Klaus walked over to the small reinforced sliding window on the side of the cabin and he unlatched it, sliding the heavy wood back just an inch.
The howling sub-zero wind immediately ripped into the warm cabin, carrying a flurry of freezing white snowflakes.
Klaus didn’t flinch. He reached his left arm out the window, holding the dirty plates into the freezing storm.
He didn’t need a washbasin or a rag as he simply tapped into the thudding core behind his ribs.
A thin controlled layer of pure white Soul Mana coated his fingers.
He extended that mana into the empty air, catching the falling snowflakes before they could blow past him.
With a microscopic flex of his will, he forced the ambient temperature around his hand to violently spike.
The snowflakes instantly melted into a heavy, swirling sphere of hot, pure water, suspended by his magical gravity.
He ran the suspended water over the wooden plates, using a tiny tendril of dense mana to scrape the dried stew and grease off the wood.
The high-pressure manipulated water pressure-washed the plates completely clean in less than five seconds.
He dropped the dirty water, letting it fall away into the snowdrifts below, and pulled the perfectly clean steaming wooden plates back inside.
’Soul Mana has a shit ton of versatility...’ Klaus thought.
He latched the window shut, cutting off the biting wind, and quietly stacked the clean plates back on the table.
Klaus walked over to the cot.
’You both are really cute.’
He leaned his towering muscled frame down over the sleeping girls and Klaus gently brushed a stray lock of dark hair out of Mirela’s face, pressing a soft warm kiss directly against her forehead.
The maid let out a quiet, contented sigh in her sleep, leaning slightly into his lingering warmth.
He shifted his weight, pressing another gentle kiss against the top of Anya’s silver head.
"Sleep tight," Klaus murmured softly.
He turned around, walking toward the heavy side-door of the carriage.
This door led out to the exterior runner... a small, iron-grated platform clinging to the side of the massive oak vehicle, outside the warm cabin.
Klaus unlatched the heavy wood and stepped out into the freezing, howling night.
He shut the door firmly behind him, plunging himself into the chaos of the Winterlands.
The carriage was moving at a terrifying speed with the giant mountain bear hauling the heavy timber over the deep snowpacks.
The invisible, rotating dome of spiked Soul Mana was still active, thirty feet out, casually pureeing the occasional dire wolf that got too close, but inside the protective bubble, the wind still whipped viciously.
Klaus held onto the iron railing, making his way along the narrow runner until he reached the very back of the carriage, completely out of earshot from the sleeping girls inside the cabin.
He stood on the rear platform, looking out at the dark shifting snowdrifts trailing behind them.
"Valeria," Klaus called out, his deep voice easily cutting through the noise of the wind. "Come out here."
He didn’t need to yell.
The connection between the Soul King and his subjects was instantaneous.
The moment her name left his lips, a sharp pulsing node of crimson energy flared to life inside his chest.
The raw mana pushed its way up his throat, manifesting as a brilliant, glowing red orb that floated out of his collarbone.
The orb spiraled in the cold air for a fraction of a second before expanding, taking physical, albeit microscopic, shape.
The chibi version of the Crimson Sharpshooter materialized, hovering in the air at eye level.
Her striking red eyes locked onto Klaus’s face and she looked at him with an expression of reverence.
"My King," Valeria spoke as she offered a crisp salute, hovering perfectly stable despite the moving carriage. "Why are you calling me out into the cold?"
Klaus crossed his arms over his chest, leaning his back against the heavy oak doors of the carriage.
"I was thinking," Klaus started, his silver eyes watching her closely. "Sparky is an elemental... She naturally possesses the ability to manifest a physical form using atmospheric plasma. You’re a human soul and right now, you’re just a concentrated ball of spiritual data with a visual projection. I can’t hand you a real gun, and you can’t touch anything."
Valeria blinked her tiny red eyes, lowering her salute. "That is correct, my King. I am currently tethered entirely to your internal domain."
"Would you like a physical body?" Klaus asked bluntly.
Valeria froze. Her tiny hands gripped the dress she wore as her eyes widened in shock.
