During my experimentations, I discovered that the furnace was a bit more sophisticated than I had first given it credit for. It had several levers and buttons that could be pressed. Naturally, the most prominent function was the one that controlled the heat of the flames.

  In the beginning, I had assumed that there was a certain temperature that was the most ideal overall, but as it turns out, the power of the flames had to vary wildly depending on what I was trying to achieve. When using certain negative emotions as fuel, it was best for the flames to be weaker.

  For example, sadness did not mesh well at all with a blazing inferno. In hindsight, this seemed obvious, but I just hadn’t expected the furnace to require so much attention.

  Also, the souls and the first ‘transformation’ mattered a lot. My cute assistants could be put into the furnace and given a burning using whatever emotions without problem, as they were already whole and stable, but initially, souls would not only resist my attempts at bettering them, but as I found out, there was a ‘switch’ at first.

  When a captive soul was turning into a phantom I could manipulate, their nature was changed, and from there, making changes to, or enhancing them was incredibly difficult unless they were of very high quality, like my five cuties.

  It meant that when creating a subservient ghost, I had to make it in one go to fulfil the job I had in mind for it. I couldn’t just repair mistakes or change my mind afterwards.

  These experiments resulted in many twisted souls that frankly served no purpose other than howling madly and moving all over the place. I could certainly use them for something, but they didn’t listen to me, so they could very easily just wander in the completely wrong direction.

  Although I couldn’t make changes after the fact, it was a free game as long as the soul was still in the furnace. Meaning that I could ‘calibrate’ the souls by making them go through several stages of… Well, cooking it seemed like.

  My method was probably not the best. I was still figuring things out, and baking ghosts wasn’t exactly something I had any knowledge of… However, what I was doing seemed to be bearing fruit.

  The first step was to slowly burn the souls with a flame made from a mixture of the various ‘basic’ negative emotions, such as sadness, anger, fear, and many others… This would result in an obedient soul, but one without any true power, merely a ghostly apparition.

  It was after this that the real fun would begin. Once I had a stable soul, I could begin tweaking its purpose by scalding it using much fewer negative emotions and in greater quantity.

  So far, though, it seemed like my creations were limited by my own strength, as even with much effort, all negative emotions seemed to result in basically the same ability for the ghosts, which was curiously an ability that my assistants did not possess, despite being far superior to those newer spirits.

  They gained the power to interact with the physical realm in some way, much like the mostly useless ghosts I had put into several cabins. These were more versatile and obedient, however, they could do far more than just shut doors like an angsty teenager.

  All that the difference in emotions seemed to result in was how they expressed themselves, which did not matter at all to me. They were my servants. They didn’t need a personality.

  But at least, these spirits could hit people on my behalf when released, pick up items, perform more intricate and dexterous tasks, and although they were rather weak and struggled to pick up heavy items, that was a problem easily solved by adding numbers.

  I had a lot of souls at my disposal, so after figuring out how the furnace worked, I created many ghosts for me to release when necessary. They did not have speech like my assistants, but they understood commands and could make sounds to convey a message, so they made for good enough guards, allowing me to have an understanding of what was going on in the forest at all times.

  Honestly, I was a bit disappointed. I was hoping to be able to create more specific kinds of spirits to do my bidding. For example, although I, and mostly everyone, tended to use the words ’ghost’, ‘spectres’, ‘vengeful spirit’, and the like interchangeably, each technically was a different thing… ‘Species’, I guess you could say, even if it didn’t make sense.

  I figured that using the souls of animals and beasts would result in something else, but no, I just ended up with the same spirit servants, only more feral and less receptive to commands.

  Looking around the furnace room that lay in my mind… My mind palace? I noticed that it was rather empty. The furnace was the centerpiece for sure, but it seemed rather obvious that there was much empty space to be found in here.

  Nara, I would assume that more stuff will appear here eventually? Next evolution, perhaps?

  An evolution would definitely bring some additions to this room, but the consumption of items capable of improving your nature as a Vengeful Spirit should also be able to do so

  I really need to get myself a good source for curses and ghosts…

  Those two things seemed to be the answer to my current problems. As long as I could feast without stop upon them, I should be able to develop my current abilities to a respectable degree.

  I also suspected that if my capabilities with both curses and spirits improved, I might be able to combine the two together somehow… I was both a curse and a spirit myself, so why not my servants and assistants as well? If my five girls could inflict curses of their own, it would be majestic.

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  Though… My mind has been filled with an idea lately. I was mulling over it already when Sylbi showed up.

  My current and only extra form, ‘Molten Steel’, could consume the steel I had accumulated via consumption to enlarge its size at the moment of the transformation… I had previously assumed that both steel and flesh served as a way to rapidly heal. However, it seemed that when I devoured something from either category, but that I didn’t need to regenerate, then it would be stocked just like negative emotions were.

  So I was wondering… Wouldn’t this imply that there would be a form that I could earn that would consume flesh instead?

