Chapter 1026: Fragments of the Dead

The Gauntlet of Darkness had already demonstrated that it could store the shadows of the dead and reproduce their abilities, but Strax still wasn’t satisfied. The Wyvern and the five birds remained connected to the weapon as distinct presences, and he wanted to discover exactly where that ability ended. Quantity, energy consumption, distance, intelligence, durability, and evolution were only some of the things that still needed to be tested.

Strax remained seated for a few more seconds before looking at his own shadow cast over the grass. The Gauntlet of Darkness responded to his thoughts, and the Wyvern emerged from it once again. The black creature took form behind him, slowly spreading its wings as its violet eyes glowed. The five birds came next, scattering across the sky.

Lithara watched the six creatures and asked, "What’s the next test?"

"Distance."

"You already sent the birds pretty far away."

"I tested a few hundred meters. I want to know what happens when they actually leave this area."

Strax pointed toward the horizon.

"Go."

The Wyvern spread its wings and shot into the sky.

Within seconds, it was already far from the hill. Strax closed his eyes and focused on the connection between the creature and the gauntlet. Curiously, he felt no difference. He ordered the Wyvern to keep going.

One kilometer.

Two.

Five.

Its presence remained just as clear.

Then he noticed something else.

"Interesting."

Lithara looked at him.

"What?"

"I can feel where it is."

"That doesn’t sound very impressive."

"That’s not all."

Strax closed his eyes completely.

The next instant, his perception changed.

For a few seconds, he stopped seeing the hill.

Instead, he saw mountains rapidly passing beneath him.

The sky stretched out ahead.

The enormous black wings appeared at the edges of his vision.

Strax immediately opened his eyes.

Lithara noticed his expression.

"You saw through it."

"Yes."

She raised her eyebrows.

Strax closed his eyes again and connected to one of the birds. Immediately, his perception transferred to the small creature. He could see Lithara and himself from above, along with a much larger area surrounding the hill.

He switched to another.

Then another.

The response was instantaneous.

Strax opened his eyes.

"That’s useful."

Lithara let out a small laugh.

"Useful? You could spread hundreds of these things throughout the territory and see through all of them."

"That’s exactly what I was thinking."

"Monica is going to like this."

"Monica is going to turn my dead into a surveillance network."

"Because it would be an excellent surveillance network."

Strax couldn’t disagree.

He mentally called the Wyvern back, but didn’t wait for the creature to return by flying. Instead, he tried something different.

"Return."

The connection disappeared.

The Wyvern instantly dissolved kilometers away.

A second later, the shadow beneath Strax’s feet distorted.

The creature’s head emerged first, followed by its body and wings. The Wyvern came completely out of the shadow and stood behind him.

Lithara blinked.

"So distance practically doesn’t matter."

"At least not on this scale."

Strax stood.

"Now durability."

Lithara immediately narrowed her eyes.

"Why do I have a feeling I’m going to be doing the work?"

"Because you’re here."

"I came to keep you company."

"You are."

Strax pointed at the Wyvern.

"Attack it."

Lithara sighed, but raised her hand. A small sphere of demonic energy appeared in front of her palm and shot directly into the creature’s chest.

The explosion tore an enormous hole through the Wyvern’s torso.

It didn’t even react.

The black mass around the wound immediately began moving, filling the empty space. Within seconds, the body had been completely restored.

Strax watched closely.

"Again. Stronger."

Lithara launched another attack.

This time, she destroyed nearly half its body.

The Wyvern turned into an irregular mass of shadows, but began rebuilding itself again. However, Strax felt something different inside the gauntlet.

Energy was being consumed.

"Stop."

Lithara lowered her hand.

"Figure something out?"

"They aren’t immortal for free. Reconstruction consumes the gauntlet’s energy."

"How much?"

"That attack used more than all the previous tests combined."

Lithara watched the Wyvern finish regenerating.

"But it still doesn’t seem like much for you."

"For me, no."

Strax thought for a few seconds.

"They can probably keep coming back as long as I have enough energy to reconstruct them."

"So destroying the body doesn’t kill the shadow."

"No. Maybe you’d have to destroy something deeper."

Lithara walked over to the Wyvern and examined its head.

"Or break its connection to you."

Strax agreed.

"That’s possible too."

He then decided to test something else.

"Attack me."

Lithara looked at him.

"You?"

"Yes."

"How hard?"

"Not much."

