Reborn as an Extra

Chapter 597: Soul Merge. Part-3.

[Sword Intent: Precision Approach!]

[Ultimate Skill: Soul Splitting: Broken Soul Shard!]

*GGGGAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!*

The desperate screams of a monster rang out in the area as its soul was shattered into pieces and its body collapsed on the ground instantly!

[Sword Sage’s Enlightenment: Soul Manipulation: Soul Shard Snatch!]

Despite the death of the monster, the attacker did not stop; he poked the monster’s body and soul with his sword and absorbed a massive part of the soul fragments into his sword.

Then he jumped far away as if escaping after committing a crime.

*BOOOOOM!!!!!*

The monster’s body blew apart in an explosion, and miasmic corruption spread in all directions as debris from the explosion flew everywhere!

But the attacker had already escaped far away; thus, he remained unaffected by the explosion.

After making a sufficient distance from the explosion site, the attacker stopped and looked at his sword covered in dense sword intent with an expressionless face and eyes that seemed to have no light in them.

"This amount should be enough, I think..."

As the soul fragments got broken down into pure soul energy, Rio’s usual emotionless voice seemed to carry a hint of confidence in that moment.

"Phew~ This is the most tiring mission I have ever done in my life..."

It has already been nearly three months since his fight against Raika and six months since Rio entered the spirit realm.

The mission has been going on for around six months now!

Even though the criminal hunt mission was only 3-4 months long, the Liam rescue mission is the longest mission Rio has ever done to date!

’It’s been around 10 months since I last saw Lia... sigh... I am suffering from severe ’Lipium’ deficiency at the moment...’ (Lia + Copium = Lipium)

Shaking his head, Rio found a random boulder to sit and rest for a bit.

After taking Elisia’s broken soul, Rio had been constantly travelling back to the location from where he entered the spirit realm for the first time.

Rio travelled by flying on his sword at a very fast speed, and by flying in a straight line, he reached the location much faster.

Although there were monsters and powerful evil spirits in the way that forced Rio to take a detour and go around them, he still managed to reach the location very early.

But Rio couldn’t leave just yet.

While travelling, Rio didn’t stop experimenting and used every monster that appeared in front of him as his test subject, and whenever the experiment failed, Rio extracted their soul fragment to collect soul energy.

He used soul energy to make up for the damage that Liam and Ellie’s souls had suffered.

Liam’s soul had been out of his body for more than a year now, and generally a person’s soul usually dissipates into nothingness or moves on to the next cycle of samsara.

With each passing minute the soul loses soul energy to stay in the material world and thus becomes weaker and weaker with each passing day.

Liam was a powerful peak A-ranker and also had a legendary skill; otherwise, his soul would have disintegrated into nothingness long ago.

Moreover, Ellie kept his soul in that soul torch that was capable of preserving the soul energy for a long time; thus, he managed to survive, but still there was quite a bit of loss and damage.

Rio used the pure soul energy he had collected to supplement that damage and heal the soul of both Liam and Ellie’s soul fragments.

Moreover, those ugly containers he made were also doing the work of stabilizing the soul and preventing its soul energy from leaking out.

Still, time was running out.

Although Rio tried to experiment and work on soul merging for nearly three months, he only managed to succeed twice, and even those were just partial successes.

’It’s more complicated than I expected it to be...’

After raising his proficiency in soul manipulation for such a long time, Rio has concluded that, for a soul merge to succeed, some conditions need to be fulfilled, and even a slight deviation can cause the entire procedure to fail!

The first condition is simple: for a successful soul merge, the two souls or the soul shards you are trying to merge must be highly compatible with each other.

This condition seemed simple, but it was very complex when thought of in detail.

Originally, Rio was thinking that souls that had similar soul fluctuations should be compatible enough, and he won’t have to worry about this condition much.

But reality was completely different.

’Merging compatibility does not just mean soul fluctuations... It is also about the sea of consciousness, memories of the souls and precise overlap...’

