What exactly was the soul? Everyone had their own opinion, but it was likely that n.o.body"s opinion was close to the truth.That was because there was no standard answer on what the soul was to begin with.
Creator G.o.ddess Eich had never designed the soul in the first place. Souls had managed to come into existence by themselves. It was just that different researchers would a.n.a.lyze the soul from different angles.
Back in my original world of Earth, in Chinese Daoism, there was a belief that humans had three celestial and seven earthly souls.
The three celestial souls were heaven, earth, and human. These three souls had completely different functions, respectively being a human"s self-consciousness, honor and the sense of shame, and lifespan.
My interpretation was the three celestial souls represented self-recognition, personal values, and the lifespan of your soul. These would form the basic hardware of any soul, and typically were fixed conditions.
Meanwhile, the seven earthly souls were dead dog, hidden arrow, Yin sparrow, thief swallower, flying poison, remover of filth, and stinking lung. Respectively, they corresponded to joy, anger, sadness, fear, love, wickedness, and l.u.s.t. Basically, these were considered to be the most original emotions and instincts.
Did all of this seem familiar? Actually, it was quite similar to the western concept of having Seven Original Sins. At most, there were some slight differences of interpretation regarding the angle from which to a.n.a.lyze some specific emotions.
Regarding human nature, n.o.body should be considered higher than anyone else. In a way, everyone was the same.
My research about the soul also started with the foundational structure of the soul. The difference between the soul"s hardware and software was the foundation of everything.
The three celestial souls were the hardware. They would remain the same for any short period of time. However, the seven earthly souls contained a person"s emotions. They were constantly and forever changing. Maybe a person would be incredibly happy just one second earlier, but then instantly change to incredible sadness.
In my opinion, the greatest difference between humans and non-humans was the ability to have emotions. No matter how fast a computer"s artificial intelligence was capable of performing calculations, the artificial intelligence still wouldn"t be alive. Any so-called random number calculation would be nothing more than a simple scam. Numbers would never be able to compare to emotions which came from the heart.
Back in my original world of Earth which relied on science, research about the soul could only rely on guesses. But here in the world of Eich, there was actually solid evidence regarding souls.
The key was the seven emotions that the seven earthly souls represented.
Fear. Undead mages would love it when others were screaming in fear as that would help them to utilize negative energy.
Happiness. There were many Divine Arts that would make people feel calmness or joy. Holy Light would instinctively cause others to feel warm and rea.s.sured.
Anger. Going berserk could provide more energy and power. A furious soul would cause your blood to start boiling; thus, berserkers obtained the power to tear apart anything before them.
l.u.s.t. This emotion would promote s.e.xual desires. Certain human jobs and succubi from the lower planes would use this emotion the most.
Amongst these emotions, some had stronger powers, while others were weaker. Some were really common, while others were far rarer. However, these emotions really did reach the deepest part of the soul, an unopened Pandora"s Box which represented the "seven emotions" or the "seven original sins".
When injecting mana or energy of a certain frequency, you would be able to incite a specific emotional reaction. Perhaps, from a certain standpoint, human souls were actually quite interestingly similar to computer programs.
And so, I slowly researched the soul over several centuries, gradually understanding the soul wavelengths which represented each emotion.
How did supernatural powers affect the soul?
How could one adjust their own supernatural powers to increase or lessen the influence on the soul?
Just what exact part of the soul did supernatural powers affect? Which portion of the three celestial and seven earthly souls?
Was it possible to literally split off your own emotions? Was that the true form of multiple personality disorder?
The result of my research was that I split a normal soul into many different pieces, successfully isolating one pure emotion in each soul shard, artificially creating souls that would only be obsessed with one pure emotion.
Yes, that was my Seven Original Sins.
Of course, things weren"t that simple. The birth of each one of my Seven Original Sins had required me to use up thousands of times the quality of their soul in soul resources. I also had to pay with a portion of my very own soul each time.
The immense strength of the Seven Original Sins was because of how unique, how pure, and how extreme their souls were.
A soul which only had love would be a saint. A soul which only had hate would be insane. A soul which only had l.u.s.t would be unsalvageable. Any soul that went to an extreme wouldn"t possibly be ordinary.
The soul of each of the Seven Original Sins, if judging by quality, would be thousands times better than any ordinary person"s. If you only looked at the quality of the soul, their souls wouldn"t be any different from a Level 4 individual"s soul.
