Mark, Billy and the elder all stood together while next to them was a police officer with a clenched face.
He was reading Billy and the elder’s ID and was none too happy to see their IDs.
This particular person was the prison warden of the Kentucky state reformatory just northeast of louisville.
As you might guess, a place that, at one point, used the gallows to kill death row inmates, along with housing over 2,000 inmates, there are bound to be deaths and subsequent spectors.
Wardens are among the few normal mortal governmental personnel that are actually aware of Soul Society as well as the IEO. Of course, they like neither of the organizations that deal with the supernatural because it brought about a lot of strange occurrences.
“What is it this time?” he asked.
“We are experimenting with a vital tool that could improve the society’s combat potential to be able to reduce supernatural creatures and increase the numbers of people able to fight them off. The main source are phantoms enhanced by a primary tool and they carry a secondary one at the receiving end.” the elder said.
The warden rubbed his forehead, “Mr Conway, I’ve got a lot of respect for someone like you but why is it that you want this prison of all places? Don’t you all regularly clear out ghosts?” He said.
“We do, at present your prison is clean from the new years cleansing however that is active spirits.” He said.
This time the Warden frowned, “Active ones?” He said.
Billy cut in, “You’ve likely been educated, even slightly, on the difference between us conscious ghosts and the evil spirits?” he asked.
“Yes, nine fragments plus sin and you need all parts to properly function.” the warden said.
“Right, as you should know, a large number of souls move on but there is also a portion that don’t which become the spirits left in the world. These souls break into their fragments and may or may not even reform as ghosts and even we, normally, can’t see these souls.” Elder Conway explained.
“Normally?” the warden said.
“Yes sir, this young man has a unique capacity to see that so we hope to access the inactive souls to experiment with.” the elder explained.
Naturally the warden rubbed his face in irritation, “Fine but since that is the case that there are still ghosts, please clear all the remaining ones out after it is done!” He said.
They naturally agreed and proceeded to do an escorted tour and asked where death row or big offenses such as pedofiles and such serious cases were kept.
They head the wards while walking through, Mark just grabs a random fragment and pulls it along until they get to a room with records.
Mark asked for a pencil and paper and looking at the fragment’s face, he quickly and skillfully drew his face. This skill was naturally cultivated from making talismans for so long and having good control of his hands.
After several minutes, he had a detailed drawing and asked a policeman to find anyone matching this picture.
After scanning the picture they ran the image through the system and they watched it while Mark took out his book and a pen, waiting for the name.
It took about an hour for the system to go through its database of already dead inmates until it found a match.
“Is that him?” the officer waiting asked.
Mark looked and compared before nodding, “Yep, that is.”
“His name is Richard Stevens, pedofile, caught in 1992, he served for 8 years before ultimately being killed by another inmate.” the officer said.
“Is there a full extended name?” Mark asked.
Obviously there was, the record contained both middle and last name and they got that.
“Officer, you can leave.” the warden said.
He was confused but left while Mark looked at the name and started writing it completely on the first page.
When he finished, there was barely a reaction until he channeled spiritual power. The name finally shined before the letters fixed itself and shrank and rapidly started to expand the detail.
Richard Holmes Stevens, 1952-2000
Cause of death: Stabbed by Shank while caught in a choke hold.
When it formed, the fragment behind Mark looked and it glowed and shot into the book’s first page.
He was surprised but about a moment later, eight other lights came through the walls into the room and rushed into the book before a strong black light came down from above.
The book was still absorbing his spiritual power until it finally shot out a small light that condensed a small booklet before it shrank into the size of a mustard seed and a very small soul orb formed.
Mark felt his book link and provide spiritual power and that weak orb expanded into the full phantom.
When his form finally fully formed, he dropped down and blinked confused and looked around. He looked at his hands and Mark could feel the spiritual power moving around and looked at the two others.
“From the start he is already a wisp.” Elder Conway said.
“The book is sending energy into the book which is inside his soul.” Mark explained. They nod as they understand the principle of it.
“Where am I and why… do i feel so good.” he said clenching his hands.
