1 Prologue
Agares territory, floating island Agreas
Deep within the mansion of the Agares clan. A mad cackling of an old man can be heard. In front of the Old man was a fetus, a fetus inside a incubation chamber.
'Kukuku, what a miserable little thing you are. I hope you will do your best to stave off my boredom' the Old man thought.
It took great many things to finally complete this little project of his; Resources, money, effort and time. Luckily, the Old man had all the time in the world. After all, he is Agares, Archduke of time.
While deep in his thoughts on how to "torture" his new pet. the fetus stirred and suddenly it started to exponentially grow. 'Hm, so the vessel is ready to receive the soul.'
He then started making 4 magic circles, of which none had the Agares crest, around the incubation chamber. Each circle served a simple purpose, the first circle is for summoning compatible souls for the vessel. The second circle is for "filtering" the compatible souls, this circle will determine which soul is the strongest and most compatible, essentially "the great sperm race". The third circle is for placing the victorious spe- soul into the specified vessel, if this magic circle was not made then the soul would just wander around for indefinite time. The last magic circle is for stabilizing the soul after it has resided within the vessel.
These 4 magic circles, while simple at first glace, they require great amount of magic which only ultimate-class devils hold. The Old man is only a high-class devil; however, he used the crystals in this island to further fuel his magic temporarily, the same crystals used to make the evil pieces. What also makes the Old man capable of succeeding in this ritual is his vast experience in the arts of magic-craft.
After completing the circles, the Old man stood away and began to inject magic into them while siphoning the large amount of magic within the crystals. Black mist started to erupt from the 4 magic circles. A crimson line appeared, pulsating, connecting each circle making it into one large circle around the incubation chamber.
The old devil started to sweat and wheeze, the ritual is taking too much out of him. Exhausted but determined, Agares started chanting in almost gibberish language. While chanting, 13 misty orbs appeared, while most were bright coloured, there were 4 dark orbs. Dark orbs are corrupted and bright coloured ones are pure.
Agares, while ecstatic, thought 'The souls have been summoned, now it is time for them to start cannibalizing one another.'
The second phase has begun. The 13 misty orbs started devouring each other. A red colored soul that seemed larger than most immediately consumed the nearest to it. Proving itself as a dangerous entity, the rest of the meager souls initiated an attack on the red comet as fear is evident by their flickering mist they produce.
All of them attacked, albeit one dark soul. As the lynching of the red giant was taking place, the furtive pygmy skulked behind the unaware mob of souls.
It eerily produced two tentacle, its first two targets are clearly the weakest of the bunch. Snatching them by surprise and pulling them relatively close so the rest would not be alarmed. The cowardly soul suddenly produced more tentacles to restrict and crush the ensnared duo. Lady luck seems to favour this little backstabber as it successfully devours the unfortunate souls. Wiggling in victory, it suddenly grows larger but a far cry from big red.
One of the lynching members, a dark orb with sinister green hue, sensed something amiss and darted off towards the just evolved soul, surprising the fool by performing a [Drain Touch], the pygmy visibly shaken by the abnormal attack, zoomed as far way as possible to distance itself from the green hued orb.
Attempting to shackle the green ambusher with its "signature" tentacles technique proved to be hard as the opponent kept juking skillfully. Afraid of the deadly touch, Pygmy quickly rotated left and right as if to search for something useful, suddenly noticed a decrepit geezer sweating like a pig. Atop the strange man was a large wizard hat.
Getting an idea that may seem ridiculous, Pygmy shot towards him to pilfer the old man of his clothing article. Hounding the would-be thief is the green menace, hell-bent on draining its prey. As trails of black and green were left behind the two speedsters, the furtive soul reached enough distance to hastily nab the large hat and turn around, finding its pursuer in front of its non-existent face. In a panicked state, it dropped to ground level kissing the floor. And the pursuer, as if in anger, spasmed.
Pygmy fled in fright of his adversary only to stop abruptly and menacingly turn around, challenging its nightmarish opponent. The enraged orb feeling provoked flew in the direction of its prey. When it got close to the motionless soul, everything went dark, less than a second later it felt ropes compressing all over.
Lady luck yet again blesses her canny champion. Remaining still to absorb the vanquished soul while clutching the hat since it proved to be a useful weapon. It took mere seconds to fully consume the three souls' essence, since it was interrupted when the green hued soul attacked and with it came benefits such as enhanced speed, probably from the first 2 souls and [Drain Touch] from the third one.
