look indistinguishable from a normal person, but their intelligence and spirit were crippled to the point where they could not even function properly! While the situation with fiends and demons were a little bit different from that analogy, it was enough to help Veronica understand the situation a bit better. The Cyborg Cat could create a fiend easily enough by gathering enough negative energy and giving it the spark of life. She could not produce a demon from scratch just as she was not able to create a human soul from the beginning because they fell outside of the scope of his abilities. That was okay. Now that Veronica had witnessed the transformation of a human soul into a Minor Demon, she became confident she could produce more of the latter! She just needed to gather a large batch of decently strong souls before finding a way to whip them on an industrial scale in order to produce one Minor Demon after another. As the blue-skinned demon spawned from the soul of the Journeyman Mech Designer regained its senses, it immediately attempted to break out of its confinement and attack Veronica and Helena, heedless of the substantial gap in power! Veronica snorted. "Damn, Minor Demons are truly dimwits. This guy has no chance of beating you, but look at him trying to claw out your face. "Demons are supposed to become smarter when they evolve. Who they used to be before they transformed also affects their intelligence and rationality," The fact that this blue demon sought to kill the Daughter of Death herself was probably not the most erudite of mech designers among his peers. "So what do you want to do with it, or him now, little sister?" "Let us examine him. I need to test his strength, his reaction to my Soul Whip and more." Veronica began to subject the newly transformed demon to a battery of empirical tests. She already had a good idea of the strength of the soul before the transformation, so she paid close attention to the range of improvement. Just as expected, the demon scored much higher in almost every area. There was truly a qualitative difference between uncorrupted souls and demons. The irrational being even gained a few weak powers. All of this made the demon stronger and scarier than he could have hoped to be when he was still in a weaker state. Once Veronica concluded her examination, she began to frown as she thought about her next goal. "A Minor Demon is not strong enough for my purposes. The works I have in mind for Demoncasting needs to be augmented by a stronger power source. I need a Middle Demon at the very least. Helena, do you know how we can turn this blue fellow into a bigger and nastier blue fellow?" "Whipping the demon will not work anymore." The Helcat flopped her tail in uncertainty. "At this point, he has already changed down to his essence. As I mentioned before, the demon needs to fulfill his purpose and feel satisfied while doing so. Only when he has become successful enough in his destructive purpose will he become qualified to enter a higher stage." "Ah, you did mention that before. Does that mean we can make him grow quickly enough if we allow him to torture and kill enough souls?" Helena shook her feline head. "Again, you are thinking too simple. It will take too long and far too many souls to satisfy even the weakest of demons. Even if it works, the costs will far outweigh the gains." Damn. Veronica knew it wouldn't be so simple. The System charged 100 AP just to summon a single Middle Demon from its ritual circle. This meant that it should be 20 times more troublesome or difficult to obtain a more powerful demon! "Do you have any suggestions?" "As a matter of fact, I do. Our mother once taught me another lesson on how to breed strong dependent creatures." "How many lessons did mother teach you while denying them to me?!" Veronica exploded. "Mother told me never to answer this question."