“You had best behave, buddy.” Mark said glaring at him.
He looked at Mark, conflicted but went quiet as he felt the strangeness of his body.
“Did you get what you wanted?” the warden asked. He naturally couldn’t see the spirit of the man that had just reformed.
“Yes.” Billy said and the two looked with a smile, happy that it would work.
After that Mark took a while to gather a new soul and built it up before Billy interrogated him for his name and they tested the result of it being used on an already formed soul.
The book reacted the same and formed the tiny booklet and it shot into his chest where he groaned and was absorbed into it before he formed a soul orb and the feedback produced a weak wisp but a wisp nonetheless.
The final thing was what happened when they died.
When they did this, it was decisive and quick. Mark moved like a shadow and chopped their heads before purging them.
This was where things got interesting, the booklets came out of their bodies and absorbed all of their gathered spiritual power before returning to the book where it was written ‘Purged by Mark Black’ and it remained there for a minute before both names were gone.
“What happened at the end?” Billy asked.
Mark was in thought about the feeling and actually asked that question to the book.
To their surprise and Mark’s joy, the book actually replied.
“All spiritual power to create the child spirit is provided by the book and the owner. As such, when the spirit is relieved of their duties or they are purged or killed by anything, even the owner, all of the spiritual energy is reabsorbed by the child book and it returns to the main book with the information. If the spirit possesses items, all the items are withdrawn alongside it to not lose precious inventory.” the book said.
“Amazing!” Elder Conway said, extremely happy “If it is like this, we can spend some time using criminal souls to cultivate the energy stored in the book.” He said.
“No, that is the slow way. The book can directly absorb spiritual energy from a vent. It is more efficient. What is useful instead is that the book automatically makes them wisps, no matter how weak they are. This changes the entire way we work with souls because now we can have a much larger number of souls as fighters.” Mark said.
That said the book began to write,
“You still require more child books to sustain immense numbers. At present you can only form 75 child books times the value of 3, the number of pages each child book represents, due to the number you produced and infused into me. 225 individuals at this moment is the limit until more child books are produced.”
Mark read it outloud and they nodded.
“It makes sense, the child book is at the receiving end so naturally you need something. That said… the book's material is still pretty normal, if you get someone to forge more spiritual things and replace the normal for improved, it should greatly improve the books capacity right?” Billy asked.
“Agreed.” Elder Conway said.
Even the book agreed.
“Yeah, it confirms it but the first thing to do is find phantoms that want to fight and then train them.” Mark said.
Suddenly coughing came from behind and they remembered the Warden.
“You done?” He asked.
“Yes sir, we got the information we wanted. After we finish talking I will clear out all the soul fragments from the prison.” Mark said.
He snorted and walked outside and the officer walked back in, looking at them strangely.
They walked out of the room and talked in more hushed tones and after organizing their thoughts Mark asked, “Are you going to tell Soul Society? It would make my life harder with the price of the books skyrocketing.” He said.
“Don’t worry, book embryos are a dime a dozen. Your way of making them is just one way, we’ve got a high productivity method so I can provide you with a number of books as reward for showing us the future for making exorcists. If we don’t have to worry about finding spirits then it would greatly improve our capacity.” He said.
“Sir… you should make sure that is true because remember, the spiritual power those guys were receiving was my own, the spiritual power of an exorcist. You should first build a mother and child book with at least ten child books, the minimum for the system to work, and test it with a normal spirit and see if it works as an exorcist through a strong spiritual energy feeding it.” He said.
When he said that, they both froze and realized that this was indeed true but it didn’t stop them.
“There are a lot of exorcists in soul society. Not many are as dedicated in their work ethics as you anyways.” Billy said.
The two nodded and looked back at the prison.
“I’ll stay here and work through the souls like I promised, it should also keep the prison from needing yearly maintenance.” Mark said.
“Good, for the specifics, I’ll make sure to send you 500 book embryos by the time you get home. When it is all said and done, you should have enough child books to support a little under 1,000 spirits. With your domain growing to 30 km in diameter, you can actually build a town inside your domain if you fill out that criteria.” He said.
