Chapter 288 Experimentation.
Xander is currently above the castle scanning the fortress from every direction from the shadow realm. She is also sharing her sight with Aeternus who is performing experiments within the castle. Aeternus is in a large room adjoined with many cells for experimental subjects. Some of the cells contain his subjects, mid-rank demons.
The large room also contains many mid-rank demons in various stages of evolution or fighting. The ones that are fighting are at each other\'s throats as if they are crazed. He sat on a pillar while he watched everything going on. Occasionally he would make some changes to the developments by releasing some dust that resemble fireflies into the air.
These fireflies are then absorbed by the demons. Some instantly start to evolve while some begin to fight each other. Some of those evolving fail and release fireflies which he takes and examines. The ones fighting kill their opponents and absorb the fireflies from the body of their opponents.
The situation might be different but one thing is common, the fireflies that are absorbed and come out of the bodies of slain demons are not the same as the ones he initially released.
There are ten large balls of Chaos energy beside him from which different fireflies are being produced. The balls of chaos energy are also different from one another. Some are completely black, some white, some reddish black, some pure red, and other different shades of the three colors.
The balls keep on changing even as more fireflies return and are analyzed. Aeternus will make adjustments to them based on the new information he acquires. He is experimenting with his Oath of the Chaos Lord ability.
He found out after some practice with it that the rate of survival is too low. The willpower required to survive the process by which chaos energy warps the body and the mind is too high. So it led to quick and painful death where the subjects are consumed from the inside out.
He has only been able to make one other subordinate apart from Xander out of 100 attempts. That\'s a success rate of 2% at best. Such a survival rate will lead to immense losses for him. He could easily lose a talented demon that he wants. And once news spread that the possibility of death when auditioning to be his subordinate is very high, no one will show up for it.
So he began experimenting with chaos energy, his ability, and souls in hopes to modify his sin ability and make it more compatible with other demons. What started as a means to ensure a higher conversion rate escalated quickly as he delved into the mysteries of sin abilities.
He created a chaos spark. Then he broke it apart with chaos energy. He didn\'t let the pieces float away. Instead, he held them together, then he grabbed some souls, and added them into the floating mess of chaos that is straining to escape his grasp. He got the souls from the stash of high-rank demons that he ransacked.
The cloud of unruly chaos energy began to mellow and clump together as they broke the souls apart. Soon they engorged on it and became tiny fireflies. He made the fireflies combine in a unique rhythm and forced sin energy in the atmosphere into the combination to see if it will finally work.
He waited patiently as he watched the ball. This is his eleventh attempt at making what he wants. If he fails, he will need to acquire more knowledge and perform more experimentation.
The fireflies within the cloud of Chaos energy began to combine in a ball according to the rhythm he set for them and grew solid. Then it glowed white and began to thrum.
"Finally, I\'ve got it." He sighed.
The previous ten balls were adjusted according to his new insight. They all thrummed and turned completely white. Then they began to alternate between glowing and dimming. His soul was also glowing and dimming in sync with the ten balls.
A row of text appeared in his vision
#( ERROR: YOUR MARK OF SIN HAS BEEN MODIFIED )
#( OATH OF THE CHAOS LORD HAS CHANGED )
#( CONGRATULATIONS! YOUR ABILITY CHAOS SPARK HAS EVOLVED INTO THE SPIRIT OF CHAOS )
He nodded appreciatively. He had gone from the low-rank demon that couldn\'t cast spells with chaos energy to a mid-rank demon that could cast sloppy spells and finally into a high-rank demon that can modify his mark of sin with chaos energy. He still can\'t cast delicate spells with chaos energy but he can modify its behavior.
He made the balls divide themselves into smaller balls that resemble the normal chaos spark before those smaller balls disintegrated into fireflies. Then the fireflies recombined into chaos sparks before they too combined into the large ten balls of white chaos balls.
The large chaos balls are white, the chaos sparks are black with white shining from within and the fireflies are red. Chaos energy within his sin ability has been made to change shape, color, size, and nature so that it will be able to fulfill the function that Aeternus has for it.
"How is everything going?" He asked Xander over their mind connection.
"Everything is good to go, Lord Khaos."
"Good. It\'s time these demons get what they came for."
He waved his hand and Chaos flames flew out into the room to burn everything. The flames only killed the demons but left the walls and ground intact. Then they returned to his body. He left the castle and flew to the arena that had been built for today\'s show. The white balls of chaos trailed after him and drew attention since they made his dark ominous figure obvious.
Demons began clamoring as soon as they saw him. There has been a ban on flying within the fortress so they could see him pass over their heads to the arena. The reason why Xander had shown up occasionally is to eat the violators of that ban.