Kaden's experiments continued on for several months. His understanding of how mana worked through Vengeance and how it affected souls grew step by step, trial and error.
Bodycount of test subjects also grew, but Kaden cared very little.
Over the time, Kaden had discovered that he required far more control than he had expected. Best results came, if he could cut the soul from its body, but still keep it inside the body and not tear it out as it naturally would. The body itself was the natural place for the soul to exist and outside of it, it seemed to quickly fade.
To achieve all this, he needed to control all the mana he used and ensure the test subjects body remained in as unharmed as possible. Unharmed was a very flexible term in this case.
"I must bind the soul completely inside the body and never let it out", Kaden thought to himself as the latest subject perished. "Vengeance must be in direct contact with the body. Stabbing it into nonfatal spot is the best way so far."
Direct contact was a must for the control he required. He had even discovered a way to construct a preliminary portion of the formation he required to enslave the subject. This preliminary formation could be constructed while he was holding the soul to house it once it was severed from its body. Without it, the soul would fade away and cause death. He succeeded at this after painstakingly learning how to keep subject alive with life mana.
This was the point where Kaden was at. To imprison souls in their own bodies. Basically the subjects were fully aware and alive, but they were just observers inside their bodies with no control over it. They would see, hear, feel and think, but their connection to their own body was gone.
This state didn't last as long as Kaden needed it to, but he was in the process of refining it. In fact, Kaden believed beast were not the best subjects. Presence of a core disrupted the formation and it would last far shorter time until it broke and the soul went wherever their destination upon death was. As for for Cari, he had not experimented on any yet. Ciner had brough him only High Beasts.
To experiment on humans had its own problems. Kaden had no access to human subjects. Sure, some captured ones could be bought, but that was expensive.
"If I can make acceptably good container for the souls within beasts, for a human it should then last far longer and be more than acceptable", Kaden thought to himself. "Once I have a proper container to hold the soul. I can add another around it and allow the soul some control over their body once more. This time with constrains that I have added. They are free to do whatever they want as long as they fulfill all my demands. It should be physically impossible for them to not obey."
Such a wonderful concept. Kaden had many ideas what to do with it once it worked. At the moment he was certain he would have a working formation to enslave souls sooner or later. The hard part was over. It was time to refine it.
"I will be able to have people work for me inside the empires", Kaden continued his thoughts. "Information, resources, sabotage ... anything."
Biggest bad sides were in the far future. Kaden was, at his level of understanding, pretty sure that the method wouldn't work on True Magi or True Cari. They had mana bodies. There was no way to insert anything inside them and expect it to stay there.
The enslavement formation of this type would only function on those with actual physical bodies. The upper limit was the peak of Condensation stage and Lower Cari stage. There existed lower limit which was somewhere within Formation and High Beast stage. Those below this level would perish in the process. Luckily number of inviduals within that range was high.
"This will limit my actions by these methods to certain level", Kaden thought to himself as he pondered on the limits.
What could be achieved with minions from Formation and High Beast stages to peak of Condensation and Lower Cari stages was quite wide. Most relevant people were within these levels. No one cared about cannon fodder under them. There were too few True Magi and True Cari so while they held many leadership positions or came to deal with more significant matters, one usually didn't run into them.
The limits of his technique were very acceptable.
"What should I do?" Kaden thought. "Should I try to take control of some military leaders at Condensation stage? Have them start incidents and spread chaos as a distraction?" That had good potential. "Or perhaps I should take some influential people and have them support those lunatics worshipping God of Lies and cause more problems for the churches?"
Yes, there were many things Kaden could think of, but he wanted to take the most gain out of his hard work. There was no need to start with something showy. It would be noticed when someone starts to act crazy sooner or later and then start investigating why. While the container for the soul would be constructed inside the subjects body, some parts needed to be built externally on the skin. The control portion, for example, needed to be outside for sure.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
So... if someone investigated, it wouldn't take long for them to notice the people acting odd were covered in some strange formation.
"I will have to do list of primary commands at the very least", Kaden decided. "Such as upon discovery, if they can't get rid of the discoverer, the slaves should self detonate destroying the any evidence. Prefably before anyone gets to see their bodies. Explosion would annihilate the formation."
Kaden also realized with the way his formation was working, it allowed the slaves quite a bit of freedom within the bound he set. If a loophole would be discovered in his rules, the slaves could take advantage of it. Possibly in some significant manner. Some basic rules would indeed be required.