“Yeah, thank you for the ‘rich’ reward.” Mark said. Considering each book was $30,000, 500 books was a whopping 15 million.
After that the two left while Mark went to his car and left his things while in his invisible ghost form and began to gather all the fragments while separating them. He also had to go to the surrounding town to find any fragments dressed as inmates and drag them back to their clusters. It took most of the day when he finally had the merge and moved along.
He appeared before the warden when he was free and just told him the job was done and it was unlikely that supernatural things would happen in the prison itself for a while.
After that he got in his car and drove back home.
As expected, arriving at night, he found the mountain of books stacked in front of his altar and with a weak smile, he knew he would be using a lot of materials to make these all child books.
He had to calculate the exact amount before ordering it. It took quite a chunk of his funds. It didn’t matter much as his tea was already starting to produce and sell while his blossoms were mostly on hold because of his month getting caught up.
Still he started back up on feeding them his energy at night and forge through the creation process of the child books and put them to restore on the altar. He spent close to a week before he finally bit the bullet and purchased the maximum sized foundation for the vent with the 5 km range.
When the price came in, he sighed because it was a full 7 million spirit dollars but it also came with an upgraded altar that was built on top of the original one at least.
They arrived the day after and you could guess the shock when they stepped out of the elevator.
“Sorry but the center of the domain is a little far because of… the growth.” Mark said, scratching his head.
They all flew to the center where they found the piece of land and looked at one another and spread out to work but not without looking at him like he was abnormal.
“How wide is it?” one of them had to ask.
“Uh… 30 km from front to back.” Mark said awkwardly.
They all marveled and one of them began to count.
“Walking corpse… stiff corpse… earthbound spirit. 30… 60, 90… it would end up a 120 km domain by earthbound spirit.” He said.
They all swallowed hard when they heard it and he scratched his head.
They were all surprised once they got into that perspective, he would literally become the king of his own little world. In fact, it would be enough for 1 major city and several minor ones and could house people in the millions with huge expanses of farmland, at 120 km of diameter.
Mark had naturally thought of that as well so he didn’t say anything.
“Um… can we start.” He asked.
The leader coughed, “Yes… uh… we should start with the altar. Your altar would be upgraded to the Mark II foundation altar with a proper Stone of Spirituality roof base to expand the capacity better. The function makes it that all the spiritual power coming from the vent goes through it first before being spread out and this will improve the quality and density of the energy. It also contains secondary ‘altars’ that can be used for infusing energy into spiritual items.” He said.
“That’s perfect.” Mark said. Happy for that option since he needed a large amount of energy for his book. He had already moved all the extra child books so there was nothing getting in the way and they also knew he wanted it done first so he could start using that specific function. He had added that as priority so they spread out and started to take out their machines and others started to examine the 5km diameter around the altar.
Stolen novel; please report.
The original foundation was 120 meters to the altar but it now had to upgrade to a huge size. More than half of the team started to work on marking out the land to properly build it while the other half went to the altar and began to take out parts that would replace the existing one.
Mark just sat there and watched and was surprised when they all worked and lifted the entire base of the altar and the pieces began to come off like supports in a puzzle but there was a lot of spiritual energy running through it all so they couldn’t actually remove it, they had to refine the old part to be absorbed into the new piece and replace it piece by piece.
Part of the team held the altar while the other moved in to start changing the base pieces.
It went to night time when he took a break to feed the blossoms that had started to grow again after being ignored.
Unlike the week-long change, it took two month's to build the entire thing. The altar alone took about four days and it doubled in size but the stone at the top became like a lighthouse and it pulsed while the power from the vent ran through it and the altar had four secondary channels.
They all were filled with ten books absorbing power and Mark was on the center one training actively as his skin rippled under the effect of the technique.
The ripples slowly weakened until it held firm. This signaled that he had given his skin its complete reforging.
He coughed as he got out of the flow and felt exhausted but his body's stability had grown and now he could start on the bones.
Looking out, the construction was already at the edge over 2.5 km away and they were building a large stone platform like the one that once existed under the altar because what came after for upgrades would start from these segments and he watched as they finished the last few.
