The Haletdam scholars generation could be described as the pinnacle of Eich’s civilization. The Haletdam generation went too far with researching taboo topics, leading to their destruction by the hands of the Gods of the time. If not for that, the Haletdam humans would likely still be ruling today, with no chance at all for the elves, beastmen, and current humans.

The Haletdam generation had three major achievements that they were incredibly proud of: everyone becoming undying, artificial souls, and the creation of life. This was also why the Gods destroyed them.

The most foundationally important and core achievement would be the artificial souls.

Conservation had started to create souls. This was a power that exceeded even the limits of what the Goddesses of Order and Chaos could do. It was likely that only Creator Goddess Eich herself had such a power.

“Part two, activate… the forbidden result of artificial souls.”

A pitch-black sword came to me while breaking the rules and distance of time and space while answering my summons. When this sword which had absorbed countless souls arrived here, all the snow in the surrounding area was instantly stained black by the corruption of dead souls.

“Death Sword Seven Sins.”

My Seven Sins sword had just harvested countless living souls on the battlefield. As Seven Sins existed here, it seemed as if a door to hell had been opened, and countless souls were pouring out.

“Trying to obtain endless knowledge and truth, and to learn the Gods’ secrets, even if that’s an instinct of intelligent creatures to search for knowledge, is also a taboo like playing with fire. Once humans finally believe that they have surpassed the Creator Goddess’s limitations, they’ll naturally try the Creator Goddess’s powers for themselves… But in the world of Eich, that’s the equivalent of bringing one’s own destruction upon oneself.”

Every single person would have their own personal interpretation of human nature. There were many philosophies about this, and none could be described as right or wrong.

As for me, I always believed that the Seven Original Sins which were viewed as the source of all human evil were also in a way the most primitive motivations which pushed every individual and even society forward. This Eighth Original Sin was the same.

The Haletdam generation was destroyed because they touched upon the foundational nature of souls and endangered the Cycle of Reincarnation. However, their research results had been left behind in this world.

“Spell formula complete. Artificial soul model blueprint completed…”

Although the Haletdam generation’s technology was amazing to the point where they could create systematic artificial souls, I had to say that even if they had astounding technology, they were incredibly weak at using it!

Creating an artificial soul with a certain amount of knowledge and self will just for the sake of having a free laborer or a calculator? That was such an incredibly foolish waste of resources.

As for me, when I obtained the techniques of both creating artificial life with magic and creating artificial souls, I immediately discovered the tremendous combat potential of combining these techniques.

“Isn’t this just… a magical version of having a clone army?”

In a way, the pinnacles of magic and science were both about the foundational nature of life and souls. Science and magic were interconnected this way despite being opposites.

Due to the current magical civilization’s overwhelming advantage in soul research, “copied souls” would be far closer to the original.

Eich was a world where all power stemmed from the soul. If artificial souls could be created and copied, then didn’t this mean that a powerful individual could be mass-produced?

A person lacked combat experience and fighting techniques? It was simple enough to use undead magic to copy memories. Harloys was an expert among experts in this field. Not only were her soul books capable of copying memories, they were even capable of copying personalities and self will.

An artificial soul would have limitations? This could be solved with the soul splitting technique that I used when creating my Seven Original Sins. Cutting off the soul shards of a powerful “host” to create replica soul seeds was an already matured technique I had for creating super undead creatures.

In order to preserve the soul’s liveliness and completeness, I even used the soul splitting and replication methods I learned from Harloys’ soul books. Every individual was a page from her soul books.

Lacking an appropriate physical body? I combined my research results with Conservation’s, and used temporary lives made from ice and snow to break all limits with the miraculous power to create life that was the realm of the Creator Goddess.

Insufficient mana? I was using the super special order-only version of Olivia’s Magic Box. Each of these Magic Boxes were capable of supplying power for an entire city’s mage towers. One such Magix Box had the storage capacity of 50 mana pools.

Although the theory was fine, there were too many unexpected things that could happen. I was still missing too many technologies for everything in-between. The success rate would be really low? Indeed, having these separate technologies become gears that worked excellently together to craft this entire forbidden spell was something with such low probability that it was almost impossible. But, when in my Northlands arena, it was possible to turn the almost impossible into a special weapon that was definitely possible.

“…Soul World Northlands is stable. ‘Roland’ physical body model completed. Artificial soul injection beginning…”

Even in my Soul World of ice and snow, each Roland clone had only approximately 60-70% of my total combat strength.

Every soul was an artificial soul that I had created using my own soul shard combined with living soul resources. These Roland clones wouldn’t have high intelligence, and they had almost zero emotions, but their fighting techniques and combat experience would also be around 60-70% of my own.

Each skeleton of ice and snow finished evolving in front of me. They all gained flesh and blood and put on armor created from solid ice while picking up swords of ice and snow.

Still, I was a little creeped out by seeing so many familiar faces with such listless eyes.

One Roland, two Rolands, three Rolands… fine, an uncountable number of Rolands.

Harloys, Roland, and Conservation. This was the result of the combined research of three Undead Emperors who were all at the peak of soul research. The Haletdam generation’s most precious technology was added to this in order to finally create this unstoppable miracle.

“…Karwenz, if you can survive against my army of 1342 Rolands for five minutes, then I’ll… I’ll win in the end regardless, so what if you can survive for five minutes? You’ll die after 10 minutes anyways.”

Karwenz ignored me as he laughed wildly when faced with my endless clone army. He immediately started challenging this one vs. thousand battle without there needing to be any meaning to it.

I heaved a sigh of relief at Karwenz’s fervor for combat. Splitting my soul into overly many pieces meant that my vision had become hazy, and my head hurt so much that I couldn’t feel anything else at all. My mana was being overloaded, which was destroying my magic power as well as life itself.

This compound forbidden spell was beyond the limits of any mage to cast. While this forbidden spell provided unstoppable combat strength, it would also cause the caster’s physical body and soul to simultaneously begin collapsing.

Indeed, I had just lied to Karwenz. I hadn’t lied for all of my lives all in order so that I could succeed at fooling an enemy in a critical time like this.

Karwenz had been fooled as I expected. If he instead stalled for time and ran away, I would definitely be the first to collapse. But with his actions, he definitely wouldn’t run away from here.

How much longer could I persist for? One more second? One more minute? Until the next judgement?

How much longer could Karwenz persist for? No matter what aces he had up his sleeve, I felt that it would be impossible for any of his aces to surpass this ace of mine.

Would Karwenz die first, or would I end up killing myself first…? This really was rather interesting.