71 The Skull

Knowing that he fate of the world might be at stake;,as such horrors should never be let loose, Foo then tried to convince him to stop, "Although your observations might be correct, there must be alternative solutions!"

Not that someone as pure as Foo would be able to come up with any way to produce miasma. No way.

"And I just met with someone from The Inquisition. I am not that sure that this is the best idea with them sneaking around..."

As expected, the mentioning of The Inquisition chased away any such thoughts from the old man's head. Even the tiniest bit of miasma could be incriminating. His current actions could be seen as suicide.

"What?! You saw them here?! Shit! Why did they have to pop up right now?! I think I was about to make progress on my theory! Now I will be unable to continue!"

``And heavens be thanked for that!`` as the shared thought of the others present in the room.

Foo then walked to the table and picked up the skull. After studying it carefully, he could indeed sense that there was a collision between the holiness and miasma.

Due to the clash, the spirit inside seemed to cover inside, unable to exert control over the skull. The theory to supply it with miasma until it could suppress the holiness indeed seemed feasible.

But there was the problem with The Inquisition. And the miasma that the old man had succeeded in producing was too sparse and too destructive.

Normally, miasma was just mana that had an evil aura. But this one was more based on pure terror. It was in a form that everything would try to flee from. There was no way that it could be used to facilitate the operation of the skull.

In fact, they were lucky that it had not completely destroyed the fragile situation in the skull.

Seeing that the skull had survived, Foo started to consider how to get rid of the miasma that had been gathering in the room. It was not much; barely noticeable.

But that inquisitor might have some means to locate even the tiniest trace. Although the quality of that formation beacon of his did make it unlikely, it was always best to be sure.

Normally, he might have tried to absorb the miasma. It was nothing to him, after all- But that miasma... Was way too potent! There was no way that he would willingly absorb that! Who the hell would be willing to listen on that old man's tales for hours?!

Not Foo anyway.

So the second method would be to counter it with holy aura. But that might also bring the notice of the inquisitor. And Foo was not yet sure on their stance towards holiness.

They might consider it as bad as miasma. Or, even worse, they might start to worship him as a god! To be worshipped was just too awkward. And it would make one struggle to fulfill all the heavy and unreasonable expectations that the worshipers placed on them.

It was the same as with the position as section head. Foo did not need all that responsibility. And being a god was just so much worse.

Just thinking back on the unreasonable god from Earth, Foo would yet again solemnly swear to never become one. He loved to curse the irresponsible and uncaring gods. But he would never want to be the one curse at.

And he knew just how high expectations that he had on gods. There was no way that he would be able to live up to them. Or rather, he would be too lazy for that.

But being a lazy and irresponsible god like the one from Earth was not an option. Sometimes Foo was something of an perfectionist. If he were to be a god, it should be perfect. But there would be no way he could bother with that!

And Foo always felt bad if he let anyone down. For this reason he held all promises that he made. Of course, that also meant that he was reluctant to give promises, and if he gave some, they would be... favourably phrased...

The conclusion was; even holiness was too risky!

He was not confident in area emissions after all. It went a tad out of control in The Abyss... Transferring directly to an object might be possible. But any larger operations would be like begging for an accident to happen.

If only Lucifer was there, then he could be forced... er... given the opportunity to regain some miasma.

But as it was now, there was no method to get rid of it! Thus Foo could only resort to the ultimate excuse; pretend it was like that when they arrived!

If that did not work, blame it on the student! He would surely choose the loving care from The Inquisition rather than having to endure even a second longer with the old man.

Of course, this was all just worst case scenarios. It might not even come to that.

Pushing such worries out of his mind, Foo then studied the skull once again. What said that you had to use miasma to make necromancy work?

Necromancy was basically an art of manipulating souls. From the original meaning to use them to divine the future, it had went towards forcing them to do their bidding.

It was quite similar to sorcery, where you manipulated spirits. The difference would be that necromancy pertained towards the spirits - or souls if you want - of dead people, and sorcery towards natural spirits.

It also seemed as if the soul of dead people was constantly being pulled towards the gates of death. As such you had to counteract it, affixing it to an object, which often induced torturous stress on the soul.

Anyone that was tortured as such over a long time would snap, starting to generate miasma, which could be used to shelter the soul, lessening the strain.

However, what if you used holiness instead? It was not that Foo found it fascinating, and wanted to experimenting on a perfect testsubject. No. He just wanted to improve the life - or maybe you should call it after-life? - of the skull.

The ignored student continued to beg to be released, but no longer that desperate as it seemed that the old man would not resume any time soon.

The old man paced to and fro, trying to come up with precautions in case the inquisitor would come.

Foo studied the now frail construct of miasma. His plan was to replace it with holiness, creating the same effect as earlier, but much more comfortable.

``This should be easy! What could possibly go wrong?``