Chapter 28: Efforts to Rent Space

[Player: Vermilion Oak Giant, Title: None]

[ID: DS-54370681-157, Gender: Male, Affiliation: Sun City High School Class 42973, Level: Lv0 (8 stars)]

[Attributes: Strength: 4, Agility: 3, Constitution: 5, Spirit: 6, Status: Good]

[Affinity: shadow Attribute Magic/Force Affinity, Natural attribute mana affinity, Water attribute physical force affinity]

Returning to his room, Leon noticed his attributes had changed, and the name that had been represented by a number was now replaced with his actual name.

At the same time, on the left wall where various resources and materials were stored, a unique frame appeared. Inside it wasn’t an object transformed into a card, but the shadow of a spear as thick as a thumb.

The same was true for the right wall, but this time the frame contained a floating corpse of a cyan dragon in a purple void.

These were Leon’s two major rewards from this mission: [Mosasaurus's Charred Spear] and [Mosasaurus's Dead Cyan Dragon].

Just after returning to his room, Leon was eager to deal with the cyan dragon. Originally, he had planned to bring the dragon to the school's rented space, but the delay caused by handling the Titan's artifact had taken at least three extra days.

The most time-consuming part was dealing with the soul fragment hidden deep within his soul.

At first, he hadn’t realized there was a soul fragment within him, so he hadn’t taken any action. After sensing it while drinking at a bar, Leon finally understood why he had grown so much over the years.

Players didn’t worry too much about soul fragments because they were relatively common. Some necromancers would even refine others’ souls into fragments to supplement their own soul strength.

Leon’s case was just a little rarer. He didn’t know when or how the fragment had been implanted in his soul, but it was clear that the dual mana and physical force affinity came from the foundational martial arts embedded in the soul fragment.

From this, it was evident that the original soul’s owner was quite formidable.

However, despite their wisdom, Leon wasn’t going to let the original soul's owner dictate his life. Among the various ways to handle soul fragments, there wasn’t an option to become the original soul's owner.

Players generally dealt with soul fragments in three ways: fusion, devouring, and assimilation.

Devouring was the most common method, used when the player’s soul was stronger than the fragment. By consuming the fragment, everything became the player’s own. However, devouring often led to missing pieces, especially if the fragment was heavily shattered.

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Assimilation involved following the fragment’s path step by step, ensuring steady growth without straying. This method was safer, but it didn’t guarantee that the path would suit the player.

Fusion, on the other hand, was the most challenging. It involved learning the knowledge within the fragment but interpreting it in one’s own way, turning the fragment’s essence into one’s own over time.

This path required great determination. Most players chose this method when they encountered high-quality fragments, believing it held great potential.

Leon made his decision after discovering the soul fragment. He knew he was still young, already at level 4, and could live for millennia. There was no need to follow the fragment’s path completely.

He chose fusion, determined to forge his own path, ensuring he wouldn’t waste the opportunity before him.

For three days, Leon worked to balance the soul fragment with his own soul, minimizing the risk of losing it in future in-game deaths.

Once everything was completed, Leon returned to the school’s rented shadow attribute space. By now, he was anxious, as he didn’t yet know how much of the cyan dragon he had brought back.

Placing his hand on the dragon’s corpse in the purple void, the scene around him changed instantly, transporting him from his small two-square-meter room to a vast space.

This space was located in the void, surrounded by endless darkness with no sense of direction. The cyan dragon’s corpse and scattered seawater and rocks floated just as they had been originally.

Countless visible strands of purple energy swirled from all directions, slowly circling the dragon’s corpse.

However, Leon could tell that the purple energy was incompatible with the dragon. The corpse neither absorbed nor repelled the shadow attribute energy, much like oil floating on water.

Leon understood the situation. The dragon was still just a corpse, its attributes hadn’t been adjusted. Absorbing the shadow energy wasn’t possible yet, and the fact that it didn’t reject it was already a good sign.

This was fortunate for Leon, as he was still too weak and had much to learn. Although he had a plan to deal with the cyan dragon, it would take time.

If the dragon had started absorbing shadow energy on its own, it could have developed its own consciousness, making it difficult for Leon to control and even potentially leading to disaster.

The current situation was ideal. He had time to slowly process and adjust everything, turning the dragon's corpse into his own domain through study and effort.

With this in mind, Leon inspected the dragon’s body again. Although the system had already calculated the total amount of resources he had brought back, he preferred to rely on his own hands and mind.

The cyan dragon before him was 93 meters long, with a maximum body width of 19 meters and a height of about 15 meters. Most of the body had already petrified, and its total weight exceeded 200 tons.

Additionally, there were about 100 tons of bones, 100 tons of seawater, and a stone block that had trapped the dragon. The stone was 10 meters high, 20 meters long, and 20 meters wide, weighing nearly 40 tons.

These items were now all one entity. Leon’s task was to separate them.

Only Leon could do this. While the school’s rented space allowed others to enter, shadow attribute players knew that when creating their undead or servants, everything had to be done personally.

Otherwise, there was always the risk of someone implanting a backdoor, turning the servant against its master at a crucial moment.

With this in mind, Leon decided to stay in the rented space for the next few months, working on categorizing and processing the cyan dragon’s corpse.

The easiest task was dealing with the seawater, which floated in the void without any gravity. Leon used a large barrel to slowly transfer the seawater to the other end of the space.

The collected seawater formed a massive dark red water sphere. It took Leon three full days to complete the transfer.

Afterward, he set up various materials around the water sphere, bought instruments and magic circles to process the seawater, and injected all his remaining magic mercury into the sphere, working to make the water self-sustaining.

This task was even more troublesome than moving the seawater. Any mistake required starting over, and it took Leon a full week to complete it.

The finished water sphere still looked like a water ball but, upon closer inspection, was clearly divided into three layers.

The outermost layer had become a faint dark red mist. The middle layer contained mercury specks of light, and the core appeared like a half-solidified gel.

This gel was the core of the magic circle. Once formed, it could operate automatically. When enough energy was available, it could transform ordinary water, shadow energy, and some magic mercury into the middle layer’s mercury-specked liquid.

This liquid, called shadow Soul Mercury, was essential for undead. It served as the energy transmission fluid for large undead, functioning like blood for ordinary life forms.

Yin Soul Mercury had an extremely low consumption rate, almost negligible.

As for the outer layer of mist, it was called shadow Soul Mist, a byproduct of the liquid’s creation.

For shadow attribute players, nothing went to waste. After much research, they had developed ways to use the mist, with one of the simplest products being the Black Sky Curtain.

By adding poison or even scattering ghosts into it, some had developed methods to turn the mist into a critical defense for undead cities.

Leon’s current shadow Soul Mist was still basic, far from being useful for creating a Black Sky Curtain. For now, he simply collected it, planning to decide how to handle it later. His priority was processing the cyan dragon’s corpse.