In the world of Eich, the soul was the source of all power.
For any undead existence, as long as they had such a soul, and their physical body was of good enough quality, they wouldn"t possibly be weak.
Yet, this was only a byproduct of my research regarding the soul and soul creations.
The flip side was that the most highly skilled doctor in the world would also know how to kill people the quickest. With birth, there would also always be destruction. Since I now understood the foundational essence on how to create a soul, I thus naturally also understood how to completely destroy a soul.
"Seven Sins of Creation Sword…"
Countless grudge-filled souls crawled out of my shadow, forcefully transforming this entire plain into a h.e.l.lish land.
I was capable of removing a part of the soul. Now then, what would happen if I added something extra to an already complete soul instead?
What would happen if an extra soul was added to the three celestial and seven earthly souls? In a way, this was quite an interesting math problem. And so, I performed a rather interesting experiment.
*BOOM!*
A grudge-filled soul crashed into a mid-level four-winged angel, who instantly exploded into tiny pieces of meat and blood.
There was no magical wavelength. There was no fight. There was no sound (the boom was just a visual effect). A powerful angel who was more than 1,000 years old instantly died just like that.
Countless grudge-filled souls continued to emerge from my shadow. Some of them had died while feeling despair. Some of them had died from hunger. Some of them had died from indulging in too much l.u.s.t. Some had died while filled with hate. Due to my modifications, their pure emotion became their only essence. All of these grudge-filled souls were now pure souls that felt only one negative emotion.
These souls instinctively desired to become complete. They instinctively desired to return to the Cycle of Reincarnation. They instinctively desired to become part of another soul.
This was no attack. This was actually a blessing. This was the instinct of the soul.
They were just like soul shards in the River Styx which would combine with each other to become more complete.
As I laughed uproariously, countless dark souls emerged from underneath my feet as the world around me transformed into something resembling a haunted house.
The powerful warrior angels were actually useless in front of these weak little grudge-filled souls. The moment that a grudge-filled soul touched an angel, either the angel"s soul would collapse while the physical body remained perfectly intact, or the soul and physical body would distort together. Those who died from instantaneous explosions were already the luckiest.
If the River Styx could be considered the ultimate "dissolvent" that could dissolve any soul, then these one-track grudge-filled souls of mine were the "glue" of the soul.
Did you want to try and attack these grudge-filled souls? They weren"t even undead. They were pure life forms. The Holy Light was supposed to give rest and blessing to souls. How would Holy Light possibly attack them?
"Demon!"
In the sky, the furious Seraphim Winton roared as he swung his sword at me. His sword swung with such thunderous speed that it even left a dimensional tear. It would be impossible for me to dodge.
But, why would I even need to dodge?
Just as his burning holy sword was about to touch my face, Winton Angla, the Glorious Hammer, stopped with an expression of disbelief.
Countless grudge-filled souls crawled out of his body. His expression was so furious that even veins started bulging. It seemed that at this instant, even an angel like Winton had gained emotions.
"Ha, how does it feel to have a complete soul? It must be quite fun to experience anger and despair for the first time in your life? You should thank me for helping a puppet like yourself to gain emotions for the first time."
Sadly, my words were meaningless as Winton could no longer hear me.
The Seraphim still remained in his attack pose, but he was no longer able to move, as the soul within his body had already completely collapsed.
Meanwhile, I picked up my cape, opened up my shadow, and started retrieving all of these grudge-filled souls. They were all resources for me to construct my death magic sword with. They weren"t easy for me to gather, so I couldn"t afford to waste them.
"Sigh, I wasted so much today…"
I was exclaiming both because I had wasted a lot of grudge-filled souls today, as this three-minute explosive attack had used up more than 20,000 grudge-filled souls in my possession, and because I was sad that Winton"s soul had completely been ruined, which meant that I was unable to do anything with such a high-quality soul like his.
I then restarted my journey, leaving behind a few angel "statues" who were fortunate enough to still have intact bodies. It was likely that they would remain standing here for a long time to come.
Three days later, the Calamity Rankings of Eich were updated once more. I now ranked in the top three for the first time ever. This time, I didn"t have any ambiguous nickname like "Undying Roland". I was now known as the "Ruler of Souls" and "Emperor of the Dead".