Finally when it was done, they all shook his hand out of respect for the domain size and his possible future and they finally gathered their tools.
Mark saw them off and headed down.
When he entered, he looked at the control settings and began to chant and finally activated the formation but after activating, the energy just spread slowly.
“There, just like originally, it would need a few days for the energy to spread but that is fine.” He said and went inside the larger altar and pulled the books and was happy they were fixed.
These were the last of the 250 books that were made from the huge pile of books he had gained from Elder Conway.
He took out a pouch and took out all the already fixed books and called out the mother book. Opening to the last page, he put the books against the last page and after a moment, new pages would form and he kept doing that and the book extended into a thick encyclopedia until he was done.
He went to the main vent of the altar and put the book in and it became a sinkhole as it started to adapt to the huge number of pages and he saw it double in size to reduce the thickness. It grew five times bigger and ended up over 500 pages.
When it stopped changing, it came out and opened automatically.
“Current number of child books: 325
Current number of pages 650, 2 pages per book
Currently the book can support 6 people per book
Total number of child books: 1,950.”
“It increased from 3 to 6.” He said
“The process of absorbing books constantly improves the capacity of the mother book. Also, you’ve forged Monster beast hide into my cover and replaced the paper with special spiritual tree paper made from your domain trees. The capacity would naturally increase.”
The book was right, magical creatures naturally include monsters which are magical animals who are less than peaceful. Just like demons, they have domains, magical creatures also have them so they also form hidden places to live in and sometimes, groups of overly aggressive individuals escape from those places and start to threaten the human population so they end up hunted.
He had purchased the hide of one such creature and asked spiritual papermakers to process wood from the trees that have grown in his domain and when it was done he asked a professional to refine the materials into the book without breaking the formations.
A professional naturally would not screw up like that so it was upgraded but didn’t display instant change originally but it now showed the change as the book was able to grow and support more.
“That’s good… Billy and Elder Conway have already been finding people who want to come here. Are you capable of supporting nearly 2,000 wisps?” he asked.
“It is within possibility.” it wrote.
Mark nodded in thought and thought about the farmers outside and how they were already nearing wisp rank after training nearly a year on the altars.
He walked out and as he did, he got a call and found it was the cowboy himself.
“Hey kid, wanna talk?” he asked.
“About?”
“Well… goes without saying that the higher ups heard about your domain and your book.” He replied.
“You mean recruitment?” he asked.
“Yep.” He said. “The terms are quite impressive actually.” He said.
“Want to meet in a city or something?” He asked.
“It can be at your house, actually.” he said.
“Okay.” He said.
Mark went to the kitchen and prepared a little something before Billy arrived and walked in and smiled when he saw him prepare some treats.
Only when he sat down did Billy start talking.
“So what kind of deal are they asking for?” Mark asked.
“Well… first off I should tell you about what’s happened over the last two month's. You’ve taken a break for the construction of your foundation.” He said.
Mark nodded in agreement.
“Okay, first off, the spirit lords have all purchased the highest level space technology humans had and following the same process you did, they were actually successful in separating every one of their domains. You can guess the shock but even more was how much they expanded.
Originally the spirit lord’s base size was already pretty big with each of them being built on ley line vents. They ranged from 1 to 3 kilometers at the base and just like yours they expanded from 20 to 45 km at base size. If you count it correctly, a 1 km base at the walking corpse. Going up by the base size each upgrade, the spirit lord domains were 5 kms wide originally but when everything was done, those with 45 km base size had domains as wide as 225 km wide. What was once an HQ has rapidly become a land of opportunity for spirits to rebuild lives after death.” he said.
“Are many ghosts doing that?” He asked.
“No, a tavern keeper tried it but a sad tragedy happened when the domain collapsed in on itself. After some research, it was found that a vital piece to stability stemmed from being anchored to a ley line vent. It also seems that the foundation of the vent caused a big difference. Many things could actually affect it, such as a stone of spirituality, the smallest spirit lord domains lacked one while those with them were the biggest. When the small domains gathered full stones and added them to the central altars it caused a second expansion to roughly 20 to 25 km at base size.” Billy said.