"Perhaps these base rules should be built into the control formation itself and not something I have to tell each of them", Kaden muttered to himself as he though of how to improve the formation. "It is far more reliable that way and stronger."
Hardwiring some absolute rules was just a good idea.
Despite Kaden's thoughts of what he would do was basically due to his excitement that his experiments were finally bearing fruit, it took still many more months of experimenting. In total it was about a year. In total Kaden had thought about the matter ever since he fought the simulations inside the Caldera Pit. Experimenting and learning something new often took time.
Those few years were still quite a short time. As far as things went, Kaden had tried many things and only after Kranor's pointer, he was able to try adjusting already existing formations to produce the effect he was looking for with Vengeance and its ability to affect souls.
For this last round of experiments, until the first working formation and what Kaden considered acceptable quality, the casualties were not as high as before. He had already refined his method and already was able to contain souls succesfully. This caused Ciner to hang out near Kaden more, but the boar was rather interested in Kaden's experiments so the disruption from her was actually minimal. At any rate, Kaden made sure to keep actual formation secret from Ciner. For safety reasons.
The control formation for the soul holder was very similar as the simulation formations. In many ways the formation, that allowed the stored fighting styles and behavior to be brought out for training, worked by forcing behavior based on the soul contained in it. The difference was just that, for the training formations, the soul and its information was stored in the training area. For Kaden's formation, the soul and its information was stored in the victims body.
Some of the remaining problems were merely caused by destabilization of the soul container once the secondary formation was combined with it, but Kaden was able to solve this problem relatively easy.
"These High Beast will not live more than a few months by my expectations", Kaden muttered to himself as he ordered around a few succesfull test subjects. "I will need to test this with humans. I don't at this time really care whether it works or not with Cari. I made this all so that I can function inside human territories. All I need to do is to add some common surveilance formations and communications and I can observe what my servants do and order them around without being present myself."
Kaden did ponder the problem of cores with his slave formation slightly, but he didn't plan to really try solving it. It could perhaps be possible to add some protective layer around the formations so that core would not distrupt it, but it was merely speculation.
"I should arrange a demonstration for Kranor", Kaden thought to himself. "Whatever he says, before I move out of Frika I will do human experiments."
As for where he was going to get humans, Kaden had some ideas. Buying one was basically plan B. Kaden intended to go to the borders of Frika where Cari and humans always fought. Things had intensified lately so capturing a human at proper rank might be possible there.
Kaden was not intending to trust his tests on some cattle humans. He needed a battle hardened warrior who could fight back and resist. If not for that requirement Kaden could have simply asked for one from the phoenix clan before they are buthered for delicacy foods.
"Perhaps Kranor can point me to a part of the border where phoenix clan has influence", Kaden thought a possible plan. "With that I might be arrange those fighting there help me capture a few humans."
Despite that Kaden had desire to see where the black pentagon would lead him, he knew to be patient. With the slave formation he would be able to do much more than search whatever the black pentagon would lead him to. He planned whatever he was doing to be long term project. He would only escape, if there was obvious and immediate danger.
As for whatever potential allies existed beyond the borders, there could be some Lower Cari deep inside Centralean Forest. Their number and ability to help would be questionable. Other relevant sources of help probably didn't exist. He would be on his own ... with his slaves. At best he could perhaps gain information, if he ran into them. That was mostly their job. To keep eye on humans.
Another location of safety would be the great remnant, the Origin Rift. Those Lower Cari and perhaps even a few True Cari wandered near and inside No Man's Land trying to follow the rift and determine where it was and when it would open up. It was important to Cari.
This was one of the major reasons why Cari maintained their presence with so few forces near the human empires. It was costly and dangerous, but it was seen worth it.
Yet, Kaden could not trust any knowledge of it. The scouts wouldn't know anything about it. The Origin Rift was near impossible to follow. It was usually also very far from the areas the empires worked at.
Even if he did happen to run into it, there would be likely no help. Anyone danger to him would be able to deal with whatever random scouts he might run into unless it was one of the even fewer higher ranked ones.
Kaden merely made a mental note of its existence. He did not consider it really relevant. He just wanted to remain aware of any potential help.
"At any rate, I better go capture a stronger High Beast or a perhaps even a Lower Cari for my demonstration", Kaden said to himself. "Kranor must be convinced to let me go to the border to finish my last experiments and, if succesful, find a way to leave Frika behind."