'Wait, stop! What are you doing?! Use your body, not the chair!'
The Skydream Iceworm was understandably shocked and furious.
The boy had a perfect martial soul to house its immense mental power, but he chose to absorb it all with his seemingly useless martial soul.
Whether it was its mind or ice attributes, neither suited this chair. It could not even begin to imagine what kind of abilities it could have because it was completely ordinary.
But Caelum did not care for the soul beast's reprimand.
To begin with, the absorption had already begun.
And even if he could, he would not change it. No one understood his martial soul better than him.
"Calm down and focus. Since you're able to seal your essence inside me for later use, you should also be able to manipulate it. Leave me a soul bone, a skull. And if you can, try to turn it into an external soul bone."
Upon hearing his words, the Iceworm wanted to yell at him again. How could it calm down when its sacrifice was being squandered? But just as it was about to speak, it felt the tug from Caelum's martial soul.
And all of a sudden, an immense pressure bore down upon the soul beast.
It was not a pressure on its body, but on its very soul.
The words it wanted to speak were stripped away from it as though it had never thought such things before. Instead, it felt compelled to obey.
Celine, watching from the side, saw Caelum's eyes glowing with a mystical black and gold, lending his amethyst eyes an intimidating charm that brooked no disobedience.
The sudden change in his demeanour, from a weeping and grieving child to a tyrannical master, was so jarring that she could not even believe that he was the same boy she had grown up with.
Meanwhile, Skydream Iceworm began manipulating its essence.
The chair began transforming with the infusion of the soul beast's power, turning into a magnificent throne seemingly carved from obsidian glass.
At its base, a band of light condensed from soul power emerged. It was yellow, a hundred-year soul ring.
With Caelum's body still being young and weak, he would not have been able to handle the full weight of a million-year-old soul ring. Nonetheless, this yellow ring was unlike any other.
The rest of the Iceworm's essence was sealed inside Caelum, leaving him with nine balls of golden essence deep within his spiritual sea that had been opened by Skydream Iceworm's sacrifice.
There would have been ten seals had it not been for Caelum's request—an external soul bone.
The original skull soul bone that would have been granted to him had to be infused with more power to allow it to become an external soul bone.
This was to be expected, however, as external soul bones grow more powerful together with the individual.
This was the lesson Caelum learned from his mother, and the reason why he asked for it. This was perhaps the only time he could ever obtain an external soul bone.
And while all these grand things happened, Caelum was not spared the pain.
Even sealed, the weight of a million-year-old soul beast's entire essence was too much for a six-year-old child to bear, not to mention having to fuse with a million-year-old external soul bone as well.
The only reason he had not passed out was because his second martial soul was his body.
Through this ordeal, his body itself was being strengthened even without obtaining a soul ring of its own. Still, by the end of it, Caelum collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath as the dawn light began to peek over the horizon.
"Brother, are you alright?"
Celine helped him sit up. She had been watching over him for a few hours now, not having slept a wink. Her face was marred by worry, anxiety and wariness.
They were still in the woods. Even if it was safe here, who knew what could happen.
What if the bandits noticed the lights from the immolation? What if soul beasts from Star Dou Forest noticed the powerful fluctuation of soul power?
She was powerless to protect herself, her brother and their mother's remains. It was all she could do to keep herself from breaking down and crying.
"I'm fine. Just let me rest and meditate for a bit."
Celine sighed in relief knowing that he was not hurt. She left him to recuperate and meditate while she knelt down by their mother's body.
Her tears fell uncontrollably, but her hands moved obediently. Her mother's last words rang loud in her head over and over. She reached down and took their mother's necklace and wore it herself.
She ignored the two rings and turned her attention to the locket.
As she clicked it open, she found nestled inside was a folded paper. It contained the squiggly drawing that Celine herself had made, a portrait of their little family.
She crouched down and embraced her mother as she wept silently.
On the other side, Caelum held back his own tears as he watched his sister.
There were just the two of them now.
He had to be strong for both of them.
After a while, he closed his eyes and began meditating. Soul power circulated within his body, following strange currents that seemed to have opened up as a result of his martial soul's awakening.
These were the meridians that his mother taught them, but somehow, there seemed to be more of them than what he knew.
Perhaps it was a change brought about by his body martial soul, but his meridians were like a system of tributaries forming a closed circuit loop.
They spread out from and fed into a strange cavity, a pool of soul power nestled within the depths of his body.
And he could feel that this was not their final form. He might be able to grow this system further, optimise it for better efficiency and efficacy.
Regardless, right now, his only way to grow was by using Clan Blaiddyd's meditation technique. And as he meditated to stabilise his soul power, his body was risen into the air, carried by an obsidian glass throne that seemed to hold the very depths of the void within it.
At this point, Caelum did not know what to call this martial soul of his.
He settled with Void Throne because it reminded him of that vision he saw during his awakening ceremony. But whether it would live up to its name was something he has yet to figure out.
Nonetheless, if his first soul ring was anything to go by, then the answer would likely be a resounding yes.
The Void Throne, even in its nascent form from before absorbing a soul ring, already had an innate domain of its own albeit weak. But now, that domain has become the crux of its abilities.
The Empyrean Domain, as Caelum understood it, granted him a powerful compelling force that acted on the body, the mind and the soul. It not only weakened enemies, it also slowed down everything about them—their movements, thought process, recovery.
This domain was a proof of tyranny and power, the kind of power that would let Caelum survive and thrive in this world.
It was shaped by his own will rather than the martial soul's own nature.
After all, this was his throne. He gives it meaning, not the other way around.
This was also the reason why Caelum had chosen to absorb Skydream Iceworm's soul ring with this first martial soul.
On its own, it is already a very powerful control-type martial soul, but its soul ring granted it versatility like no other.