"Your not much or my not much?"

"Yours."

"That’s still a lot."

"Attack."

Lithara extended her hand.

A demonic blade appeared and shot toward Strax’s chest.

He didn’t move.

The Wyvern, however, did.

The creature crossed several meters in a single burst and placed its own body in the path. The blade struck its wing and blew part of it apart.

Strax raised an eyebrow.

So did Lithara.

"Did you tell it to do that?"

"No."

They both looked at the Wyvern.

Its destroyed wing was already rebuilding itself.

Lithara asked, "Instinct?"

"Maybe."

Strax repeated the test. This time, he mentally ordered the Wyvern to remain still regardless of what happened.

Lithara attacked again.

The creature didn’t move.

The energy struck Strax and disappeared against his body without producing any relevant effect.

"So it isn’t trying to protect me because it wants to," Strax said.

Lithara nodded.

"There must be some fundamental order inside the shadows. Something like protecting the master unless another instruction contradicts it."

"That would explain the mechanical behavior."

Strax called one of the birds.

The small creature landed on his hand.

"Do something I didn’t tell you to do."

The bird remained still.

Strax waited.

Nothing.

"Fly wherever you want."

The creature took flight.

Then it started circling Strax.

He frowned.

"No."

Lithara started laughing.

Strax tried again.

"Choose something to do."

The bird landed on his head.

Lithara laughed even harder.

"It chose."

Strax looked upward as though he could somehow see the animal.

"Get down."

The bird immediately landed on the ground.

Lithara was still smiling.

"It looks like there’s some level of interpretation, but no real personality."

"Or they retain fragments of their original instincts."

Strax looked at the Wyvern.

That could be tested.

He ordered the creature to hunt.

The Wyvern immediately spread its wings and began observing the forest below. After a few seconds, it dove.

Strax followed its vision.

The creature had identified an animal among the trees without Strax needing to specify what target it should search for. The Wyvern followed the prey for some time, calculated its trajectory, and prepared its wind attack.

Strax stopped it before it could fire.

"Return."

The Wyvern came back.

"It knows how to hunt."

Lithara crossed her arms.

"Then there’s memory."

"Or preserved instinct."

"What’s the practical difference?"

"Memory means something intelligent could preserve learned techniques. Instinct means the gauntlet only reproduces natural behaviors."

Lithara immediately understood.

"You want to test it with someone who knows how to fight."

"Eventually."

She pointed at him.

"Not with me."

Strax smiled.

"You’re still very worried."

"Because I know you."

He ignored that and returned his attention to the gauntlet.

There was another much simpler test.

Strax ordered the Wyvern to use its wind blade again. The creature fired at a distant rock formation, carving a deep cut into it.

"Again."

Another attack.

"Again."

The third was stronger.

Lithara noticed.

"That one was different."

"I increased the energy I sent into it."

Strax repeated the test.

This time, he supplied considerably more energy.

The Wyvern opened its mouth.

Wind began violently compressing in front of it. The resulting attack was far larger than the previous ones and tore through the entire rock formation, slicing off the top before continuing into the sky.

Lithara watched the piece of mountain slide down.

"So you can strengthen their abilities."

"To a certain point."

Strax felt the shadow’s structure.

It had become unstable.

The Wyvern began releasing black smoke from all over its body.

"I went past the limit."

The creature dissolved.

Its essence immediately returned to the gauntlet.

Strax tried to summon it.

Nothing happened.

Lithara approached.

"Did you kill your dead?"

"Maybe."

He waited a few seconds.

The presence remained inside the gauntlet, but it was weakened.

"No. It’s still here."

"Then?"

"It needs to recover."

Lithara became thoughtful.

"You put too much energy into a structure that couldn’t withstand it."

"Looks like it."

"So a weak creature can’t simply receive infinite energy."

"Unfortunately."

"Did you seriously expect to turn a bird into some kind of monstrosity capable of killing dragons?"

Strax looked at the five birds.

"...Maybe."

Lithara shook her head.

Strax called one of them and began slowly sending energy into it.

The small creature’s body grew.

Its shadows became denser. Its claws grew slightly, and its violet eyes became more intense.

He continued.

The bird went from its normal size to nearly half a meter.

Then one meter.

Its wings expanded.

Lithara watched.

"Strax."

"I’m watching."

"That’s not a bird anymore."

"Technically, it still is."

"That thing is the size of an eagle."