The souls must not only have similar soul fluctuations; their sea of consciousness should match a lot.

The sea of consciousness is always unique to every person; everyone has a completely different sea of consciousness, and it’s near impossible to find a sea of consciousness that is extremely similar to your own in someone else’s soul.

This is almost as difficult as trying to find a person who is exactly on the same ’Path’ as you in life and has exactly the same level of understanding as you about their ’Path’ while also having exactly the same effects of that ’Path’ on your soul for both people.

Such things are near impossible to happen.

Only after figuring out these conditions did Rio realize how bizarre his own existence really was.

’I guess this is the reason why miasma hasn’t been able to succeed as of yet, even after thousands of years...’

’After all, it can’t compare people’s sea of consciousness and compare it to find a similar one without corrupting them both and destroying them in the process...’

It was weird how perfectly Rio matched with the original Rio.

Both had no understanding of their ’Paths’ when they merged, both were weak, and both had the same ambition of just living a peaceful, happy life.

They both had a very similar sea of consciousness before.

Their sea of consciousness changed and became dark and barren afterwards only when Rio started to lose his emotions at a very fast rate, but before that it was quite similar.

Rio and the original Rio were so perfectly similar that it almost seemed like they were twins from different realities.

’And to think that out of all people in this world my soul merged with the exact person who was similar to me... I don’t think this is a coincidence...’

’Something is definitely controlling all this... and I have a hunch that it’s the same power that is making me lose my emotions and my connection with my humanity...’

Rio was not sure what that ’Hidden Power’ of his was, but he was sure that it resided inside him without a doubt and was affecting his soul from the very deepest levels possible.

’Thankfully, in Ellie’s case, this first condition is not that big of a problem...’

Ellie’s soul had shattered into several fragments, but even after shattering apart, all those fragments belonged to the same soul after all; thus, they were extremely compatible with each other.

Their sea of consciousness was compatible, and even their ’Path’ was compatible.

All Rio needed to do was arrange all those fragments in such an order that the memories stored in them would properly overlap with each other.

Each of those soul fragments consisted of a crucial part of Ellie’s sea of consciousness, and Rio needed to place them all together in such a way that the memories and consciousness stored inside them would not get jumbled up with each other.

It was quite similar to solving a picture puzzle with dozens of pieces; the only problem was that Rio was terrible at solving puzzles.

Although Rio didn’t have much talent in solving puzzles, he was capable of reading soul memories and scanning the sea of consciousness.

With his soul memory reading skill, Rio skimmed through all the memories stored in those soul fragments and arranged them in proper order.

It seemed disrespectful to be reading a friend’s entire life memory without permission, but Rio had no other choice at the moment.

He tried his best not to look at any private memories and only used memory points that were important for merging her soul.

’Forgive me Lia... I am not a pervert; I promise I did not do anything suspicious at all...’

While arranging Ellie’s memories in the correct order, Rio had to ask Lia in his mind for forgiveness several times.

And since Ellie was Liam’s lover, it felt like he was violating the bro code by doing that kind of thing.

After several days’ worth of effort, Rio finally managed to arrange the soul fragments in order and make up a proper circular soul from it.

But still several smaller and mid-sized pieces were missing from the soul because of the immense damage Ellie had sustained from having her soul shattered.

Rio had no other choice but to suck out immense amounts of soul energy and craft small, intricate pieces of soul fragments out of them that would fit perfectly in the gaps of Ellie’s broken soul.

Rio was not literally crafting a person’s soul with his own hands; he almost felt like he was doing the work of a ’God’ in that moment.

"Although it was a difficult task... I managed to get something out of it at the very least..."

"Now I can actually create ’prototype’ sea of consciousness by using soul energy and soul manipulation..."

Using soul manipulation and soul energy, Rio created an empty sea of consciousness inside the soul fragments he created so that he could fill the gap in Ellie’s broken sea of consciousness.

’But this power is straight up evil...’