Soul fire and a some tattoo's

The way a fire would normally be made was by causing a combustion between a fuel and an oxidizer, this reaction would create the fire resulting in the fuel being burnt, typically into the form of ash or charcoal, Once the fuel or oxidizer where used up, the fire would die. Eric planned to use souls as the fuel, oxidizer, and ignition creating a fire purely made of souls, the 'ash' and 'charcoal' would be the burnt-off souls that would be used to strengthen his soul, when he had run out of souls to refine and burn, it would begin to burn his soul, but instead of burning away everything leaving only the good stuff to be used

The fire would instead begin to refine his soul, similar to how blacksmiths would use fire to refine iron by removing the impurities, said impurities would be used to strengthen the fire so that it would burn other souls faster and refine his own soul to a higher quality.

The problem he was having was that normal fires would form by the ignitor causing a reaction between the oxidizer and fuel, commonly wood and air. But he was using all soul, which would be like smacking three stones together in a vacuum chamber, nothing would happen. What he was trying to figure out was how to make those stones into a fire.

His current idea was that by making a soul hyperactive and unstable he could make it 'combust' into a 'flame' The problem with this was that weaker souls would just break while stronger souls were two resistant and wouldn't combust, and finding a soul that was just strong enough to not break while still being weak enough to burn would take forever. While thinking about this Eric got an idea. 'what if I just push a weaker soul to the point just before it would break and use it to start a stronger soul?'

With this new Idea, he checked his souls to see if that would be possible, he currently had five souls of various strengths, the weakest being from one of those mushroom people and the stronger being from a very strong hell cat, this hell cat had flames flowing along its pelt and had even managed to cut off one of Eric's arms, luckily, he was able to use body magic to reconnect and fix it.

Back to making a fire out of literal souls, Eric grabbed the weakest soul and began to make it more and more unstable and active, once it was just about to break he fused it with the next weakest soul, making it active and unstable before influencing it to become more so, which was easier now that it was already a little unstable, by the fourth soul he could tell that it was almost there, once the mess of hyperactive souls had been fully fused with the hell cats soul, Eric continued to make it more and more unstable,

Just as he thought it was about to break, something changed, the originally violent and jittering soul was now calm and still as cracks began to form on its suffice, through the cracks, Eric could see a faint glow. As more and more cracks formed the 'shell' collapsed and fell into the newly born soul fire fueling it. It was small, and weak, like a dying candle in a storm, but it continued to burn, bright as ever. It wasn't hot or cold, in fact, he couldn't even really feel anything from it, but he could tell that it could be used to refine his soul or burn others to make his own grow, he could tell that once it was strong enough he could use it to burn others around even when they where alive, and most importantly he could tell that it was 'alive'.

Unlike the other souls that he collected in the past that he could feel were 'dead', the soul fire felt alive, Eric could feel conciseness coming from it, it was faint and barely discernable but it was definitely there, bringing the fire to his own soul it began to burn off very small parts of it carefully, as it went around burning parts off it would grow by feeding on the residue.

The residue wasn't anything bad, it was just stuff that didn't fit in his soul, like parts of other souls that he couldn't fully get rid of, the soul fire would take those parts and feed on them, growing stronger in the process allowing it to refine tougher parts of his soul and do so faster than before.

Normally setting your soul on fire would be an excruciating experience, but because the soul fire was alive and purposely being very careful around its 'father', it was very comfortable, like drinking something cool on a hot day, or taking a hot bath and relaxing after a long day of work. Enjoying the soothing feeling Eric thanked the soul fire, although it couldn't understand language yet, it could feel Eric's emotions so it could tell that its 'father' was happy, so it continued to refine Eric's soul, all the while growing stronger and brighter. the power {soul fire} had also appeared on his status by this point.

The next day Eric was sitting in a carriage as it set off to the academy of hell, as the academy was in the royal city in the center of hell it would be quite a while before they got there so Eric just enjoyed the feeling of his soul being refined while practicing some magic and doing some research.

His current endeavor was turning different magic into 'ink' and tattooing magic circles on himself so he didn't have to draw one every time he wanted to sacrifice something or refine someone, or was it the other way around? Oh well. The benefit of making the tattoo out of 'ink' made of magic was that he could change the tattoo at will if he wanted, meaning that if he wanted to upgrade the tattoo all he would need to do was think about it, and voila, it was done.

Using his experience with how souls changed from one state to another he began to make ink from {sacrifital magic} before forming the circle on his forearm. Once he was done and he could tell that the circle was fully functional, he began on the refining circle, this one was a little harder because it was made from three different magic's which he had to fuse properly or it wouldn't work, he put this one above the sacrificial circle tattoo.