“So my base size can still grow if I invest enough money.” He said.
“Yes, this is where the deal comes in. There are basically one or two spirit lords in each continent except Antarctica since there is next to no life there. Their domains are currently draining huge numbers of wisp and above level spirits.” he said.
“I see a pattern here.” Mark said.
“Yeah, soul society wants to recruit exorcist phantoms that have been made to settle on ley lines and have formed domains to become necropolis city lords.” he said.
“In other words, once a domain is formed, they provide the foundation pieces to perfect the huge expansion while the ‘lord’ builds the foundation.” he said.
“Yes.” Billy said.
“And the benefits are?” He asked.
“Well, you are recruited already with rights that tend to be for stiff corpses and prices on knowledge are reduced. You are eligible to obtain earthbound spirit training knowledge though only after you’ve become a stiff corpse. We will support the creation of the town with the intellectual division and basically the main part of the city building, you know, plumbing and such.” he said.
“How are phantoms going to survive here?” Mark said.
“Right… well this is the second thing. As surprising as it sounds, domains stationed on a ley line vent that have been perfected don’t have a negative effect on phantoms.” he said.
“What?” Mark said.
“Yeah, we tested with criminal souls and tossed them into the spirit lord domains. They would die in those because the spiritual pressure was huge, however, in a domain of a walking corpse that had been perfected, a phantom actually survived and the elements would help increase the density of his body to the point that they could survive under the increased spiritual pressure. In other words, you’ve basically discovered how to give phantoms a home. Oh, we did find out that within the foundation range of the vent, phantoms cannot enter like normal, however this is perfect because the altar could become your main home and where you train your police force.” he said.
“Okay… and I assume there are obligations?” He asked.
“Yes. We’ve experimented with your perfected book of ghost registry, it indeed works as intended and allows ghosts to ascend to wisps and use exorcist skills. Surprisingly, ghosts that were not originally exorcists but command the book get their spiritual power enhanced by the book's feedback to be able to do the same. You didn’t feel this because you already have a soul capable of this. We’ve been slowly designing a system of hierarchy based on the size of a domain each city lord commands. Depending on the size, they would be responsible for a certain perimeter. You’re an exception as a poltergeist of course but most city lords start as walking corpses which is the natural moment when ghosts make domains.” Billy explained.
“So they are organizing the division of tasks and providing city lords with tools to make a fighting force to reduce the danger in a given territory. So decrease workload but increase work efficiency.” Mark said.
“Exactly, starting at that point you would watch over a town. This is, a mortal settlement of under 50k population and the surrounding counties that are within the state marked boundaries that a town government would run. Counties usually follow the rules the larger town makes until it has the population and political density to be independent from a city's political control.” He said.
“Right.” Mark said, understanding that.
“Stiff corpse would command cities, places between 50 to roughly 300k populations. They would naturally command their own counties but have the ‘structural command’ to call the forces of smaller towns to aid. This is the same in normal government and your forces would help a large city. If it were the case here, you would take care of Elizabethtown and its surroundings and should Louisville need backup, you and your police force would naturally go as back up.” he explained.
“Okay.” Mark replied.
“Above that, earthbound spirits would protect state capitals for the USA, that would mean there would be 50 major earthbound spirits that would act as ‘governors’ of Soul society and would develop a state army. Nature spirits however would instead protect the largest metropolitan area where millions lived. This would allow large armed forces powered by nature spirits to protect and keep the peace among spirits in the cities where crime and negativity most densely gathers. Finally Spirit lords would basically protect their continents without national bondage.” He said.
“I see… so each country would have its own major system while the spirit lords are outside of this and command everything from above.” He said.
“Spirit lords have always been the ones mistaken as gods so it isn’t strange they would view things outside of the political structure and move only when truly needed.” he said.
Mark nodded but he was still on the ball.
“If it makes it any better, you’ve got full right to tax people living here.” he said.
Mark’s brows twitched because he knew it would generate considerable funds if he did that and he could better build the domain.