Glancing at the battle between bunch of Davids and a Goliath, there are 5 Davids sieging. Currently there appeared to be 7 souls in total left in the battlefield, in less than a minute the number is down by 6.
After consuming three souls, the pygmy decided its next course of action is to join the coalition against the most powerful soul while also weakening its allies using nearly unnoticeable amount of [Drain Touch] by circling around the battlefield and using the tentacles. Hopefully they won't notice....'sweat'
Gathering its bearings, the pygmy heads off towards the clash of souls.
All 6 souls clashing took note of the cowardly rogue that approached, wary of its wily acts. Nevertheless, both factions were hard-pressed dealing with each other than to deal with one soul.
Almost all of them use some sort of aura to attack and defend, including the red giant. While one of the besiegers, a dark soul with violet hue uses tentacles.
Pygmy felt the great threat that exudes from the red giant just being near it. Steeling its non-existent heart, it decided to strike from below, producing multiple tentacles with significant amount of [Drain Touch] it drew them back and fiercely whipped the enemy whilst absorbing essence. Since it is the enemy it won't hold back, not to mention the drained essence strengthens and regenerates the soul.
The coalition, surprised by the action, is still suspicious of the shady soul but until the enemy is dealt with, will refrain from attacking it. The enemy was not impressed with the attack since there are stronger souls within the coalition.
Confirming the coalition is a friendly, it continued to whip and dodge the enemy's attack while going around the encirclement "accidentally" brushing its tentacles imbued with negligible [Drain Touch] against the coalition members.
No matter how courageous one is, when they are outnumbered, defeat is inevitable.
Couple of minutes have passed since pygmy entered the fray. The red soul, because of its arrogance was defeated after it realized too late that it shrunk, weakened and grew weary. All due to the team effort by everyone. What surprised the 5 coalition members is that the dark soul that was small, is now the largest one standing amongst them. All thanks to the soul essence suckled from mostly the red giant and the unsuspected preys.
Alarmed by this fact, they all switched target to this evolved monster. However, before they attacked the titan, tentacles suddenly wrapped two of them and it did not come from the new threat. The tentacles had violet hue to them. Ambushed by their supposed ally, the captured twin souls were easily devoured due to tiredness from the fight and from what they did not know of [Drain Touch]. Now there were 4 left.
Easy preys, the evolved pygmy thought.
It did not take much to gobble up the rest of them, although violet tentacle did put up a fight, the wizard hat came in handy again. The monster decided to don the fatal hat. Like a certain monk with sharp hat.
Relishing in its Victory by assimilating the plundered souls. The monster found that it did not gain new ability like [Drain Touch]; however, it did grow very powerful thanks to the kind donations from its enemies.
While pondering on what will happen now, a strong force pulled the monster towards a certain direction. Towards the incubation chamber, leaving a trail of dark wisp and the hat behind.
Agares was bemused by the thieving soul when his hat was stolen. The battle he witnessed was also something interesting to remember, especially that shrewd dark wisp. Unfortunately, he didn't have the luxury to think such things as right now the third phase is initiated. Careful control and focus is required for this one.
Slowly but forcefully implanting the soul into the now grown vessel. Fetus no more, the vessel is now that of a child and still growing. The damned soul is quite the rebel, trying to free itself from my control, but all of its attempts are in vain. After the soul is completely inside the body, the time for the last phase has come.
Fourth and last phase needs the greatest amount of magic to succeed. Luckily for the rotting coot, the crystals are abundant. Sucking too much magic from the crystals can be lethal to even ultimate-class devil, the Old man has a remedy for that though. Time reversal.
The first three phases only took few minutes to complete, the fourth one however; took hours to finish. Since it involves connect the body and soul to the realm of the living and properly actualize it. Regardless of how hard it is, the ancient devil is now swiftly adding the finishing "touches".
The vessel or rather, the homunculus is now complete.
Agares sighed, exhaustedly walked to the apparently teen boy inside the chamber. Standing in front of him, he laid his hand on the glass window of the chamber and said "Your name will be Senex Agares and you will be the one to inherit all my knowledge". The Old man retracted his hand and punched the glass, grabbing the boy's neck and tossing him outside the chamber.