  The idea made sense, especially since, despite seemingly serving the same purpose, steel and flesh were clearly made distinct by the system panels, and also, it would explain why I grew flesh in the first place.

  Apart from being cosmetically good as it made me scarier, the flesh served zero purpose. It bled excessively when struck, but I didn’t actually suffer the slightest damage.

  Think… Think… What could be the conditions for another form?

  The Molten Steel Form had been rather simplistic in its requirements. It needed me to have the ‘Flame Resistance’ upgrade in the advanced stage, and for me to be struck by powerful fire attacks that surpassed my defences… Which made sense considering that the form was literally my melted self.

  Do I still not get any clue, Nara?

  I am allowed to give you the names of a few forms, which might help you get a better idea of the possible requirements

  The names, huh? That’s better than nothing, I suppose.

  Plush Form

  Mascot Form

  Nightmare Form

  Revenant Jack-Out-Of-The-Box

  Four of them…? Plush? Mascot? These don’t sound very threatening…

  These are the forms which you have begun fulfilling the requirements for

  Added Nara, so in short, I was closest to acquiring these compared to how many other forms there were… If I had to guess, the nightmare one was either about me becoming nightmarish in some way or form, or literally about nightmares.

  So, I should cause people to have nightmares of me, perhaps?

  The last one gave me little inspiration. I know what a Jack-in-the-box is. There was one back at Harvey’s Diner. Was it Harvey that it was called? I don’t quite remember anymore, but it’s basically a music box from which a puppet dressed as a clown or jester leaps out.

  I didn’t get why children seemed to be scared of that thing. The sounds it played were definitely far better on the ears than whatever screams and howls were going on in the main dining area, whilst the horrible automatons were playing the worst music imaginable.

  Perhaps it has to do with the fact that I picked the ‘Music Box’ upgrade? That, or it was just a play on words to describe the fact that this transformation would turn me into some sort of clown or jester puppet? Anyway, I didn’t see anything that seemed to have to do with flesh.

  If one of those four was linked with my accumulation of flesh somehow, then it wasn’t obvious in the least.

  As I thought whilst sitting in front of the furnace, greatly enjoying getting to rub my chin instead of tapping a metallic lower jaw, Gigi popped into the room, took a few steps, and whispered something into my ear.

  “They’re back already? It has barely even been an hour”

  According to Gigi, the quarter of adventurers was back, and apparently, the elven mage who had been heavily struck was back on his feet without showing any signs of injury or even discomfort.

  They were able to find a healer competent enough to rapidly heal injuries in less than sixty minutes? That was inconceivable!

  I didn’t know for sure how severe the mage’s injuries were, but he had seemed to be completely out of it, and I doubt Sylbi would have struck with anything lesser than the intent to kill, so surely, bones had been broken by the strikes, so it wouldn’t have been an easy injury to heal either…

  I didn’t get the logistics of it all, but it didn’t matter. I recalled my assistants and told my wandering servants to stay put for now. I was just going to wait for them to leave. There was no way that I was going to confront these guys.

  Sylbi could endure several powerful spells. One would probably be enough to scatter me across half of the forest, so I just lay back and relaxed. Thanks to the elf’s earlier encounter with one of my cute assistants, I could somewhat sense him. His thread of negative emotions was feeble and weak. Clearly, even though he had been surprised in the moment, he wasn’t truly afraid of the same thing happening again, merely apprehensive and on his guard more than usual.

  That was enough to let me know when they were going to leave, though, due to the weakness of the thread, I couldn’t sense him from very far away, so I was going to keep operations to nothing even when he disappeared from my senses, as he would still be within the forest when that happened, just further from my position near the middle of Louwoods.

  Mmh… That girl’s sword must be forged out of pretty nice steel to just be able to cut through an abyssal without suffering any damage, and that troll woman’s shield would probably be quite nice as well…

  The flesh of stronger people was more nourishing, so that swordswoman's flesh should… Beyond anything else I had ever tasted so far.

  I couldn’t defeat them, but I could imagine myself dining on their lifeless remains to pass the time…

  ___

  “Where the hell is it? It was right here”

  “You mean to say it was all over the place, you chopped that fucker up good”

  “As Gontra is saying, you slash that abyssal into countless small pieces, it is not unlikely that it simply shrivelled up and died because of it”

  “Huh…”

  Hortus cleared his throat.

  “...The compass says that it moved…”

  Hearing this, Hilene squeezed the bridge of her nose.

  “This wasn’t a strong abyssal. It shouldn’t have been able to just shrug off what I did to it…”

  She said as Yeldt scratched behind one of his pointy ears.

  “It was probably helped by the master of this forest, I told you, a spirit sneaked up on me and broke my concentration, so it isn’t out here to imagine that the point was to help the abyssal”

  “I don’t want explanations, I want that abyssal deader than dead, let’s give chase–If it doesn’t stop to corrupt like before… It can get far before we can catch up”

  “I knew this job was a bad idea…”

  “Shut up, Hortus”