"A... a physical body?" Valeria repeated, her ethereal voice trembling slightly. "You... you can do that? You can pull me out of your soul and give me flesh and bone again?"
"Yes," Klaus nodded. "I haven’t tested the exact limits of it yet, but the Soul Configuration skill isn’t just for elementals. If I manipulate the ambient matter and anchor your soul to a reconstructed biological vessel, I can bring you back into the waking world. You wouldn’t just be a ghost as you’d be real."
He expected her to immediately jump at the chance.
She had been a proud warrior so the idea of being trapped as a miniature ghost inside someone’s chest had to be humiliating but Valeria didn’t look excited.
She actually looked incredibly conflicted.
She floated down, her tiny boots resting lightly on Klaus’s broad shoulder. She sat down, crossing her legs, and looked away from his face, staring out at the dark snowdrifts.
"Honestly, my King..." Valeria started, her voice dropping into a quiet remarkably vulnerable tone. "I... I don’t really want a physical body."
Klaus raised a silver eyebrow. "Why not?"
Valeria looked back up at him, her red eyes completely earnest.
"Because I love being in your soul. When you killed me, I thought it was the end but existing inside your inner domain... it’s peaceful. It’s safe. I can feel your immense power all around me. I don’t want to go back to being a fragile Zombie who has to sleep in the dirt and worry about freezing to death."
She paused, a deeply rosy blush coloring her tiny, pale cheeks. She looked down, fiddling with the hem of her dark shirt.
"Besides," Valeria mumbled shyly. "While you are the Soul King out here in the physical world... I was hoping I could be your Soul Queen to the people inside your soul. I’ve already organized the guards and the wolves into proper defensive battalions while you were sleeping."
Klaus stared at the tiny Crimson Sharpshooter.
He had literally shot her through the head, stolen her soul, and trapped her in his chest... now she was currently blushing and asking to be his internal wife while organizing a spectral militia?
The absurdity of his existence never failed to blindside him.
Valeria suddenly gasped, slapping both of her tiny hands over her mouth. Her blush deepened to a violent crimson.
"I... I apologize, my King!" Valeria stammered quickly, floating up off his shoulder in a panic. "I am overstepping my boundaries! I am merely a subject of yours, I have no right to presume such a title! Please forgive my insolence!"
"Relax, Valeria," Klaus chuckled, a low, rich sound that cut through the howling wind. "You don’t need to apologize. Honestly... I would like it."
Valeria stopped floating backward. Her tiny hands slowly dropped from her mouth. "You... you would?"
"Yeah," Klaus smirked lazily, leaning his head back against the wood. "You’re competent, you’re loyal, and you’re the only one in there who actually talks back to me instead of just mindlessly roaring so keep the troops organized. Queen fits."
Valeria’s tiny face absolutely lit up. A brilliant smile broke across her features, her red eyes shining with overwhelming devotion.
She saluted again, her chest puffed out with pride.
"However," Valeria added, her tactical mind instantly pivoting back to the topic at hand. "If you truly wish to give me a body... you should give me one that can seamlessly phase between being physical and a soul."
Klaus frowned. "Phase? Why?"
Valeria floated closer, hovering just inches from his face.
She tapped her tiny chin thoughtfully. "It’s versatility. If I can switch between physical flesh and an incorporeal state, I can fight physically in the real world without risking permanent damage. And..."
She paused, a completely lewd smirk spreading across her tiny face as she looked him up and down.
"...so when you want to use me to satisfy your sexual urges, I’ll be able to properly accommodate your massive stamina before retreating back to the safety of your soul to recover."
Klaus didn’t even blink.
He just casually brought his right hand up, pinched his thumb and middle finger together, and flicked her squarely in the center of her tiny forehead.
THWIP!
"Kyaah!" Valeria shrieked as the physical force of his finger sent her spinning backward through the air in a rapid series of chaotic somersaults.
She caught her balance ten feet away, rubbing her forehead with an indignant pouting glare.
"Keep the horny comments to a minimum while we’re working," Klaus said deadpan. "I’m going to start experimenting. I hope you don’t mind."