“I have a feeling this system isn’t friendly to a ‘no’.” He said
Billy smiled awkwardly.
“Places close to ley line vents aren’t always common.” he said.
“Right… do I have to follow Soul society regulations… reports and all that?” he asked.
“We hope you will. Considering the method we are building, it is basically a mirror government to run the spiritual side of the country.” he said.
Mark slowly nodded, “Right, only on the condition that I am not restricted by the work. In other words, I need at least some people to help and work through most of the political mumbo jumbo since I’ve never studied that crap. I also can’t be limited and ‘forced’ to hunt higher level creatures if I am focused on clearing the base level.” he said.
“That is fine, a lot of that can be dealt with by the wisps you recruit.” Billy replied.
“Yeah but I’m the only one with soul eyes.” Mark said. “Also, armament. You said we were making police forces but police forces need weapons. I understand us making our own talismans and easy to make stuff but at the very least a weapon and armor to distinguish.” He said.
“Right, we are already in the process of making ranked armor. It is made of spiritual thread which can be stored in your body allowing you to dress yourself instantly when going into ghost form?” He said.
“And weapons?” he asked.
“For the time being, we are working on producing a great number of wisp level swords. Oh, we also are going to produce soul society policeman badges to act as special ID.” he said.
“That is fine. Not like I can reject this but it is a good start.” Mark said.
“Yeah, oh right. You ‘are’ in charge of Elizabethtown due to it’s 30k population… which has decreased to about 12k after the spiritual surge and the people’s fears. The range of your ‘duties’ is a 30 km radius.” He said.
“Huh?” Mark muttered.
“We are taking into consideration the max size of your domain as the range of influence. Because the walking corpse is the stage where most ghosts make domains, the size of your domain at the walking corpse would be 60 kms or 30 km radius.” he said.
“That…” Mark muttered and looked at his phone and found a site that made circles with a specific radius and looked at the size of the circle and showed him.
“Yep, don’t worry because there are other towns that have domains that overlap so after we’ve finished making a map, we will divide the range properly.” He explained making Mark sigh.
“Just curious but how is plumbing and all that going to even work?” He asked.
“We’ve found that the domains contain all the required elements for life, even its own water sources underground. Has your domain rained yet?” he asked.
“No, it did get cloudy one day when it was raining outside though.” he said.
“Right, this also proves that your domain isn’t 100% finished or just lacks power. Maybe the foundation wasn’t big enough but it should be now. Weather is perfectly emulated from outside and after it starts to rain, water will bubble up and form natural waterways that the nature of your domain already has planned out but it is always away from the center.” he said.
“So those springs are going to be the source?” He asked.
“Yes, actually the recent culture that phantoms have taken is much more akin to altar homes. Basically they don’t need large homes, although this is only starting out, they just want an altar to live and grow on and to be in a peaceful natural setting. Those who are wisps start to want small cabins to protect their altars from the rain though so we have already begun to design natural campgrounds for phantoms.” He said.
“Is all farming work funded by me?” he asked.
“Yes, we suggest you explore your native flora to be able to find herbs and things that can be cultivated. We have also found herbs that are unaggressive to local domain flora so you can also get that but don’t randomly buy any plants because each domain is unique.” He said.
Mark nodded, “Okay… I hope you can send someone with rich experience in herbology and someone skilled in geographical mapping to properly map my domain before anything. I don’t want phantoms suddenly flooding the place and me unable to give them work they can grow from and just have fools running around. Also, I’ve upgraded my book with better material and just finished assimilating all the books Elder Conway gave into the mother book. Each child book supports 6 people now so I can recruit 1,950 people. Before letting public people come in, I want to have an established police force and some time to train them. There is no point in people who just have some more strength and hold a big stick, it just breeds power hungry idiots.” He said.
“Do you have any specifics you are looking for?” Billy asked.
“I want at least one or a few drill sergeants to make up the disciple trainers and phantoms or wisps that are knowledgeable to be able to teach even a small group to be able to produce talisman and charm supplies.” He said. “I also need to get all the wisp and poltergeist level knowledge that I don't have from tier 3 to 6.” He said.
