Vile Evil Hides Under The Veil

Thanks to the unique awakening of her Soul Sense, Nira could smell the souls of the people she came in contact with.

Thus, she had claimed to detect the same scent from Lemaar as the man responsible for the destruction of her apparition back in Anfang.

However, in reality, she felt that something was off. And that her claim was not entirely foolproof.

She could tell that Lemaar's soul had two distinct scents as if his soul had been created by superimposing and fusing the souls of two different beings. As such, she was perplexed about the identity of Lemaar.

If she didn't know any better, Nira would have declared that Lemaar had been demonically possessed or that he was an incarnation of some god who had sent their Divine Sense inside his soul.

However, Nira was knowledgeable about these cases and had encountered various examples of both. She had met many demonic entities as well as incarnations of the gods who harbored their deity's Divine Sense within them.

And of course, she had smelled them. Quite literally. She had come to recognize the patterns of the soul just by smelling them. This was the reason why she could tell that the first founder king of Edinburgh and Eren would get along well because they both smelled similar to some extent, which made both of them come across as cool-headed, cold-hearted, and cunning.

Recognizing the nature of the people based on the smell of their souls was Nira's unique quality. She could also tell if someone was demonically possessed or carried the will of the gods with them.

Thus, she could tell that Lemaar's case was entirely different from those cases. His soul's scent had dual palates, but both of them didn't smell demonic. His soul was also not harboring anyone's Divine Sense. Plus, the way with which the two distinct souls had been fused was also something she hadn't experienced before.

She had never seen something like that.

However, this puzzle made Nira want to catch Lemaar alive even more than before.

A palate of smell that she received from Lemaar definitely belonged to the man who had destroyed her apparition, AKA Soul Fragment, in Anfang. That meant he was definitely connected with the perpetrator from Anfang somehow even if he was not the same person.

The destruction of the apparition also bugged Nira for a different reason. The Soul Fragment was completely destroyed by Eren when he was in Anfang. As such, she didn't inherit the memories that it had created while it was kept in the Sansara World 1.0

However, Nira inherited the Soul Fragement's emotions after its destruction. She also deduced the palate of the soul after analyzing the emotions related to Eren's smell. Her Saint Rank made it possible for her to pull this off.

The inherited emotions from her own apparition told Nira that the man who had destroyed her Soul Fragment had a huge secret that he was trying to keep away from her. That he had destroyed her apparition so he could keep that secret to himself. A secret that she could have made use of in her current Rank.

It was almost impossible for those outside Anfang to find their way back into it due to the Divine-isolation Array Formation. Otherwise, Nira would have sent the Soul Fragments of her minions to investigate the matter.

However, she could have never guessed that the

The Saint Rank archer operating through an alchemy doll just needed to scan Lemaar's soul as a whole and see what was wrong with it. She could make use of various soul-probing methods her real Saint-rank self had in possession to get to the bottom of the enigma that was Lemaar.

'My Soul Fragment was completely destroyed in Anfang because of this man or his colleague,' Nira looked at Lemaar hatefully and thought to herself, releasing the arrow.

'I paid a huge price because of this, and my soul is still recovering from the damage that was caused because of the Soul Fragment's destruction. I must make him or the man behind him pay the price for halting my progress.

Plus, I can send this little fish as a gift to Lehan and ask for his help in recovering my soul injury in return. I'm sure that research maniac will like this specimen. Hehe. The one who has wounded my soul will be forced to become my beneficiary this way.'

The archer thought as she watched her just-released arrow approaching the target that was Lemaar.

***

Thanks to residing with a geek like Sansara Sage, Nira Nightshade knew that there were various ways to increase productivity or attempt to be in multiple places at once for personal reasons. One of these methods involved using clones.

Creating a homunculus didn't count because it required the transplantation of the entire soul. The homunculus couldn't be operated separately from one's own body; rather, it served as a replacement for the user's current body.

In a way, inhabiting a homunculus vessel made the user pseudo-immortal, as homunculi could live as long as there were resources to support their existence.

However, a homunculus vessel was as much a curse as it was a blessing for Practitioners reaching the end of their lifespans. First, they could never restart their Path in a homunculus vessel, and their powers were destined to stay stagnant after choosing this vessel.

Second, a homunculus vessel required rare natural resources, limiting its accessibility to only the rich Sages in Anfang with profound economic and societal foundations.

Elemental clones provided another way to be in two different places at once, but they weren't sustainable in the long run and had operability range restrictions requiring a network of Array Formations or a hefty fee to the Mesh.

Another method involved using the bodies of deceased Practitioners to create puppets. Inhabiting a dead body using one's Spiritual Force fell under necromancy, with its own set of limitations, most notably the inability to impart Menaka's Blessing to the undead.

The Mana Body Creation method that Sansara Sage Lin Lehan developed in Anfang wasn't entirely new in Labh Salem. What mattered was that Lin had discovered this method independently using Anfang's resources. However, it, too, had drawbacks for users.