Valeria floated back over, rubbing her head, but her interest was immediately piqued. "What kind of experiment, my King?"
"I want to test the limits of Soul Expansion," Klaus explained. "As the Soul King, I have complete control over the structure of souls. I can harvest them, configure them, and weaponize them but I want to see exactly how far that control goes. I want to know if I can actively manipulate and overwrite the soul of a living creature, and force its physical biology to adapt to the new spiritual blueprint."
He looked out into the freezing dark snowpack rushing past the moving carriage.
"Which is why I need a live test subject."
Valeria blinked, her red eyes widening.
A brief flicker of panic crossed her face.
"A live subject? My King, surely you don’t mean—"
"Not you," Klaus clarified instantly, waving his hand. "You’re already dead. I need something with a beating heart."
He pushed himself off the wooden door, turning his body to face the open tundra.
He narrowed his glowing silver eyes, his divine senses expanding outward, cutting through the howling blizzard and the thick veil of falling snow.
He didn’t have to look far.
Trailing roughly forty yards behind the carriage, staying just outside the lethal perimeter of the rotating, spiked mana dome, was a lone mutated dire wolf.
The beast was massive, heavily scarred, and starving. It wasn’t attacking but it was stalking them, waiting for the massive mountain bear to collapse from exhaustion.
Klaus didn’t draw his sword and he didn’t cast an offensive spell.
He raised his right hand, his fingers curling slightly like the claws of a predator.
SHHHHK.
A thick, liquid-glass tendril of pure, highly concentrated white Soul Mana shot out from the center of his palm.
It didn’t arc or travel like a projectile... it moved with instant linear velocity, ripping through the sub-zero air and bypassing the protective dome entirely.
The tendril slammed directly into the stalking wolf’s chest.
It didn’t pierce the flesh.
It phased completely through the bone and muscle, latching securely onto the fragile flickering structure of the monster’s soul as Klaus ruthlessly flooded the tendril with a surge of blunt, concussive spiritual pressure.
The dire wolf didn’t even have time to whimper. Its eyes rolled to the back of its skull, its nervous system instantly short-circuiting as its consciousness was brutally knocked out.
The massive beast collapsed into the snowpack with its momentum sending it sliding forward like a limp ragdoll.
Klaus brutally yanked his arm backward.
The soul tendril contracted with terrifying speed.
It dragged the unconscious, two-hundred-pound wolf directly through the snow, pulling it effortlessly through the transparent wall of the mana dome, and hauled it straight up onto the iron-grated rear runner of the carriage.
THUD!
The unconscious beast hit the metal grating heavily, completely unresponsive.
Klaus stepped forward, looming over the limp monster.
He didn’t break the magical connection as he kept the glowing white tendril firmly attached to the wolf’s chest.
He closed his eyes, tapping directly into the beast’s spiritual architecture.
It was a fascinating and horrific perspective.
To Klaus’s divine senses, he wasn’t looking at fur and muscle anymore.
He was looking at a complex, glowing blueprint of intricate, interlocking spiritual veins that dictated every single biological function of the creature.
"I’m configuring the soul to remain in an enforced comatose state," Klaus murmured. "I’m manually severing the soul’s connection to the physical pain receptors and the waking consciousness."
He opened his eyes.
He drew back his heavy combat boot and delivered a brutal, bone-cracking kick directly into the wolf’s ribcage.
CRACK!
The sound of snapping bone was loud, but the wolf didn’t flinch.
It didn’t wake up and it didn’t even twitch.
The heart was still beating, the lungs were still drawing in the freezing air, but the mind was completely deadened by Klaus’s authority.
"Success," Klaus sighed.
"Incredible," Valeria breathed, hovering closely to examine the beast. "You have completely bypassed its defenses. What should we do first, my King?"
"Give me an idea," Klaus offered, looking down at the massive, furry canvas.
Valeria tapped her chin. "Shape the soul to turn it into another monster. Something completely different from a canine so we can see if the flesh will follow the spiritual command."
Klaus nodded. "Alright. Let’s make a bear."