“All of it?” Billy asked.
“Is there a problem? Knowledge is power and being able to work with a lot and have variety is better.” Mark said and thought for a while. “How do investigators fit into this?”
“They are mostly walking corpses and are going to fall under earthbound spirit command to form a statewide investigator division. We plan to improve their training so that they could possibly sense stronger spirits.” Billy said
“Okay, that sounds good.” Mark replied and thinking a bit he nodded and found he had nothing else to say.
“Great, we will see about the drill sergeants, the library staff will be a little harder but I’m sure Elizabethtown libraries would be happy to get support and establish an official town library in your domain.” He said.
Mark just rolled his eyes and Billy took out the contract and he looked at it and naturally Billy had to get some of the condition changes added and he pointed out some things that he didn’t agree with but Billy took the time to explain the purpose of many clauses until he got through it and finally sighed it.
“Perfect, we will soon get your first commanding officers and the knowledge division. You will have to train them personally though. You will find that you can learn a lot.” Billy said.
“Just curious but do they even know how to use cold weapons?” he asked.
“Most of the souls have to learn to fight with those but many of these people train in martial arts or were fighters in life. We also have a lot of people who have gone to war and have learned to react on instinct. Most of these are people who have joined the combat divisions to date.” he said.
“I see… I really would learn a lot from these kinds of people. For the librarians, they are likely to be the kind to learn more dedicated enchantments and things acting as the support and the ones to purge the spirits beaten and trapped by combat division.” Mark said. “That is a good idea honestly, dividing into two man units of different specializations, at least initially until we have a system in place.” Mark said.
“Okay, since it is agreed on, we will send construction crews to build the plumbing near the center, geographers to find springs and map the domain and biologists to examine the local flora. We will also get a few people to make a greenhouse to see the reaction of the domain’s space to certain crops. Depending on the reaction, we can tell if herbs grow healthy, become invasive or grow poorly. Honestly, I hope spirit wheat and grain adapt healthily because it would make it easier for the entertainment business.” He said.
“Why entertainment?” Mark asked.
“Because you are building towns, at the very least the ghosts won’t go bored. We also need to figure out how to permit TV broadcasts to come into the space of the domain so there is internet and TV.” He said.
“Is that safe, it might make more bums?” Mark asked.
“You just got to impose order, that’s it.” He said.
With a nod, Billy got up and picked up his guitar and it made Mark remember something, “How are the spirits getting the crystals to expand so many domains? I thought only those created or assimilated through crystals made by an exorcist would work?” he asked.
“We’ve been hunting down hundreds of dark specters in nests for those. Fighters beat it down and restrain the vengeful spirits for them to use the Purge of Evil and make the crystal.” He said. “Oh right, that thin needle you got, has it changed much?” he asked.
“It’s been an energy sponge since I got it. I’ve basically left it in the altar constantly. I’ve been analyzing it though and found that there are super thin cracks like how the crystals have to merge a crystal or break one. After I fill it once, my spiritual power gets trapped and fills those thin cracks and the needle thickens a bit and grows. I’m not really sure what it is but it just sucks in energy and doesn’t have any fundamental changes despite the karma in the spiritual energy.” Mark said.
“Right, your holy power is indeed a little different but don’t forget to work hard. I believe something equal to 50,000 souls would upgrade your soul to tier 2 virtuous soul.” He said.
“Yeah… oh, will having more and more wisps in my domain make it more stable or larger?” He asked.
“No, that only functions because of the incompleteness of a dark spirits domain. Yours is formed by you only and takes shape at once so there are no problems.” he said.
It was unfortunate but Mark already knew there was no way or something so simple would work. Instead, while walking him out, he asked Billy if any artifacts have reacted to the domains yet beyond the crystals.
Billy just smiled and shook his head, “Well buddy, I’ll be seeing you when we have the people ready. Get ready for a real ass whipping under drill sergeants and to whip their asses as well to show the strength difference.” He said.
“Don’t worry I’ll work hard.” He said
Like that he left and Mark started to prepare for the big changes to his relaxed life he has had until now.