Strax increased the energy a little more.

The structure began showing the same problem as the Wyvern.

He stopped immediately.

The bird remained that way.

Strax waited.

One minute.

Nothing changed.

"Interesting."

Lithara approached.

"It didn’t go back to its original size."

"No."

"So you really strengthened it."

Strax felt the connection.

The presence that had once been insignificant was now several times stronger.

"It wasn’t temporary."

Lithara stared at the creature.

"Then your shadows can evolve."

"Maybe."

"You just turned an ordinary bird into that."

"Yes."

"Imagine the Wyvern after a few months."

Strax smiled.

That was exactly what he was thinking.

He ordered the bird to attack a tree.

The creature shot forward.

Its claws tore through the trunk and ripped away a considerable chunk of wood before it returned.

Lithara let out a low whistle.

"This is starting to get ridiculous."

"Not yet."

Strax raised his hand.

"Now I want to test something else."

The shadows around them began to move.

All five birds were summoned simultaneously.

Strax tried to merge them.

At first, nothing happened. The creatures simply remained in front of him. Then he forced the gauntlet’s energy to establish a connection between the five structures.

The shadows began touching.

Lithara immediately took several steps back.

"Do you know what you’re doing?"

"No."

"Excellent."

The five bodies began to melt.

Black feathers disappeared into a single mass. The wings blended together, the violet eyes vanished one after another, and the energy within the gauntlet began reorganizing the five presences.

Then a creature emerged.

It was a black bird with a wingspan of nearly three meters, a much more robust body, and two pairs of wings. Its violet eyes were larger, and a small crown of black smoke hovered above its head.

Strax stared.

So did Lithara.

"You fused them."

"Looks like it."

"And the five presences?"

Strax closed his eyes.

There was only one now.

"They became one."

Lithara cautiously approached.

"Is it permanent?"

"I don’t know."

Strax tried to separate them.

The creature immediately began falling apart.

Five black masses dropped to the ground and returned to the forms of the original birds.

Strax smiled.

"No."

Lithara stared at the gauntlet.

"So you can store the dead, summon shadows, use their abilities, see through them, reconstruct them, strengthen them, and fuse them."

"So far."

"So far?"

"There’s still one thing."

Lithara became suspicious.

"What?"

Strax looked at the Wyvern’s corpse.

The body remained exactly where it had died.

He walked over to it.

"Until now, I’ve always used a creature immediately after its death."

Lithara understood.

"You want to know whether you need to be present when it dies."

"Exactly."

Strax recalled the shadow Wyvern into the gauntlet and placed his hand over the physical corpse. There was no soul there. Whatever had left the body at the moment of death had already been captured earlier.

He then looked toward the forest.

"We need something that’s already dead."

Lithara spread her wings.

"I’ll look."

"Without killing anything."

She made an offended expression.

"I know the difference between finding a corpse and producing one."

Strax looked at her.

Lithara held his gaze for two seconds.

"...Usually."

She took flight.

This time, it took her a little over ten minutes.

When she returned, she was carrying the corpse of an enormous feline-like creature, probably dead for several hours. There were bite marks on its neck, and part of its body was already cold.

Lithara dropped the creature onto the ground.

"Found it near a river."

Strax brought the gauntlet closer.

Nothing.

He tried to pull.

The shadows reacted, but there was no presence to copy.

Strax increased the energy.

Still nothing.

"So there’s a window."

Lithara landed beside him.

"Or you need to capture the soul before it leaves."

"Probably."

Strax looked at the corpse.

That established an important limitation.

The gauntlet couldn’t simply walk across an ancient battlefield and raise every dead thing it found. It needed to capture something at the moment of death or shortly afterward.

But that also revealed something far more important.

"They aren’t corpses."

Lithara looked at him.

"What?"

"The shadows don’t come from the body."

Strax raised the Gauntlet of Darkness.

"They come from what leaves it."

Lithara became serious.

"The soul."

"A part of it, at least."

The two remained there, staring at the weapon.

Then Lithara asked, "Are you going to keep going?"

Strax smiled.

"Of course."

"Thought so."

He closed his hand.

The shadow beneath his feet began to grow as the Wyvern finally finished recovering inside the gauntlet.

Strax already had another question.

And that one would be much harder to answer.

If the gauntlet could capture fragments of a soul at the moment of death...

What would happen when the soul was powerful enough to resist?